Am exterminated! Am exterminated!--A Dalek, upon losing a fight with a Mechanoid
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"The Executioners", 22 May 1965
"The Death of Time", 29 May 1965
"Flight Through Eternity", 5 June 1965
"Journey into Terror", 12 June 1965
"The Death of Doctor Who", 19 June 1965
"The Planet of Decision", 26 June 1965
Written by Terry Nation
Directed by Richard Martin
Script editor: Dennis Spooner
Produced by Verity Lambert
William Hartnell as the Doctor
William Russell as Ian Chesterton (final appearance)
Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright (final appearance)
Maureen O'Brien as Vicki
Peter Purves as Steven Taylor (first appearance)
The Doctor has been tinkering with a time-space visualiser, which he took from the space museum, and he's got it working again. With it, the TARDIS team can watch any instant in all of space and time. They watch Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address, an audience between Shakespeare and Elizabeth I, and a performance of "Ticket to Ride" by the Beatles on an episode of Top of the Pops. Vicki has heard of the Beatles, has even visited their museum in Liverpool, but "didn't know they play classical music", a description that disgusts Barbara.
The Beatles sequence isn't on the North American DVD of "The Chase" (though it was on the earlier North American VHS release), and, while I understand the rights issues involves, I think that's a shame. That performance of "Ticket to Ride" actually gets used in Beatles documentaries, and it only exists because of its appearance in Doctor Who--the rest of that episode of Top of the Pops has been wiped.
(The story goes that originally, the Beatles themselves were actually scheduled to appear in the programme--made up to appear in their seventies, they'd be picked up by the time-space visualiser while attending their fiftieth anniversary. But Brian Epstein put the kibosh on them appearing in a cheap kids' science fiction show.)
That bit of fluff concluded, the TARDIS materialises on a hot desert planet, boiling beneath the heat of two suns. Ian and Vicki dash off over a dune to go exploring, while the Doctor and Barbara hang back to sunbathe. At this point I kind of wondered in the Doctor would attire himself for sunbathing by pulling swimming trunks on over his frock coats and check trousers, a la Batman and the Joker having their surfing competition, but no, he just remains fully clothed while he lays out.
Ian and Vicki discover a metal hatch in the sand. They pull it open and descend into the crumbling tunnels of an abandoned subterranean city. But soon they're attacked by a large, tentacled creature--it looks a bit like a squid, but moving about on dry land. And it's between them and the hatch, so they have no option but to retreat deeper into the tunnels.
Back on the surface, the Doctor and Barbara are prevented from looking for their friends by a sandstorm, which not only changes the entire landscape but also buries the TARDIS. And it reveals a new threat: a squad of Daleks, hunting the TARDIS team (whom they now describe as "our greatest enemies").
They flee and take refuge with the planet's native humanoid inhabitants, the Aridians, who look like anthropoid silver fish. (I don't mean they look like anthropoid silverfish, but that they wear lycra jumpsuits and swimcaps spray-painted silver, with fins glued on to look like fish.) They explain that this planet, Aridius, was once an aquatic paradise, but that the water burnt away as the planet was drawn closer to the twin suns.
(Which opens the question as to how it came to be named "Aridius". Was it named by the Ironic Planetary Naming Authority, or by the Bad Luck Planetary Naming Authority)?
The Aridians tell the Doctor and Barbara that when the planet dried out, the mire-beasts invaded the Aridians' underground cities. The mire-beasts--one of which is obviously the creature that has cornered Vicki and Ian--cannot be defeated, and so the only solution for the Aridians is to wall off those sections of their tunnels that become infested.
The Aridians take Barbara and the Doctor to their city, but soon enough the city is contacted by the Daleks, who demand that the Aridians hand over the TARDIS team or face extermination. Not wishing to put their hosts in a bad situation, the Doctor declares that he and Barbara will leave, but the Aridians refuse to allow him to do so--the Daleks have specifically told them that if the team escape, they will destroy their city.
Meanwhile, Vicki and Ian have fought off the mire-beast, but in the process Ian took a blow to the head and got knocked unconscious. Vicki runs off in fright, and in her mad dash through the tunnels, she somehow finds a way through into the very chamber where the Aridians are holding Barbara and the Doctor. They make to arrest her, too, but before they can, a mire-beast bursts in, having followed her through the tunnels.
In the confusion, the Doctor, Barbara and Vicki make their escape, and Vicki leads the group back to Ian. He's awake--his wound looks worse than it is. (And it really does look bad--there's a lot of blood flowing from that temple for 1965 television.) While awake, he's found an exit from the tunnels--and it leads right to the TARDIS.
The TARDIS, buried in the sandstorm, was discovered by the Daleks, who captured a pair of Aridians and used them as slave labour to excavate it, then killed them when they were finished. Ian and the Doctor are able to distract the Daleks, and the team escape and dematerialise.
A few minutes after they're in flight, though, the Doctor learns some shocking news from the TARDIS's sensors: the Daleks are pursuing them. They've built their own time machine and are hunting the team through space and time.
Cut to the Dalek time machine's control room. One Dalek gives a report calculating how big a lead the TARDIS has on them, and after he gives this report, the Dalek commander demands he convert the amount into Earth measure. The original Dalek actually stutters as he does the arithmetic. ("Um ... er ... ah ... twelve ... Earth minutes.") This is one of those moments in fandom that's cited as a reason why "The Chase" isn't a very good story--the ridiculousness of a stammering Dalek. But what I'd like to point out is how unreasonable the Dalek commander's demand is in the first place--why on Earth would he need the time units converted to Earth measure? If you're, say, the pilot of an RAF bomber, and your tail gunner reports, "We've got German fighters closing in behind us, skipper! About five hundred yards!", you don't very well respond, "Sorry, Bill! Since our enemies are German, I can't act on that information until you translate 'five hundred yards' into German for me!"
Anyway. We now go into a series of set pieces, where the TARDIS materialises, the crew briefly interact with their surroundings, and then depart; then the Daleks arrive, ascertain that the TARDIS has already left, and pursue it. This includes extensive shots of the time vortex, with a cardboard cutout of the TARDIS chased erratically across the screen by a cardboard cutout of the Dalek time machine, while some very jazzy incidental music played. You kind of wonder if the BBC hired the Dave Brubeck Quartet to do the music for this serial. (In fairness, the cardboard cutouts do get larger as they cross the screen, which does an excellent job of creating the illusion that they're moving three-dimensionally rather than two-.)
The first stop on the chase is atop the Empire State Building, where the team meet Morton Dill (played by Peter Purves), a tourist from Alabama who's just gosh-darned amazed at everything he sees in the big city. When the TARDIS dematerialises a few moments later, he concludes he must have stumbled across the production of a movie, something he thinks gets confirmed when the Daleks show up a few minutes later. He examines the Dalek he meets by walking in a full circle around it, and the Dalek's eyestalk follows him, tracking 360 degrees to keep up with him--it's a really cute moment. (Morton Dill survives the encounter--the Daleks murder no one on their visit to the Empire State Building. Well, not on this visit.)
Next, the TARDIS arrives at and quickly departs from the Mary Celeste. The Daleks also arrive and depart, but not until their appearance has so frightened everyone aboard that they've jumped ship into the Atlantic Ocean, leaving the Mary Celeste deserted, with its famous half-drunk cups of coffee and breakfasts in the middle of being eaten. A Dalek falls overboard, too, and actually screams in terror as he falls.
The TARDIS's next destination is the front hallway of a spooky, dark, deserted mansion, which the Doctor identifies from its architecture as Central European. The Doctor and Ian head upstairs to explore the house, while Barbara and Vicki wait by the TARDIS.
While, they're waiting, a figure in a dark cloak approaches them, introduces himself as Count Dracula, and then departs. The Doctor and Ian discover a laboratory with a shrouded body lying on a slab; they pull back the shroud to reveal Frankenstein's monster, and quickly flee the lab.
The Doctor theorises that somehow, the TARDIS has transported them into the recesses of the human mind, a dream world. This excites Ian, because surely the Daleks can't possibly follow them into the human subconscious. But he's wrong, because soon enough, the pepperpots do indeed arrive.
A battle ensues between the Daleks, Dracula and Frankenstein, with the Daleks' guns having no effect on the monsters. In the commotion, the Doctor, Ian and Barbara pile into TARDIS and dematerialise, and not until it's already too late do they realise that they've left Vicki behind. The Doctor insists there's no way to go back and get her; he simply doesn't have sufficiently fine control of the TARDIS.
Vicki, though, manages to dart inside the Daleks' time machine and hides there; the Daleks withdraw from their battle and take off in pursuit of the TARDIS. After the spooky house has once again fallen quiet, a camera shot shows us its front entrance, where a large sign identifies it as a carnival fright house, part of the "Festival of Ghana, 1996; admission $10" (yes, dollars). But a sticker placed over the sign tells us that the festival has been "cancelled by order of Peking".
While hiding aboard the Dalek time machine, Vicki is able to watch the Daleks hatch their next stratagem: they construct a robot duplicate of the Doctor, identical to the original in every way save for the fact that he's played by an actor who doesn't really resemble William Hartnell at all, and programme to "Infiltrate and kill!" the TARDIS crew. (That phrase is repeated a good eight or ten times during episodes four and five.)
I can't really think of a better way they could have done the duplicate-Doctor, given the constraints under which they were operating, but I've got to say, it's pretty unsuccessful. The production team make a valiant attempt to have William Hartnell play the duplicate whenever possible, but most of the time, they have to use the unconvincing double. And I don't just mean that happens the Doctor and the robot have to appear in the same scene; I mean it happens whenever they appear in consecutive scenes (which happens for most of the robot's time in the programme).
1960s Doctor Who was shot "as-live", meaning that as near as possible, a thirty-minute episode was recorded during a thirty-minute block of time at the studio. So when the camera cuts from a scene between Ian and the Doctor in one location, to a scene between Barbara and the robot in another location, there simply isn't time for William Hartnell to run across to the other side of the studio to play both scenes.
In the robot's first appearance, at the cliffhanger for episode four, the double is used for a long shot, surrounded by Daleks; we then cut to Hartnell for a closeup, still stood on the TARDIS set from the previous scene, with a Dalek eyestalk extending into frame to make us think we're still aboard the Dalek time machine. But that really doesn't work: neither Hartnell's posture nor the background match the double's.
Still, two things do work. First, William Hartnell dubs all the robot's lines as the double mimics them; sure, there lip syncing's slightly off, but that's forgivable given that, once again, this was being done live. And second is the scene where the Doctor and the robot finally meet. Hartnell will speak a line playing one character (of course, by that point, we don't know if he's the Doctor or the robot) facing off to camera left; we then cut to a shot of Ian or Barbara or Vicki, during which, Hartnell turns around; we then cut back to Hartnell, now facing off to camera right, and Hartnell delivers a line as the other character.
So. The TARDIS now arrives on the planet Mechanus, a jungle planet. (No doubt it was named Mechanus by the same Ironic Yet Creepily Predictive Planetary Naming Authority that named Aridius.) But it's a jungle of large, extremely aggressive fungi that are more than happy to eat whatever human-sized creatures come near them. The TARDIS team are trepidatious about walking off into the jungle, but then suddenly, a path lights up along the ground. They follow it, and it leads them to a cave where they take refuge.
Meanwhile, the Daleks have landed and sent their robot off to find the team. Vicki waits till all the Daleks have left, then heads off into the jungle to try to rejoin her friends. From their cave, the others hear her calling for them, and Ian and the Doctor head into the jungle to find her.
While they're gone, the robot arrives at the cave and rather callously tells Barbara that Ian is dead, killed by the fungi. She doesn't believe him and insists they go look for him, so the robot accompanies her into the jungle. As soon as they're isolated, the robot attempts to kill her, but he's stopped when Ian comes upon them--Vicki has by now told him and the Doctor about the robot.
The robot Doctor runs off into the jungle, and the team split up to find him. Of course, the endgame for this is that Ian, Barbara and Vicki are all gathered in a clearing, and the two Hartnells enter from opposite sides at the same time, so that neither we nor the team know which is the real Doctor.
One of the Hartnells orders Ian to get out of the way so he can thrash his double with his cane. Ian says, "And if I don't?" to which the Hartnell responds, "Then I'll give you the same treatment!" and takes a swipe at him. Ian and this Hartnell, supposedly the robot, grapple, while Vicki, Susan and the "Doctor" watch on. Ian throws the robot to the ground and picks up a large rock, preparing to brain him.
The "Doctor" with Vicki and Susan then forcibly turns Vicki away, saying, "Susan, I don't want you to see this." This lets Vicki and Barbara know that this "Doctor" is actually the robot. Ian is stopped from braining the real Doctor by Barbara's scream. The robot runs off, and the Doctor follows him. The two of them then duel with their wooden canes, and while they're locked together, the Doctor is able to pull the robot's wiring from its chest, destroying it.
Yes, that means that the real Doctor, while aware that his fellows didn't know whether or not he was a robot sent to assassinate them, attempted to beat Ian with his cane purely for not getting out of his way fast enough. The sad part is that I can't actually say, "This is a horribly contrived, out-of-character action for the Hartnell Doctor to perform," so much as I can say, "This actually isn't all that big a stretch, character-wise, for the Hartnell Doctor."
So with that all taken care of, our heroes retreat back to their cave. But they're soon found by Daleks, who surround the cave and prepare to exterminate the team. The Doctor attempts to impersonate the robot, exiting the cave and telling the Daleks that they've all already been killed, but the Daleks see through the ruse easily. The Doctor narrowly escapes extermination.
(It's actually Ian who suggests he try it. Barbara objects immediately, and while Ian, Barbara and Vicki argue about it, the Doctor slips out at the back of the frame. They're all just agreeing it's an unworkable plan when they hear the Doctor's voice speaking to the Daleks, telling them the mission has been completed. The Daleks respond with a gunshot, and the Doctor darts back into frame, looking rather frazzled. It's a cute little scene.)
Before the Daleks can storm the cave, however, a door opens at its rear and a robot emerges. It's a giant metal sphere with bits and bobs attached, and it speaks with a droning intonation not unlike the Daleks' voices. It ushers them into the door from which it has just emerged, with turns out to lead to a lift.
They ascend in the lift. The Doctor attempts to make conversation with the robot, but it ignores him. The lift takes them to a magnificent city of what spires, built on a platform high above the fungal jungle. (Man. "Fungal jungle". I'm calling that one. You want it, you pay a royalty.)
They're ushered through the city's corridors--populated only by more of the spherical robots--to a sleeping chamber, where they meet another human being. This is Steven Taylor, who's played by Peter Purves, the same actor who played Morton Dill back atop the Empire State Building. He was a space pilot in Earth's interplanetary wars, but his ship crashed. For two years, he's had no one to talk to but his cuddly toy panda.
Steven explains that the robots are Mechanoids. Earth had intended to colonise Mechanus and sent the Mechanoids as an advance party, to build the city. But when the wars came, Mechanus got forgot about. Now the robots will only think that arriving humans are the colonists if they know the Mechanoids' code; since neither Steven nor the TARDIS party know the code, they're trapped here as the Mechanoids' prisoners.
Their cell contains access to the roof, where Steven goes to exercise. On the roof is an extensive length of electrical cable; now that there are five people here, instead of just one, they can use the cable to lower each other the fifteen hundred feet down to the ground. Vicki, terribly acrophobic, has to be forcibly held down while the others tie the end of the cable around her, then holds her eyes shut in terror as they lower her to the ground.
Meanwhile, the Daleks have ascended the lift chute and demand the Mechanoids hand over the TARDIS team. When the Mechanoids refuse, a battle ensues, and soon the whole city is ablaze. The battle is actually very well done, a montage of model shots and shots of the two different robot forces rolling around and firing (the Mechanoids are equipped with flamethrowers), framed by flames licking at the edge of the screen.
When smoke starts billowing onto the city's roof, Steven, panicked, dashes back inside, to rescue his cuddly panda. When he doesn't re-emerge, the TARDIS team assume he's been killed. They themselves finish climbing down to the ground, and they make their way through to the jungle to the Daleks' time machine. They discover it's been abandoned--all the Daleks, like the Mechanoids, have been wiped out in the battle.
Now Barbara realises that, with the intact guidance mechanism on the Dalek time machine, she and Ian can use it to travel back to 1963 Earth, if only the Doctor will show them how to use it. He angrily refuses, calling them both utter idiots, but really, of course, he just doesn't want them to leave him. It's really a terribly sweet moment, such a very true portrayal, especially for someone of Hartnell's age and generation, conditioned not to show soft emotions.
But thanks to Ian and Barbara's entreaties, he agrees, and next thing we know, the two schoolteachers have landed in London. It's 1965 instead of 1963, but as Ian says, "What's two years between friends?" There's then a lovely montage of Ian and Barbara frolicking through London; playing with the pigeons in Trafalgar Square; Ian expressing mock horror upon discovering a police box on the Thames Embankment.
At the end of the day, they climb aboard a bus, speculating about whether they'll be able to get their old jobs back. The conductor comes along to sell them their tickets, and Ian reaches into his pocket, asking for two threepennies.
"Two threes?" the conductor exclaims. "Where you been, the Moon?"
"No," says Ian, "but you're close!"
Vicki and the Doctor watch the whole thing through the time-space visualiser. Vicki is overjoyed to see them so happy, but the Doctor is still grumpy. As he shuffles off, he murmurs the truth: "I shall miss them. Yes, I shall miss them."
What Lisa thought
"Well," she gruffly conceded, "maybe I'm sort of sorry they're gone. But only because I don't get to complain about Barbara anymore!"
All gruff on the exterior to hide how much she cares on the inside. Sort of like William Hartnell, is my wife.
I, on the other hand, am pretty happy. With "The Web Planet", "The Space Museum" and "The Chase", we've now finished a run of sixteen episodes that I think are pretty dire, broken only by the first episode of "The Space Museum". And next up is one of my favourite Hartnells, "The Time Meddler".
I
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