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Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 182: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

As much as I've been enjoying listening to the soundtracks over the last couple of months (it's become a way of life, and having an episode on during my walk home each day has become something of a routine), it really does help when there's an actual, surviving episode to go on. I think I was rather spoiled by having all of The Tomb of the Cybermen to watch, so it felt like a bit of a step backwards to have little to base yesterday's episode on than tele snaps and location photos.

I've found myself far more drawn to this episode of the story than I did yesterday. In part, it's possibly because there's a bit more going on today than we had yesterday, but it doesn't hurt that if we do encounter a less interesting part of the story, it's got some lovely direction to fall back on. This is Gerald Blake's first time directing on Doctor Who (and he won't be back until The Invasion of Time!), but he's off to a great start, really injecting the story with some atmosphere.

The dark corridors of the monastery really are the perfect setting for a Doctor Who tale, and the rest of the building holds up in its design, too. There's a section of narration on the soundtrack to Episode One where Frazer Hines describes the Doctor looking up at a large statue of a Buddah, and I vaguely pictured something of a manageable size… but there really is a massive statue at the back of one set!

Equally, the location footage looks great. The story gets a lot of stick for using the mountains of North Wales as a stand in for the Himalayas and while, no, it doesn't quite work, I'm ready to admit that it gives it a good shot, and it certainly looks impressive enough anyway. I seem to say this a lot as the shoe continues to broaden out into more varied (and lengthier) location shooting, but it really does have a feel of being completely unlike any other place we've seen before in the series. Mind you, doesn't Victoria say something about footprints in the snow in the first episode?

And then you've got the Yeti themselves. Often called out for being quite cute (which, yes, they are) they still come across as pretty impressive here. The cliffhanger reprise gives us a chance to see one of them lumbering into the cave towards Jamie and Victoria, and it looks as good as I could have hoped it might from picturing it yesterday. Admittedly, they look a little less imposing when they stand around outside the monastery and watch their friend be trapped, but they still look quite good. It's a pity that we've never had that action figure of them - I'd snap one up.

The Yeti's spheres are pretty impressive, too, perhaps even more so than the creatures themselves. We get to see a couple of instances of them moving here without any apparent outside help, and it works well both times. I'm not sure if it's more impressive to see that it actually can move through the thick mud (K9 would wince at the idea!) or the shot of it rolling along the edge of the Buddah statue, at some speed. I'm guessing the story would see more of this going on in the later (missing) episodes, so I'm glad we get to see at least a few brief snippets of it happening in the part that survives: at least it shows me that they could do it well!

Because I've been a fan for several years, I'm more than well aware that the omnipresent voice echoing through the inner sanctum of the monastery is that of the Great Intelligence, but it doesn't take anything away from it - it genuinely is quite imposing. 'Do not be afraid,' it booms at one point, when it's hard to be anything else! Having just gone through the most recent series of Doctor Who, I keep expecting Richard E Gran't face to appear in the smoke from the candles at some point. Maybe as an anniversary treat, they could have him re-dub all of the Great Intelligence's lines?

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 181: The Abominable Snowmen, Episode One

Dear diary,

I think it's more than fair to say that whatever had to follow The Tomb of the Cybermen for me was going to have a tough job to keep me impressed, and I'm sorry to say that the first episode of The Abominable Snowmen has left me rather flat. To tell the truth, I think it really is as simple as me being disappointed that it isn't another episode of Tomb, because there's plenty here that would be right up my street in any other circumstance.

There's two areas of the story's setting that should particularly appeal to me. The fact that it all takes place in-and-around a remote monastery in the Himalayan mountains means that I've got an instant hook - take a Google Image search of these monasteries, there's some beautiful examples of them. They're just the right setting for a Doctor Who story, and especially suited to a base under siege tale - there's no one else for miles and miles around. I'm listening to today's episode on audio, so I've been picturing a desolate mountainside shrouded in snow and fog, though I fear tomorrow's episode may not tie in with that, if the location photos are anything to go by!

Quite aside from the location of the story, it's set in a period of history that really interests me - that late 1920s/early 1930s period where there were still areas of the Earth, to be explored. Oh, don't get me wrong, I know that we've still not been into the very depths of some rain forests, or to the peaks of every mountain, and the bottom of the sea leaves us with a vast area to explore, but this period in time is the dying days of the stereotypical 'explorer' image, when you can still sail out to sea and discover a new island which a satellite would have located in seconds today.

Then there's the idea of hinting for the Yeti. I've never really known where I stand on the idea of the Abominable Snowman. I don't think I believe in its existence, or if I do then I think it's probably just a type of rare monkey, and nowhere near as mystical as people think. But I love the idea of those early 20th century explorers going out to look for the creature, and the suggestion that the Doctor is from a newspaper, and there to sabotage the mission for a 'cheap headline' is great - and very in keeping with the era.

We've also got an opening scene that I really should absolutely love - it takes time to show us the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria all hanging around in the TARDIS and having fun together. It feels like an age since we've been able to spend some time inside the ship with our regular cast (I have to admit that I didn't really notice it fading out, but I think The Chase was probably the last time that we really had anything quite like this. Possibly I could cite the opening to The Moonbase where they joke about the Doctor over-shooting Mars).

It's not all fun and games, though, and there's plenty of drama to be found once the Doctor is inside the monastery and being held prisoner by the monks. It's always of interest when the Doctor is separated from his friends and left alone with no allies, and in a setting quite unlike any we've had in the series before, it's always nice to have something new. Jamie and Victoria's exploration of the Yeti cave isn't of as much interest to me, though, and I'm sorry to say I zoned out a little during this (Victoria's screaming soon snapped me back to attention, though!).

Here's hoping that the chance to watch tomorrow's episode will allow me to pull this story out from the previous one's shadow, and set me on a better course for the rest of the tale…

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 180: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Four

Dear diary,

It seems strange, standing at this end of the story and looking back, that I ever considered it may not hold up. I’d worried that having found a fondness for other stories which I’d never really considered before, The Tomb of the Cybermen - ostensibly my ‘favourite’ Doctor Who tale - and suddenly find it underwhelming. Almost ten years of it being my favourite could be washed away in these four days.

What’s actually happened is quite the opposite – I’ve completely rediscovered my love for the story as though seeing it again for the very first time. It possibly helps that this is the first time since The War Machines, way back at the end of Season Three, that I’ve actually had a full story to watch. It could help that I’m already looking more favourably on this one than some of the stories I’ve never seen but haven’t heard great things about. Or it could be that, quite simply, The Tomb of the Cybermen is one of the all-time greats. Certainly, I’ve met a number of people over the years who have either cited it as their favourite, too, or at least considered that it’s a good contender for a favourite story to have.

Right the way through, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by just how much I’ve been loving this one – by the time Episode One had finished, any worries I had were gone, and I was left just enjoying things. Each episode has given me something new to love, and the fourth is no exception to this – I’d always thought of Toberman’s partial-conversion into Cyberman as having no real merit, but it works really well and is key to the story. His fight with the Cybercontroller here is much better than any of the fights in the last episode, and the final shot of him, staring down against the Controller as they each push on opposite sides of the door is fantastic. Are they just planning to leave the body there, though? I realise it must be a pretty long trip back to Earth, but surely they must be able to take him home? At least throw a sheet over the corpse or something!

I’ve focussed so much in this story on the developing relationship between the Doctor and Victoria (though it feels like they’ve been travelling for a while now. The About Time series speculates that there could be unseen adventures between her entrance to the TARDIS in Episode One and the arrival on Telos – and there’s plenty in the story which I think can support that), but I’ve barely mentioned Jamie’s role in events.

It’s far from being a secret that I love the pairing of the Doctor and his Highland friend, and there’s so much of a spark between them in this story that I can’t let it pass without mention. The ‘hand holding’ in Episode One is always singled out for praise, but brilliant as it is, there’s a number of other moments in The Tomb of the Cybermen that I think showcase the pair better. Episode Three sees the Doctor making a pun about the Cybermat’s metal brains being overloaded (‘You could say they’ve had a total metal breakdown’) and Jamie's reaction to his terrible pun. Today we get Jamie tying the door of the revitaliser machine, before the Cybercontroller breaks through the door (‘Jamie, remind me to give you a lesson in tying knots sometimes…’), and his realisation of what’s happened to Toberman: the boy is learning from his travels.

Something that often gets talked about in this story is the death of a Cyberman here, where the chest unit bubbles as foam rises up and overflows. It’s cited as an example of Doctor Who going too far and being too violent, and I can almost see that. It’s certainly more horrific than we might usually get at this time. For me, though, what made it scary was the way the Cyberman grabs at his chest throughout, almost as though trying to force his circuitry back inside. That’s the really gruesome part, but it works. Equally, there’s a scene where Jamie fires a gun point blank into a Cyberman’s face as it climbs from the hatch. Smoke comes pouring out of the mouth as it stumbles back down into the tomb. It’s a striking image.

For a long, long time, The Tomb of the Cybermen was the fabled ‘Holy Grail’ of missing Doctor Who tales, and the general consensus is that when it showed up in 1992, it wasn’t as good as everyone hoped it might be. For me, though, it’s damn near perfect, and I’m pleased to say that it’s still coming out top for me.

I’m hoping that it might be a good sign – I’ve been slightly dreading Season Five. It’s mostly missing, and it relies heavily on the Base-Under-Siege and Monster-of-the-Week formats, I’d been fearing that I might find it repetitive. Hopefully, though, if things continue to live up to the quality of The Tomb of the Cybermen, we could be on to a real winner…

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 179: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Simply because The Tomb of the Cybermen was my first exposure to the creatures, I’ve always thought of these as being the ‘default’ model. It’s this design that I think of when people talk about Cybermen, and the style of speaking here is the one I most readily associate with them, too. It’s pleasing, then, to be enjoying them so much again now. There’s something about the voices especially that really is creepier than we’ve had before (as much as I loved the ones in The Tenth Planet), and it helps that some of their dialogue is so blunt.

Yesterday’s episode ends with the Cybercontroller telling the archaeological party ‘You belong to us. You will be like us’, and there’s a moment here when Jamie tells a Cyberman that he’s a human – he’s not the same as them, and the reply is simply ‘You will be’. The idea of being converted into a Cyberman has been present ever since their first appearance, but this is the first time it’s really being played as a threat. In The Tenth Planet, it’s almost an offer, but here it’s a terrifying experience, and something that you really don’t want to happen. In promoting Nightmare in Silver, Neil Gaiman commented that he’d been watching the 1960s stories and wanted to make the Cybermen scary again – it’s hard not to see what he means about the terror.

This episode, perhaps more than any we’ve had for a while, relies on a number of big special effects. I remember back during The Ark, I commented that the effects were just being dropped in easily, wheres before they’d have been the showpiece for the entire 25 minutes. Here, they’re just part of the routine, and the programme thinks nothing of showing the effect of a Cyber-gun against a wall (the awesome power of which lends weight to the cliff-hanger, when the same gun is fired in the Doctor’s direction).

Perhaps the biggest effects surprise for me, though, is the Cybermats. I have to admit, as much as I love The Tomb of the Cybermen, I’ve never been all that fond of the Cybermen’s pets. I’ve seen this story several times over the years, but in mind mind the Cybermats didn’t work and looked rubbish… but they’re great! I’d not remembered that the tails wag, which really helps to sell the effect, and I was surprised just how similar this version is to the ones who appear in Closing Time - I’d not seen this story since that one aired.

Just because I love the story doesn’t mean I’m completely blind to some of its faults, though. While there’s plenty of great effects in here, and the Cybermen get used in a way that makes them look great (there’s a show of one trying to hold the hatch to their tomb open, and you really get a sense of the strength involved), I’m willing to admit that it doesn’t all work. Just like the previous two episode of this story, I’ve written absolutely loads of notes, but this time around there are several about things that aren’t great.

There’s a fight early on between the archaeologists and the Cybermen which becomes a bit of a muddle, and it’s home to the shot of Toberman being hurled through the air by a Cyberman. It’s a lovely idea, but sadly the kirby wires are just far too visible, which somewhat lessens the effect. Similarly, a later shot of the Cybermen stumbling around in the aftermath of some smoke bombs doesn’t look all that spectacular.

All of that can be forgotten, though, because this episode is home to one of my favourite scenes in all of Doctor Who, when the Doctor and Victoria share a conversation in the dead of night, as everyone sleeps huddled in corners of the tomb’s lobby. I think it’s fair to say that I’ve not been all that impressed with Victoria so far on the whole, but these few minutes, shot in close-ups of Patrick Troughton and Deborah Watling as they just get the chance to act together really sells me on her. It’s a beautiful moment, and another one of those scenes that shows emotion didn’t creep in with the advent of 21st century Doctor Who.

I hate quoting long passages from the episode when I’m writing about them, but the Doctor’s words about remembering his lost family are so emotive, that I just have to post them again here;

Oh yes, I can when I want to. And that's the point, really.
I have to really want to, to bring them back in front of my eyes. The
rest of the time they… they sleep in my mind and I forget. And so will
you. Oh yes, you will. You'll find there's so much else to think about.
To remember. Our lives are different to anybody else's. That's the
exciting thing, that nobody in the universe can do what we're doing.

I’d not be surprised if that’s another one of those moments that really sold me on the idea of Patrick Troughton as being the Doctor – it’s simply wonderful

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 178: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I can distinctly recall purchasing The Tomb of the Cybermen on DVD for the very first time. I'd been something of a Doctor Who fan since the autumn of 2003, but only dipping in and out, picking up one or two titles on VHS from the library as and when I felt compelled to. Then, one day in the summer of 2004, in what was then the BBC Shop in Norwich, I purchased my first two Doctor Who DVDs. There was this one, and Resurrection of the Daleks. None of the stories I'd rented had featured either of the programme's top two monsters, so I thought that it would be a pretty good place to start.

And you know what? I loved them. I'm sure I'll talk more about Resurrection next year sometime, when we reach the right placement for the tale, but I can recall just being blown away by Tomb, right from the off.

Looking at this episode today, and viewing it for the first time in the context of all the stories that have gone before it, I don't think it's impossible to see just why this one is so loved by fans. In several ways, it's the perfect representation of the Second Doctor's era, and I think it's fair to say that Troughton is on the absolute top of his game. Everything his Doctor does so well is showcased in these 24 minutes, from letting slip that he knows more than people realise ('Your colleague has very strong hands,' he tells Kaftan, shortly after they discover that the fuel pumps on the rocket have been tampered with. He continues: 'Enough to do a great deal of damage if let loose in the wrong place…'), to subtly controlling the room (switching levers to make sure that the hatch to the tomb will open), and making quips when the bad guys get it wrong.

There's something about his look here, too - the way his hair sits, and the way his costume looks underneath his recently-added cape - that just screams 'Second Doctor' to me. The Tomb of the Cybermen was recorded at the very end of Doctor Who's fourth production block, and it's clear that by this stage, both Troughton and the programme makers have settled on exactly what this new version of the character should be. Placed in the surroundings of such a fantastic story, it's no wonder that I took the Second Doctor to heart and made him my favourite.

That said, you do have to wonder why the Doctor does some of the things that he does in this story. During The Evil of the Daleks, I mentioned that we were seeing the first real attempts of the Doctor to manipulate the people around him (the First Doctor did this too, especially in the early days, but this is the first time we see him doing it with just the right word or action here or there, as opposed to actively misleading people into doing what he wants, as we see in stories like The Daleks), and he seems to be doing the same kind of thing here… but then almost instantly wishing that he hadn't.

In yesterday's episode, he discovers that the Cybermen are buried somewhere inside this cliff-face, and that the archaeological team can't get the door open… so he shows them how to get in. They then can't figure out how to get the machinery working… so he gives them the answer, before adding that they really shouldn't. Today, he helps them open the hatch, before spending plenty of time talking about it being a bad idea, and hoping that nothing will go wrong. Is he just a bit confused? Maybe it's the low temperatures?

It's good to see Victoria being given a bit more of a personality here, too. There's a moment early on when the Cybermen's gun trap fires and she lets out a little scream, but after that she's a much more assertive person than we've seen before. When the professor advises the women to stay behind, she actively tells him that she's coming along wether he likes it or not, and she's not afraid to step in and deal with Kaftan once the Doctor has highlighted her as a threat, even going as far as to hold the woman at gunpoint. This is much more like it, and I think I can go along with a version of Victoria that behaves more like this.

Elsewhere, I feel as though I need to praise the set design a little bit more today. The design of the tombs is simply stunning, and one of my favourite sets from Doctor Who's long history. You should have heard my cry of joy when the design cropped up again for Nightmare in Silver a couple of months ago. Everything about the tomb itself, especially the scale - which I think is best captured by an on-set photograph of director Morris Barry stood in front of the construction - is simply gorgeous, and I love it.

Back in 2005, with the programme back on TV and my friends suddenly deciding to take an interest, they asked to watch one of the old ones so they could see what it was like. Of course I plumped for showing them this! It’s my favourite story. Having sat through half the first episode with one friend complaining about the lack of colour (I shouldn't have been surprised - a few years earlier he'd walked out of a cinema screening of Van Helsing, because the first few minutes are black and white) and the other about the slow pace, I skipped ahead to show them the final few scenes of this episode, with the Cybermen being unfrozen from their winter sleep.

And they couldn't stop laughing. They thought it was hilarious. I was mortified - one of my favourite moments of Doctor Who and my friends couldn't stop talking about how rubbish it looked. I've always secretly thought that they were wrong (I say secretly, I tell them they're wrong, every time I visit home), but you know what? Watching it again now in the context of all these other episodes? I know they're wrong! Because it does look bloody fantastic!

The ice 'melting' from the tomb, the blurry shapes moving around inside before splitting open the casing and climbing down the ladders at the sides… it is a great moment, and it's an example of the show pulling off an effect pretty well. I'll admit, I don't like the way they start to break out of the tomb, and then are instantly frozen again (complete with a thick layer of ice - get your money's worth from the visual effects department) only to re-emerge, but everything else here is great. There's not all that many Cybermen, but when they're swarming around the cave it looks like masses of them. It's a great bit of directing from Barry.

Although, I will concede that the About Time book for this era is right - it would seem that the Cybercontroller has spent the last five centuries squatting in a cupboard. Ah.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 177: The Tomb of the Cybermen, Episode One

Dear diary,

This is it! This is the big one! For the best part of the last decade, I've always cited The Tomb of the Cybermen as being my absolute favourite TV Doctor Who story. I credit this serial with making the Cybermen my favourite monsters, and Patrick Troughton my favourite Doctor. It's almost the template I have in mind for what Doctor Who is supposed to be. The bad thing about all this is that I've been dreading hitting it in The 50 Year Diary. It's always been my favourite when I'm comparing it to odd stories here and there, but how's it going to stand up in context? What am I going to make of it, now that I've discovered other gems like The War Machines and The Macra Terror? Essentially, is The Tomb of the Cybermen going to turn out to be really a little bit rubbish?

Thankfully, the answer to that question is no. Of course it's not going to all fall apart now that I've watched 160-something other episodes that immediately preceded it. The Tomb of the Cybermen is my favourite story for a reason, and it's holding its own very nicely here. You'll forgive me if I'm a little more forgiving of the story than I might otherwise be, but there's not an awful lot that needs to be overlooked - the full-body versions of the Cyberman image don't look half as good as the head-and-shoulders version that we're all far more familiar with, it's true, and it seems silly that there's a table and chairs waiting handily in the lobby to their tomb, yes. But you know what? Everything else here is fantastic, so I don't care!

I think it's probably telling that I've written more notes about this episode than I think I have about any other in the marathon so far. I usually get about six episodes on a single sheet of paper, but I've used a side and a half for this one. There's just so much that I wanted to note down, and so much that I could talk about that it felt silly not to. It probably helps that this is the first full Troughton story that I'll be able to watch (indeed, it's the only full Troughton story from his first two seasons in the role), which means that there's little visual things I can pick up on more than I've been able to lately.

So where to start? The introduction of a new companion has often been used as a way to reintroduce the concept of Doctor Who to an audience who may be joining for the first time, and it's strange to note that this is the first time that the re-establishment happens in the first story of the season - we pan into the image of the Police Box, and then cut to inside (the first time we've seen it since The Moonbase, which feels like an absolute age ago), where the Doctor explains that it's his home, and has been for some time. Victoria is then introduced to the concept of time travel, and the idea that they can travel anywhere in time and space. The aspect of not being able to control where they go gets glossed over on this occasion, though Jamie does ask the Doctor for a smooth landing.

It's another one of those moments that shows how much the Doctor and Jamie have become best friends since they first met, and even aside from the argument they had during the last story, they really are becoming inseparable. There's little wonder that they travel together until someone else forces them apart - I imagine the pair would still be out there somewhere if they could be. Troughton and Hines simply bounce from each other, from the way the hold hands (and then quickly stop) as they enter the tomb, to the Doctor's tease that the Highlander's skirt is a bit short. It makes this phase of the programme so much fun, and I really can't get enough of the pair.

Victoria, it has to be said, still isn't really giving me much to love, though. Deborah Watling is doing a good job, and again it has to be said how beautiful she looks as she stands in the TARDIS at the beginning, but the character is a bit of a generic Doctor Who girl. She wanders into the Cybermen's 'revitalising' machine, where the bad guy locks her in, and then she's flustered when she gets out. There's a moan to the Doctor about wanting to just leave, and a constant feeling of unease. I get that it's her very first TARDIS trip, but this is the side of the character we saw plenty of in The Evil of the Daleks, and the fact that I can't remember much about what else she does in my favourite story probably speaks absolute volumes.

Although I've only got tele-snaps to compare it to for the most part of the last season, this story seems to be set on a far vaster scale than I'm used to from the series. I seem to find myself saying this a lot every time we get to a surviving episode (it was true of The War Machines, and The Faceless Ones, and the tele-snaps for The Smugglers made it look pretty large scale, too), but we really are on a new level here. There's a shot early on as we look down past Toberman's legs to the rest of the archeological expedition below, and it makes the place look so grand that it almost throws you. It does have to be said that I'm not sure it always works as an alien world (there's another shot which makes it look like a group of people inappropriately dressed for a day that the beach), but it sets the story apart and really gives the start of the new season a glossy feel.

I could just go on and on about this episode and all the things that are right with it, but I'd start to bore you before too long, and there's another three episodes to fill with praise yet, so I think I'll call it a day here. Suffice to say that my favourite story hasn't let me down, and I'm tremendously pleased by that.

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 176: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Seven

Dear diary,

I spent a fair bit of time during The Faceless Ones talking about the way Samantha Briggs was being set up as a companion, with a proper back story that served to show off all the aspects of her character – she was plucky, inquisitive, unafraid to dive right in to potential danger (she’d come all the way down from Liverpool, too, you know) and there was a real connection between her and Jamie. She was so very clearly the new companion… right up until the end of the story, at which point she wasn’t.

I’ve then spent plenty of time in this story actively waiting for the chance to show Victoria being signposted as the companion… but she isn’t, until the latter half of today’s episode – six after she was introduced. Victoria has come across as just a bit of a damsel in distress, and although much of the story has revolved around her (or, at least, around Jamie’s attempts to rescue her), she hasn’t really made much of an impact on me. Certainly, I couldn’t tell you very much about her character at all, whereas Sam Briggs was fully rounded by the time she kissed our highlander goodbye.

It’s surprising, then, that her being accepted onto the TARDIS as the new companion carries as much weight as it does. I’d forgotten that her father died during the course of this story, so his sacrifice to save the Doctor came as a pleasant surprise, and it was very movingly done. ‘You’ve just saved my life,’ the Doctor tells him. ‘It’s a good life to save,’ Waterfield replies, before asking the Doctor to look after Victoria for him. Jamie later muses that they can’t just leave Victoria (alone on Skaro, with her father and her best friend dead? I should think not!) and the Doctor confirms that she’s leaving with them. It’s a lovely moment, and oddly emotional, considering my lack of attachment to her up to now.

It’s odd to think that this is it (barring the odd cameo) for the Daleks until quite some way into the Third Doctor's era. They'll be absent from the series for the next five years, and absent from The 50 Year Diary for the next five months, rather fittingly returning for me just around the time of Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary. It was at this point Terry Nation started to really look at selling the Daleks as their own series, and this is probably the more logical placement for Daleks: The Destroyers to sit, but it felt like 'the final end' was a good point to leave the creatures on for now.

I wonder, though, what it would have been like if the Daleks hadn't turned up again to face off against Jon Pertwee? It's definitely true to say that without them, the programme wouldn't have gotten out of the First Season (possibly not even that first 13-episode commission), but by this point in time, it really has picked up it's own following, and losing the Daleks here and now possibly shows that they're not really needed for Doctor Who any more. Imagine a world in which the return of the Daleks, those pepper pot creatures from the 1960s were being revived for the new series as a slightly more obscure monster, in the same way the Macra and the Ice Warriors have been in recent years!

On the whole, I'm sad to say, The Evil of the Daleks hasn't been the barn-storming end to the Fourth Season that I was hoping for. The story's reputation within fandom has always been very high, but it really hasn't delivered for me. Lots of very nice moments, but it's felt like the Daleks leaving the series with more of a whimper than a bang, a real shame. I'm almost tempted to read the Target novel at the end of Series Five (when this serial was repeated on television) to see if I can improve my opinion on it - worth doing?

Aside from that, and The Highlanders, Season Four has been very strong. I've really loved it. I worries so much about these 'middle' seasons of the 1960s, since there was just so much missing, but it wasn't until after I'd finished with today's episode that I realised - we've not had a complete story all season! THat's about to be changed, with the release of The Tenth Planet and The Moonbase with animated episodes, but for me, every single story has been supplemented with the soundtracks. I think it's a testament to the season that it's managed to make such a great impression with so little visual material to go on.

But forget all that! We move onwards, and into Season Five! Not only that, it's my first complete Troughton story, and it's the classic tale I've always considered my favourite Doctor Who story. Little bit excited? You bet I am!

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 175: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Six

Dear diary,

It’s very clear that we’ve got Roy Skelton on Dalek duties in this episode, isn’t it? At times, it sounds like Zippy’s gotten hold of a ring modulator! If anything, it actively helps to story – as if these child-like Daleks weren’t already unnerving enough, they’re speaking in the voice of a beloved children’s character. Fantastic stuff.

That whole opening scene, with the Daleks continuing to play their games with the Doctor, is absolutely brilliant, taking the great ending to the last episode and taking it even further. There’s something very unusual about the way that the Daleks slowly drawl the Doctor’s words back at him (though we get ‘Traaaaiiiiinnnn’ and ‘Dizzzzyyyyy’, I’m a little sorry that they didn’t attempt to copy ‘Roundabout’. I’ll have to make up for it by saying the word in a Dalek voice to myself for the rest of the day. Or to strangers on the street. Why not? Roundaboooouuuttttt…). The scene seems to keep getting creepier and creepier, until it’s drawn to a close when the Daleks ominously state ‘we must go now’. It’s said in a way that wouldn’t be out of place coming from a spooky child in a horror film, and really works.

I was starting to think that’s I’d never have a nice word to say about The Evil of the Daleks, so I’m really leased to find that things are more to my taste now. I was hoping that the shift over to Skaro would be a turning point for the story, and it seems that it has more or less coincided with this, so I’m happy. And it’s the first time that we’ve seen the Doctor travel back to an alien planet we’ve already been to! We’ve seen him return places before (He’d been to Dido in The Rescue, for example), but this is the first time that we’ve seen both of the trips to the planet (Hm? You what? Oh, all right then. Yeah yeah, we visited Kembel on two separate occasions in The Daleks' Master Plan. I'll give you that one, but as that was all part of one big adventure - spread across several different stories! - I'm discounting it. This is the first time we've seen him return to an alien planet in a completely different context.)

Years of being a Doctor Who fan means that I know full well how the sets look for this episode, with the stark black and white angles, and the Dalek Emperor sat in the corner, plugged into the city (the narration on the soundtrack nicely describes it as sitting at the centre of its ‘web’), but I can’t help picturing the stark, metal corridors of the original Dalek story – without the visuals to this episode, my mind has automatically gone back to what I consider to be the ‘default’ design.

There’s something quite brilliant about the Doctor facing up to the Dalek Emperor, who towers over him. He’s cool and confident, musing that he’d always wondered if the pair would ever meet. It put me instantly in mind of a similar scene, in which the Ninth Doctor steps out of the TARDIS and confronts another Dalek Emperor. In another similarity between this and The Parting of the Ways, the Doctor seems to issue spoilers for us, when he tells the Emperor that he’ll have a revolution on his hands pretty soon, once the new ‘humanised’ Daleks start to ask questions.

The main issue I have with all of this - and the reveal that while the Doctor thought he was isolating this ‘Human Factor’, he was actually helping to discover a ‘Dalek Factor’ – is that I’m not sure I care. Much as I love Alpha, Beta, and Omega, I’ve said before that I wasn’t really paying too much attention to the experiments that the Doctor was being forced to do, so it doesn’t feel like some massive shock revelation here. I’m hoping that won’t matter too much as we move into the final episode, which I already know is the much fabled ‘Final End’ of the Daleks (at least during the 1960s).

a

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 174: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Five

Dear diary,

My favourite Beatles Album (Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) was released in June 1967, while The Evil of the Daleks was being broadcast (between Episodes Two and Three, to be precise), and watching through the series in order, it's easy to draw some comparisons between the evolution of both the band, and Doctor Who's greatest foes. Although it's not as black and white as I'm about to paint it, I've always thought of the Beatles as being split into their early, very '1960s' stuff, and their later more abstract music.

Similarly, The Daleks have evolved since their earliest days in the series, and I think it's fair to say that they can be divided into the early stuff where they're just 'evil' pepper pots, who come along and invade/kill/shout a lot - essentially, every William Hartnell Dalek story. Or to put it another way, every Dalek story that Terry Nation had a real hand in - and the later Daleks who are more experimental: the two Whittaker stories.

They've not really had a massive presence in this story so far, and I don't think I'd have missed them had they not arrived until this episode in the narrative. Now that the story is shifting its focus back onto them, though, we're given that more abstract kind of Dalek scene that Whittaker is so good at - the episode closes on three Daleks playing a game. It sounds so simple, but it would have been unthinkable for the series to do something like this two years ago. Even the 'comedy' Daleks in The Chase ultimately get restored to shouting 'exterminate!' a lot and chase the Doctor and his companions.

This is the kind of cliffhanger that I've been waiting for from this story - one which takes the Daleks and does something interesting with them. Even when Power of the Daleks was left to show us a group of Daleks amassing an army, they did it on such a scale as to make a real impact. Cliffhangers like the one we had yesterday (two Daleks approach Jamie! Oh no!) just don't pack a punch any more, whereas this kind of thing is fantastic.

I think it's fair to say that the store has a whole has turned around a bit for me today - certainly I've been far more receptive to it. It helps that after several episodes in which we watch people move from 'A' to 'B' to 'C' and back again, things seem to be reaching a kind of point now. The idea of identifying the 'Human Factor' was introduced back in Episode Two, but it feels like so long since then that it had almost become irrelevant in my mind (Of course, it's the whole point of everything that has happened in Episodes Three, Four, and Five, but to my disconnected mind, I couldn't care less).

It might just be because I'm feeling more generous towards the episode, but I've picked up on a lot more sparkling dialogue today than in the rest of the story - it's the first time that I've written quite this many notes for a few days' There's obviously Troughton's speech about being a professor of a wide academy (of which human nature is merely a part), which has seeped into being one of those quotes you often see associated with the Doctor. There's also his discussion about the human emotions and how useful they can be, and his sheer delight when the Daleks push him around the room on a spiny chair. It's another thing I just can't imaging Hartnell's Doctor doing: for all his giggling and light-hearted moments, I can't imagine him being pushed around on a chair by a group of Daleks. Something about that image doesn't seem right in the way that picturing Troughton doing it does.

Perhaps my favourite dialogue from today's episode comes from the Doctor and Jamie's argument. I praised the earlier one they had in which the Doctor tricked Jamie into doing what he needed, but that one was partly play acting, at least on the Doctor's part. Today's argument is real, and you can tell from the way it's played. It's much lower-key than the earlier example, and it feels far more real. In many ways, it's reminiscent of the final scene of The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, and there's a number of beats in both those arguments that are the same.

I didn't know that the Doctor and Jamie ever had a discussion like this - I always thought they spent all three years together as the absolute best of friends, with never a cross word between them, so it's brilliant to see that there's more to their relationship than all that, and to know that Jamie is capable of being fleshed out in such a way. 'Look, I'm telling you this - we're done, you and me. You're too callous for me,' Jamie tells his friend, and it ties in nicely with my thoughts about the Doctor being seen to manipulate his friend earlier in the story. As always, it's a little thing, but it really works.

I'm hoping that the goodwill I've built up over this episode is a good sign, and with another two to go I may yet figure out why this story is held in such high regard. It's good to know that we're three characters shorter now, as I have to confess I was starting to get a bit lost as to who was who. Now that we've got Daleks acting very differently, and the story seemingly headed somewhere, things are looking up…

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 173: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Four

Dear diary,

How do you type that noise you make when you suck air in through your teeth? I’m genuinely not sure how to type this one today. All I’ve got written in my notes is ‘Jamie fights Kemel for the first five minutes’. After that, there just wasn’t really anything else that I felt compelled to write about. I’m so disappointed – this was supposed to be the great one! The big send off for the Daleks!

I think the thing that annoyed me the most was the cliffhanger. I spent every episode of The Power of the Daleks absolutely singing the praises of the episode endings. Every singe one felt new and fresh, taking the Daleks and making them scary in a way completely unlike anything we’d ever seen from them. Today’s cliffhanger involves Jamie reaching a door, while two Daleks trundle up behind him, guns at the ready.

At the end of Doctor Who’s fourth year, this just doesn’t hold up as a Dalek cliffhanger. We’ve seen them approaching people ready to kill in various forms ever since the fifth episode - and there we only see the plunger and Barbara from the Daleks point-of-view. Take away the thrill of not knowing what this strange thing could be, it’s still framed more interestingly than this one, at least judging from the tele snaps.

I think I was just expecting there to me a bit more to The Evil of the Daleks. Now, I’m not completely in the Dark, I know that at some stage the action will switch to Skaro, and we get a big destruction of the pepperpots, with (so I hear) pretty good integration of model work and studio footage – not that I can actually see it…. I know we’ve got a huge Dalek Emperor on the way, and I can only assume that this is what sets this story on such a high pedestal. It’s just that… I thought from reputation that we’d be getting a brilliant story from start to finish. Ah well, you can’t win them all, I guess.

I’ve always been more intrigued by the proposed notion of a Daleks vs Cybermen story from the 1960s. I know we eventually got one during the Tenth Doctor’s era, but there’s something about the idea of the 1960s versions of these creatures dueling it out that really appeals to me, and I can’t help but feel that I’d be enjoying it more than I currently am this one. I don’t think it’s helping that I know The Tomb of the Cybermen is coming up, and I’ve always thought of it as my favourite Doctor Who story, so this one just feels like a bit of an obstacle in my way!

Hm? Sorry? What do you mean you can feel a tenuous link on the way? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

…Knowing that this story was on the way, with its big old Dalek Emperor, I decided to pick up my (slightly battered) copy of The Dalek Chronicles on my last trip home. It’s a 1994 Doctor Who Magazine special, which reprints all of the Dalek comic strips from TV Century 21, in order from the start. I managed to grab a copy on Ebay years and years ago, but I’ve never actually read it. Always meant to, just don’t think I ever found the time. I’ve been reading it in chunks alongside this story, and I’m somewhat dismayed to find that I’m enjoying it more than The Evil of the Daleks.

I’d imagine that a number of people reading The 50 Year Diary will have at least a vague idea of what these comics are, but for the uninitiated: Tv Century 21 was a comic produced in the 1960s, and for 104 issues they ran a single-page comic titled The Daleks. It told the story of the Dalek’s creation on Skaro – there’s no Davros, but they’re still created by a scientist, and there’s still a great big war – and then follows them as they spread out across the stars. They fight the Mechanoids a bit, too. The final strip in the series ends with the Emperor Dalek declaring that the Daleks will conquer Earth, which leads quite neatly into the second of the Peter Cushing Dalek films, and tellingly, the later strips see the design of the creatures morph to look more like their movie counterparts.

I think it’s probably fair to say that it’s not any great literary feat, and it doesn’t stand up to a great deal of scrutiny, but taken at face value as a weekly adventure strip featuring the Daleks, it’s really rather good. It has the feel of a comic strip from The Eagle (perhaps unsurprisingly, as the first artist on the strip, Richard E Jennings, had contributed to The Eagle for a long time, and Eric Eden who filled in for a few issues in the middle of the run had worked on Dan Dare), full of that wonderful breed of what we tend to call ‘retro futurism’ these days. The design of the Daleks’ city is fantastic, and there’s plenty of little touches to the strip that can’t help to make me smile.

Quite early on in the story, only about five or six issues in, a spacecraft lands on Skaro for the first time, and the Daleks plot to capture it. The thing that I enjoy about it is the way they hide themselves to prepare their attack: the emperor orders the Magnetic Sand to be switched on, and it covers the city in a perfect disguise. It’s the kind of fantastic futuristic thing that you’d expect to find in a children’s ‘space’ comic of the age, as is the invention of things like the ‘Astrodalek’ later on in the story (A Dalek with his eyestalk plugged into the end of an enormous telescope), and the Daleks’ flying Hover Discs, which have become quite iconic withing Doctor Who - there’s even a new Dalek toy set available now that comes with one.

The strip is mostly written by David Whittaker, but it’s far more traditional than some of the things he tries with the Daleks on TV. That doesn’t mean that things are rendered to being dull, though, as it has a kind of simplistic charm to the story. Whittaker even still takes old favourite ideas from Terry Nation and does something new and different with them – there’s a wonderful moment on the planet Alvega with some living plants (haven’t seen any of those in a while!). While it could be reduced to being a rubbish retread of the kind of things we’ve seen in stories from The Keys Of Marinus, to The Chase and The Daleks’ Master Plan, Whittaker depicts the plants as plotting against the Daleks, and there’s a fantastic panel at the end of one strip where the plants have worked their way inside a Dalek’s casing and grown out, bursting out from every seam. It’s a bizarre image, and it looks stunning. Pleasingly, it’s given plenty of room to breathe.

The first three strips, and a few from later in the run (once Ron Turner had taken over art duties for the latter half of the run, a style which, sadly, down’t appeal to me half as much as the earlier one does), have recently been reprinted in the Doctor Who Magazine Dalek spacial, reprinted from the original art which makes them look gorgeous – certainly much better than the versions in my 19-year-old version! Here’s hoping that they’ll see a full reprint in the near future, because the series as a whole is certainly worth a read, if only to see an alternate (and much more 1950s/60s sci fi) version of the Daleks’ early years…

I think I’ll be giving the strip as a whole an 8/10 – wish I could say the same for The Evil of the Daleks!

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 172: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Three

Dear diary,

Oh dear. I think I've taken the same kind of issue with this story that I did back with The Highlanders - I've decided early on that I'm simply not impressed and now that's all my mind can focus on. Things are even worse here, though, because I'm going in with the pre-defined notion of this being a real classic that can do no wrong…

Whereas actually it's just a bit of a plodding bore that can do no… well… anything, really. Seriously, we're almost 75 minutes into The Evil of the Daleks, and very little has happened. The TARDIS is stolen. The Doctor and Jamie are kidnapped and taken back to 1866. Turns out the Daleks are there, and they want the Doctor to perform experiments on his young friend. Oh, and now there's a Turkish man in a fez and a series of elaborate traps for Jamie to get through so that the Doctor can actually undertake these steps.

Really, though? Really? This story was voted top 18 in the last big fandom poll? (I've yet to see how it's faring in our own large-scale poll of Doctor Who episodes, so I don't know if it's retaining its position, or if it's following its previous form and slipping down the table.)

Oh, all right. It's not all bad. Certainly, it's not reached the point where I'm dreading the throughout of having to go on and start looking for an alternative way of finishing the story (Hello, The Highlanders, again). I think the only thing that's keeping me going at this stage is the promise that things are going to get better. I don't often seem to agree with received fan wisdom, but they can't have been this wrong for so long, surely? The Evil of the Daleks is going to become fantastic any minute now, yeah?

There's one or two little pockets of things peppered throughout the story that are keeping my interest up, and today's thing of interest has to be Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines. Again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I've praised them to the high heavens plenty over the course of Season Four, but they really are something special, aren't they? Today, we get to watch (hear) them having a blazing row, and it's enough to make the ones the earliest Doctor used to have with Barbara look like a minor play fight.

And then, it's all revealed to be a part of the Doctor's plan - a way of tricking his companion into taking part in the experiment, so that they have a chance further down the line. People often single the Seventh Doctor out as the arch manipulator, but this is a perfect example of it being used much earlier on in the programme's run. I've commented before that this incarnation is very good at dropping the right word or the right action at just the right moment to get the results he wants, but it's never used better than this.

Aside from that scene, which comes fairly late on in the episode, I'm afraid that things just aren't grabbing me. I was going to be rating this one a little lower than I have, but that scene alone is so good that it deserves to bring the score up just a little bit…

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 171: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode Two

Dear diary,

I've often thought that if (when) I ever got my hands on a time machine, I'd quite like to visit Victorian England. Couldn't tell you why it's the top of my list, but I've always been fascinated by it. Even at school, the Victorian era was one of my favourites in history lessons. In many ways, I've always thought of Doctor Who being particularly suited to the era, too, and it seems many other's agree with me - several parts of the most recent season have been set there, and it's not been uncommon for the Doctor to visit in the past.

It's odd, then, to think that this episode marks the first time that we've actually seen this era in the series (yes, yes, pedants, the scene on the Marie Celeste during The Chase is technically set in Victorian times, but it was way out at sea, and might as well have been set in any generic past if it wasn't for the joke at the end, so I'm disqualifying it), almost five years in. Oh, and it's done beautifully. It's said a lot, but the BBC design department really do make a stunning job of this period, and this episode is no exception. Maxtible's drawing room has to be the crowning achievement, as it looks simply brilliant, and it's nice to have an episode from the story surviving so that we can really appreciate it.

Speaking of which, it's bloody lovely to see a Dalek again! We've had them in the series quite recently to welcome the new Doctor to the series, and I watched The Destroyers not all that long ago, but thanks to the gaps in the archives (and the lack of production of The Destroyers…) this is the first time I've actually seen a Dalek on screen, moving and everything, since The Daleks' Master Plan, and that feels like a lifetime ago. Technically, it was for the Doctor.

It's nice to see that the Daleks here are the same kind of manipulative ones seen in Power of the Daleks, and the cruel, terrifying version that we had in Master Plan, too. Yesterday's episode ended rather nicely with a Dalek screaming at Kennedy to identify himself (though it wasn't as good a cliffhanger as they had pretty consistently in their last tale), and then the resolution to that ending today? The Dalek exterminates him as soon as we're done with the reprise. Then it disappears, and Waterfield has something of a breakdown as he realises he'll have to dispose of the body. The Daleks really are at their best when their callous, and Whittaker knows exactly how to use them in the right way.

All that said, I'm sorry to say that the story still isn't really capturing me. I've seen this episode before (a long, long, time ago on a bored Sunday-afternoon viewing of the Lost in Time collection), and remembered it being pretty good, but this time around it still feels as if I'm waiting for things to get going. As ever, there's a lot to like, but it just don't seem to be doing very much. Maybe I'm being put off by the fact that people say it's one of the stone-cold 'classics' of Doctor Who, and my expectations are just set a little bit too high?

We do get our first introduction of Victoria in this episode though, as a captive of the Daleks, who seem obsessed with her weight. They're holding her prisoner as leverage with Waterfield, so that he'll help capture the Doctor and force him to conduct some experiments on Jamie. I complained yesterday that the plan to get the Doctor to the antiques shop was a bit round the houses… but now it makes even less sense! Surely it would have been quicker to knock the Doctor and Jamie out at Gatwick, transport them to 1886, tie Jamie up in the lab and force the Doctor to get to work under Dalek guard? Why all the messing about?

Victoria herself comes across as less obviously a companion as Sam Briggs did in the last story (heck, even Mollie seems to be a more likely candidate to step aboard the TARDIS at this point!), but it does have to be said that Debbie Watling does look beautiful in her first scenes. I've not seen much of Victoria's tenure outside of The Tomb of the Cybermen (as Deborah herself says on one of the DVD special features about this era - there's nothing left of there time on the show, really), so I'm hoping she'll blossom once she's out from under the Daleks' watchful eye-stalks.

a 

Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start... 

Day 170: The Evil of the Daleks, Episode One

Dear diary,

In the early 1990s, The Evil of the Daleks was voted the best Doctor Who story ever by the readers of DWB. It had dropped a little in estimations by the time Doctor Who Magazine ran a similar poll five years later, coming in at number nine in the list, and in the 2009 Mighty 200 poll, it slipped even further, to number 18. Indeed, in Doctor Who Online’s very own 50th Anniversary Poll, it’s currently sitting at number 25! Despite this decline in opinion, it still has to be said that Evil has something of a reputation amongst Doctor Who fans as being pretty darn good.

It's perhaps surprising, then, that this first episode comes across as being just a bit of filler material. The impression I got from the opening to the episode is that the Doctor and Jamie were supposed to see the TARDIS heading off on the back of a truck (at the end of the last episode, the Doctor had already deduced that it had gone, and now they actively see it), and then Bob Hall is planted in one of the hangars to put the pair off the scent. He's then followed, and is knocked unconscious for it - his being followed is clearly not a part of the plan (Kennedy even plans to beat the Doctor and Jamie over the head to make sure that they don't discover anything). It then transpires that the pair were intended to come here, because there's a pack of matches planted to lead them on to the coffee bar. So why knock out Hall? It leads to his fleeing the city, and is surely a waste of a valuable ally?

Once the Doctor and Jamie have made it to the coffee shop (where contemporary music helps to set the scene, though it's a shame to know that the Beatles' Paperback Writer had to be removed from the soundtrack), they're met by Perry. Perry has been sent by Waterfield (who also sent kennedy to plant the matches and, I'm guessing, Hall to start the whole thing rolling) to ask the Doctor to come to the antiques shop at 10pm. Why the overly-complex plan? Surely seeing the TARDIS being carted away - and then being asked by Hall at Gatwick to head to the antiques shop if they want to see the police box again - would be enough to get them there?

The whole thing is an exercise in delaying the pair until the story is ready for them. I don't know if the story was intended to be a six-parter which was then extended out to seven (in the same way as The Mind Robber being given an extra episode late in the day) or if it was just needed to get things set up ready for the main tale, but either way, it's odd.

That's not to say that it's a bad thing, mind. There's plenty to like about this episode, not least the fact that we get to spend some more time in the company of Troughton and Hines again. I'd not realised that such a large part of the story kept them in the 1960s (I'd always assumed that they stumbled into the Victorian era pretty quickly once the story got started), but it's odd just how well they really do fit in here. Whereas in The War Machines, at the end of last season, the sight of William Hartnell climbing out of a cab was unusual, it doesn't feel at all out of place to see (or, at least, hear) Troughton doing so. Considering how much time Ian and Barbara spent wishing the TARDIS would land in the 1960s, it turns up there an awful lot these days (I make it The Massacre of St Bartholemew's Eve, The War Machines, now here, and there's a couple more trips to this period in the next couple of seasons).

Not only that, but the ship keeps returning to the city on the same day! In the fantastic History of the Universe in 100 Objects book from last year, there's a line describing the 20th of July 1966 as being the day that WOTAN launched his War Machines, the Chameleons returned hundreds of missing people to Gatwick airport, and the Daleks were at large in their time-travelling antiques shop. Surely that sentence really sums up just why this era of the show is so fantastic?

Despite all the running around, and knowing vaguely what's going on, which runs the risk of lessening the tension (It's a shame, for example, to know that the Daleks are going to be a part of the story - of course they're in the title - because it takes away some of the tension of Waterfield arguing with his 'unseen masters'), there is enough here to hook me in to the tale. I don't know, for example, what the Daleks need from the man. Or why they've stolen the TARDIS (the Daleks have time travel, so it can't be that… are they just trying to capture the Doctor's attention?), or what the time-travelling antiques shop has to do with anything, and I'm keen to move on and find out, so I guess that's the story doing something right!

But to come in the top 25 Doctor Who stories ever…? I think it's got a way to go, yet…

a 

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