Day Fifty-Seven: Flashpoint (The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Episode Six)

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

Day Fifty-Seven: Flashpoint (The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Episode Six)

Dear diary,

When I started on this experiment, I was looking forward to today. Susan had long been, in my mind, a bit of a useless companion, and not one that I really was relishing the thought of spending almost two months with as I worked my way through the series. Actually, though, I'm genuinely left a little sad now.

It's really nice to reach this point in the programme's run and realise that my opinion of Susan thus far has been coloured somewhat by a few extreme examples (Reign of Terror, I'm looking at you…). On the whole, she's been quite a fantastic character, and it certainly feels strange to see the TARDIS fading away with Susan left behind.

What's also nice, coming to it having spent every day since New Year's with Susan in tow, is just how affecting this final scene is. I'd argue that it's one of the most famous scenes in Doctor Who's long history (or, at least, Hartnell's speech is), but that's all it's ever been to me; a scene at the end of Susan's time on the show. It's never really been that full of emotion before, or anything all that special - it's just something that happened in Doctor Who way-back-when.

In many ways, then, today has proved to me that all my reasons for wanting to undertake this marathon, to shut myself away from other areas of Doctor Who and focus on watching it in order - in context - from the start at a set pace have been valid. The way I described it to another fan back in December, just before I started on the project was that companions - and Doctors - come and go, but they always feel sort of ephemeral. I can watch a Susan story on DVD one day, then a Tegan story the next, before skipping back to a Sarah Jane, then purchase a Big Finish audio with a brand new adventure starring the Seventh Doctor and Ace.

Watching in this way is akin to watching the show as it goes out now - you form a bond with the companion and with the Doctor, and it's genuinely moving when their time in the TARDIS comes to an end. The point of what I'm trying to say here is, yes, watching Susan leave was actually a bit emotional. Sure, she overplays it a bit when telling David that she can't stay behind on Earth with him, no matter how she feels, but it's all very real, and far more real than we often see in the show.

I'm also pleased to see Hartnell at his best here, too. The Doctor knows that this is the time he'll have to make a difficult decision, and he almost falls to tears when he takes Susan's shoe and realises that this is the end for the pair of them. Watching him let her go is simply wonderful, and I'm genuinely going to miss her.

I'm still desperate to hear a West Wing-styled series from Big Finish, though, featuring her and David as they try to start re-building the Earth!

Elsewhere in the episode, it's nice to see the defeat of the Daleks given the scale that it so sorely missed in their first story. The shot of the Robomen and the slaves turning on the Daleks and charging at them from out of the mine is fantastic, and it really does feel like a fitting finale. It's a shame that it's over with s quickly, but it's a definite improvement from the last time around.

I've little else to add, really, about The Dalek Invasion of Earth, except to say that it really has surprised me. For a long time, I've always just thought of it as just another story from the Hartnell era, which was ok but nothing special, but actually, I've loved it from start to finish. One of the best stories we've had so far.

It's a shame that the story is likely to be tainted to me somewhat by the sad association of Raymond Cusick's death, but I'm pleased that I've been so impressed by a story featuring his - frankly wonderful - designs.

I'll be rating this episode,

Next Episode: The Powerful Enemy

(NB; you may have noticed, from Planet of Giants onwards, I've not been rating the store has a whole at the end. I've found that I'm usually summing the story up in the last episode as I go, leaving little to say for a summary at the end. I'll be putting all the average scores together at the end of each Doctor's era for a bit of a retrospective, so I can summarise the eras as a whole).