The Daleks' Master Plan

12 episodes
Aired between 13th November 1965 and 29th January 1966

Written by Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner
Produced by John Wiles
Directed by Douglas Camfield

Synopsis

Parts 1-6:  The Dalek's Master Plan

Back on the jungle planet of Kembel, the Special Security Service (SSS) have dispatched two more agents to find out what happened to Mark Corey.  Bret Vyon, and Kert Gantry, haven't discovered that, but they have discovered the presence of the Daleks, and their security house plants.  Gantry has already been wounded and they argue about their next move.  It's clear that they need to escape and warn Earth, so Gantry urges Vyon to go on ahead as his wound will only slow them down.  Vyon reluctantly does so, and it's a good job because seconds later, Gantry runs into a Dalek and is exterminated.

On Earth, the members of the Security Service don't acknowledge Vyon's attempted communication as they are too busy watching Mavic Chen, renowned Guardian of the Galaxy, announce his plans to take a holiday from protecting the solar system.

The TARDIS lands on Kembel, and the Doctor is very concerned over Steven's wound.  He tells the servant girl, Katarina to stay with him whilst he goes and gets help.

In the jungle, Bret Vyon trips and breaks the transmitter whilst running through the jungle to escape the Daleks.  He's desperate, and spots the Doctor leaving the TARDIS, and explaining to Katarina that he's got the key, so stay inside.  The Doctor hasn't gone far before Vyon confronts him at gunpoint, demanding the key before knocking the old man out.

With the key, he bluffs his way into the TARDIS and says the Doctor sent him.  He asks Katarina to set off, but she's totally useless, thinking that they're all actually dead and on their way to the afterlife!  Vyon clicks  switches and hopes for the best, ending up revealing the Doctor on the scanner, rubbing his head.  Steven regains conscious enough to see this and take matters into his own hands, knocking Vyon out with a wrench.

The Doctor locks Vyon into a magnetic chair and goes off again to find help, leaving Katarina in charge of the prisoner and the now unconscious Steven.  As he leaves, the sound of a spaceship roars overhead, so he begins to follow it.

Back on the TARDIS, Vyon convinces Katarina to give two tablets to Steven to counteract the poison in his blood.  She does this, even though she doesn't know what a tablet is.

The SPAR (Space-car) lands on Kembel and out of it, emerges Mavic Chen: Guardian of the Galaxy!  He hails the Daleks and vows to help them conquer the solar system.

The Doctor witnesses this and is horrified to have run into the Daleks again, he rushes back to the TARDIS but see's more Daleks about to enter the ship.  Predictably, they cannot gain access, but it's alright because they're about to begin Operation Inferno.  The Doctor doesn't hang about to hear any more.

Mavic Chen helps greet the arrival of the final delegate, Zephon of Galaxy Five.  Zephon is quite arrogant and sure of his abilities in the vital role to conquer the galaxy.  He is curious why Chen would want to join the Daleks, seeing as it's "his" solar system they are intending to invade.

Chen says that he desires to rule over a much bigger area than just the Solar System, and the Daleks will help him do that.

As he wanders through the jungle, the Doctor comes across the skeleton of Mark Corey, and his message tape.  A little later, he also finds Vyon, Katarina and a recovering Steven, who all left the TARDIS just before the Daleks showed up.  The group debate their next move, but are forced to act when they discover that Operation Inferno means burning down the jungle with flame throwers.

The desperate band make an unexpected move by finding their way to the Dalek base, the last place the Dalek's will look for intruders.

Back in the city, the council of delegates is called, but as they all go to the conference, Zephon says he will attend when he's good and ready.

The group arrive at the landing strip of the base, and Bret Vyon recognise's Chen's SPAR. He is distraught that the ruler of the Solar System would be in league with the Daleks.  The Doctor confidently says that they can steal the SPAR and use it to go to Earth and warn them all, but not until they've discovered what the Daleks are up to.  With the help of Vyon he manages to kidnap and knock out Zephon who is taking a stroll outside the base, and use his robes as a disguise.  He orders Vyon, Katarina and Steven to go to the ship and get it ready for takeoff.

Stealthily, the Doctor enters the conference and discovers that the Daleks have got Chen to produce a quantity of the rarest ,mineral in the universe - Taranium.  It's taken fifty years to gain a handful, but finally, the Daleks are ready to use it in their ultimate weapon - the time destructor!

Outside, a tied up Zephon regains consciousness and manages to sound the security alarm.  In the panic, the Doctor grabs the Taranium vessel and escapes.  Vyon takes the klaxons as a signal to get out of there and begins to take off.  Luckily, the Doctor makes it to the SPAR (the ship, not the shop) and the group take off.

The Daleks are furious, and blame Zephon, who in turn tries to pin the blame on Chen, stating that it's a conspiracy to sabotage the Dalek's plans.

When nobody believes him, Zephon tries to leave but is summarily exterminated.  The Daleks turn their attention to the escaping ship, but can't risk destroying the SPAR for fear of destroying the Taranium.  They decide instead to use a "randomiser" to control the ship remotely, and dispatch a Dalek Pursuit Vessel to retrieve the Taranium core.

On the SPAR, the group playback Cory's tape and begin discussing their next move.

They are forced to land in swampland on Desperus; a prison planet where ruthless criminals are dumped with no guards or supervision needed.

As you might guess, three of the natives called Borg, Garge and Kirksen all see the ship as a way off the planet and to freedom, and so try to hijack it.  The Doctor and Katarina see them coming however and drop a live electrical wire into the swamp, shocking Borg and Garge unconscious.

As the Dalek Pursuit Ship arrives, Bret and Steven manage to get the ship operational again and take off.

When the commotion has died down, the Doctor realises that he didn't close the door, and sends Katarina to do it.  As she does, Kirksen (who managed to board the ship before take off) grabs her and holds her at knife point.

A scared and panicking Kirksen demands to know where the ship is going.  When Vyon says it's on its way to Earth, Kirksen decides that he doesn't want to go back there to be caught, and orders them to go to the nearest planet: Kembel.    No amount of yelling or arguing with Kirksen will make him change his mind, so the Doctor orders them to go to Kembel and "let the Daleks deal with him".  A struggling Katarina however recognises what will happen if Kirksen gets his way, and decides to open the outer air lock, sucking them both out into space and killing them instantly.

The Doctor, Steven and Vyon are all shocked into silence, but resolve to continue their trip to Earth.

Back on Kembel, the Daleks realise that they cannot chase the Doctor further into the solar system, or their presence will be revealed.  Chen offers to race back to Earth and recover the core there, then bring it back once the group have been dealt with.  As Chen leaves, others in the Council query the faith the Daleks have put in Chen.

Vyon lands the SPAR near an experimental science station, just outside Central City on Earth.  There, he contacts his old friend Daxtar.   The group nervously await his arrival, unaware that they have been spotted.

Chen arrives back at Central City and liaises with Karlton, the head of the SSS (who obviously lives in Bel Air).  When their informants tell them that the traitors are Bret Vyon and Kert Gantry, Karlton reassures him that Sara Kingdom will retrieve the Taranium,  Kingdom is fiercely loyal and will obey every order without question.

Daxtar finally turns up, and the group tell their tale to him.

He agrees to help them, and urges them to go with him to Central City, alert the security forces to the oncoming danger, and return the Taranium.  The Doctor reveals that he never said anything about Taranium and thus reveals Daxtar as a traitor.  Vyon kills him, and they are forced to come up with a new plan.  As they are about to leave, Sara Kingdom turns up and holds them all at gunpoint, demanding the Taranium.

Vyon causes enough of a distraction so that the Doctor and Steven can escape, and he tries to convince Sara that Chen is the traitor.  Sara follows orders and kills Bret in cold blood before beginning her chase after the Doctor and Steven.

Trying to get out of the way, the Doctor and Steven hide in one of the nearby rooms.  Sara soon finds them, but as she prepares to kill them and take the Taranium, it turns out they've stumbled into a testing area for molecular dissemination.  They are all instantly evaporated and transported across the galaxy to the planet Mira, where there are no signs of life.

Karlton finds out what has happened and encourages Chen to return to Kembel and tell the Daleks that it was all part of the plan in the first place, seeing as Mira is close to Kembel, it will give them a good opportunity to go in their pursuit ship and recover the Taranium.  Chen is skeptical but has little choice.  Ultimately, it doesn't damage his plan to gather an army of dissidents from the other delegates and attack Kembel when the time is right.

On Mira, the Doctor, Steven and Sara recover.  Sara is still after the Taranium until Steven disarms her and furiously tries to make her think beyond her orders.  Sara is a bit gutted at the revelation, seeing as Bret Vyon was actually her brother, and she killed him in cold blood for Chen.  As they explore, they soon find themselves surrounded by eight foot, invisible creatures known as Visians.

It's not long before the Daleks turn up and fight their way through the Visians to the Doctor.  They declare that the group are surrounded by Daleks or Visisans and demand that the Doctor surrenders.

Things look pretty bad for the group, but luckily, the Visians decide to attack the Daleks, giving the Doctor, Steven and Sara time to escape.  They come across the Dalek Pursuit Ship, but it's guarded by a lone Dalek.  The Doctor comes up with a plan to fake surrender, whilst Steven circles behind it and sticks a blob of mud over its eye stalk.  The Dalek goes crazy, firing blind, narrowly missing the group as they manage to get inside the ship and take off.

The groups celebration is short lived, as the Daleks use the auto pilot on the pursuit vessel to bring them back to Kembel.  Steven fixes that problem by smashing the auto pilot to bits, leaving the Daleks to use a magnetic tractor beam instead.

Chen arrives back on Kembel and has an argument with the furious Dalek Supreme who tries to blame all of this fiasco on him.  Chen counters and says he's just trying to mop up all the failures of the Daleks.

Meanwhile, the Doctor realises their's no escape for them, and like it or not, they're headed back to Kembel.  He comes up with a plan to create a face copy of the Taranium core, but although he succeeds, it doesn't carry the powerful glow of the original.  Steven suggests that they could use the Gravitic force from the ships power centre, but Sara and the Doctor say it's far too primitive and dangerous.  Not one to simply accept his fate, Steven takes matters into his own hands and performs the experiment anyway.  The resulting explosion knocks him off his feet and sends him into a waking coma, but the fake Taranium core now glows, with the added effect of placing a force field around Stevens body similar to the one the TARDIS has.

When they land on Kembel, the Doctor gives Steven the fake core and they move outside, to greet Chen and the Daleks.  The Doctor states that the Daleks will only have the Core once they arrive at the doors of the TARDIS.  The Daleks hate the idea, but don't want to damage the Taranium so agree.  Once the group are back at the time machine, the Doctor and Sara enter, leaving Steven to hand over the core to Chen.  Once he has done this, the Daleks try to exterminate him, but he gets away, thanks to the force field.

The TARDIS leaves the planet, and Steven's force field wares off.  He is delighted by his discovery, as he believes they could all use it to protect themselves from the Daleks.  The Doctor tells him to stop being so stupid as next time, he could really get them all killed.  Steven is downhearted, but agrees not to use the gravitic power again.  Satisfied, the Doctor turns his attention to the real Taranium power core, stating that the Daleks will not stop until they have it in their grasp....

Parts 7-12:  The Destruction of Time

The TARDIS scanner is on the blink again, so the group cannot see where they land next, and the TARDIS readings say that the air is poisonous wherever they are.  Taking precautions, the Doctor tells Sara and Steven to stay in the ship whilst he makes the repairs (because the atmosphere shouldn't affect him).

When he ventures out, it turns out that the poisonous atmosphere is simply inner-city pollution as they are in 1960's England.  The TARDIS has landed outside a Police Station on Christmas eve 1965.
As the Doctor emerges from the box, a local Policeman is flabbergasted and arrests the Doctor to find out what he was doing inside Police property.

Taking matters into his own hands, Steven leaves the TARDIS and sneaks past one of the Policemen, stealing a Police uniform from the back of a Police car in the process.  Using the uniform, Steven bluffs his way into the Police Station as a new recruit from G Division, but is told to wait for the old man who is currently being interrogated.

The Doctor is indeed being interrogated, and is totally willing to tell the truth that he's from another time and planet, travelling about in a Police telepone box.  The 'coppers' understandably think he's nuts and begin to take him away to the funny farm, but Steven stops them.  He bluffs their way out of it, saying that the Doctor is harmless and well known to them in G Division.  The Police reluctantly agree to let him take the Doctor away.  However, no sooner do they get outside than they see Sara being arrested for climbing on top of the Police Box (to repair the scanner).

Stevens bluffs don't work this time, but Sara's deft elbow to the Policeman's stomach does, and they all rush back into the TARDIS and escape, leaving the Police Officer baffled as he watches their departure.

The TARDIS next lands on a movie set, where the group mistake the lead actor for a true villain, tying down a damsel.  Steven assaults him, leading to a farcical chase through the movie lot, where the group rush past Charlie Chaplin.  The group split up and Steven ends up being mistaken for an actor on the set of a Keystone Cops movie, and thus has a silent movie chase around the corridors.  Sara ends up in a Lawrence of Arabia set, and is ordered to take her clothes off, whilst the Doctor ends up lounging about with a depressed clown called Bing Crosby.

Eventually, the group make it back to the TARDIS and escape, once again, leaving everyone stunned and assuming it was a hollywood trick.  On the ship, the Doctor pours everyone a glass of wine and wishes them a merry Christmas, including breaking the fourth wall to wish it to 'everyone else at home' too.

Back on Kembel, the Daleks prepare to test run the time destructor, using Trantis, one of the delegates they happen to find annoying.  When they try it, nothing happens, and they indeed discover that the Taranium core is fake.  They blame Mavic Chen for the situation who vows to get it back for them.  The Daleks order a time machine from Skaro,  Chen is warned that if he fails, he will be exterminated.  Trantis is the only one there that's very happy to find out that the core is fake.  He sighs with relief that the experiment failed, but he's exterminated anyway.

On the TARDIS, the ship registers another time vessel following them.  They try to escape it by going to the Oval during a cricket match, but even that doesn't work (surprising?).  They take off again and this time venture to a volcanic planet, where the time vessel catches up with them.  The group decide to confront their pursuer and leave the TARDIS.

It turns out the other time vessel is the Meddling Monks (see The Time Meddler).  He stealthily moves around the TARDIS and sabotages the lock before revealing himself to the group and gloating about how he's now got his revenge.  When the monk leaves however, the Doctor finds it a simple matter of bouncing the rays off the sun to unfreeze the lock.

After a brief stop over in Trafalgar Square on New Years Eve 1965, the group next travel to ancient Egypt, outside a newly finished pyramid, where the Doctor decides that he can safely repair the damaged lock.

Back on Kembel, the DARDIS arrives, and a small unit of Daleks go with Chen to get the core back.  They arrive nearby to the TARDIS, and Steven mistakes it for the Monk's TARDIS.  He and Sara go out to try and reason with the monk, leaving the Doctor to work on the lock.  Little does he know, but he's being watched by one of the Egyptians who believes he's tomb robbing.  The Egyptian runs off and tells others who arm themselves.  The Egyptians rush off and capture Sara and Steven, taking them away and tying them up.  More of the Egyptian force try to capture the Daleks as they emerge from their time machine.  Unfortunately for them, they are cut down in droves by the ruthless Daleks.

Oblivious to this, the Doctor completes his repairs to the lock, just in time to see the Monk's TARDIS arrive and camouflage itself as a stone pillar.  He hides, letting the Monk wander off to find him.

Whilst the Monk is skulking about, trying to find the Doctor, he runs into the Daleks and quickly bargains for his life by assuring them he can get the Taranium core.  The Daleks and Chen agree, but give him an hour to do it.

The Monk returns to his TARDIS and gets a device to help track the Doctor's TARDIS.  As the Monk skulks off again, the Doctor turns the tables and sabotages his ship by removing the directional control, and switching the camouflage to a Police Telephone Box.  With the sabotage complete, he follows the Monk into the pyramid, where the energy signals are leading him.  Inside the pyramid, the Doctor confronts the Monk and knocks him out.

Sara and Steven free themselves and find their way into the pyramid, looking for the Doctor.  They find the TARDIS inside, and a bandaged hand that opens a nearby sarcophagus.  Don't worry though, it turns out that the 'mummy' is simply the Meddling Monk who was knocked out by the Doctor and wrapped up in bandages before being dumped in the sarcophagus.

Steven and Sara take the Monk with them to find the Doctor, and it's not long before they run into a group of really browned off Daleks who have been waiting an hour for the Monk.  The Monk desperately tries to convince Chen and the Daleks that he was bringing Steven and Sara as hostages, which they believe.  The use the TARDIS companions as bait, and issue an ultimatum to the Doctor from the DARDIS loudspeaker.  The Doctor agrees to hand over the Taranium in exchange for the group.  They agree for a rendezvous, and as the Doctor is exchanging his friends for the Taranium, the Egyptians attack again.  Everything devolves into chaos, and Chen snatches the core from the Doctor, who has little choice but to escape back to the TARDIS with Steven and Sara.

The Monk flees and gets back to his ship, realising that if the Daleks see it, they will assume it's the Doctor's and try to destroy it.  He abandons his plan and leaves in his ship.  He materialises in the Arctic, and soon works out that his directional control has been knicked.  He lifts his arms up to the sky in anger, and vows revenge on the Doctor.

Back on the TARDIS, the group are unhappy that the Daleks now have the Taranium core, and are a it put out that they cannot do anything about it.  The Doctor does point out that they can try to jury rig the Doctor's TARDIS with the directional control and fly back to Kembel, but warns that it's from a different model of TARDIS, so it might burn out and fail.  With little choice, the group decide to go for it.  As they flip the switch, the console room fills with smoke and things go bad.  The Doctor fears that they failed, but as soon as they check the scanners, they find that the directional control was able to take them back to Kembel before it burnt out.

The DARDIS also travels back to Kembel, and Chen makes a big show of how 'he' was able to get the Taranium.

The Daleks wonder whether to just kill him, but the Dalek Supreme orders them to keep him alive for now.  Elsewhere in the city, the Council of the Outer Galaxies don't see the need to keep Chen around, now that the Taranium has been provided and vow to kick him out.  Chen has other plans and begins addressing the meeting, alluding to the fact that that he is better than everyone else, and he is now classed as equal among the Daleks.  This starts a fight between him and the other delegates, and Chen happily kills one of them to prove his point.  The others are forced to accept his new leadership, but they soon find that the Daleks have other plans and take them all prisoner.

The TARDIS crew head out into the jungle of Kembel, and it's not long before the Doctor is separated from them.  Steven and Sara decide to follow the most likely course he would have taken, and head towards the Dalek city.  As they progress, Sara begins to fear the worst as the place is eerily deserted.

When they reach the Dalek control room and find the empty DARDIS, they come up with a plan to announce over the loudspeaker that they have control of the Dalek's time machine and will use it, unless the Doctor is returned to them.  Instead of a Dalek reply, the furious Mavic Chen comes over the speaker and tells them that the entire council has been imprisoned and left for dead, and says they need to come and free them.

Steven and Sara make their way to the prison cell, but discover that the Doctor isn't with them.  Steven is apprehensive about letting the council go, but Sara convinces him that they are the galaxies only hope of finding the Daleks.  The delegates promise to turn against and hunt down their former allies, and are all freed.  Steven and Sara decide to go back to the TARDIS to see if the Doctor went back there, and watch as the delegates board their ships and take off.  They are surprised however, when Chen's ship explodes on take off, fearing that now Earth will not be warned in time.

They set off back to the TARDIS, but soon discover that the Daleks never actually left Kembel, they just relocated to an underground base.  They begin to discuss their next move, when Mavic Chen turns up behind them, wielding a pistol.  He purposefully destroyed the ship, to fool the group,  He confidently leads them into the underground Dalek base at gunpoint.

By this time, Chen is totally insane, and actually believes that the groups plan is to now usurp his power as ruler of the galaxy, by siding with the Daleks.  Chen, Steven and Sara are soon spotted by the Daleks, and the Supreme orders them to be brought to the control room, whilst preparations for the 5,000 assault Daleks to invade the galaxy are made.

When Chen gets to the control centre, he asks for an update on the conquest plans, but the Daleks remain silent.  He begins ranting and raving at how ungrateful they are, and the Daleks threaten to exterminate him.  This doesn't phase him as he clearly believe's he's now immortal, and turns on the Dalek Supreme, shooting at it with his pistol.  The gun has no effect.  He tries to flee, and the Daleks pursue him, gunning him down in the corridor.

Whilst the Daleks are out murdering their former ally, the Doctor reveals himself from the shadows (he followed a Dalek here), and gives Steven the TARDIS key.  He orders Sara and Steven back to the TARDIS, and activates the time destructor on the Daleks return, holding it in front of him like a shield to stop them killing him.

Steven, Sara and him angle their escape out of the door, and the Doctor smashes the lock when it's closed to hold the Daleks up.  He then pushes the humans towards the TARDIS and tells them to leave him.  Sara is distinctly unhappy about that, and slips away from Steven as they run, going back for the Doctor.

Sara helps the Doctor through the jungle, but finds that her human DNA is more susceptible to the activated device, and begins to age rapidly.  It's not long before the device grows in power and reduces the jungle around the planet to ash, renders the Doctor unconscious, and ages Sara to an old hag.

Once back at the TARDIS, Steven begins to use the scanner to watch for his friends and finds them outside the TARDIS.  He rushes out to turn off the destructor, but finds that he can't.  He moves to help Sara, but it's too late, she's been reduced to just skeletal remains.  Feeling the destructor begin to work on himself, he desperately rouses the Doctor, but the old man shoves him towards the TARDIS, forcing Steven back inside the console room.  Painfully, the Doctor makes it inside, and closes the doors, distraught at the fact that Sara didn't make it.

The Daleks move through the now ashen landscape and try to shoot the destructor, but they are too late.  Their metal shells disintegrate and they are devolved back into squid like Dalek embryo's.

Eventually, the Taranium burns itself out, and the time destructor stops working, allowing the Doctor and Steven to exit the TARDIS.  They figure that the entire Dalek force has been defeated, but lament the deaths of their comrade's - Katarina, Bret Vyon, and of course, Sara.  Somberly, they re-enter the TARDIS and we watch it dematerialise.

Trivia

• Although Terry Nation was supposed to write the whole thing, he was increasingly pulled away on other projects, specifically becoming the producer of a show called The Baron.  The Script Editor, Donald Tosh, came up with a plan to get around the inconveniences.  He employed Dennis Spooner (who had worked with Nation many times) to help write the second half of the story

• The problem was that, even close to the day of filming, nothing had turned up from Nation around the first half of the plot.  Tosh confronted Nation about it, who offered to come over and hand him the script for the first half that evening.  Unfortunately, when the doorbell rang, it was a taxi driver who had been given a brown envelope from Nation, containing a few pages of notes and descriptions, and about a dozen lines of dialogue for the first five episodes.

• Luckily, Douglas Camfield was scheduled to direct the show, and supposedly ended up making a lot of the first half on the fly!  The downside was, he also went off track a bit, and often gets the blame for the Christmas episode, even though it is thought that Hartnell was responsible for ad-libbing the address to camera

What worked

• The first couple of episodes are full of suspense, and it's nice to see that Bret Vyon can use his brains and bluff his way into the TARDIS

• The delegate of Zephon without his cloak looks surprisingly good

• It's nice to see the alien delegates all have different mannerisms, from the way they walk, to the way they bang their fists on the table.  The baldy one with spots is particularly entertaining, he even bounces around strange when emergency alarms go off and he's meant to be panicking

• All that screaming Katarina does at the end gives it a very suspenseful moment.  Things get real serious, real quick.  Steven yelling helps with this too

• The Dalek's haven't sounded this good since their inaugural clash with the Doctor

• Sara Kingdom fits into the crew well, once her brainwashing days are behind her

• The Dalek guns sound better 

• The man reporting a missing greenhouse in the Police Station is comedy gold!

• The ruthless extermination of the Egyptians shows how hard the Daleks really are

• The eerie atmosphere in the deserted Dalek city, and the strange accompanying music 

• The noise of the time destructor really builds tension, and the brutality of its operation is as startling as watching the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time

What didn't work

• The delegate of Zephon walks around like a cardboard cut out, with stiff arms and legs, it didn't need it, he's alien enough

• I'm not sure if its just me, but some of the daleks seem "fatter" than the others.  

• The jungle planet of Kembel has the exact same sound as the jungle planet of Spirodon (see the Planet of the Daleks) 

• The Dalek guns take on the same sound as the Auton guns (see Spearhead from Space)

• Mavic Chen likes to do a lot of background explanations to aliens who should already know what he's saying.  It's very much an "as you well know, Zephon...."

• It's not necessarily a bad thing, but..."The Feast of Steven".... What the actual heck?! 

• The rays of a sun can unfreeze a technically disabled TARDIS lock...convenient

• The Monk in the sarcophagus

Overall Feelings

It's speculated that this story came about because one of the BBC high ups couldn't get enough of the Daleks.  It was decided therefore, instead of having two Dalek stories in a year, to put them both together to form one big epic.

Knowing some of the trivia and back story to all this, it's painfully obvious where Terry Nation left off and Dennis Spooner began.  The first half is a futuristic spy saga, where, with the exception of a few actors doing silly walks, the cast play it totally straight.  The result is a tour de force.  The Daleks have rarely seemed so menacing, and there's even political tension in there.  The deaths are brutal and sobering, with Peter Purves really making you feel that Steven was devastated at Katarina's death.  Hartnell also does a really good job, being commanding and brave all at once.  Then we get to "The Feast of Steven"...

Many people say that comedy works best when the stakes are high, but this takes the previous six weeks of tension building and just totally dismisses it with stupid silent movie parodies and people rambling on about missing greenhouses.  Don't get me wrong, the Police Station fiasco was ten times better than the Romans, and as a stand alone would have been pure gold, but in the middle of this epic, it's just devastating.  And so is the sidestep into ancient Egypt, where we get some episodes with the Meddling Monk who, lets face it, was only brought back because it was Spooner writing it.  Again, I would have welcomed another story with the "original Master", but not here.  The interaction with the Daleks make him seem even more incompetent than usual.

Once we're back on Kembel, the tension comes back, but the Daleks have lost something; they've stopped being ruthless killers, and turned into bond villains, choosing not to just exterminate those who are useless, but putting them into elaborate death traps, and inviting them into the centre of their operations.  The only real redeeming quality of this is the end game.  The Doctor's willingness to sacrifice his life to activate the destructor shows a side of him only hinted at before, and something that would have been inconceivable, following An Unearthly Child.  This is a guy we really, really, want to root for, and that fact helps us sympathise with Steven's helplessness in the TARDIS no end.

The death of Sara is unexpected and shocking, and points out to us in a brutal way, that John Wiles and Donald Tosh see things far more differently than Sidney Newman and Verity Lambert ever did.  At times, this story feels like something from Phillip Hinchcliffe's era, and is a welcome addition for it.  Events in the Doctor's life have taken a dark turn, and like it or not,  the children of 1966 are coming along for the ride.

Rating

First 6 episodes, and episode 12

9 out of 10

Episodes 7-11

5 out of 10

Rewatchability Factor

I would definitely watch this again, but will also definitely skip over the Feast of Steven like it never happened.

8 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Chase

• Mission to the Unknown

• The Invasion

• Planet of the Daleks

Consulting the Matrix

Was the death of Katarina a step too far?  Do you think she should have been given a longer shot at being a companion?

The Time Meddler

4 episodes
Aired between 3rd July 1965 and 24th July 1965

Written by Dennis Spooner
Produced by Verity Lambert
Directed by Douglas Camfield

Synopsis

Vicki is sighing and moping about the console room, saying how she will miss Ian and Barbara.  The Doctor agrees, and comforts her, offering to take Vicki home too if she wants, but she declines.

They hear a noise coming from the living quarters.  Vicki assumes one of the Daleks survived, but it turns out to be a bruised and battered Steven Taylor who managed to find the TARDIS whilst it was on Mechanus (see The Chase).  Steven enters the console room and passes out.

The Doctor and Vicki nurse Steven back to consciousness and explain to him that he's now on a time machine.  Steven is skeptical to say the least, which winds Vicki up, but the Doctor takes it all in his stride, confident that Steven will be shown the truth when they arrive at their next destination.

The TARDIS arrives on a rocky shore, and a local monk observes its arrival with great astonishment.

Steven cleans himself up, and the group exit the TARDIS for a look round.  Soon enough, the Doctor finds an old Viking helmet and presents it to Steven, who promptly dismisses it as part of a child's costume.

The group decide to explore a set of nearby cliffs, but the Doctor decides to take the long and easy way around.  Vicki reluctantly tackles the heights of the cliffs with Stephen.

Once they're gone, the monk turns up and inspects the TARDIS, trying the door only to find it locked. The monk curiously checks his wrist, to find it bare.

The Doctor finds his way to a nearby village where he starts poking around in the houses only to be pinned to the wall by a quarterstaff.

Meanwhile, the monk makes his way back up the cliff to his monastery,  Seconds after he enters the building, Gregorian chants begin to sidle out of the window.

Back on the beach, two of the villagers peer down the cliff face.  The first villager explains that he saw a strange box there, but the tide's come in and obviously smashed it apart against the rocks.

The Doctor is sat by a camp fire, where one of the village women gives him some mead and begs apology for assaulting him.  The Doctor uses his wits and bluffs information out of the woman, finding out that they've landed in 1066, and they are in Northumbria, where the Vikings have been raiding the local townsfolk, just before Harold and his army turns up to beat them.

As the woman goes off to get more food, the Doctor suddenly hears the singing distort and get slower before it returns to normal.  He discovers from the woman that the monks haven't been there long, and no one's seen much of the monks so far.  The Doctor gets excited and sets off to the monastery.

Meanwhile, Vicki and Steven have made it to the top of the cliff.  They err on the side of caution and hide when they hear someone approaching, but Steven is restless.  A man appears in the clearing, and the pair watch him as he finds something shiny on the floor.  Against Vicki's wishes, Steven casually steps out into the clearing to ask the man what he's found.  The man tries to run and Steven ends up fighting him, but gets a thick lip for his troubles as the man runs away.  Vicki is mad with Steven's brashness but Steven happily says he got what the man found and holds up a wrist watch, reassuring his faith that they haven't traveled in time.

At the monastery, the Doctor enters and looks around the place to find a grammar phone playing Gregorian chants.  He laughs to himself but his amusement is short lived as bars drop down behind him.  The monk arrives, laughing and jeering at the Doctor through the bars.

The monk moves the Doctor to a cell, where he spends the night.

Vicki and Steven have spent the night in the clearing, and as they awake to begin looking for the Doctor, they are ambushed by the men who went to find the TARDIS and are brought back to the village.  This seems to finally convince Steven that perhaps they did travel back in time after all.

Once at the village, some of the villagers want to kill Steven and Vicki for being Viking spies, but the woman in the village recounts how she met the Doctor last night.  Wulnoth, the headman of the village says they are just traveler's and lets them go.  Steven and Vicki are told that the Doctor went to the monastery and so they set off there.

Now morning has arrived, the monk goes back to the cliff side and observe the horizon with a pair of binoculars, watching with glee as a Viking long ship appears. The monk goes off again with a smile to make preparations.  As the longship lands, a small party of Vikings scale the cliff and go off to scout the area for food and to gauge the resistance of the populace.

Steven and Vicki arrive at the monastery, and ask the monk if he's seen the Doctor.  The monk says he hasn't but to appease Steven, agrees to check with the other members of his order.  There are no other members of his order, however.

Steven doesn't believe the monk and when he returns, Steven asks him to keep a lookout for the Doctor, questioning him as to if the monk can remember his description.  The monk smiles and recounts what the Doctor looks like before wishing them a good day and closing the door.  Steven is proud of himself as he never gave a description, so he's therefore certain the monk has him prisoner.  Vicki isn't too sure about it and thinks that it's too easy.  Regardless, they vow to sneak into the monastery after dark and rescue the Doctor.

Back in the village, the woman is assaulted by the Viking scout party and they make their getaway with food, leaving the woman catatonic.  When they find her, the villagers are in outrage, accusing Steven and Vicki of the crime.  The woman tells Wulnoth that it was the Vikings, and the men set off with swords in their hands to track them down.  It isn't long before they do indeed find the Vikings and they break out into a fight.  Most of the Vikings are killed, with a couple escaping, and only Wulnoth and one of the accusatory villagers surviving the attack, the latter sustaining a deep wound.
Wulnoth carries his fellow villager towards the monastery for help.

At the monastery, the monk prepares his Grammar phone and cell trap for the pair, and lies in hiding, but as Steven and Vicki enter, Wulnoth arrives and begins pounding on the door.

The monk is forced to answer the door and isn't there to spring the trap when Vicki and Steven find the Grammar phone.  The pair advance through the monastery until they find the Doctor's cell.  Steven picks the lock, but they soon find that the Doctor is gone, managing to escape through a secret passage, which they follow.

The monk manages to occupy Wulnoth long enough to check for the intruders, but finds that the cell is empty and that  Steven and Vicki are gone.  He looks worried, but is forced to tend to the aid of the villagers with some penicillin.  Wulnoth insists that the injured villager stays at the monastery.  The monk doesn't like it, but he relents.

The Doctor makes his way back to the village, where the woman tells him about their encounter with Steven, Vicki and the Vikings. The Doctor believes that the arrival of the vikings is somehow linked to the monk and decides that he needs to confront him again.

Despite following the secret passage, Steven and Vicki fail to find the Doctor.  They return to the TARDIS, thinking that he might have done the same.

Elsewhere in the woods, the remaining two Vikings argue about their next course of action, but eventually agree to lie low in the monastery until the invasion fleet arrives.

The monk studies his plans, which seem to include using an atomic cannon to blow up the Viking fleet.  All seems to be on schedule, but his work is interrupted once more by a knock at his door. When the monk answers it, he is surprised by the Doctor who points a stick in his back and pretends it's a rifle.  The Doctor says he wants some answers and leads the monk back inside the monastery.

Steven and Vicki arrive at the edge of the cliff to see the TARDIS has gone, and the tide is in.  Vicki is distraught at this, believing that either the Doctor has left without them, or that the TARDIS has been swept away.  Steven encourages her to take action by going back to the monastery to see if the Doctor hung around.  On their way, the pair find the monks atomic cannon in a nearby bush.

There's yet another knock at the monastery door just as the Doctor begins to interrogate the monk.  The Doctor insists that they answer the door together, but demands a set of robes so he cannot be shown as a bad guy by the monk.  As they get to the door, the Doctor commands the monk to stay back so he can do the talking, but as soon as he answers the door, Sven the Viking puts a sword under his nose.

The two Vikings order him to be quiet and take them in, which the Doctor has no choice but to do, whilst the monk escapes.

The Doctor is taken to his old cell and locked in, whilst Ulf the Viking goes to threaten the other monks.  He comes across an altar where he is knocked unconscious by the monk who pops out of hiding with a plank of wood.

The monk ties Ulf up and pops off to the village, convincing Wulnoth and the woman to get the villagers to light beacons on the cliffside in the next two or three days.  As he leaves, Wulnoth and the woman decide that it has something to do with a possible invasion.

Back at the monastery, Sven discovers a secret passageway lying open in the cell.  He checks it out, and the Doctor cleverly approaches from behind and knocks Sven unconscious (also with a bit of wood).  Satisfied, the Doctor goes off to find the  monk once more.

Steven and Vicki return to the monastery via the secret door and find the unconscious Sven.  They continue until they reach a large room containing a Saxon Sarcophagus, and see a large power cable sticking out from behind it.  Sure enough, there are two doors that open up and when Steven and Vicki climb inside, they find that it's another TARDIS!

The monk returns to the monastey and gloats to Ulf, saying that the beacons will attract the Vikings, but is confronted by a sword wielding Doctor once more.

Under the Doctor's urging, the monk reveals that his plan was to draw the Vikings in close and then destroy them with the atomic cannon so that Harold would win the battle of Hastings.

The Doctor insists that the monk takes him to his time machine, which is disguised as the Sarcophagus, where they meet up with Vicki and Steven.   They ask the monk why he'd want to meddle with history, and he makes it obvious that he's doing it for fun, wanting to help get jet aircraft by the 1300's and keep Harold on the throne because he thinks he'd be a good king.

The Doctor admits that the monk comes from the same planet as him, but fifty years into the future. They compare the monks "Mark 4" machine to the Doctors and joke about how at least the chameleon circuit works in this one.  All this talk of the TARDIS reminds Vicki about the fate of their own and she tells the Doctor that theirs has washed out to sea.  The Doctor laughs and says that it won't be moved by the tide, it's simply submerged.

Whilst they are discussing all this, the monk seizes his chance to escape, but as soon as he leaves the TARDIS, he is captured by Ulf and Sven who have been revived.  The monk tells them that they should be attacking the Doctor and his friends, putting the blame on them.  The Vikings take no chances and tie up the Doctor, Vicki and Steven.

The injured villager witnesses the monks treachery and rushes back to the village to warn them.  The villagers are already up in arms about the beacons and this just makes them certain that the monk is a Viking spy.  

The villagers run off towards the monastery to take care of the threat.

The Vikings agree to help the monk set beacon fires for the invasion and start carrying a box of fireworks with them to the cliff.  They are met by the angry mob of villagers who begin chasing them around the monastery Benny Hill style.  

Lucky for the TARDIS crew, the woman from the village turns up and frees them.  The Doctor thanks her and proceeds to disable the monk's TARDIS by removing the dimensional stabilizer.  

He leaves a note for the monk and together he, Steven and Vicki head off back to their own TARDIS.

The monk meanwhile deceives the Vikings, leaving them to be killed whilst he gets away.  He rushes back to the monastery, giving up on his plan and intending to leave.  He finds the Doctor's note which says that he's stranded the monk there, and that he may decide to come back at some point and return the dimensional stabilizer.  Sure enough, when the monk looks inside the Sarcophagus, he finds that the TARDIS' internal dimensions have shrunk to be in line with its outside dimensions.  

The once arrogant monk sits in despair, for now, he's stranded in 1066.

Trivia

• If you don't count the Doctor himself, this is the first story where an alien or anachronistic presence is the cause behind historical events, or the changing of them.  By the end of the first Doctor's reign, this type of story will be very much the standard for historical's.

• Once again, William Hartnell takes a holiday.  This time missing episode 2 by being in a prison cell.

• This is one of the first occasions where we get true continuity issues.  Whilst David Whittaker was script editor, the rule was that no amount of meddling could change history.  This fit with Sidney Newman's format that historical episodes should be educational.  Once Dennis Spooner took over, all that changed.  In this story, not only can history be changed, but we also see that the TARDIS is more than something the Doctor made up in his shed.  

What worked

• When pointing to the Viking helmet, in response to Stephens dismissal of it.  "What do you think it is, a space helmet for a cow?"   Priceless!

• When the Doctor is exploring the monastery, it does give you a bit of an eerie feeling.

• To say that this was all studio work, the woodland sets were pretty darn good

• The big reveal at the end of episode 3.

• It's great to see that a lot of the Time Lord history wasn't contradicted here.  Things are ellusive and questions go unanswered, like who it is that came up with the law about changing history, or whether the monks TARDIS is a better model than the Doctor's.

• The bit where the monk sells out the Vikings to the angry mob is a bit ruthless and shows there's more to this bumbling monk than meets the eye

What didn't work

• The prison the Doctor finds himself in at the end of episode 1 - what, the monk just happens to place bars over all his doorways in case people enter uninvited?

• Why is there a cell in a monastery.  It could have been another room, but why is there a bed in it and a lock on the door?

• Sven the viking sounds like he may as well come from Kensington

• The only way Steven can know what's going off is for Vicki to give all the exposition, but unless she's been taught off screen, how does she know all about dematerialisation and the such?

• Who do Steven and Vicki search for a secret door in a cell that's already unlocked?

• Even if the monk is stranded, the Doctor never did anything with the Atomic Cannon.  He could still change history.

Overall Feelings

On the surface of it, the Time Meddler is tedious.  There's lots of hanging around and making conversation with villagers, and astonishingly quick day and night sequences that progress for no reason at all.  Indeed, until the end of episode 3, we're forced to watch all the shenanigan's that were present in stories like the Reign of Terror, but with the disadvantage of not having anyone of historical importance to hook us in.  Until that moment, you would be forgiven in saying that it's quite boring.  But if you feel that way, you may not have been listening to what's been said before.

To get the most out of this story, you have to go back to the advice I gave you in the Unearthly Child.  You have to watch this as if only two years of Doctor Who are in existence.  If you do, then the allure and mystery of why a grammar phone is in a monastery in 1066 becomes more interesting, and the monks TARDIS becomes a really big deal, just like it was for people back in 1965.

Having said all of that, this isn't the most intellectual story out there.  It explores things that we as  a viewer would no doubt consider if we had access to a time machine, e.g. using compound interest to make a fortune.  It takes the concept of the Space museum showing off all sorts of Artifacts and pondering the effects of messing about with time, and combines it with the farcical nature of the Romans, who better then than Peter Butterworth to play the main bad guy?

Rating

6 out of 10

Interesting concepts and a good introduction to the Time Lord element, but it takes a while for the story to get into gear.

Rewatchability Factor

4 out of 10

The story is a bit slow, made tedious by having to explain everything to Steven, who doesn't believe it anyway!

Watch this if you liked

• Mark of the Rani

• Terror of the Autons

• The Time Warrior

Consulting the Matrix

If you could introduce one piece of technology to an ancient race, what would it be?