Day of the Daleks

We kick off Season Nine with the first appearance of the Daleks since Patrick Troughton finished them off in Evil of Daleks. Well we know that nothing keeps a good Dalek down and here they are again looking, it must be said, a bit small in number and slightly battered.

Their voices are also slightly odd. I'm sure there's an expert out there - Nick Briggs - who can tell me why: something to do with the ring modulator probably but I digress (again).

It is another Peace Conference but this time mysterious assailants are trying to kill the man leading the Conference, Sir Reginald Styles. It turns out that these assailants are from 200 years in the future and Sir Reg is blamed for destroying the Conference he tried to create plunging the Earth into war and allowing the Daleks to mop up the survivors and once more rule the Earth. So guerillas from this future have traveled back in time to kill Sir Reg.

Jo gets dragged into the future by a dodgy time machine and get buttered up by the Controller. She's quite trusting Jo. To the point of suicidal naivety. So she's a bit shocked when the Doctor turns up, having gone the long way round, and starts berating the Controller in that inimitable way the Third Doctor has when dealing with any type of politician or civil servant.

In the final episode, a cozy chat leads the Doctor to realize that it wasn't Sir Reg that blew everyone up but the guerillas themselves in their attempt to stop blowing everyone up. We are in a paradox.

For a series where the lead character trots around in a time machine, it is quite rare that time travel forms a part of the plot (at least until Steven Moffat arrived) so it is always quite interesting when we get dragged into discussions about Blinovitch Limitation Effects and paradoxes. By going back in time the guerillas created their own future.

The Doctor and Jo rush back, clear all this up, and prevent the destruction of the Conference. Which means that the guerillas future never happened, which means they never had to travel back in time in the first place so the Peace Conference would have gone ahead as before and everyone would have been killed so the guerillas would have had to come back in time to prevent Sir Reg's crime except that they'd be stopped by the Doctor and wouldn't need to travel back...right, I'll stop. I'm getting dizzy.

There's a paradox within a paradox here. Perhaps the Doctor, with his Time Lord skills, can nip and tuck everything to avoid everyone being caught in a strange time loop.

That's the flaw with the story really. If you ignore that then it's an enjoyable romp. The Daleks are a wee bit disappointing but it feels like Day of the Daleks is an epic waiting to happen but BBC budgets and 70's special effects couldn't let it breathe.

I like Aubrey Woods' performance as The Controller. All icy politeness and emotional control, even at the end.

UNIT gets to look proper military and useless at the same time. Getting whacked in numbers by the Daleks and Ogrons in the final battle sequence and leaving a back door to a building that is supposed to be heavily guarded both, er, unguarded and unlocked. Just a minor security cock-up there Brig.

Any road up. I enjoyed this. It's a four-parter so it flew by and it does feel like they've made a real attempt to go for something big, even if they can't quite pull it off. 

NOTES ON THE SPECIAL EDITION RE-WATCH

I re-watched this on 23/11/2020, but I watched the Special Edition DVD. That does deal with some of my criticisms above. They get Nick Briggs to put in 'proper' Dalek voices, which is nice. They help boost the numbers of Daleks, U.N.I.T. troops, and Ogrons, particularly in the final battle sequence. They also improve the effects on the guns and the Time Travel machine, as well as some scenes of the post-Dalek Invasion Earth. It all works reasonably well. 

Once again I should compliment Aubrey Woods's performance as The Controller, but I'd like to add a couple of other performance compliments. Anna Barry as Anat and Wilfred Carter as Sir Reginald Styles. Indeed, Styles looks like he is going to be the Third Doctor era political official cliche, but in this story, he turns out to be the good man. He might be a little pompous, but his intentions are good. Something that the final line of the story makes clear. 

I think this could easily slot in as a New Doctor Who story, with its timey-wimey themes. You'd have to do something to make The Ogrons less lumbering, but having said that there's a brutality to this story that seems very 1970s. The way, even though we don't see it, the Doctor's interrogation when he first arrives on the alt-Earth has clearly not been an easy one. 

I also liked the way there are certain echoes throughout. The way the Controller tells the Ogrons that they haven't yet been dismissed and then The Daleks do the same thing to the Controller later on showing precisely the pecking order of the Dalek run Earth. The way the Doctor talks about the wine at Alderley House and then does the same thing when at dinner with the Controller. 

Jo is delightfully naive in this, especially when dealing with the Controller and a clearly angry Doctor over dinner. But that naivety fits the character I think. Jo Grant is a trusting soul, which is nice. She never loses that and descends into cynicism. I get the feeling that is pretty reflective of Katy Manning herself. 

So, yes a delightful re-watch. I'm sure the Special Edition has other changes that I've not noticed. I don't have one of those brains that can spot a changed line or altered scene unless I literally watch the two things back-to-back but as it addresses a number of my criticism in the original review I can't pretend it wasn't an improvement. The good thing is though you can still watch the original if you wish to.