Day of the Daleks part 3

[Craig @craig Emperor]

The Doctor flees the Daleks in the tunnels and allows himself to be taken 200 years into the future in order to find Jo. The Daleks are made aware that their enemy is involved.

[The Krynoid Man @thekrynoidman]

Isn’t this the infamous episode where we get a glimpse of Jo Grant’s knickers?

[Craig @craig Emperor]

@thekrynoidman I think there may be the briefest of brief glimpse of red briefs. But then we’ve already had Leela’s wet blouse and Zoe’s tight catsuit to cope with in our BG watch.

[Arbutus @arbutus]

Now we’re really getting to the good stuff. I love it when the Third Doctor gives heck to abusive dictator types like the Controller. He’s at his most likeable when he has the moral high ground.

Two hundred years in the future, apparently they still have all terrain vehicles. Cool.

I’m impressed by the way the SE removes the visual weaknesses from the old episodes, making them much more watchable by today’s standards and pointing up how great the stories actually were. But my main reason for preferring the SE is the Dalek-voice of the wonderful Nick Briggs. I love the way he says “Daaaaleks”!

 

 

[ScaryB @scaryb]

Another good episode. Some nice direction – I like the use of tight closeups (you don’t need any budget to pull those off 🙂 ). The controller is a lot less camp in this. He’s quite weasily with the daleks, but then turns distinctly nasty when he gets the chance to put the pressure on his underling. The Daleks put the pressure on him, he puts the squeeze on others.

In the nonSE version – glad the Dalek voices have speeded up (mogadon supplies must’ve run out 😉 ), but they are really very undalek and unthreatening. The tricycle chase is a bit contrived – the Ogrons look like they’re having to work really hard NOT to catch up with it (in fact check out the one on the right of the screen in the scene where the Doctor and Jo jump on the trike – he’s definitely holding back till he gets his cue.
The tricycle scene somehow reminds me of this – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS9Qmgk4aR0&feature=kp (but a bit slower and with fatter tyres!)

And you can’t help but think that if the daleks/controller had installed audio instead of visual, or just spent some time monitoring their spy equipment that their lives would be a lot easier.

But on the whole I liked it. Jo’s naivity in trusting the “nice” people who have rescued her contrasts with the Doctor’s attitude; she’s not afraid to challenge him, but she’ll follow the Doctor’s orders 100%.
I trust @thekrynoidman was happy!!

[The Krynoid Man @thekrynoidman]

@scaryb I’m sorry I don’t understand what you mean by you’ll trust I’ll be happy. Is it because you think I that I like Jo as a companion better than Rose. If that’s the case then yes, I am happy. I actually think Jo is a very underrated companion. Like you said she trusted the Doctor, but still questioned him on occasion. She even saves him just as much as he saves her, how many companions have done that. They also had a really good father daughter relationship, which I can buy a lot more than the “one true love” nonsense with Rose. Plus she looks really nice in a mini-skirt. Hey I’m not ashamed to admit I find a woman attractive.

[Bluesqueakpip @bluesqueakpip]

Good, fast paced episode with lots happening. UNIT basically had a week off while the Doctor and Jo visit the guest cast, 200 years in the future. And we start to realise that the guerillas really do have a point – in case you hadn’t guessed from the mere existence of Daleks, the future is not a nice place to live.

@scaryb – yes, the tricycle chase is definitely a bit contrived. It looks a bit like the Doctor’s nicked what he thought was a fast getaway vehicle, only to discover it could barely get above a jogging pace. Downhill. 🙂

I agree that the Special Edition removes the visual weaknesses – for example, the humans are no longer being enslaved in a block of 1960’s flats. Though, come to think of it, that might not’ve been intended as a visual weakness.

@thekrynoidman -The ‘infamous glimpse of Jo Grant’s knickers’ (which the SE didn’t remove) suggests to me that Doctor Who fans were early adopters of the freeze frame. We saw considerably more of Zoe…

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

In many ways, I think Episode 3 sets out to do a little too much and, while its nice to see the pace surge forward, I think that’s why elements like the chase on the trike come over as a little contrived (as @scaryb and @bluesqueakpip say). The Target novelisation (because it could afford the visuals) made it all sound a little more exciting with Ogrons on trikes as well. I will say the SE recut makes it a bit more visually engaging with disintegrator bolts whizzing around.

As @arbutus says, I think Pertwee is great in the scene against the Controller here. Unlike Jo, he’s witnessed the brutality of the future world and he knows the Daleks are in the mix. It’s a pointed, but almost guarded approach he takes to goading the Controller.

It has all the elements of an “under occupation” vision. You have the collaborators like the Controller and the guards. You have the plucky resistance and their double agents. I mentioned that early drafts of the story had suggested the Master as the foe in the future, and you can easily imagine Delgado strutting about this future world in full Dictator mode. When you consider this, it’s easy to see the comparison with the future at the end of AG Series 3 in The Last of the Time Lords.

That said, this vision suits the Daleks as it has their grubby sucker prints all over it for what the Daleks were. Enslaving worlds, using other species as slaves, then working them to death with occasional exterminations. When you look at the Controllers female assistants in the control room there is an air of Robotisation about them (from Dalek Invasion of Earth).

I did smile when the Controller questions the effectiveness of the Ogrons against the rebels though. I would have paid good money to hear him say.

“Your Gorillas aren’t up to fighting the Guerrillas”

I would have liked to have seen more of a build up of the mental probe to confirm the Doctors identity, but it’s still a great cliffhanger. It’s the Doctor! With the first and second Doctor in the background! Who can save him now!?

[Anonymous @]

Great stuff and yes the SE makes future Earth look far less like a wet Saturday afternoon in a Milton Keynes shopping centre circa 1979 than it previously did.

And Pertwee is great here too. The Third Doctor does really come into his own when he’s pompously ascending the moral high ground. Good to see his cutting back on his wine consumption too. Clearly exile on Earth led to him hitting the bottle a bit too much. But despite some natty re-editing I still can’t help but find the whole trikie chase slightly on the bum-puckering side.

I quite like @phaseshift‘s suggestion that the Controller’s staff are a more advanced version of Robotised humans. But why only females and why only pretty young blondes? I wonder if it’s meant to be a shout-out to the Bond films of the time. Especially as the Controller seems to have a quite Dr No/Blofeld-esque outfit on.

And to repeat, I think Aubrey Woods is doing stellar work as the Controller. Craven but then vindictive and is that a few little sparks of genuine humanity visible every so often? I also wonder if all the chat about productivity and ‘prosperity’ is making a point about the politics of the time the show was made and the troubled state of British industrial relations.

But taken all for all, I’d say this is the quintessential Pertwee episode. If you had to show someone a single episode that distills the whole era then this would be it surely. Time travel, monsters, hand to hand fights and a quick chase in an improbable vehicle. All it’s missing is a bit more UNIT action.

You can definitely see it’s an influential story. Not just on Moffatt, but you can’t help but thinking that Terry Nation nicked more than a bit from it for Genesis of the Daleks, particularly life in the Kaled bunker.

Great  cliffhanger too. One of the scenes that stuck in my mind when I first read the novelisation. And I think possibly my first glimpse of the Second Doctor.

[ScaryB @scaryb]

I mentioned the Bond influence the other week, which I think was partly a Pertwee/era thing and also as @phaseshift mentioned again, this wasn’t originally intended to have Daleks in it. I think it gains from adding them – the chain of pressure/collusion becomes stronger. How far will someone go in allowing themselves to be compromised in order to retain the illusion of power/stay alive? It’s a credit to Woods’ performance that we start to wonder about his background. Does he too have family who are under threat? Or as it just the lure of power which led him into collaboration with the Daleks and betraying his own species?

Agree with @bluesqueakpip and @jimthefish that the female scanners look very robotic – I wondered if they were meant to be clones?

@thekrynoidman I was merely referring to your previous comment about Jo’s knickers! I missed a lot back then. But I loved her range of boots – always fab.

[The Krynoid Man @thekrynoidman]

@scaryb Ah, well I find that bit actually, so no I’m not happy.

[PhaseShift @phaseshift Time Lord]

@jimthefish

Good to see his cutting back on his wine consumption too.

I know – after episode 1 I found myself wondering what colour his kidneys were. 😀

Some of those little illustrations in the early Target Books were great for scene setting. I guess they thought it would make the range look a bit more grown up without them, but when you’d never seen the episodes they were great. From memory, most were pretty faithful to what was on the screen.

I’ll add to your and @scaryb s praise for Woods as the controller as well. On the one hand a servant of the Daleks, but his expression when confronted by the Doctor’s goading (and walking out) indicates someone with some pretty deep conflicts.

[blenkinsopthebrave @blenkinsopthebrave]

Finally caught up with these episodes. A tantalising reference to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, a spectacular mini skirt on Jo (and yes, she is one of my favourite companions as well–and not just because of the mini skirt!), distinctly fembot-like assistants to the Controller, and, watching it this time, the whole relationship between the Daleks and the Controller was strangely like the managerial culture of contemporary universities…sorry, the last one was sort of an in-joke for anyone who works in university administration.

And as for the final escape on the motorized tricycle, less Steve McQueen in The Great Escape and more Rocky the Rhode Island Red in Chicken Run.

[Anonymous @]

@scaryb and @phaseshift — I think the Controller is living in Bad Faith, as they used to say in poncey philosophy tutorials on Sartre. And it took a quick check on the IMDB for me to realise where I recognise him from. He’s the frikkin’ Candyman!! (no, not that one)

Must have missed the mighty @scaryb‘s mention of Bond references, so apologies for trying to steal her thunder….

[ScaryB @scaryb]

@jimthefish
Well spotted on the Candyman.
And no worries about the Bond reference overlap, I’ve been posting a bit late on all the episodes…hah! Try to steal my thunder(ball) would you?!!
😉
…I’ve got my coat, I’ll ah, just close the door behind me!

[wolfweed @wolfweed]

Sorry I’m late with my homework. In the end I had to go and steal it from the future…

 

Presumably these are the sort of Dalek Camps we’ve heard about in Asylum of the Daleks.

This is the episode where we see the Daleks as Slave-Masters and the humans living like dogs.

I think the Ogrons are meant to be bounding like dogs, but they look like they’re running on hot coals!

We’ve had wine & cheese, now a big cigar is shared around! You’d probably enjoy a smoke if your diet consisted of nothing more than pills & tablets. Food is obviously a privilege solely for the elite. ‘People have never been so happy and prosperous.’

The Ogrons are so embarrassed by their (bounding) run, that it  does indeed take them an age to catch our heroes’ trike.

The Doctor is being tortured but at least that lovely 60s slideshow’s being screened…

 

Right, I’m off to type this up, so that it’s there for me to steal in the future…

 

[domberesford @domberesford]

I love the new voices Nicholas Briggs provided in the re-issue, special edition version of Day of the Daleks. I’m sure the original voice actors were great at their profession, but those Dalek voices didn’t sound right and Briggs really understands the gravitas needed to convey the terror of the Daleks, especially in episode three!

[johnnybear @johnnybear]

So Jo’s red knicker shots were not removed by the up their own ass BBC on the Day of The Daleks DVD?

JB

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