Written by Tom
David diffuses the Robomen’s bombs. The Doctor falls asleep. David and Susan go into the sewers where they come into contact with a bunch of rebels. The spaceship Ian’s in lands near some mines where he comes into contact with a bunch of rebels. Barbara and her friend continue their journey across London by stealing a truck from a museum and using it to run Daleks off the roads. The episode ends with Ian being attacked by the Slyther, a thing the Daleks have that’s hanging around the mines.
When writing these essays, serials tends to naturally split themselves into two types. The first are serials which aggressively change their status quo every few episodes, providing new perspectives on their central themes as a way of keeping themselves fresh. The Marinus serial is the obvious example of this style being taken to the extreme, though the Sensorite serial structuring its six episodes as a two-parter and a four-parter also show how this can be used. The second type are serials which very quickly establish a status quo and then provide it for as many episodes straight as the TV schedule requires. The Marco Polo serial really is seven episodes of people moving between several tents in China and nothing else, while the French Revolution serial is six episodes of unsuccessful comedy and French rebels whispering at each other.
From this blog’s point of view, we greatly prefer the first type as these are the serials which give us to the most to write about. Meanwhile, the relative monotony of the second type makes writing about them a real slog – you eventually end up with nothing to do but say “Yes, the positives and flaws we identified in Episode Two are still here”. Which is the problem we’re starting to get with this Dalek Invasion serial. Here’s the serial summarised: “A functional but uninspiring script keeps getting ruined by terrible direction in the studio and saved by some genuinely iconic location footage”. Beyond this, there’s little to do but catalogue the most memorable errors in the studio, complain a bit about the script, and then highlight just how good the location footage is. (For example: The filmed-on-location scene where the human slaves are forced by the Robomen to pull a cart across a train track is genuinely horrific. Alas, this is immediately contrasted by the studio shots of Ian supposedly watching this happen, stood on a hill set that makes no attempt to look like it’s even remotely in the same location.)
This episode does represent a point where the serial has become pretty stuffed though, the scenes and set pieces coming thick and fast given its half-hour container. Admittedly, the episode makes space for this by sidelining the Doctor entirely – he literally sleeps through the entire thing. This gives the rest of Team TARDIS time to shine though.
The best material goes to Barbara who gets to run over Daleks in a lorry she’s stolen while being chased by a spaceship. I don’t think I even need to justify why this material is good – it’s just inherently cool. It’s also interesting that this is basically the only plotline to actually feature the Daleks in it outside of some background cameos in Ian’s plot – given that this is supposed to be our fourth slice of a Dalek spectacular, the fact that it barely features the Daleks in it is certainly interesting.
Ian and Susan’s plotlines aren’t as cool. Ian feels remarkably disconnected from everything going on around him, having fallen in with a random collection of rebels next to a mine and being menaced by the Slyther, a formless and vaguely mossy creature who’s come out of nowhere and has no visual continuity with anything else in the serial. Meanwhile, Susan spends her time walking around a sewer and foreshadowing her presumed exist from the show with David (this time considering the idea that staying on Earth to rebuild it after the Dalek occupation might constitute a calling). Given that Terry Nation was the first person to invent the concept of the Doctor Who Cave Episode (in which a flagging serial will temporarily relocate itself into a subterranean lair as a way of pumping some visual diversity into things), it’s interesting that both Susan and Ian’s plotlines have positioned themselves directly adjacent to two underground locations. This does indicate a scriptwriter who has got slightly bored of their original concept and begun throwing things at the wall to keep things interesting though.
And yet, it does all work in aggregate. With three separate plotlines happening simultaneously, all of which feature new rebels and monsters popping up all over the place, there is an awful lot going on in this episode. Given that television is still in its relative infancy and usually defined by the theatric nature of its productions, the idea of having a single episode of television contain as much action as this episode does must be seen as something quite special, whether or not much of the action is particularly well done. I’m not convinced there’s actually a plot behind all of this beyond “the Daleks have invaded Earth and then stuff happens” but the stuff is at least fun when taken as a whole.
FNORD 