The Chase

Dear Gary—

“I shall miss them. Yes, I shall miss them.” No histrionics, no running mascara. Just a simple, heartfelt “I shall miss them.” For me, Gary, this is the single most heartbreaking scene in all of Doctor Who.

I hate writing this, Gary, because this time it’s not goodbye Susan but rather goodbye Ian and Barbara. Never again will the Doctor have companions as valuable. Although dependent on the Doctor, Barbara and Ian were very much independent. Never again could a companion of the Doctor carry the show sans the Doctor. It’s fitting that the two go out in a Dalek episode, and just like Susan’s farewell, Barbara and Ian go out on a high note.

In this their third appearance, the Daleks have identified the Doctor and his companions as their greatest enemy, referring back to the second Dalek episode when their attempted conquest of Earth was thwarted. I’m not even going to try to fit this into the Dalek/Doctor timeline but will rather take a cue from Doctor Who and deflect the questions. The Daleks, after all, have discovered time travel, so who can say when any of these stories take place relative to each other? What with the Doctor traveling and the Daleks traveling, crisscrossing through time. Any attempt at reconciliation would be like the Doctor “rattling off explanations that would have baffled Einstein.”

No matter. The Dalek Supreme has identified the Doctor and company as arch enemies  to be pursued through all eternity.  This is truly the beginning of a beautiful hostility. Now it is personal. It is not the Doctor stumbling upon the Daleks and happening to defeat them. This is a concerted and directed effort by the Daleks to pursue and exterminate. Do not deviate.

And it is a wild ride through time and space that results. It starts with some light hearted TARDIS scenes involving the Time-Space Visualiser, a sort of time TV that was a souvenir from the previous story The Space Museum. Using this device our adventurers peek in on the Gettysburg Address, Queen Elizabeth conversing with Shakespeare, and a 1965 performance by the Beatles. A precursor to the actual time ride on which they will soon find themselves.

Similar to The Keys of Marinus, The Chase consists of several episodes that are mini stories within a story, and each one entertaining. We start with a typical Doctor Who alien planet with assorted beings, a sandstorm, our adventurers separated, collapsing tunnels, threatening Mire Beasts, and the TARDIS guarded by Daleks (all the while Ian is running around in a dapper barbershop quartet shirt). Once out of this jam, the crew is on the run, from the top of the Empire State Building to the deck of a sailing ship (the mysterious Mary Celeste); they stay one step ahead of the Daleks.

Their next landing is my favorite in this story—a haunted house exhibit complete with Dracula, ghosts, bats, and of course Frankenstein’s monster. I love how Doctor Who during William Hartnell’s run was not afraid to show up the Doctor. He is convinced that this house of horrors is a nightmare world existing within the human mind. They are, he claims, lost in an area of human thought and therefore safe for the moment from the Daleks who cannot enter. Of course he is wrong.

I also love the interchanges between Ian and the Doctor during this episode. The Doctor is so sure of himself and Ian is equally unsure. “Where’s your spirit of adventure?” the Doctor enquires. “It died a slow and painful death when those bats came out of the rafters,” Ian replies. The Doctor ventures on, down into the eerie lab, and even after beating a hasty retreat upon encountering the monster he maintains his game face bravado.

And again, Gary, we have a lovely little scene of Ian getting irritated when they return to where they left Vicki and Barbara only to find that the two are nowhere in sight. “The girls have gone,” he says in that resigned, I-should-have-known-it disgust of his.

The chase finally takes them to another alien planet with another robot race to contend with—the Mechonoids. After being so sure of himself about the haunted nightmare world they just left (while all the time being so very wrong), the Doctor now admits to several failings. He takes complete blame for having inadvertently left Vicki behind—“all my own stupid fault”—and later he states, “I don’t mind admitting I feel rather exhausted.” For all of his arrogance and bravado, William Hartnell’s Doctor is willing to admit his faults.

I want to take an aside here, Gary, to mention some things we learn in this story about the TARDIS. First, the Doctor has a TARDIS magnet that he gives to Ian so that he can always find his way back (the Doctor doesn’t need it as he has “the directional instincts of a homing pigeon”). I don’t believe this magnet is ever mentioned again, so I can only assume that Ian either lost it or still had it when he left.  We also learn more of the indestructibility of the TARDIS as it resists the Daleks attempts to destroy it. The TARDIS is also equipped with a Time Path Detector, and most startling, this detector, the Doctor says, has been on the ship ever since he “constructed it.” The Doctor ‘constructed’ the TARDIS? I’m picturing him with a TARDIS kit, reading the instructions, inserting piece B into slot A. No wonder it never works properly. What he does not have yet, apparently, is a sonic screwdriver, for at one point in this story he does ask for his screwdriver, but it is most evidently non-sonic.

We’re winding down The Chase now. The Daleks use a Reproducer to make a robot version of the Doctor, but thankfully our travelers ultimately can tell the real from the fake. We are also introduced to Steven Taylor (who must be a descendent of the Arkansas tourist they ran across on top of the Empire State Building as he is portrayed by the same actor) who is destined to become the Doctor’s new companion.

But it is the final scenes that are the most powerful.  Barbara and Ian want to go home, to “belong somewhere” rather than the “aimless drifting” they have been doing. They have been dependent on the Doctor to this point, hoping someday the unreliable TARDIS with its broken time mechanism will miraculously land them back in their own time and place. But now they have the Dalek time machine at their disposal and the sudden realization that this is their chance.

A sudden realization it is. Too sudden for the Doctor. At least with Susan he had an adventure long time to reconcile himself to the fact that his granddaughter was growing up and needed to move on. He himself made the decision to part with her. The departure of Barbara and Ian, however, is sprung on him, and his angry reaction is born of grief and fear.

“You are absolute idiots,” he declares. He will not aid their suicide. They will end up “a couple of burnt cinders,” he sputters. He cannot bear this parting. The Doctor’s vulnerability comes shining through in these last scenes. Ian and Barbara, the kidnapped schoolteachers, have become his companions, his friends. They are the last link to his granddaughter. They are leaving him.

In the end he must let them go, and we get a nice little montage of the two delighting in their return to London (even though it is 1965—2 years out) as the Doctor and Vicki observe them on the Time-Space Visualiser.

And then we have the simple, “I shall miss them. Yes, I shall miss them.” All of the emotion is felt in those few simple words, and we grieve with the Doctor.

The loss of true friends is always the hardest, Gary.