Death to the Daleks

Dear Gary—

“They’re probably the most technically advanced and ruthless life form in the galaxy.” And yet whenever the Daleks appear on screen in Death to the Daleks they are accompanied by some kind of bumbling bumpkin music that undermines this image of the Doctor’s deadliest enemy.

“Inside each of those shells is a living, bubbling lump of hate.”

Cue bumbling bumpkin theme music.

It just doesn’t rhyme.

Granted, the Daleks are somewhat neutralized in Death to the Daleks due to the energy drain that has rendered their weapons useless. However, even with their energy blasters out of commission the Daleks find a way to dominate; they simply fit themselves with more primitive firearms.

I do have to wonder, though, why the energy drain does not affect the Dalek power of movement. After all, the TARDIS is completely shut down. Landing on the planet Exxilon the TARDIS, “a living thing . . . thousands of instruments . . . its energy sources never stop” as the Doctor describes her, is plunged into darkness. Even the doors will not work and the Doctor has to dig out a hand crank to pry them open. Back in The Web Planet the first Doctor could open the powerless TARDIS doors with his ring, but absent the ring I guess he uses a crank.

The Daleks, however, can still move about; can still communicate; can still enter and exit their ship; can still find firearms to take the place of their defunct blasters; can still strike terror in the hearts of their foes. All to a bumbling bumpkin tune.

Despite this anomaly Death to the Daleks is a decent four part story. Due to the energy drain the Doctor, Sarah, a party of similarly stranded earthlings and the Daleks form an uneasy alliance. However once fitted with their new but primitive firearms, the Daleks take over and enslave the native Exxilons to mine for parrinium, yet another rare precious mineral in a long line of Doctor Who rare precious minerals.

Meanwhile, the Doctor leaves Sarah behind to cope with the Daleks and the parrinium while he goes off with Bellal, a native Exxilon, to restore power.

The Exxilons are another example of a longstanding Doctor Who tradition—a tribe of people descended from a great and technologically advanced peoples but who have devolved and have lost all knowledge of their ancestral heritage. Plus we have an engineering feat that has run amok; a maze that can only be traversed by solving a series of complex puzzles; and a computer undone by a paradox. All solid Doctor Who staples.

And all part of a separate storyline that the Doctor has followed, leaving the Daleks, enslaved minors, and stranded Marine Space Corp team behind, although a couple of Daleks and space cadets do tag along belatedly.

Bellal leads the Doctor to the magnificent living city that his ancestors built. This self-repairing city with a brain turned on its creators and now sits impenetrable and indestructible, sapping all energy around it. As the Doctor and Bellal work their way deeper into the city by solving the various brain teasers along the way, they are followed by two Daleks. However the threat posed by these ‘bubbling lumps of hate’ is again undercut by the bumbling bumpkin theme.

I almost wonder, Gary, if the Death to the Daleks title was meant to be prophetic; I wonder if the show was trying to kill off the Daleks, not with a bang but a whimper. After all, who would hide behind a couch when the musical cue was clearly comedy not danger?

And yet the “scorched planet policy” of the Daleks is a very real threat in Death to the Daleks.

It just does not rhyme, this discordant note.

In the end the Daleks are handily disposed of by the unlikely Galloway, the de facto leader of the Marine Space Corp who defies all expectations and sacrifices himself to blow up the Dalek ship in flight, ending the Daleks with a bang after all and not a whimper.

The Doctor is left to deal with the power draining city. “A computer is a machine of logic,” the Doctor reasons, and therefore “it cannot stand paradoxes.” He engineers “what in human terms is called a nervous breakdown” and the city self destructs. This is a useful device used against many a Doctor Who computer, and yet, Gary, I can’t help doubting its authenticity. But I’ll let that go.

The Daleks have their own way of dealing with the city, having sent up two of the space cadets with a bomb to blow up the beacon atop the city. I suppose if the Doctor hadn’t scrambled the city’s brain it would have self-repaired, so the Doctor’s trek into the inner workings of the place was not in vain, and Galloway was able to secrete one of the bombs for use later against the Daleks so everything ties together nicely.

“It’s rather a pity in a way; now the universe is down to 699 wonders.”

Cue bumbling bumpkin music; cue TARDIS takeoff.

Cue another send off, Gary, hoping to find you somewhere out there . . .