Doctor Who Retrospective #5 of 10 “Dalek”
We’re just twelve days away from the relaunch of Doctor Who, so this retrospective series continues with a look back at episode six of the first series, Dalek, and the clue to who the bad guys are, is right there in the title. However, it was not always going to be the case. As soon as the jubilation around the announcement of the commissioning had died down, one of the first questions asked was “Are the Daleks coming back?”, the production team wanted the answer to be in the affirmative but there was an obstacle. The rights to the Daleks are held, not by the BBC, but by the Terry Nation estate and there was a huge amount of negotiation about the use of the famous pepperpots. It reached the point where news came out of BBC Wales that they had not secured the rights after all and a new monster would be used in the story in place of the Dalek. Quite what this would have turned out to be I have no idea (and may be, I guess, they’ve already recycled whatever designs and ideas they had and used them in another story). Writer Robert Shearman, who had based his idea for the episode, Dalek, on the Big Finish audio drama Jubilee, probably had the worst phone call of his life when he was told he’d have the re-write the thing from scratch. Thankfully, the situation was finally resolved and we got to see one of my favourite ever episodes of Doctor Who.
The story revealed to us that the Time War that had been mentioned in a number of previous stories, had been fought between the Time Lords and the Daleks, both races had been destroyed and (allegedly) only the Doctor and this Dalek had survived. This lead to some truly memorable scenes as the two foes faced off against one another but it might have been the Rose/Dalek story of sympathy, betrayal and redemption that stole the show. This cemented in my mind the fact that the Doctor and his companion now shared a genuine equality. The Doctor’s attempts to destroy the Dalek were thwarted and eventually it was Rose’s compassion for the mutating Dalek creature that had been infected with her own DNA, that persuaded the Doctor of the error of his ways. This fallability in the Doctor was thoroughly endearing.
It was perhaps the script that was most memorable, the following being some my goosebump-inducing lines….
“Blimey, you can smell the testosterone” - Rose
“Doc - tor?” - the Dalek
“What are you gonna do? Sucker me to death?” - technician
“El - e - vate!” - the Dalek
“You would make a good Dalek” - the Dalek
“Why don’t you just die” - The Doctor
The whole event created a slice of Dalekmania not seen since the sixties. Despite the general election in the UK taking place in the same week, the return of the Daleks received a more prominent position on the front of the Radio Times, in a near unprecidented second cover for the series. The feedback, viewing figures and fan reception was hugely positive and may be it was this episode, more than any other, that guarateed the success of this Doctor Who. Hard to fault… I even liked Adam!
Tags: BBC-Wales, Big-Finish, Dalek, Doctor Who, Jubilee, Robert-Shearman, Terry-Nation
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