A Journey Of A Thousand Eons...: 47. The Daleks (The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Episode Two)

This is primarily the Doctor and Ian’s half hour.  Oh, we still get stuff from Barbara and Susan’s story, but the bulk of this is our bickering duo get captured, brought aboard the Dalek saucer, are tested and separated--Ian getting stuck with another prisoner named Craddock (Michael Goldie, coming off as an ancestor of Michael Keating’s Vila in Blake’s Seven) and The Doctor being subjected to Robotization.

...and as we learn during Barbara and Susan’s story, Robomen can’t handle the process of Robotization, and tend to end up going mad, so they’re a bit concerned and express said concern to Resistance Leader Tyler (Bernard Kay), offering some strategic knowledge to help them in assaulting the saucer with Dortmann’s special bombs.  Their attack puts the Daleks in chaos...but the Nazi Pepperpot in Charge orders the Robotization of the Doctor to continue.

There’s none of the location shooting here, and Terry Nation uses this half hour to give us an info dump and shore up his intended analogy of this situation to World War II.  Remember that when this first aired, WWII was less than two decades past and the bulk of British citizens probably had some memories of living through it.  So the elements Nation is consciously referencing (I don’t think it’s incidental that Dortmunn is wheelchair-bound), especially in regard to the resistance, are still super-fresh to the audience who first watched this.  This analogy of what’s going on to the last great war will continue throughout this story.

The test given the Doctor once again reminds us that this was intended as an educational show for kids, as the show seems to stop so that Hartnell can reason out a literal problem in a box.  Surprisingly, given how...cavalier Nation is about the nature of the Daleks in later serials, the script actually builds on what we learned in the last season and uses those facts to create the solution.  As with previous moments where he has had to monologue, Hartnell is in his element here, and given the improved chemistry between him and Russell (the two of them coming off as socially mismatched friends rather than out-and-out antagonists), it avoids the dryness of what could have been.

(Although, to be fair, Hartnell gets to be wonderfully condescending in a comic way to Craddock, so I get both the original interpretation of this Doctor as well as the ‘Hooty Owl’ version I have some affection for...)

I suppose I should also mention that there is still pretty much no indication of an attraction between Susan and David (Peter Fraser)....so arguably this is the first Forced Romantic Pairing Of A Departing Companion.

Sure, I recognize some of the lassiez-faire meandering that ruined ‘Keys to Marinus,’ but it’s holding up.