The Evil of the Daleks

Jamie, Doctor... friends.

This is the last of the Second Doctor stories for me to review and I was planning on holding off on it a bit longer, but with the news of Deborah Watling's passing, I couldn't think of a more apt time to revisit it. I say revisit as I have actually seen it once before. I recall it being interesting but a bit drug out, being seven parts. But perhaps that was also in how I watched it as I tend to watch recons in large chunks rather than spacing them out as I do with most classic stories. We'll see how it goes a second time around.

Plot Summary

At the airport following Ben and Polly's departure, the Doctor and Jamie see the TARDIS being hauled away on the back of a truck. They head to a hanger and talk to a man in maintenance coveralls called Hall. Hall notes the taking of the TARDIS but only comes alive when the Doctor mentions getting the police. He give them a fake delivery company name and they leave. Hall then contacts a fellow conspirator named Kennedy who was watching from a distance.

The Doctor and Jamie duck behind some pumps and watch Hall leave. The Doctor suspects something and follows Hall's car in a cab. Kennedy also leaves and meets with Hall at a prearranged meeting point. He pays Hall for his job of posing as a worker and tries to get him to knock the Doctor and Jamie out. Hall refuses so Kennedy knocks Hall out instead and then bolts out of the room when Jamie and the Doctor enter. They find a matchbook for a coffee bar with the name of The Tricolour on it. Hall wakes and runs out of the room. Jamie and the Doctor try to follow but lose him. With no other options, they head to the coffee bar. Kennedy, watching from the shadows, leaves by another route.

Kennedy reports to his employer, Professor Waterfield, who sells Victoriana. Waterfield is pleased that the Doctor is heading to the bar and opts not to worry about Hall's flight to the north of England. Waterfield calls in his shop manager, Perry, and asks him to go to the coffee bar and request that the Doctor and Jamie meet at his shop at 10pm that night, giving Perry pictures of the Doctor and Jamie. Perry agrees and sets off while Waterfield heads into a locked back room filled with futuristic equipment where he demands answers from an unseen entity.

The Doctor and Jamie arrive at the bar and ask about the man named Kennedy. They have no luck but are approached by Perry who delivers Waterfield's request. Jamie and the Doctor agree to come by that evening. Perry tells Waterfield who in turn orders Kennedy to prepare. Waterfield leaves to change his clothes as well but Kennedy slips into Waterfield's office after he leaves. Kennedy finds the key to the secret room and enters. He activates the machines before discovering the safe. While he cracks the safe, a Dalek materializes from the machine behind him and demands to know who he is.

Kennedy tries to run but the Dalek kills him just as he exits the room. Waterfield comes in and finds the body and the Dalek. He is appalled but the Dalek threatens him and orders him to continue. Waterfield then takes a picture of the Doctor and tears it in half. He puts one half in Kennedy's hand and the other sticking out of a box next to the machine with a glass vial inside.

The Doctor and Jamie sneak into Waterfield's shop at 9:30 to find extra information. They quickly deduce that Waterfield may actually be from the Victorian era as his antiques seem genuine but brand new. The hear a noise and hide as Perry enters to listen at the door. They surprise him and he tells them about taking the TARDIS. They are about to go and try to recover it when the study door opens.

Inside the study, they find Kennedy's body. Perry tries to call the police but the phone is giving off static. He heads out to find a policeman while the Doctor examines the body. He finds the picture and deduces that there must be a hidden room behind the bookcase. They search and find the keyhole. While searching for the key the door opens. They enter and Jamie sees the other half of the picture. When he pulls it, the lid of the box pops open and releases gas from the vial. The gas knocks out both of them. Waterfield emerges from his hiding spot and closes the box. He then activates the machine and all three of them disappear.

The Doctor wakes the next morning in the house of Theodore Maxtible, Waterfield's backer in his time experiments. After a maid revives the Doctor, Maxtible and Waterfield take the Doctor down to the lab where they explain that while they were experimenting, they accidently opened a doorway for the Daleks. The Daleks captured Waterfield's daughter Victoria and forced him to steal the TARDIS and kidnap the Doctor. A Dalek appears from the cabinet where Waterfield's machine is located and tells the Doctor that they will be putting Jamie through a test and extracting a human factor from the results.

Jamie wakes from the gas but before he is fully roused, a thug named Toby enters and knocks him back out. He also knocks out the maid and then takes Jamie out of the house. He takes him to a nearby barn where Toby is paid off by Arthur Terrall, fiancé to Ruth Maxtible. Arthur seems to be under some sort of mind control and has occasional fits where he is able to fight it off. Relapsing, he leaves as the Doctor enters and takes Jamie back to the house.

The Doctor allows Jamie to overhear him talking to Waterfield about the experiment the Daleks are setting up. Meanwhile, preparations are being made for the test. The Daleks move Victoria from her regular cell to a locked room in the south wing of the house. Maxtible also takes a mute strongman Turk named Kemel and sets him as a guard inside the first door of the passage, gives him a picture of Jamie and tells him to fight him off if he arrives.

Angry at what he feels is a trick by the Doctor, Jamie argues with the Doctor and Waterfield and storms off. The Doctor however, manipulated his words and is confident that Jamie will ultimately take the noble action and try to rescue Victoria. He is justified a while later when Maxtible informs the Daleks that Jamie has moved just outside the entrance to the south wing.

Jamie meets the maid, Mollie, outside the door and she gives him a plan of the house as he requested. They hear a scream (the Daleks just murdered Toby who had snuck back to the house to steal more money) and Jamie orders Molly back to her room. He opens the first door and eludes a booby trap of spikes falling from the doorway. He proceeds through where he meets Kemel at the end of the passage.

Kemel and Jamie fight but Jamie manages to stun Kemel and gets past him. Kemel follows Jamie but Jamie locks himself into a storage room looking for a weapon. Kemel rushes the door and Jamie sidesteps it, allowing Kemel to burst through. Kemel's momentum carries him out a window where he grabs the edge of a gutter. Jamie grabs a rope and hauls him back into the room. Once Kemel is safe, Jamie moves on to look for Victoria. He spies a handkerchief in Victoria's old cell and bends down to look at it. Kemel rushes in and pushes Jamie just as another booby trap falls on the spot.

The Doctor points out that Jamie's act of mercy saved his life to a skeptical Dalek. Meanwhile, Waterfield and Maxtible find Toby's body. Waterfield wants to tell the Doctor but the Daleks insist on disposing it. Waterfield admits he can't take it and will confess his crimes when Victoria is rescued. Maxtible takes a gun from a drawer and follows Waterfield. In the barn, Maxtible berates Waterfield for his weakness while Arthur listens in the shadows. As Waterfield heads back to the house, Maxtible turns to shoot him but Arthur grabs him and insists it not happen yet.

Jamie and Kemel become friendly and Kemel insists on helping Jamie to rescue her. They head down the corridors, following the occasional Dalek. Jamie sets off another booby trap, which they manage to avoid. The Doctor points out that instinct is also necessary rather than a cold reliance on logic.

A Dalek calls out and forces Victoria to state her name. Jamie and Kemel spot her and plan her rescue. While they do so, Arthur catches Mollie who had heard Victoria calling her name. Arthur angrily dismisses her when Ruth enters and stops his tirade. She tries to get him to leave but he rejects her.

Maxtible tries to get the Daleks to leave and hold up their end of the bargain. The Dalek dismisses Maxtible but does state that they will share a specific secret with him. As it leaves, Ruth enters and demands to know what is going on. Maxtible does not come clean but states that soon he will know the secret of transforming ordinary metal into gold. As he does so, he takes on the appearance of a man becoming unhinged.

A Dalek calls for Victoria to stand for inspection a second time. As that completes, Jamie and Kemel pull a rope across the room and crash it into the fireplace. They then throw the rope up to the banister allowing Jamie to climb the rope up to Jamie's room. Kemel follows him up the rope. Jamie knocks on the door but as he does so, a Dalek emerges with a second entering the area below. Jamie pulls the rope around and uses it to send the Dalek crashing to the floor below. He and Kemel then run into Victoria's room and bar themselves in.

In the kitchen, the Doctor gets himself something to drink and runs into Arthur. The Doctor talks with him but notes that he doesn't eat or drink. He also magnetizes metal objects when he holds them. The Doctor returns to the lab as Arthur struggles again with his natural mind and the programing the Daleks have placed on him. He heads into the hall where he finds Maxtible hypnotizing Mollie and urging her that all that happened was a dream. When she returns to her room, he tells Arthur to retrieve Victoria from her prison via a secret passage.

Having isolated Jamie's emotional responses, the Doctor sets about implanting them in the dormant Dalek brains brought to him. Waterfield fears that the new Daleks will become a superior race and will destroy all of humanity. He tries to stop the Doctor, but the Doctor restrains him, noting that the Daleks still have Victoria and Jamie.

The Daleks begin to melt their way through the door to Victoria's room. While Jamie and Kemel try to block the door with additional rubbish, Arthur opens a secret passage and grabs Victoria. She cries out in the passage just enough for Jamie to realize that there is a secret door. He manages to open it and he and Kemel run down the passage after her. Victoria manages to get loose from Arthur at a fork and runs down the other passage. Arthur, knowing he is pursued, runs the other way. At the fork, Jamie and Kemel split up.

Jamie emerges in the trophy room and is attacked by Arthur with a sword. He manages to duck and grabs a sword of his own. They fight in the room, their clashing blades attracting the attention of Ruth and Mollie. Ruth sends Mollie for the Doctor while imploring Arthur to stop. As the Doctor enters, Jamie catches Arthur in the back with his blade, loosening a small control box. Arthur immediately drops to the ground as the Dalek control over him is lost. The Doctor urges Ruth and Mollie to take Arthur in the carriage and get away from the house as fast as possible.

Kemel emerges in the lab and find Victoria unconscious. He bends over her as a Dalek emerges from the cabinet. The Dalek orders Kemel to take Victoria into the cabinet. He hesitates but finally does what they say. A few minutes later, Jamie, the Doctor and Maxtible enter the lab. Jamie is still angry at the Doctor and implies that he will leave due to the Doctor's callousness. The Doctor urges Jamie to have patience and see what has happened. He unveils three Daleks that have been implanted with the "human factor". They push their way towards the Doctor and take him for a ride around the lab, playing a game with him.

After finishing their games, the Daleks enter the cabinet to return to Skaro. The Doctor and Jamie leave to go find Victoria, unaware that she and Kemel have been taken to Skaro. Maxtible meanwhile tries to dismiss Waterfield's concerns about Victoria, implying that she has been freed by the Daleks and must be wandering about the house. He shoos Waterfield away but Waterfield stays near and overhears Maxtible insisting that the Daleks give him the formula to transmute metal into gold. The Daleks ignore him and insist he bring the Doctor to them while setting up a device in the lab.

After the Dalek leaves, Waterfield attacks Maxtible but Maxtible knocks him down. Realizing that the Daleks have planted a bomb, Maxtible rails against what the Daleks are doing and chases them through the cabinet. The Doctor and Jamie find Waterfield and the bomb. They grab Waterfield and the three of them also head into the cabinet to travel through the machine to Skaro, just before the bomb destroys the entire house.

The Daleks are angry with Maxtible for not bringing the Doctor with him and they imprison him with Victoria and Kemel. Shortly afterwards, an alarm is triggered when the Doctor, Jamie and Waterfield enter an access tunnel to try and sneak into the Dalek city. Discovering that the Doctor has named the three human factor Daleks, one of the Daleks attempts to pose as a human factor Dalek to trap the Doctor. The Doctor however realizes the deception and pushes it off a cliff.

The Daleks next force Maxtible to shock Victoria into screaming. The sound carries and the trio follows it to a passageway where they are intercepted by other Daleks. The Daleks take the trio into the main chamber where the Emperor Dalek is waiting. The Emperor informs the Doctor that they used his experiment to create a specific Dalek factor and they now insist that he spread it through humanity with the TARDIS, which they have also taken to Skaro.

The Doctor refuses but is told that he will and they are sent to the same prison cell as Victoria, Kemel and Maxtible. The Daleks later open the door and show a machine that appears to turn iron into gold. Maxtible runs through the door towards the machine but as he does so, he is hit with a wave across the door and infused with the Dalek factor. He becomes a mindless servant of the Daleks.

Maxtible returns to the cell and encourages the Doctor to come with him as the TARDIS has been taken out of the city. Steeling himself, the Doctor walks though the doorway and is also hit with the Dalek factor. He appears to be like Maxtible but stops to examine the machines the produce the Dalek factor and will be used to spread it to Earth. Maxtible leaves and the Doctor, now acting as his normal self, switches a pod in the control panel from the Dalek factor to the human factor he developed in Maxtible's lab. He whispers to Jamie to not be afraid to walk through when he returns. A Dalek enters and he is taken to see the Emperor.

In the main chamber, the Emperor is informed that the Daleks infused with the human factor have been questioning orders. The Doctor, pretending he is under Dalek control, suggest that the Daleks pass through the doorway to overwrite the human factor and reinfuse the Dalek factor. The Emperor orders it and several Daleks pass through the corridor, becoming infused with the human factor.

The newly infused Daleks begin to question orders from a regular Dalek and it shoots one of the new Daleks. The other human infused Daleks respond and destroy the initial Dalek. The Doctor returns to the room and orders Jamie, Waterfield, Victoria and Kemel out of the city to the TARDIS. He leaves but Waterfield follows him while the others leave the city. The Doctor points out another attack by a regular Dalek and tells the human-infused Daleks that they might fight to survive.

A regular Dalek sees the Doctor and shoots at him but Waterfield steps into the beam and is killed. The Dalek is then destroyed by the other faction. The human-infused Daleks push into the main chamber where the Emperor is destroyed in the crossfire.

Maxtible runs after Jamie, Victoria and Kemel where he attacks Kemel, screaming like a Dalek about killing. He pushes Kemel off the cliff, killing him and then runs back to the city to enter the fight. He slips past the Doctor, who is hiding behind a grate. After Maxtible goes past, the Doctor runs and catches up with Jamie and Victoria. They reach the TARDIS and observe the two factions of Daleks destroying each other.

Analysis

If The Evil of the Daleks kept the pacing and mystery of the first two episodes (and kept itself to four or five parts) I have no doubt that genuine debates would be had between fans as to whether it was the best Dalek story of all time. Unfortunately, it does not and starting in Episode Three, it begins to fall off from it's gripping beginning. It does start to pick itself back up but it does have a bit of a lull in the middle. I suspect the lull wouldn't be quite as pronounced if the episodes existed but it is there.

Now, to be fair, I think the effort to infuse the middle lull with action and plot development does succeed on some level. This is the Second Doctor in a state that I really enjoy: caught flat-footed initially, but now working on a plan to escape the situation. He manipulates Jamie into carrying out the task (which is also a testament to his faith in Jamie's ability to rescue Victoria) and he has an almost smug attitude towards the Daleks as Jamie advances. He's nearly mocking the Daleks for not seeing both the admirable traits in Jamie that are allowing him to succeed and the fact that he is going to create Daleks that will upend the order of the Daleks. This is the Second Doctor at his best, not all-seeing, but quick-thinking and with the ability to create plans that require patience and will result in the total destruction of the enemy.

Although Victoria is introduced in this story, she is a prisoner during the whole and does not function in a companion role. So this is the first story of the Second Doctor run where Jamie is the only companion (The Wheel in Space being the other). Frankly, he's good enough that I think they could have had a full season with just the two of them. Their dynamic might have gotten stale towards the end, but they play so well off each other that I think it would have worked. It certainly does here as Jamie goes the whole gambit of emotions with the Doctor: loyalty, feelings of betrayal, Watsonian assistant, and dashing hero. Jamie is constantly enjoyable in what he does.

Most of the other guest cast is pretty good as well. The person the most short-changed is Kemel as he is silent and that doesn't do much in a recon. Fortunately, there are some telesnaps so you can see that he was visually expressive. Arthur and Ruth were the most superfluous as I never really understood what was going on with Arthur. He was being controlled by the Daleks but for what purpose? Waterfield was controlled via the threat to Victoria and Maxtible was deep in a belief that the Daleks would give him the ability to make gold. So why have Arthur under spell? My guess would be that the Daleks wanted a mobile spy and Arthur was convenient, but that doesn't fully explain all his actions. Why send the thug Toby to kidnap Jamie? Why prevent Maxtible for killing Waterfield once the Doctor has arrived? I have a feeling that more was intended with Arthur but that subplot was dropped in favor of more action scenes with Jamie and Kemel and then Arthur, Ruth and Mollie are drop kicked out of the story just to ensure they don't die when the Daleks destroy the house.

Despite Arthur and Ruth being a bit of a dead end, the real weakest character is actually Victoria. Victoria is not a terrible companion but this story does foreshadow her primary function and that is to be the screaming damsel in distress for most of the run. She has almost no personality development aside from being generally kind-hearted in her feeding of the birds and her treatment of Kemel. She does fight Arthur when he tries to kidnap her so she must have some spirit, but nothing else is really done for her, unlike Samantha in The Faceless Ones, who was clearly being groomed to be a companion. If you didn't already know that Victoria was going to be a companion, the viewer would likely dismiss her out of hand.

The Daleks were quite good in this story. They were not as devious as in The Power of the Daleks but they didn't need to be. They held all the cards and could impose their will as they saw fit. Yet, it was not the mindless killing that we usually get from the Daleks. They had a plan and displayed cunning, both in their trap to lure the Doctor as well as the maze they led Jamie into. Even their final plan was a bit deeper than expected. So much time is spent on the idea of infusing the Daleks with a factor of humanity that it is a bit of shock to learn that it's really a means of honing the purity of a Dalek and then conquering humanity by making them more Dalek-like. I also like to think that this infusion of humanity and it's counter for genetic purity is what starts the factional fighting that first pops up in Resurrection of the Daleks, although since I haven't seen that one yet, I can't confirm that part of my head cannon.

It is a real shame that this doesn't exist as Episode Two is nicely framed and shows some interesting directorial ideas. I was completely surprised when one transition was made using a circle wipe as that seemed rather extravagant for Doctor Who. There's also so much of this story that is clearly done with visual media that you just can't capture with pictures, computer regenerations and replacement actors with their heads not showing. It's all a noble effort but it just makes you pine for the moving images that much more. The final battle in Episode Seven would be worth watching as you get enough from the behind the scenes footage available on the Lost in Time DVD to wet your appetite that much more.

As far as the overall story, you have three phases. There is the mystery in Episodes One and Two and that is the most engaging part to me. You have the testing of Jamie and his little adventures which cover Episodes Three, Four and Five. Then you have the final confrontation on Skaro which is set up in Episode Six and carried out in Seven. Jamie's test is the most padded and where the lull really kicks in. It's not boring (or at least not to me) but you can feel the padding going on. The testing of Jamie and the development of the human factor could easily have been cut down to one or one and a half episodes. In fact, I think this would have been a really tight five-part story, especially if you drop Arthur and Ruth wholesale. Still, the two extra episodes of padding are reasonably well rounded and I think they are only a serious problem if you are watching them all back-to-back with no break. Putting a day between each, eases out the padding and makes it a bit more interesting, in my opinion.

There are recon stories out there that can feel like a real slog. To me, this is not one of them. I enjoyed this story even more the second time around and I think my spacing of the padding in Episodes Three through Five had a lot to do with it. It's not perfect and being a recon does knock it down a peg in my book, but it is a good story and will appeal to most people if they can get past the recon aspect of it. If this were animated, I think it would draw a lot of folks in. It is slightly unfortunate that Victoria is introduced so quietly, but she does come around and has some good moments in Season Five. But I think it's fair to say that I rather enjoyed this one and would revisit it. That is more than doubly so if any part of it was recovered.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5