Day of the Daleks

Try and use your intelligence even if you are a politician.

Day of the Daleks is one of those stories that gets referenced a lot by fans in context of other stories. I've been meaning to get around to this one but just kept putting it off in favor or other stories. From what I've heard, it is generally regarded as the best of the Third Doctor Dalek stories but given that Planet of the Daleks and Death to the Daleks are average stories, that's not a tremendously high bar to clear.

Plot Summary

In a government country house, Sir Reginald Styles, British representative to the UN, is working late when he notices the wind blowing the drapes. He gets up to close the window but is attacked by a man in guerrilla fatigues. He knocks Styles down and prepares to shoot him but disappears before he can. His yells attract the attention of the staff who come to his aid. One of them calls UNIT to report the incident.

The Doctor and Jo are in the lab with the Doctor playing around with the TARDIS controls again. As he does so, another version of himself and Jo appear in the doorway. The other Doctor reassures him that it's alright but the TARDIS shorts out before he can explain further and they disappear. The Brigadier enters shortly afterward with the report of what happened with Styles. Styles it seems is a critical negotiator in the peace talks with the Chinese so an assassination attempt is taken very seriously.

The group heads to the house but Styles is dismissive of the whole thing, having convinced himself it was a dream. The Doctor is unconvinced as he has found footprints near the window. They search the grounds and find the man unconscious, having been knocked out by a couple of Ogrons shortly after rematerializing on the grounds. UNIT puts him in an ambulance to take him to a hospital. They discover an advanced ray gun and a strange box which they give to the Doctor for examination.

The Doctor takes both objects back to the lab where he verifies that the ray gun is from Earth but must be from the future. He also determines that the box is a crude time travel device. He fiddles with it and it reactivates. As he does so, the man in the ambulance disappears. The power surge overloads the box and it stops working. The use of the box is picked in the future by a group of people in a control room. They try to locate the coordinates of the signal but can't lock on before it fades. This is reported to a Dalek who enters the room.

With the failure of the box, the Doctor and Jo opt to spend the night at the house to see if anything happens. The night passes quietly although a squad of futuristic soldiers do appear on the grounds. As the sun rises, they vaporize two UNIT patrolmen and invade the house. They attack the Doctor just as he is finishing repairs on the time travel box that had malfunctioned earlier.

The soldiers are prepared to execute the Doctor but he points out that he is not Sir Reginald. They hesitate and then take the Doctor and Jo into the cellar to hide from Yates and Benton who are looking for the two missing patrolmen. They tie the Doctor and Jo up and head back upstairs to discuss their plans. They decide to keep the Doctor and Jo as hostages and wait for Sir Reginald to get back.

They pull the Doctor and Jo out of the basement and have the Doctor answer the phone when it rings. It is the Brigadier who had been alerted by Yates of the Doctor's disappearance. The Doctor plays it cool but slips a message in that alerts the Brigadier and he heads down to the house to investigate.

Shortly after the call, Jo manages to slip out of her bonds and grabs the time travel box, threatening to destroy it. The soldiers urge her to put it down but it activates and Jo is pulled forward to the 22nd century and into the control room. The controller convinces Jo that the three soldiers were criminals and he will do what he can to arrest them, rescue the Doctor and return her to her own time. He dismisses her and then passes the coordinate she gave him to the Daleks.

With Jo gone, the soldiers elect to retreat. One heads to the bridge tunnel they arrived at to check on their device and is attacked by an Ogron. He kills it and runs back to the house to warn the others. They tie up the Doctor once more in the cellar and conduct a fighting retreat against the squad of Ogrons that has appeared. The Doctor manages to cut through his bonds against the wine rack and comes up just to disarm an Ogron that has invaded the house.

The Doctor kills an attacking Ogron while several others are killed or driven off by a machine gun fired by the Brigadier. The Doctor thanks him and then runs to the bridge tunnel without explaining things. As the Doctor enters the tunnel, a Dalek appears. He dives to avoid it and runs into the soldiers as they activate their time travel device, pulling him into the future.

In the future, the soldiers head to a quiet spot to wait and potentially try again. The Doctor leaves them to go look for Jo. He heads out into the fields and approaches a complex, avoiding Ogron patrols as he does so. He observes humans working at sifting ore in slave-like conditions but is spotted and captured by the Ogrons.

The Doctor is taken to an interrogation chamber and roughed up as the security detail believes him to be a part of the resistance. The security chief is interrupted by the factory manager who asks to speak to the Doctor privately. Once alone, he urges the Doctor to tell him who he is with in the resistance as the manager is also on their side. The Doctor insists he is not part of the resistance and further communication is cut off when the Controller enters and take the Doctor to Jo. The Controller also informs the manager that his quota is to be raised per the orders of the Daleks. The manager signals the resistance about what is going on but is knocked out before completing the message.

The Controller supplies Jo and the Doctor with food and luxury but the Doctor fills Jo in on the conditions in the factories. Once alone, they overpower the guard and try to escape. They manage to get out of the complex but are recaptured by the Ogrons. During the pursuit, the Daleks identify the Doctor and order him brought to them to verify his identity via brainscan. After capture, he is tied to an examination table where the Daleks confirm their suspicions. Before they can kill him, the Controller intervenes, wanting to get information from the Doctor about the guerrillas. The Daleks reluctantly agree.

The guerrillas decide that they can use the Doctor to attack Styles better than they can and execute a raid on the Dalek city. They sneak through an abandoned railway and overwhelm the Ogron guards. They even manage to destroy a Dalek. They burst into the room where the Controller is trying to persuade the Doctor to help him but the Doctor is both unwilling and unable. He does however insist on the guerrillas sparing the Controller's life as they leave.

Back at their base, the Doctor is told that the war began when a bomb went off at the peace conference killing everyone, including Styles. The history books assumed it was a ploy to gain power and Styles was accidentally caught in the blast. The rage over the incident sent the world powers into a frenzy and they launched a nuclear war, leaving the planet devastated and easy pickings for the Daleks, who enslaved the surviving population. The Doctor realizes that one of the guerrillas, Shura, was left behind in the last raid and is probably going to detonate the bomb that actually starts the war.

The guerrillas agree to send the Doctor and Jo back if it means stopping the war. They head back to the bridge tunnel where the Doctor and Jo find the Controller and a squad of Ogrons. The Controller intends to arrest the Doctor but when the Doctor promises to free all of them from the Daleks, the Controller dismisses the Ogrons and allows the Doctor to leave. This is overheard by the human chief of security who informs the Daleks. The Daleks execute the Controller for treason, promote the chief of security to Controller and assemble a squad of Daleks and Ogrons to ensure the conference ends in the death of the delegates.

The Doctor and Jo materialize back as the conference is about to begin and they are taken to the house by Sargent Benton. Once inside, the Doctor insists that the Brigadier evacuate all the delegates from the house. Styles protests but once gunfire is heard between the UNIT soldiers and the Ogrons, the Brigadier steps in and orders everyone out by force.

The Doctor and Jo head to the basement where they find Shura and a bomb of Dalekanium. He thinks it a trick but upon hearing the firing and knowing the Daleks are here to ensure the conference fails, he insists the Daleks be allowed into the house where he will set off the bomb. The Doctor agrees and tells the Brigadier to pull his men back and have the Daleks take the house. They do so and Shura sets off the bomb, destroying the Dalek and Ogron invaders. With the timeline now changed, the Doctor tells the Brigadier that he hopes the conference will go much better now.

Analysis

I think a person's appreciation of this story is going to depend heavily on how much one enjoys the Third Doctor in his James Bond moments. This story is very James Bond with a time travel edge to it. Given that I like James Bond, I found this story rather entertaining. It is not without it's flaws but if you don't pursue those too hard, this is a very enjoyable story.

The Third Doctor is his usual pompous and self-assured self in this one but he doesn't get as much focus as he does in other stories. The story here is heavily split between a number of points of view so the Doctor and Jo find themselves as only one cog in the whole machine. I rather liked that for the Third Doctor as he self assuredness can get a bit grating at times and it puts him on the wrong foot for a good part of the story. We also get to see the Doctor morally outraged with the Controller and it's nice to see him with that level of dander up. As much of a rabble rouser as he can be, the Third Doctor does seem to feel more comfortable with the establishment than other Doctors and it's good to see him in more of an openly defiant role.

Jo is good but only because she's her more competent self here. She actually does almost nothing in the entire story. She's a prisoner of either the guerrillas or the Daleks for pretty much most of the story and plays complete second fiddle to the Doctor in the few moments she is not. About her only strong moment is after she and the Doctor get out of the basement, she is able to work her way out of her bonds while the Doctor does not. Of course, this leads to her being captured by the Daleks so it's not a great moment for her in the grand scheme of things either. But at least it requires cunning by the enemy to capture her rather than her own incompetence.

As for the Daleks, they are rather wasted in this story. You really could have substituted the Daleks with any alien race. Heck, you could have made this story with all humans and just have a Salamander type figure running things and it would have worked just as well. Arguably it might have even worked better because of the shortcomings of the Daleks. It is rather obvious that the producers of the show were going on memory of what the Daleks were like because they talk in a very robotic, halting voice. There are a couple of moments here and there where they seem to pick up in personality and start to speak a little more like they used to, but they stick to the robotic monotone for most of it. This probably wouldn't have bothered anyone at the time, but with all the Dalek stories at our fingertips, it is jarring and out of place to hear them like that. I also have a hard time believing that the Daleks would have listened to the Controller in sparing the Doctor's life. It seems more likely that the Daleks would have ignored him and just killed the Doctor once he was properly identified.

As for the other characters, I thought they were all well played. Some of the guerrillas were a bit wild but Anak was a tempering presence and that helped when they were on screen. I thought the Controller was quite good as a quisling who was openly conflicted, thinking that he was doing what was best for the survival of humanity but also knowing deep down that what the Doctor said about him and the Daleks was true. It was a solid performance and more engaging than might be expected for a middle place villain.

I've already noted the problem with the Daleks. The second issue I had was one that I suspect came from editing. The Doctor and Jo see future versions of themselves appear while the Doctor is working on the TARDIS console. We never see that scene again from the future perspective. I kept expecting them to make a jump to the wrong time and place and that be the future moment. I suspect a scene like that was written and perhaps even filmed but was cut as Episode Four was pretty jammed as it was. It's not a big deal, but it was annoying to never get resolution to that little incident.

On the direction front, it was pretty good. This was a very action oriented story and the director did a decent job on that front. Of course, they screwed up royally when it came to the reprises as the opening to the subsequent episodes included the sting as it lead in to story. It was very jarring and off-putting when trying to get in to each episode. Then on top of that, they realized their mistake in Episode Four and did not include the sting. That made the mistakes of Episodes Two and Three stand out even more. They might as well have stuck with the mistake and claimed it a style choice rather than demonstrate that they made a mistake. So a mixed bag in direction.

The big thing that I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around though is the resolution to the paradox. The guerrillas come from a future where a bomb had been set off killing all the delegates. That bomb ended up being from themselves thus creating the future they tried to prevent. I'm fine with that as events shown would have continued on that path. Where I get hung up though is how the Doctor is able to prevent the time loop from completing this time.

You would think that the Doctor would always be involved in the other iterations of the timeline and thus there in trying to stop the bomb. Of course, if you assume the Doctor wasn't there the first time, the Ogrons would still have come and forced Anak and Boaz to flee with Shura left behind before Styles returned. With no warning, Shura detonates the bomb and creates the future. So you must assume that the Doctor is a wild card that has been inserted into the timeline and thus able to prevent the events from happening. Just how his inclusion was accomplished to break the paradox is a mystery and one that I doubt will ever be clarified outside of better head cannon than mine.

So again, if you don't think too hard, it's a pretty enjoyable story, especially if you like action romps. I think I do agree with fan sentiment that this is the best of the three Third Doctor Dalek stories. The other two are fine and fun in their own right, but this story contains all the things that really draw people to the Third Doctor and then you throw in a bit of time travel and Daleks on top. Maybe not the best to introduce the Third Doctor or the Daleks but certainly a good one for established watchers.

Overall personal score: 4 out of 5