It’s funny what sticks with you from certain stories, and that no matter how much time has passed, these sense impressions take root and burrow in. It isn’t “the memory cheats” as JN-T once opined infamously, because this weeks cap addition, Death to the Daleks, just isn’t the type of story which is all that indelible.
Late Pertwee era so it suffers from more than a bit of ennui, the third (in a run of four) year in which there was a Dalek story, and the last classic era Dalek story NOT to have Davros, the story was stuck in our minds as being excessively studio-bound, and well…. boring.
The main image which the THT Collective remembers from the story is that of the Dalek on fire. It’s easy to forget that this was also a Sarah Jane story, and that this story asked the Daleks to be more conniving that shouty as their power had likewise vanished, so it was something of a surprise, as it was with the preceding story Invasion of the Dinosaurs which we capped awhile back that there was a lot more location filming than we remembered, and that the Exxilons were more stealthy and interesting than we had thought. But this was every bit a Terry Nation story, right down to a character named ‘Tarrant,’ so many of the usual tropes and Nation-favored plot devices, including the journey to the heart of the Exxilon city, are all there.
Nevertheless the cap addition of Death to the Daleks fills another hole in the Tours cap-iverse. I wonder what next weeks cap addition will be?
S’mores anyone?
