Production Code: K
First Transmitted
World's End - 21/11/1964 17:40
The Daleks - 28/11/1964 17:40
Day of Reckoning - 05/12/1964 17:40
The End of Tomorrow - 12/12/1964 17:40
The Waking Ally - 19/12/1964 17:40
Flashpoint - 26/12/1964 17:55
Plot
The TARDIS materialises in London sometime after the year 2164. Dalek invaders are now ruling the Earth with the aid of humans converted into zombie-like Robomen, but they are opposed by a group of resistance fighters led by the wheelchair-using Dortmun.
The travellers discover that the Daleks have established a huge mine in Bedfordshire, their aim being to remove the Earth's core using a huge bomb and replace it with a powerful drive system so that they can pilot the planet around the galaxy. Ian manages to create a barrier in the shaft in order to intercept the bomb. The resulting explosion destroys the Daleks and their mine and creates a huge volcanic eruption.
Susan has fallen in love with resistance fighter David Campbell, and the Doctor decides to leave her on Earth to find a new life with him, while he continues on his travels with Ian and Barbara.
Episode Endings
The Doctor and Ian, menaced by a group of Robomen, prepare to escape by diving into the Thames. As they turn, they see rising slowly from the water the familiar shape of a Dalek.
The Doctor lies helpless on a bench beneath a robotising machine in the Dalek saucer as the Dalek commander gives orders for the operation to commence.
The Doctor, Susan and David decide to wait for a few minutes before departing for Bedfordshire as there are Daleks nearby. Unseen by them, two Robomen have deposited a large oblong casing on the walkway above. The casing begins to tick ominously, and an indicator on a dial starts to move round...
Ian and his friend Larry are trapped on the lip of a sheer drop as the ferocious Slyther bears straight down on them.
Ian is trapped inside the Daleks' bomb as the countdown begins and it moves toward the shaft where it is to be released...
The TARDIS dematerialises and, comforted by David, Susan moves away. Her TARDIS key lies discarded on the ground, with an image of a starscape superimposed...
Roots
War of the Worlds.
Things to Come.
Resistance movies.
Dialogue Triumphs
Dalek : "We are the masters of Earth!"
Dalek : "Rebels of London, this is your last offer - our final warning. Leave your hiding places. Show yourselves in the open streets. You will be fed and watered. Work is needed from you... but the Daleks offer you life. Rebel against us and the Daleks will destroy London completely. You will all die. The males, the females, the descendants. Rebels of London, come out of your hiding places."
Daleks : "The Daleks offer you life!"
The Doctor : "One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, my dear. Goodbye, Susan."
Dialogue Disasters
The Doctor : "What you need is a jolly good smacked bottom!"
The Doctor : "I think we'd better pit our wits against them and defeat them!'"
Continuity
The Daleks can move underwater, tell time in hours, and write their maps in English. They point their eye stalks at the ceiling when communicating with one another by radio (which works underground). They are led by a Supreme Controller, in black livery, with Black Daleks below it. Dortmun christens the Dalek's outer casing dalekanium.
According to the TARDIS' instruments, oxygen and air pressure are normal [Gallifrey must therefore match Earth in those respects].
The Doctor attacks a Roboman, explaining 'I never take life... only when my own is immediately threatened!'
Barbara used to live in Bedfordshire and can drive a lorry. Both she and Susan can cook. Susan never felt there was any 'time or place I belonged to. I've never had any real identity'.
The Doctor is quite happy for her to stay with David [suggesting that her lifespan is comparable to a human's].
QV
The First History of the Daleks
Location
London and Bedfordshire, [2167].
Future History
[By 2164] Earth had several moon stations. London had moving pavements and an 'astronaut fair'. Police boxes are still in use.
Trivia
The Daleks have enlarged fenders (accommodating small tricycles to enable the operators to move them over uneven ground on location) and energy collection discs (intended to explain the fact that they are no longer reliant on static electricity drawn from metal floors, as they were in their debut story).
A Dalek attempts to interrogate a tailor's dummy - an early, isolated example of the creatures being as treated as figures of fun, which would be seen more prominently in their next story, The Chase.
This story features the first of many quarries to be used in the series' location filming - this one, John's Hole Quarry, actually representing a quarry rather than an alien landscape.
The Black Dalek's 'pet', the Slyther, manages to change appearance somewhat between the end of the fourth episode and the beginning of the fifth. (This was due to dissatisfaction on the production team's part with the original version of the costume.)
William Hartnell does not appear in the fourth episode (apart from in the film insert reprise from the third) as he was absent during the week in which it was recorded; this was due to him sustaining a bruised back in an on-set accident during camera rehearsal of the previous week's episode. Edmund Warwick briefly doubled for him.
The title of the first episode is a pun, referring both to the devastation of the Earth by the Daleks and to the fact that the TARDIS arrives in an area of London known as World's End, in Chelsea.
It was the production team's idea rather than writer Terry Nation's to write Susan out by way of a romance with the freedom fighter David (whose surname was originally to have been Somheim, then Archer). The story was also to have introduced a fifteen-year-old girl named Saida, played by Pamela Franklin, as a new companion by having her stow away aboard the TARDIS at the end of the last episode; this idea was subsequently dropped and Saida became just a one-off character, renamed Jenny and played by Ann Davies.
Myth
This story is set in the year 2164. (The Doctor and Ian find a calendar dated 2164, but it is lying in a disused warehouse and could have been there for years; it is most unlikely that anyone was still printing calendars after the Daleks invaded.)
The Daleks are defeated due to their susceptibility to the Earth's magnetic forces. (They are defeated when they are caught in the explosion at their mine; the idea of their susceptibility to magnetic forces was exploited in the later cinema film adaptation of the story, Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.)
Technobabble
Earth has something 'that no other planet has': a magnetic core (For 'no', read 'every'.) The lines concerning gravity are odd, since removing the core will get rid of it, upsetting 'the entire constellation'.
Goofs
The Dalek saucer in episode one: belief has never been so suspended. The saucer commander changes colour scheme between episodes. And just what is the Dalek doing in the river?
In episode two, outside the Dalek saucer, two studio technicians are visible.
Jenny and Barbara have to hold their neck manacles in place.
Cars go by when the Daleks are in Trafalgar Square.
There are still pleasure cruisers on the Thames after 10 years of alien occupation.
In episode six a Dalek comes through a door with its eyestalk looking straight at the ambushing rebels, and quickly turns away.
The Black Dalek, before addressing the humans, clears its throat.
Who is 'The Waking Ally' anyway?
Twice boom-mike shadows are visible (episodes three and six).
In episode six, as the Doctor unlocks the TARDIS, a faint Dalek voice can be heard screeching (This was not part of the original transmission, but arose during duplication for overseas markets).
Why did the Daleks locate their mine in Bedfordshire rather than somewhere where the Earth's crust is thin?
Why do the Daleks set complex intelligence tests to determine suitability for being turned into Robomen, who are mindless zombies? [Unless it's to remove the clever ones...]
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - William Hartnell
Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill
Ian Chesterton - William Russell
Susan Foreman - Carole Ann Ford
Ashton - Patrick O'Connell
Baker - Richard McNeff
Carl Tyler - Bernard Kay
Craddock - Michael Goldie
Dalek Operator - Robert Jewell
Dalek Operator - Gerald Taylor
Dalek Operator - Nick Evans Also in The End of Tomorrow but uncredited
Dalek Operator - Kevin Manser
Dalek Operator - Peter Murphy
Dalek Voice - Peter Hawkins
Dalek Voice - David Graham
David Campbell - Peter Fraser
Dortmun - Alan Judd
Jenny - Ann Davies
Larry Madison - Graham Rigby
Roboman - Martyn Huntley
Roboman - Peter Badger
Slyther Operator - Nick Evans
Thomson - Michael Davis
Wells - Nicholas Smith
Woman in the Wood - Jean Conroy
Woman in the Wood - Meriel Hobson
Crew
Director - Richard Martin
The Dalek Invasion of Earth