Production Code: R
First Transmitted
The Executioners - 22/05/1965 17:40
The Death of Time - 29/05/1965 17:40
Flight Through Eternity - 05/06/1965 17:45
Journey Into Terror - 12/06/1965 17:40
The Death of Doctor Who - 19/06/1965 1740
The Planet of Decision - 26/06/1965 1740
Plot
The travellers are forced to flee in the TARDIS when they learn from the Time/Space Visualiser taken from the Moroks' museum that a group of Daleks equipped with their own time machine are on their trail with orders to exterminate them.
The chase begins on the desert planet Aridius and takes in a number of stopping-off points including the observation gallery of New York's Empire State Building, the 19th Century sailing ship Mary Celeste (the Daleks' appearance causing all the crew and passengers to jump overboard) and a spooky haunted house which, although the Doctor and his friends do not realise it, is actually a futuristic fun-fair attraction.
Eventually both time machines arrive on the jungle planet Mechanus, where the Daleks try to infiltrate and kill the Doctor's party using a robot double of him. The travellers are taken prisoner by the Mechonoids - a group of robots sent some fifty years earlier to prepare landing sites for human colonists who, in the event, never arrived - and meet Steven Taylor, a stranded astronaut who has been the Mechonoids' captive for the past two years.
The Daleks and the Mechonoids engage in a fierce battle which ultimately results in their mutual destruction, and the Doctor's party seize this opportunity to escape. The Doctor reluctantly helps Ian and Barbara to use the Daleks' time machine to return home.
Episode Endings
The Doctor and Barbara watch as, making rough choking sounds, a Dalek emerges from the sands of Aridius.
The TARDIS dematerialises as the Daleks fire at it in vain. Chorusing 'Eradicate!', 'Obliterate!', 'Exterminate!' the Daleks determine to set off after it at once: the Dalek Supreme has ordered that the travellers be pursued through all eternity and exterminated!
The travellers have escaped from the Mary Celeste and the TARDIS hurtles through the space/time vortex, pursued by the Dalek ship.
The leader of the Dalek executioners asks the robot double of the Doctor if it understands its orders. It replies in the affirmative: it is to infiltrate and kill.
A door in the wall of the cave where the travellers are hiding slides down with a crash to reveal a small compartment containing a spheroidal robot. The robot, in a strange electronic voice, says: 'Eight hundred - Thirty - Mechonoid - English - Input - Enter'. The Daleks can be heard approaching outside, so at Ian's suggestion the four travellers move to join the robot in the compartment...
Having assured himself and Vicki that Ian and Barbara have arrived safely home, the Doctor operates the TARDIS controls. The ship dematerialises and flies through the space/time vortex en route for a new destination.
Roots
The Beverly Hillbillies (Morton Dill).
Max Sennett movies (Dill asks if the TARDIS crew are 'from Hollywood') and Cheyenne (Dill seems to think Cheyenne Bodie is a real person).
Universal horror films of the 1930s.
Dialogue Triumphs
Dalek : "Advance and attack! Attack and destroy! Destroy and rejoice!"
The Doctor : "We're trying to defeat the Daleks, not start a jumble sale."
Dialogue Disasters
Ian : [Speaks for a generation of viewers, telling Vicki] "Don't just stand there and scream, you little fool, run!'"
Continuity
The Doctor implies that he built the TARDIS (or just the time path detector?). The TARDIS homing device is introduced, and the first reference is made to the time rotor (at this stage of the TARDIS' development it's an instrument on the console rather than the central transparent column).
The Time Space Visualiser 'converts neutrons of light energy into electrical impulses' - 'A sort of time television,' says Barbara. On the side of the Time Space Visualiser are the names of all the planets of the solar system (Vicki stated in the previous story that it was developed on Earth). Ian asks to see Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Barbara to see Shakespeare and Elizabeth I discussing Falstaff (Francis Bacon gives Shakespeare the idea for Hamlet. See also City of Death).
Vicki tunes in to the Beatles performing 'Ticket to Ride' on Top of the Pops in 1965. Ian dances like a physics teacher at a Sixth Form dance. How he knows a song released two years after he left Earth is never explained [although he only sings the chorus]. Even the Doctor seems quite into it and is upset when Barbara, playing the 'square' as usual, turns the machine off ('You've squashed my favourite Beatles'). Vicki explains that she visited the Beatles memorial theatre in Liverpool (a case of fiction predicting fact), but didn't realise they played 'classical music'.
Vicki says she used to live close to a castle ('with a drawbridge and everything') as a child.
Steven's mascot is a panda called Hi Fi.
The planet Aridius circles twin suns (the planet once had oceans but after climatic changes most of the marine life was destroyed, except the mire beasts who lived in the sea-slime).
The wildlife of Mechanus includes carnivorous fungoids.
The Daleks refer to Mechonoids as 'Mechons'. Daleks measure both time and direction in Earth terms. There is a first reference to the Daleks' replicant technology (see Resurrection of the Daleks) and their ability to travel through time, possessing both a dimensionally transcendent time machine and a time tracker. The TARDIS also has a Time Path Indicator. This is, the Doctor notes, the first time he has ever found a use for it (see City of Death). The Daleks attempt to destroy the TARDIS but it proves to be impervious to their 'neutraliser'. The TARDIS' computer take 12 minutes to power up and relocate.
Ian has a book called Monsters from Outer Space [which he found in the TARDIS library] (he considers it 'a bit far fetched'). Ian and Barbara return to 1965 in the Dalek time ship which they destroy ('What's two years among friends?').
QV
The First History of the Daleks
Location
The Sagaro Desert, Aridius.
Empire State Building, New York, 1966.
Frankenstein's House of Horror exhibition in the Festival of Ghana, 1996.
Mechanus, England, [1965].
Future History
Mechanus was discovered 50 years before the landing of the TARDIS, Earth sending out the Mechonoid robots to clear the planet for colonisation. Earth, meanwhile, got caught up in an interplanetary war [one of the Cyber Wars, or the Draconian conflict prior to Frontier in Space], during which space pilot Steven Taylor crashed on the planet.
Links
References to The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Vicki says that New York was destroyed in the invasion).
In a reference to the previous story, Ian borrows Barbara's cardigan to set a trap for a Dalek ('Oh, not again,' says Barbara).
Trivia
The Daleks sport a slightly modified design, complete with 'solar panel' slats around their shoulder sections.
Stock film from Top of the Pops of the Beatles singing 'Ticket to Ride' in the Time/Space Visualiser scene is utilised in the first episode - this was in lieu of a planned live appearance by the 'fab four' made up as old men, which was vetoed by their manager Brian Epstein.
Distinguished actor Hywel Bennett features in an early role as the Aridian Rynian.
There are a number of instances of the Daleks being sent up - most notably in the depiction of a 'thick' Dalek barely able to complete a sum.
There are some adapted cinema film Daleks - and, inadvertently, a studio camera - lurking in the foliage of Mechanus.
The Chase was hastily commissioned from Terry Nation when another of his stories, apparently a revival of his abandoned season one historical The Red Fort, fell through.
The film inserts of Ian and Barbara celebrating their return to Earth were made as part of the film shoot for the following story, The Time Meddler, and so were the responsibility of that story's director Douglas Camfield and designer Barry Newbery.
Myth
The scene of Ian and Barbara taking a bus ride following their return to Earth was shot on location. (It was shot in the BBC's Television Film Studios at Ealing, with back projection used behind the window of the bus to give the impression of movement.)
Goofs
In episode one Vicki and Ian cast shadows over the desert backdrop. In episode two, Vicki knocks an Aridian over, who then guiltily sneaks off camera. When a Dalek moves in front of a scanner screen in episode four, the countdown on the screen appears on top of the Dalek.
As the TARDIS arrives in the haunted house, a man's shadow is visible on it.
A boom mike (and operator) is in shot as Ian and the Doctor descend the stairs.
Frankenstein's Monster rips off its bandages, but changes into a jacket before the next scene.
A Dalek can be seen through the scenery in Frankenstein's lab, before the Daleks arrive. At the end of this sequence, the first line of the following scene (Vicki: 'What's that in aid of?') can be clearly heard. If the Frankenstein's monster is a robot in a funfair attraction, why does it attack people?
In episode five, a BBC camera can be seen in the jungle.
In the final episode, when Barbara almost falls off the Mechonoid city roof, Ian grabs her pants and almost pulls them off in the process.
The Daleks' robot 'duplicate' of the Doctor, far from being 'indistinguishable from the original', actually looks so different that you wonder if they've got the right person.
There's a confused Dalek scene in episode three with overlapping dialogue ("Sucess!" "Final victory"). One of the Daleks sounds like he has a heavy cold and hesitates when asked the time of arrival.
Peter Purves initial estimation of the distance from the roof of the Mechonoid city to the ground is 15 rather than 1500 feet.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - William Hartnell
Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill
Ian Chesterton - William Russell
Steven Taylor - Peter Purves
Vicki - Maureen O'Brien
Abraham Lincoln - Robert Marsden
Albert C Richardson - Dennis Chinnery
Bosun - Patrick Carter
Cabin Steward - Jack Pitt
Capt Benjamin Briggs - David Blake Kelly
Count Dracula - Malcolm Rogers
Dalek - Robert Jewell
Dalek - Kevin Manser
Dalek - John Scott Martin
Dalek - Gerald Taylor
Dalek Voice - Peter Hawkins
Dalek Voice - David Graham
Francis Bacon - Roger Hammond
Frankenstein - John Maxim
Grey Lady - Roslyn de Winter
Guide - Arne Gordon
Malsan - Ian Thompson
Mechonoid Voice 5/Mechonoid Voice 6 - David Graham
Mire Beast - Jack Pitt
Morton Dill - Peter Purves
Prondyn - Al Raymond
Queen Elizabeth I - Vivienne Bennett
Robot Doctor Who - Edmund Warwick Also in Journey into Terror but uncredited
Rynian - Hywel Bennett
Television Announcer - Richard Coe
William Shakespeare - Hugh Walters
Willoughby - Douglas Ditta
Crew
Director - Richard Martin
The Chase