Production Code: V
First Transmitted
The Nightmare Begins - 13/11/1965 17:50
Day of Armageddon - 20/11/1965 17:50
Devil's Planet - 27/11/1965 17:50
The Traitors - 04/12/1965 17:50
Counter Plot - 11/12/1965 17:50
Coronas of the Sun - 18/12/1965 17:50
The Feast of Steven - 25/12/1965 18:35
Volcano - 01/01/1966 17:50
Golden Death - 08/01/1966 17:50
Escape Switch - 15/01/1966 17:50
The Abandoned Planet - 22/01/1966 17:50
The Destruction of Time - 29/01/1966 17:50
Plot
The TARDIS materialises on Kembel. There the Doctor and his friends meet Space Security Service agent Bret Vyon, who has been sent in search of Marc Cory. Learning of the Daleks' scheme, which hinges on the use of a weapon called the time destructor, they determine to warn the authorities on Earth. This proves problematic as the human leader Mavic Chen, Guardian of the Solar System, is a traitor in league with the Daleks.
Fortunately the Doctor has managed to make off with the taranium core of the time destructor, disrupting the Daleks' plans. In one of a number of attempts to regain the taranium, Chen dispatches Space Security Service agent Sara Kingdom to track down the Doctor's party.
Sara, unaware of Chen's treachery, kills Bret - her own brother - before the time travellers can convince her of the truth. She then joins forces with them and, after an encounter with their old adversary the Monk, they all arrive back on Kembel. There, the Doctor contrives to steal the time destructor and turn it against the Daleks, annihilating them. Sara has ignored his instruction to return to the TARDIS, however, and she too is killed.
Episode Endings
The Doctor, having learned that there are Daleks on Kembel and discovered Marc Cory's skeleton and recorded warning message, hurries back to the TARDIS. He is stopped in his tracks when he sees that there are three Daleks standing guard on the ship. Horrified, he whispers 'Steven... Katarina...'.
Having snatched the taranium core from the Daleks, the Doctor heads back to the Spar spaceship. On board, however, Bret Vyon decides that he can wait no longer. Ignoring protests from Steven and Katarina, he starts the take-off procedure.
Having escaped from the prison planet Desperus in the Spar just as the Daleks arrive, the Doctor asks Katarina to check that the airlock door is secure. As she does so, the convict Kirksen emerges holding a knife. Katarina screams.
The Doctor and his friends are confronted by Sara Kingdom, who appears to be in league with Mavic Chen. The Doctor and Steven make a run for it, but Bret tries to appeal to her. She casually shoots him dead. Summoning Borkar, she tells him that two fugitives are still at loose and must be shot on sight - 'But aim for the head.'
The Doctor, Steven and Sara have been transported to the planet Mira, where they hide in a cave from the invisible Visians and invading Daleks. As the Daleks surround them, the Doctor concedes that the creatures have won.
The travellers have escaped once more from the Daleks. The TARDIS arrives at their next destination and, checking the controls, the Doctor discovers that the atmosphere outside is completely poisonous.
The travellers journey on in the TARDIS. Realising that they never got a chance to celebrate Christmas during their recent visit to Earth, the Doctor produces a bottle of champagne and some glasses. He toasts Steven and Sara and then turns and wishes everyone at home a happy Christmas as well.
Escaping from New Year revellers at Trafalgar Square in London, the TARDIS moves on again. The Daleks despatch a ship in pursuit. They are confident that they will conquer the universe.
The TARDIS has arrived in ancient Egypt and materialised in a tomb. Steven and Sara return to the ship to find the lid of a nearby sarcophagus moving. From inside, a bandaged hand emerges.
The Doctor fits within the TARDIS control console a directional circuit stolen from the Monk's ship. He warns Steven and Sara that its operation will be very dangerous. Nevertheless, he comes to a decision and activates the controls. Suddenly a bright light explodes from the console.
Back on Kembel, Steven and Sara are captured by Mavic Chen and marched at gun-point into the Dalek base.
With the Daleks destroyed and Sara dead, the Doctor and Steven return to the TARDIS and leave the planet Kembel.
Roots
The seventh episode is a mixture of Z Cars, silent Hollywood movies and 1930s serials.
James Bond.
The Avengers (Sara Kingdom).
She (Kingdom's death).
Dan Dare.
Flash Gordon.
Dialogue Triumphs
Mavic Chen : "... you must admit, the Daleks have a genius for war!"
The Doctor : [On the death of Katarina.] "She didn't understand... She couldn't understand. She wanted to save our lives. And perhaps the lives of all the other beings of the solar system. I hope she's found her perfection. We shall always remember her as one of the daughters of the gods. Yes, as one of the daughters of the gods."
The Doctor : "Your ideas are too narrow, too crippled. I am a citizen of the Universe, and a gentleman to boot."
Steven : "Let's go, Doctor, I've seen enough of this place."
The Doctor : "Well, my boy, at last we've rid this planet of Daleks."
Steven : "Bret... Katarina... Sara..."
The Doctor : "What a waste... What a terrible waste."
Dialogue Disasters
The Doctor : "Here's a toast, a happy Christmas to all of us."
Steven : "The same to you, Doctor, Sara."
The Doctor : "And incidentally, a happy Christmas to all of you at home!"
The Doctor : "Get me out of this place, it's full of Arabs!"
The Doctor : "Pull yourself together, madam!"
The Doctor : "Are these tablets? Do you think they're lollipops?"
Double Entendre
Sarah : "A strange man kept telling me to take all my clothes off."
"You seem to know all the queer people."
Continuity
Searching for Marc Cory, missing for six months (see Mission to the Unknown), Kert Gantry and Bret Vyon instead find the Daleks' alliance, holding its seventh meeting. Members include Guardian of the Solar System Mavic Chen, Trantis, Zephon 'Master of the Fifth Galaxy' [see The Monster of Peladon] (a new arrival since Mission to the Unknown), Celation, Beaus, Warrien, Sentreal, and Malpha.
When the Doctor and his friends steal a Dalek scout ship, the Doctor says he is getting used to Dalek technology. During the Hollywood sequence the Doctor meets Bing Crosby.
The Monk is aware of the Daleks by reputation. The Doctor fiddles with the Monk's chameleon circuit, changing his TARDIS from a block of stone to a motor cycle, a stage coach, a Western waggon, a tank and a Police Box. He also steals the Monk's directional unit to enable his own TARDIS to return to Kembel. Without this, the Monk can only wander randomly [Presumably the unit then fails, as the Doctor still can't control his TARDIS (cf The Three Doctors).]
The Time Destructor contains a core of one emm of Taranium (a mineral only found on Uranus).
Chen notes that the people of the planet Tisar and the entity Gris have both tried to depose Zephon recently. The indigenous population of Mira are the Visians (who are invisible and, according to the Doctor, eight feet tall and extremely vicious).
QV
The First History of the Daleks
Location
Kembel.
Desperus (the solar system's prison planet).
Earth in the year 4000.
Mira.
Liverpool, 25 December 1965.
London, 1 January 1966.
A cricket test match between England and Australia.
Hollywood, c.1925 (first talkies)/1930 (Bing Crosby's first film).
Tigus.
Egypt, during the Fourth Dynasty (2613BC -2494BC).
Future History
Chen states that there has been continuous peace in the solar system since 3975. Earth is developing long distance teleportation technology [based on T-Mat principles: see The Seeds of Death]. Earth has a class system, a concept of luxury, broadcast news, penal colonies, and a place called Central City. The Technix are all bald. Bret Vyon was raised on Mars Colony 16.
Links
The Doctor says that the way to defeat the Daleks is 'to look back in the history of the year 2157' [he either simply gets the date of the invasion wrong, or this is when the Dalek campaign against Earth (meteors, etc.) began (The Dalek Invasion of Earth).]
There is a great in joke when the Doctor sees a man in the police station and tells him that he believes he has met him 'in a market place in Jaffa' (the actor appeared in The Crusade).
The Monk says that he was able to bypass the dimensional control that the Doctor sabotaged in The Time Meddler.
Cassandra prophesied about Katarina's death in The Myth Makers.
Untelevised
The Doctor comments that he saw the relief of Mafeking in the Boer War [1900].
Trivia
Brian Cant plays the hapless Kert Gantry in the first episode. Cant later went on to become a popular children's presenter, appearing in shows like Playaway and Play School.
The green-uniformed Technix all have bald heads - for which parts the actors involved had to agree to their heads being shaved.
Nicholas Courtney makes his first appearance in Doctor Who. Courtney's next role was in The Web of Fear as Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, a character who was subsequently to appear with all but the eighth Doctor, and who was one of the regular characters during the early seventies.
The Doctor is seemingly unaware of what cricket is when the TARDIS materialises at the Oval during a Test Match between England and Australia.
The date of the Dalek invasion of Earth is given as 2157 AD.
The starfish-like Dalek creatures seen after the time destructor has done its work in the final episode; are implied to be the form from which the Daleks evolved over a period of millions of years.
The death scene of Katarina, shot as a film insert at Ealing during the week beginning 27 September 1965, was the first work that Adrienne Hill had done in the role.
Myth
Sara Kingdom was going to be a replacement companion for Katarina. (Not quite true. When it was realised that the character of Katarina would not work as a regular, Nation was asked to write her out as soon as he could. A replacement 'companion' character was then requested for the remainder of this story. There was never any intention for Sara to continue past the end of The Daleks' Master Plan.)
The incident at the end of the seventh episode when the Doctor looks directly into camera and proposes a toast to everyone at home was an unscripted ad lib on William Hartnell's part and outraged the production team. (This action was scripted and rehearsed. It was in fact a tradition in the sixties for scenes of this kind to be included in special Christmas editions of popular series. Besides which, if the production team had really disliked it they could simply have edited it out.)
Technobabble
The Doctor places Bret Vyon in a force field that works on an 'electromagnetic principle' (episode six also features g-force force fields). The Doctor, Steven and Sara become trapped in a cellular disseminator. The Daleks use a 'randomiser' and a 'magnetise beam' (sic) to try to stop the various escape ships the Doctor uses.
Goofs
Marc Cory's tape message is different from the one he left in Mission to the Unknown.
If the Grand Alliance is so expendable, why have it in the first place?
The Doctor gurns during cellular dissemination.
A police box would look very out of place outside a police station.
Cast & Crew
Cast
The Doctor - William Hartnell
Katarina - Adrienne Hill until The Traitors
Steven Taylor - Peter Purves
Arab Sheikh - David James
Assistant Director - Conrad Monk
Blossom Lefevre - Sheila Dunn
Borkar - James Hall
Bors - Dallas Cavell
Bret Vyon - Nicholas Courtney
Cameraman - Steve Machrin
Celation - Terence Woodfield
Clown - Robert G Jewell
Dalek - Kevin Manser
Dalek - Robert Jewell
Dalek - Gerald Taylor
Dalek - John Scott Martin
Dalek Voice - Peter Hawkins
Dalek Voice - David Graham
Darcy Tranton - Leonard Grahame
Daxtar - Roger Avon
Detective-Inspector - Keneth Thornett
First Policeman - Norman Mitchell
Froyn - Bill Meilen
Garge - Geoffrey Cheshire
Hyksos - Walter Randall
Ingmar Knopf - Mark Ross
Interviewer - Michael Guest
Karlton - Maurice Browning
Kert Gantry - Brian Cant
Khepren - Jeffrey Isaac
Kirksen - Douglas Sheldon
Lizan - Pamela Greer
Malpha - Bryan Mosley Bryan Mosley and Buddy Windrush are the same person
Man in Macintosh - Reg Pritchard
Mavic Chen - Kevin Stoney
Professor Webster - Albert Barrington
Prop Man - Buddy Windrush Bryan Mosley and Buddy Windrush are the same person
Rhymnal - John Herrington
Roald - Philip Anthony
Sara Kingdom/Sara - Jean Marsh
Scott - Bruce Wightman
Second Policeman - Malcolm Rogers
Station Sergeant - Clifford Earl
Steinberger P Green - Royston Tickner
The Meddling Monk - Peter Butterworth
Trantis - Roy Evans
Trevor - Roger Brierly
Tuthmos - Derek Ware
Vamp - Paula Topham
Zephon - Julian Sherrier
Crew
Director - Douglas Camfield
The Daleks Master Plan