The Evil of the Daleks

“I am not a student of human nature. I am a professor of a much wider academy of which human nature is merely a part.”

I had wanted to watch this because it was Victoria’s first episode and because it was another topic in the someday-‘twill-be-written essay about Doctor Who and the Victorian and/or the Gothic. I was very excited when I found the soundtrack at the public library, though obviously disappointed that the film had not survived (I hadn’t realized that before). Unfortunately, public library copies are not known for their niceness, so I missed most of the ending. However, aside from that, I found this quite intriguing for a Dalek episode, an outing with Patrick Troughton almost comparable to Tom Baker’s in “Genesis of the Daleks,” and with enough story for seven episodes.

I admit the first episode is bearable only because of Jamie (who is one of my favorite companions) and the Doctor (I love Troughton). The setting, in Gatwick Airport in 1966, unconsciously seems to anticipate “Time-Flight,” but overall it’s so bland; why would you want to see either of these time travelers in Gatwick?! (At least it’s not Stansted.) The TARDIS being stolen is natural enough but kind of weirded me out seeing as how I’d just written a similar scene in my First Doctor story. At last things begin to pick up, with the Doctor executing a rather too-Sherlock-Holmes-ish deduction. I would cry foul, but in villain Kennedy’s discussion with Bob Hall, we find that it’s all an elaborate (extremely so!) trap for the Doctor and Jamie. I found that their listening to the Beatles in a café was a bit . . . odd.

The scenes in Edward Waterfield’s Victorian antique shop are quite interesting. If I hadn’t known already that Waterfield was Victoria’s father and by default not from 1966, I would have been most puzzled by his “good as new” antiques from the nineteenth century. I love his reactions to assistant Keith Perry’s “okay” and other anachronisms. Speaking of Perry, hasn’t he got the PONCIEST accent you’ve ever heard? An impressive cliffhanger as Kennedy is about to be offed by a shadowy Dalek.

Jamie and the Doctor are dragged by Waterfield into the Daleks’ time machine and sent back to 1866. I think Waterfield is taking the whole 1966 thing pretty well, but then again, if a Daleks were holding your helplessly Victorian daughter Victoria hostage, you might be able to face up to anything. In a Victorian household setting similar, in my mind, to the one in “Ghost Light,” Jamie and the Doctor are told by Molly the maid they had one rough night. (I rather like Molly. She should have had more to do.) Things get a bit redundant as Jamie is kidnapped from the house by a big lug named Toby (!) and then has a very weird run-in with Arthur Terrall. (I never figured out: is he being controlled by the Daleks? Or is he a vampire? What’s going on?)

Arthur Terrall is a Crimean War veteran and that, I assume, is the justification for using the character of Kemel, a mute Turkish strong-man (whose tongue has been presumably cut out)—what cheek, then, to introduce a similar character in Toberman in “Tomb of the Cybermen,” which follows! Despite a lot of running around, the next few episodes manage to keep one’s interest. I’m especially impressed by, shall we say, the “Victorian factor.” Theodore Maxtible, the Faust-like figure who has sold his soul to the Daleks for alchemical secrets, seems convincingly Victorian in all aspects. (Though again, what I remember of “Ghost Light” seems to be an echo of the story in that way.) With Waterfield, he has taken ideas from Michael Faraday and attempted to construct a time machine using static electricity and mirrors. How apt! How utterly believable. Maxtible is also a devotee of hypnotism (which he seems to distinguish from mesmerism). Victoria, too, is all that her era should suppose her to be. Like Johanna in the Tim Burton Sweeney Todd, she has a sweet musical theme to convey her innocence and purity—but spends most of the story helpless and exercising control the only way she knows how: by trying to starve herself in order to thwart the Daleks.

Jamie is a great companion because he can serve two roles: the “oh, Doctor, what is this?” companion who has to be explained to all the time, in part because he’s an eighteenth-century Scottish hick; he is also capable of taking care of himself and is always pummeling his way through fights like a less sophisticated Captain Jack. In particular here, he’s got a great swordfight with Terrall. The Daleks expect the Doctor to give him up as a lab rat, and poor Jamie, the Doctor is able to manipulate his reactions in an uncannily predictive manner; one might think him the Seventh Doctor without his genuinely tender impulses.

There is at least some cross-century, cross-cultural bonding between Jamie and Kemel after the latter fails, despite Maxtible’s instructions, to kill the former. Both seem to agree that Victoria is hot stuff, and one of Jamie’s most charming qualities is his crush throughout the series on the oblivious (or perhaps disgusted) Victoria. In rescuing her, he does indeed come off as a conventional Prince Charming, though perhaps more from the Shrek mold. His reactions to what he thinks is the Doctor’s betrayal are so human: “Anyone would think that it’s a little game, and it’s not. People have died. The Daleks are all over, fit to murder the lot of us, and all you can say is that you've had a good night’s work. Well, I’m telling you this, we’re finished. You’re just too callous for me. Anything goes by the board, anything at all. You don’t give that much for a living soul except yourself. Just whose side are you on?” What a pity Jamie was returned to his own time and place without a memory of his experiences with the Doctor. I must also confess the Doctor and Jamie are a triumphantly funny pair.

Anyone familiar with Helen Raynor’s Dalek story will think, perhaps, less of her creativity once having heard “Evil of the Daleks.” Her Daleks have almost died out and need human creativity to survive but later change their plans into planting Dalek DNA in humans. These Daleks ostensibly seek the Human Factor (not the X-Factor, mind you) to gain tactical advantage, but in reality the rather effete-looking Emperor Dalek wished the Doctor to separate the Dalek Factor so that Daleks could convert all humans across time (with help from the Doctor’s TARDIS) into Daleks. Of course the plan does not succeed, and I think one place in which the serial as an audio fails to capture the excitement of the TV show is when everyone finds themselves on Skaro. I really can’t visualize it at all. The original “human” Daleks, given names (not Sec, Jast, and Caan, mind you) by the Doctor, are playful and apparently push the Doctor around in a chair. (I’d love to see this.) His intent—to cause all Daleks to have this sense of humor and human morality—is much the same result that the Tenth Doctor’s DNA-imbued Dalek-humans are given in the Helen Raynor story. The talk of conversion arches and Dalek xenophobia all shows up in the Tenth Doctor’s era, too.

Frazer Hines reads the linking narration here very well; I got confused at points and thought it was Paul McGann reading! While I’m sorry I wasn’t able to really hear episode seven due to really bad skipping on the CD, I think this is a serial well-worth hearing, though perhaps not as suited to audio play format as “Reign of Terror.”