Death to the Daleks Part Four

The one where the universe loses its 700th wonder...

"What is it?" asks Bellal, quite rightly. "It's another test, I think," replies the Doctor, before he starts to scan the "ornamental floor" with his sonic screwdriver. Of course, it's a "deadly floor", capable of pumping 7,000 volts into anybody who crosses it, but luckily the Doctor works out that it can be crossed safely by playing Venusian hopscotch (but regular hopscotch will do!). If only we'd had an inkling of what this danger was at the end of last week's episode, we might have felt more bothered. It was done so much better when script editor Terrance Dicks pinched this idea for The Five Doctors nine years later...

The city is basically made up of a series of Escape Rooms, which the Doctor and Bellal have to solve and survive as they move closer to the heart/ brain of the structure. The next room pits Bellal against the Doctor in an attempt to turn them against one another, but thankfully the Doctor overcomes the city's control over his Exxilon pal, again by using his sonic screwdriver. When the Doctor asks Bellal if he's ready to go on, the little fella says: "No. But we must?", and my heart weeps a tiny bit.

Death to the Daleks Part Three

The one where the Daleks have a bit of root trouble...

The screaming hosepipe thing has a pot shot at Dr Who, and the screeching noise it makes as it swoops in is ear-shreddingly loud. For saying it's literally a big tumble dryer pipe suspended from wire, the root creature is a pretty formidable adversary, and it makes short work of the Dalek, administering its deadly "sting" several times. The Doctor describes the root as an "underground support system for the city", but does he mean the roots are literally supporting the fabric of the building, or that they "support" the city's defense system by acting as "guards"? Bellal clarifies all this a bit more when he explains that his ancestors built their cities rooted into the ground, and which drained electrical energy from the air (hence the power drain).

The Exxilons are an interesting race, the victims of their own technological advancement. They are an ancient race which "solved the mysteries of science" and conquered space travel long before most other civilisations were out of bed. They travelled the galaxies as the "supreme beings of the universe", even apparently visiting Earth to help the Incas build their temples in Peru (which was good of them).

Death to the Daleks Part Two

The one where the Daleks develop a new kind of weapon...

"Total extermination!" barks the Dalek. "Fire! Fire! Fire!" And everybody just stands still and awaits their fate with remarkably calm resignation. Nobody bolts, nobody runs, nothing. What a bunch of wimps (including Dr Who!). However, the squelchy noise the Dalek gunsticks make when they fire means something is amiss, and we soon learn that their weapons are just as powerless as the TARDIS.

With the Daleks disarmed (in more ways than one), the usual rules of the game are cast aside, and the two groups agree to team up until the power drain can be reversed. For all his formulaic trappings, writer Terry Nation has come up with a corking new twist by having the two great enemies - the Doctor and the Daleks - join sides for once, and it's fascinating watching it pan out.

Death to the Daleks Part One

The one where the TARDIS loses all its power...

There's quite a brief but brutal opening, in which a running man is shot in the belly by an arrow and tumbles into a lake to his death. It rather spoils the mysterious build-up that writer Terry Nation crafts throughout the rest of the episode, and I think it would have been much better to open with the second scene, with the Doctor spinning his parasol and crooning Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside. And from there, an inexorable descent into fear...

I have such nostalgic feelings about Death to the Daleks. It was one of the handful of stories I had in omnibus form on VHS in the 1980s, and I absolutely adored this story, perhaps more so than other tapes I had, like The Robots of Death and The Time Warrior. I mean, it had Daleks in it, and I was only 11 years old, so that kind of swung it for me! But I must try and put my warm thoughts aside to review the story episodically, critically, to see whether I still feel the same way.