Flashpoint (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 6)

The one where the Doctor says a final goodbye to his granddaughter...

Oh how I love Barbara Wright. As well as being beautiful and elegant and demure, with magnificent hair, she's sensitive, intelligent and strong-willed too. She's a capable woman with an endearing vulnerability, and that to me makes for one of the Doctor's best companions ever.

Here in Flashpoint, she is typically magnificent. She and Jenny are the first of our heroes to reach Dalek Control (yay for girl power, 60s style!), and Barbara uses her wits to try and pull the wool over the Black Dalek's eyestalk by cooking up a nonsense plan about human rebels plotting an assault on the invaders. She namechecks the Indian Mutiny ("Indian mutiny?" grates the Black Dalek. "We are the masters of India!"), the Boston Tea Party, General Lee and Hannibal as if they're all part of one big plan, and of course the Daleks don't know any different or better. Barbara is using human history against the Daleks, and notably historic conflicts which were uprisings.

The Waking Ally (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 5)

The one where Barbara and Jenny are betrayed for a bag of sugar...

Let's get it out of the way straight away, shall we? Who or what exactly is the waking ally? The obvious (and possibly only) answer is that it's the Doctor, because he spent all last episode ill or unconscious, and now he's back. But if that's the case, it suggests the name of episode 5 was changed to reflect what was a late alteration to the story, owing to William Hartnell's back injury. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact so little is made of the return of the Doctor. In fact, there's barely any mention of him having been absent, and the first we see of him he's already reunited with Susan, David and Carl with no explanation. As if it never happened!

Pretty lame, really, but it does pique my curiosity as to what episode 5 was originally going to be called before Hartnell went off sick. Perhaps The Day After the End of Tomorrow or something similarly abstruse?

The End of Tomorrow (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 4)

The one where Barbara drives a truck through a squad of Daleks...

These episode titles are all very apocalyptic, aren't they? The End of Tomorrow, Day of Reckoning, World's End (which is actually the location where the TARDIS landed)... But whether they have any connection with events in the story, I'm not so sure. What about the end of tomorrow (Sunday night)? What reckoning? I rather like Terry Nation's comic book sensationalism, and we'd get plenty more where this came from... The Death of Time (although it doesn't die), Flight Through Eternity, (actually just one century), Day of Armageddon, Destruction of Time (although it's not destroyed).

The End of Tomorrow begins with the Daleks' clockwork time bomb which sounds like Colly's mill, Windy Miller's house in Camberwick Green. But what's this? The Doctor's ill! He tries to rise to his feet but collapses with a mildly unconvincing "ohhhhh", and we don't seem him again all episode. David claims it's the effects of the Daleks' drugs, but he seemed to get over that quite quickly in Day of Reckoning. He's obviously on a comedown. Either that, or William Hartnell damaged his back during rehearsals and took a week off to recuperate. I'm not sure which is likelier.

Day of Reckoning (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 3)

The one where the Doctor begins to acknowledge his granddaughter's need for independence...

Director Richard Martin's handling of the rebel assault on the Dalek saucer is much more dynamic here, with prisoners being released and various explosions and flashes. Spencer Chapman's great multi-level set is glimpsed at its best for the first time, but the direction still has a rough-and-ready feel which seems to be Martin's trademark. His roving camera is a clever idea to try and capture various set-pieces, but too often the camera misses, or almost misses, what's going on (a case in point are the gunshots fired off-camera which kill the saucer's lights). It just feels clumsy and under-rehearsed.

The action outside the saucer is better, with rebels attempting to lift and topple the Daleks, good old Barbara chucking grenades, and smoke effects adding to the confusion. The feeling of chaos on set sort of adds to the atmosphere of panic in the story, but there's still that hesitance in execution. One runaway extra stalls his escape to allow a Dalek enough time to catch up with him and kill him, for instance. I acknowledge that 1960s cameras were big, bulky, unwieldy things (as were the Dalek props), but I've seen similar set-pieces in 1960s television executed with much more panache than here.

The Daleks (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 2)

The one where we learn what good invaders the Daleks are...

The Daleks are back! The popularity of the pepperpots from Skaro at this point in Doctor Who's history was immense. The public had been demanding their return ever since they faded from TV screens nine months previously, and the only way to do that was to have an adventure set before their ultimate destruction on Skaro as seen in The Daleks.

The Doctor is wise to them this time though, and William Hartnell plays it with a healthy dollop of outraged, and perhaps over-confident, defiance which will come to typify the traveller's clashes with the Daleks. No longer is he afraid or keen to turn tail and flee. "I think we'd better pit our wits against them and defeat them," he tells Ian. That's the Doctor we know and respect.

World's End (The Dalek Invasion of Earth Episode 1)

The one where a Dalek rises out of the River Thames...

World's End opens with a cracking teaser which would work well as a pre-credits sequence if it was a 21st century episode (I've always wanted to re-edit 20th century Doctor Who episodes to include pre-credits teasers in the style of the new series; there's usually a scene that can be pulled out). It seems to show a deranged man (wearing what appears to be a neck brace) staggering into the river, apparently committing suicide. A less than cheery but intriguing way to open a new story!

And then the TARDIS materialises silently in front of the most chilling bill poster ever to appear in Doctor Who - IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DUMP BODIES INTO THE RIVER. Straight away we're getting a keen idea of what sort of a world this is, and it isn't pleasant. Following a rather shaky TARDIS interior scene in which it seems everything pivots on exactly when William Hartnell is going to deliver his line of hanky-waving exasperation, our heroes scamper outside into their first ever location filming (remember: that wasn't Hartnell on location in Guests of Madame Guillotine).