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.

Sadly, their plot to take control of the Robomen fails and the two women are shackled by their necks as punishment (they're lucky they weren't exterminated outright). But their meddling has riled the Black Dalek (who's probably already pretty pissed off that someone killed his pet slyther) and he gets whipped up into a frenzy, trundling around his control room like a pacing wild animal, encircled by his minions. I've always been impressed with how good the Dalek operators are on cramped sets such as this. They very rarely bump into each other despite their bulk and limited visibility.

The Doctor sends David and Susan off to instigate part of his plan ("And don't stop to pick daisies on the way!") while he and Tyler infiltrate Dalek Control. I do like how Terry Nation has each of our heroes trying to stop the Daleks independently - the Doctor and Susan from the outside, Barbara and Jenny from the control room, and lonesome old Ian in the bomb shaft trying to interrupt the explosive. It shows a good understanding of the team's dynamic and the way that Doctor Who works.

The Doctor and Barbara are reunited for the first time since episode 1, and soon after with Ian too. There's a wonderful camera shot from a Dalek's point of view as it advances on the defiant Doctor, and the voice we hear is deep and guttural, quite unlike the rather weedy voices we've been hearing throughout this story. Is this how Daleks sound to themselves inside their casings?

Then there's another Babs moment, where she impersonates a Dalek voice as she gives the Robomen fresh orders to revolt. Waving her hand over her mouth like a Red Indian, she seems to be having a whale of a time until the Doctor wades in with his staccato "Turn on the Daleks, do you hear me?". Love it, love it, love it!

Dalek Control is infiltrated by the rebels, and the slave workers in the mines are released and run riot, hoisting Daleks in the air and smashing them with rocks. Even the Robomen join in. These action scenes are directed really well by Richard Martin for a change, and are accompanied by Francis Chagrin's apocalyptic organ score (which sadly drowns out some key dialogue at one point).

With a huge explosion, the Daleks are destroyed, causing landslides, mushroom clouds and even a volcanic eruption. But there's no moment of celebration for our rebel heroes as they look on at the devastation. Jenny and Tyler merely stand watching, silently. They are exhausted and numb, observing with disbelief. "It's over," murmurs Jenny.

A good amount of time is dedicated to the most important scene in Doctor Who's history up to this point - the departure of its first lead character. After a poignant scene between the Doctor and Tyler in which they remember Dortmun and the others who died in the fight against the Daleks, punctuated by the distant chimes of a reclaimed Big Ben, William Hartnell and Carole Ann Ford get their final moments together. The scene is so simple, with a lot going unsaid which speaks loudest, and the performances are spot on. It cannot fail to bring a lump to your throat as the Doctor rues the fact he and Susan have not had time to talk of late, and he thinks about mending the soul of her shoe.

The exchange between Susan and David is equally as charged. "I can't stay, David," says a tearful Susan, who really does want to stay. "I don't belong to this time. Grandfather's old now. He needs me. Don't make me choose between you and him, please."

But the Doctor makes the choice for her, and double-locks her out of the TARDIS. He is letting her go - pushing her away, really - in order for them both to move on for the best. Hartnell's speech at the end is packed with emotion and you can tell every word he says he means - as an actor as well as the character. "During all the years I have been taking care of you, you in turn have been taking care of me. You're still my grandchild and always will be, but now you're a woman too. I want you to belong somewhere, to have roots of your own. Your future lies with David and not a silly old buffer like me.

"One day I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye, my dear."

And the TARDIS fades away. Susan's reaction is heartbreaking. She looks like a little girl lost, devastated, numbed by what's happening. She has probably never seen the TARDIS dematerialise from the outside before, it's a strange and unsettling sight for her, and she steps into the space it leaves behind, feeling the vacancy. She reaches out for her fiance with one hand, and drops the TARDIS key with the other - all highly symbolic, of course - and the two wander off toward their new lives together, to rebuild planet Earth. It's all so well done, truly sad, lump-in-throat stuff.

Susan would see her grandfather again - four times over, in fact - but this reunion was handled pretty sloppily in The Five Doctors. What we need is for the Doctor to keep his promise to go back and see her. It's the greatest Doctor Who story never told...

First broadcast: December 26th, 1964

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: Susan's leaving scene is heartbreaking. Carole Ann Ford and William Hartnell especially are stunning. One of the saddest scenes in Doctor Who history, just over a year in.
The Bad: The other farewells could probably have been better handled: Ian and Barbara don't get to say a proper goodbye to Susan, and there's no sign of Jenny at all.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★ (story average: 9.2 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Powerful Enemy...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: World's End (episode 1); The Daleks (episode 2); Day of Reckoning (episode 3); The End of Tomorrow (episode 4); The Waking Ally (episode 5)

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: http://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-dalek-invasion-of-earth.html

The Dalek Invasion of Earth is available on DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Dalek-Invasion-Earth/dp/B00009PBAN