The Planet of Decision (The Chase Episode 6)

The one where we say farewell to Ian and Barbara...

Aren't the Mechanoids magnificent? I mean, yes, they're incredibly cumbersome creations, and it's hard to see how the Doctor Who production team thought they might become "the new Daleks", but they look amazing. They look solid and formidable, and despite their springy little heads, the design is inspired, like a turtle crossed with a golf ball. The fact they created three Mechanoid casings is even more impressive, seeing as they have so little screen time. They could have been in more episodes of The Chase, and could certainly have returned for a second outing in Season 3 (most appropriately in The Daleks' Master Plan). Sadly, it wasn't to be...

Also impressive is the model of the Mechanoid city. That too looks huge, and you can even see the tiny little Mechanoid models moving along the walkways at one point. It's an intricate, beautiful design, and if I were a child in 1965 I'd have loved a play set of this city for Christmas (this coming from a kid whose most memorable Christmas was the year he got an Ewok Village play set!). Imagine the fun children would have playing with this city and a few Dalek and Mechanoid action models?

The Mechanoids make some bizarre sounds though (one sounds like a spanner in a tumble dryer!). It's obviously meant to be a computer language, but there's not much scope in this form of communication, and this leaves the robots sadly under-used. It seems they were sent ahead by Earth space travellers 50 years ago to ready Mechanus for colonisation, but when some kind of war broke out, Mechanus was forgotten about, and now the robots roam their empty city streets with nothing very much to do except repair one another. It all sounds very like Frank Cottrell-Boyce's Smile from 52 years later!

The Doctor and friends also meet their first human since leaving the Mary Celeste in episode 3, in the form of deserted space pilot Steven Taylor. Peter Purves is instantly refreshing, giving Steven an exuberance which makes him stand out from the regular Doctor Who guest stars. Steven has been abandoned on Mechanus, as a prisoner of the robots, for two whole years, in which time he hasn't seen or heard from a single other human. His quiet joy at hearing another human voice say his name is lovely, and his attachment to HiFi the cuddly panda sweet, if a little out of character for a tough space pilot. Having said that, I talk to my teddy bear all the time, so I can't really blame him.

The Daleks in this episode are more hyper than ever, obviously stressed out by losing their enemies and having to fight some alien robots (or Mechons as they refer to them). "The orders of the Dalek Supreme will be obeyed! The humans will be destroyed! The Mechons will not be permitted to stand in our way! We attack! We attack!" shrieks one Dalek, followed by a gaggle of: "Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! Attack!"

These highly-strung Daleks are so stressed that they're letting their guard down too easily. When one Dalek accidentally sets off the Doctor's explosive device, the Dalek instantly gives in and yells: "Am exterminated! Am exterminated!", while another, when given a hug by a Mechanoid, proclaims: "Totally immobilised!" They just give up, barely without being touched. The ensuing Dalek/ Mechanoid battle is impressively staged, but spoiled by Richard Martin's over-use of cross-fades to depict a feeling of chaos. We don't see enough of the actual combat, only tiny snatches of it amid moving images from two, sometimes three, other scenes laid on top. Plus smoke effects and some strange animated explosions. It looks and feels all very apocalyptic, but after all the effort of building so many Mechanoids - which, incidentally, have flame-throwers as weapons! - and moving filming to Ealing, I can't help feeling the final edit wastes the raw material.

Of course, the real highlight of The Planet of Decision is the last 10 minutes, which sees the sad departure of Ian and Barbara. After 16 adventures, William Russell and Jacqueline Hill decided to leave the programme, and it's a major turning point in the series' history. Despite their characters being somewhat diluted and mildly infantilised in their final months, Ian and Barbara were the centre of Doctor Who for most of its early run. Ian was the lead hero, Barbara was the maternal heart, while the Doctor and his granddaughter were the outsiders to whom we could only partly relate.

Their departure is handled sensitively and given plenty of time to play out. William Hartnell is obviously highly emotional in these scenes, fumbling his words as he tries to portray the Doctor's anger and upset on top of his own inevitable feeling of loss. For Hartnell, this was the end of an era. Most of the people who were with him at the creation of Doctor Who had gone (producer Verity Lambert would be leaving very soon too), and although he obviously had an affinity with Maureen O'Brien, the departure of Russell and Hill must have hit him hard. The Doctor seems rather too overwrought at Ian and Barbara's wish to go home, a sign, surely, that Hartnell was dealing with his own emotions.

That final scene, where the Doctor and Vicki watch the school teachers laughing together, happy at last, on the Time Space Visualiser is really touching, and just as he did with Carole Ann Ford's departure, Hartnell pulls a beautifully understated but powerful performance out of the hat. "I shall miss them. Yes, I shall miss them," he mutters to himself. "Silly old fusspots." Is that a frog in your throat, Billy?

Ian and Barbara's leaving scene (frustratingly, we're deprived of an actual farewell scene between the regulars) is a delight. Ian talks about wanting to sit in a pub again and drink a beer, or watch a cricket match, and it's these simple home comforts that he'd obviously miss. Although I have to say it's a slight understatement when Barbara claims that her time travelling in the TARDIS will only "probably" be the most exciting time of her life! Whatever does she expect will happen to her back on Earth that could beat visiting the Aztecs or Romans, or meeting aliens and robots? She must have high hopes for Shoreditch in 1965!

And there we have it, Ian and Barbara have gone. They seem happy in their madcap tour of London, but they leave behind them a truly wonderful set of adventures in time and space. Neither character was ever to be seen again in Doctor Who sadly*, but what Jacqueline Hill and William Russell achieved in those two years on the show was good, solid work which has stood the test of time. In many ways, Doctor Who was never as good after they left...

The Chase, overall, is a mess. It's narratively weak and inconsequential, but the design is strong, especially when you consider there's at least one new location each week. It sags terribly in the middle and sometimes looks like it's made on less than a shoestring, but it's almost always fun. Nevertheless, I'm not a great fan of it as a whole because it mostly seems rather pointless and silly. Take one episode alone to watch and it's fine, but as a six-part serial, it's really rather poor.

* Originally written in 2017, five years before Ian appeared in The Power of the Doctor.

First broadcast: June 26th, 1965

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The Mechanoids look stunning; it's a real shame they appear so little. Oh, and it's a tiny moment, but I can't help chuckling when Ian grabs hold of Barbara's knickers to stop her falling off the roof of the city! Now that's familiar!
The Bad: I really wish we could have had a proper farewell scene between the Doctor and Ian and Barbara, but it seems the Doctor isn't a fan of confrontational goodbyes (see Susan).
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 6 out of 10)

NEXT TIME: The Watcher...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: The Executioners (episode 1); The Death of Time (episode 2); Flight Through Eternity (episode 3); Journey into Terror (episode 4); The Death of Doctor Who (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/2013/08/the-chase.html

The Chase is available on DVD in a box set with The Space Museum. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Space-Museum-Chase/dp/B0033PRJWQ