Saturday 28th December - The Survivors

 

Daleks.

With that single word, the show becomes something more than a science fiction adventure about a small group travelling haphazardly in space and time. The show introduces the now infamous mechanical, ever-twitching, ever-moving aliens who are thoroughly chilling and - from today's standpoint - seem to embody the fears of inhuman, totalitarian control many in British society suffered at the height of the cold war. Emotionless, robotic creatures who control a futuristic, soulless city who have the technology to conduct surveillance at all times. Atomic fears - no doubt encouraged by the recent Cuban missile crisis - feature, too: radiation sickness, nucleonic war and mutations. Daleks seem to capture post-war societal fears. They're something more than just alien monsters. No doubt the cold, grating voices of the Daleks had a tremendous impact and contributed to their popularity.

It's another episode where the Doctor and his companions are captured and spend the episode bewildered. Radiation sickness affects them and the Daleks believe that they can retrieve the drugs that were left back in the TARDIS which will enable the Daleks to leave the city for the first time. We hear about the Thals, a grossly-mutated race who live on the planet and, presumably, left the drugs outside the TARDIS. Susan, the least affected by radiation, travels alone through the forest at night during a storm to retrieve the drugs.

The best scene of this episode (certainly visually) has to be the Dalek's interrogation of the Doctor. It's the first time we get to see the Doctor separately from the others and, even though he's unwell, he manages to confront the Daleks in a way we haven't seen so far. Under spotlight, he stands up to his captors (notice the defiant way he fearlessly points at them) and gets them to divulge knowledge of the Thals. As always, his eyes flit this way giving the impression he's analysing every detail of what the Daleks tell him.

It was good to see the show's acton hero, Ian, incapacitated by a Dalek weapon. He's become the physical defender of the group and he is frustrated that he's unable to fulfil that role. It enables Susan something to do in returning to the TARDIS through the dead forest during a storm.

The cliff-hanger is low-key: Susan opens the TARDIS doors to return to the Dalek city.

A couple of behind-the-scenes pieces of trivia about this episode. It's the second episode that had to be re-recorded (this time due to background noise picked up on the microphones) and that the Daleks were initially going to be designed by Ridley Scott but, owing to scheduling, the task was passed to Raymond Cusick, who created the familiar pepperpot design. With a budget of £700 (about £18,000 today), Cuisick was able to build 4 complete Daleks.