The Evil of the Daleks

The Doctor and Jamie pursue the stolen TARDIS and end up being transported back a century to the house of Theodore Maxtible, where the scientist Edward Waterfield’s daughter Victoria is being held captive by the Daleks, who plan to use the Doctor in order to spread mayhem throughout history.

The Evil of the Daleks has a fair few things wrong with it, any one of which would be enough to derail a story. I say this at the very start, because, miraculously, this story not only avoids being derailed, but manages to be one of the most moving, evocative and exciting Doctor Who stories of all time. It has everything that a good Doctor Who story should have. It has other things in it as well, but we’ll come to them later.

The story is based in three times and locations: London in 1966, Maxtible’s house in 1866 and Skaro. The main part of the story occurs in 1866, during the Victorian age. There are few of the tropes of Victorian fiction- no hansom cabs, no foggy streets of London, no street urchins etc. However, we are never in doubt that we are in 1866, because the events in the story reflect one important aspect of Victorian thinking- people believed in both science and magic. This was an age when practical science was becoming more than the experimental side of industry and navigation, and it was beginning to join with natural philosophy and specialised hobbies, such as geology. There was real scientific progress, but it had still not shaken off its associations with mysticism. In this story, we have Maxtible and Waterfield’s ‘time mirrors’. Maxtible’s theory (based on the findings of Faraday and others) is utterly ridiculous, but it is the type of theoretical wrong-turn that could have occurred in the Victorian era. Maxtible is driven by the alchemist’s quest to turn base metals into gold, one of the types of mysticism that formed the root of Western chemistry. Victoriana is not just an exotic backdrop- it forms a basis for the story itself.

The Daleks are brilliant here- their voices are very forceful and they are totally ruthless- even when they keep people alive for their own purposes, it is very clear that the prisoners are one wrong word away from extermination. The Dalek Emperor is a brilliant creation- the design is very impressive and the voice, although more expressive than a regular Dalek, has infinite malevolence. Then, there is the Daleks’ quest for the Human Factor- an idea that is very simplistic on paper, but used well, as it is here, it becomes a meditation of the nature of the Daleks themselves. The Daleks are devious enough to actually fool the Doctor for most of the story.

The guest performances are excellent across the board. John Bailey is thoroughly convincing as the troubled Waterfield, a man who, though he is in an unbearably desperate situation, never allows himself to lose his sense of decency and respect for human life. Marius Goring is great as Maxtible, the ‘man of property’ who is consumed by avarice. New regular Deborah Watling makes Victoria instantly appealing. However, the regulars are not to be outdone and Troughton and Hines give their most impressive performances yet. There is an all-too-rare instance of development of the interaction between the Doctor and his companion. The Doctor is more manipulative than he has ever been before and Jamie at first feels betrayed, and then feels disgusted with the Doctor- until the Doctor proves exactly what his priorities were all along.

So what’s wrong with it? Like The Faceless Ones, it shows signs of having been padded out to increase the number of episodes. The part where the Doctor follows clues to lead him to Waterfield is nonsense- the clues are ridiculous and the fact that Perry shows up to tell the Doctor where to meet Waterfield makes the clues redundant in the first place. There are some redundant characters- there is no reason at all for Toby to be in the story- he coshes Jamie and takes him to Terrall, only for Jamie to return to the house. Indeed, it is never made clear what significance Terrall has to the story, if at all. Episode 5, in particular has little in it that is necessary to the story and is not interesting enough to justify its inclusion. There are also problems with the plotting, most tellingly, why are the humanised Daleks not destroyed as soon as the Doctor has finished- indeed, why is the positronic brain holding the Human Factor not destroyed as soon as it is used to discover the Dalek Factor? The dénouement relies on this, which is very problematic. The only existing episode, Episode 2 is excellent and telesnaps indicate that that quality was maintained throughout. Surviving footage of the final battle, however, shows that it was not 100% convincing (it used the Marx toy Daleks which, for some reason, were a different shape to the real ones) but not so much to drag the viewer out of the experience. Derek Martinus directs with style and the design work is exemplary.

A major factor in this story’s success is David Whitaker’s script. Full of wonderful dialogue and characterisation, its strength more than makes up for its many flaws in plotting. Even the redundant characters are well written (and performed) making this a very easy story to listen to.

The story ends, of course, with the ‘final end’ of the Daleks. They would, of course, return, but that barely dulls the power of the story. This story is the first ‘event’ finale in Doctor Who and packs a similar punch as the finales of Doctor Who in the 21st century. This is a wonderful story- flawed in many ways, but having so many wonderful scenes, concepts, characters, images and dialogue that it is easy to forgive its shortcomings.

NEXT: The Tomb of the Cybermen