A Bluffer’s Guide to Doctor Who: The Nightmare Begins
The Daleks have a master plan. And thus begins an epic.
Describe The Nightmare Begins in six words:
The Daleks as SPECTRE kill Bond
This is…the Dalek epic
Episodes: 91 — 96 (I know, I know. I’ll explain what I’m doing in a moment.)
What Happens?
A lot!
Any behind-the-scenes gossip?
A little but it’s kind of a problem in approaching this story.
Observations:
Okay…
The usual way of approaching these stories does this one a disservice. This is known as The Daleks’ Master Plan and is the 12-part Hartnell Dalek epic that has a weird Christmas episode thrown in the middle. And if you want a Bluffer’s Guide of The Daleks’ Master Plan, that basically serves as a description.
The thing is, that’s because that’s all there is too really know about it. Elizabeth Sandifer does a much better job at setting the context around this than I could so I recommend you have a read of it here.
What I can do is try to recreate what it would be like to watch it. Observations and hot takes are scattered along the way. It’s simply unfair to this story to make broad observations over twelve episodes. Let’s settle for the first seemingly-complete chunk which I’ve titled The Nightmare Begins…
The TARDIS is in crisis. Steven is injured, the Doctor is worried. Next companion Katarina just looks around in awe. She doesn’t understand any of this. She thinks the Doctor is a god: How else would he have a box that is bigger on the inside? Why else would he save her? But the Doctor knows he is not a god, and knows that he can’t help Steven’s injuries. The Hartnell era often has its brand new stories directly follow on from the previous adventure. Never like this, though. This is new. The last adventure has had consequences. Katarina thinks the Doctor is a god but the Doctor know he isn’t: He’s relying on luck that the TARDIS lands somewhere with medicine for Steven. The Doctor is not a god. At the moment, he can hardly do triage.
We cut: Instantly, we recognise the look and the sound of this jungle. This is from that solo Dalek story. And already there’s chaos: some SSS agents are in trouble. Bret Vyon is one cool smooth individual. His partner, Gantry is paranoid. They’re trying to make contact with Earth to warn them about the Daleks. Earth is not picking up.
We cut: Instantly, we know that this is Earth and the people who Vyon is trying to contact. His message is flashing on a control panel. But it’s completely ignored. Two workers instead talk about sport and listening to Mavic Chen’s speech. Mavic Chen is the Guardian of the Solar System. He seems very charismatic. His interview is witty. The female worker, Lizan, is teased by her male co-worker for admiring Chen. This isn’t a crush, though. It is clear that the male co-worker, Roald, is apathic to politics. Lizan is interested in politics and sees Chen has a figure worth worshipping. A charismatic political figure? That’s worth noting.
Vyon is forced to give up trying to transmit a message. He is forced to leave the paranoid Gantry. And then he sees the TARDIS lands. It fades into view. The Doctor comes out. Vyon demands the key to the ship. The Doctor refuses, chuckling. The Doctor always belittles villains by not taking them seriously. We’ve seen it before: the Drahvins, the Monk, the Moroks, the Animus. It’s one of the Doctor’s standard tricks.
“Give me the key,” says Vyon, “or I’ll shoot you.”
And the tonal shift is massive. This is not how Doctor Who stories work.
Vyon enters the TARDIS and can’t believe it. He soon, however, gets rapidly impatient with Katarina. Katarina doesn’t understand anything. She doesn’t understand how the ship works. She doesn’t understand the scanner. And when Vyon tries to help the injured Steven, she doesn’t understand medicine (chiefly, she doesn’t understand the word “tablets”).
The Doctor finds a city. Determined to get help for Steven, he makes his way down. There he sees the Daleks. And a visitor has just arrived: Mavic Chen.
Of course, Mavic Chen was going to be in league with the Daleks. It’s not that it’s obvious by the story. This reveal is treated like the teaser in the middle of the episode for the commercial break (the BBC never had commercial breaks but included moments for them for shows to be sold overseas. These moments are obvious in 60s episodes by a fade-to-black at the midpoint). Which means, it’s just over 10 minutes. It’s been an intense 10 minutes with lots of new information; you’re not here seeing where it’s going just yet. No, it’s because Mavic Chen is so ‘othered’. Whatever he is, he is not Caucasian.
The Doctor runs back into the forest. The Daleks have found the TARDIS.
They don’t recognise it. This isn’t strange, yet. The Daleks have only recognised the Doctor once: in The Chase. The Daleks not recognising the Doctor is standard. But the Doctor recognises them. This is their fourth encounter.
And it’s different. It’s almost as if the Doctor know he has to stop them. In their first encounter, he started a rebellion against the Daleks just so he could get an important piece for the TARDIS to work. The second time, was more emotionally complex. He had to go to the Daleks’ headquarters to get his friends back, and landed in with a bunch of rebels. Morally outraged by the Daleks, yes, but not using that outrage to rebel.
The third time, they knew who he was and tried to hunt him down. He pitted them against another enemy and escaped.
This is the fourth time, and the sight of a ship they don’t recognise, the Daleks decide to drive out the spies. They burn down the forest. Animals screech as their habitats are purged. There are long shots of Daleks burning down trees, turning them to ash.
The Doctor runs. He finds Vyon, Steven and Katarina. He tells Vyon about Chen. About the Daleks. About the city.
Vyon starts making plans but the Doctor isn’t having any of it: “Now,” he roars, “will you listen to me? Sir?”
Vyon shuts up. “If the Daleks are doing something drastic,” says the Doctor, “Then we have to stop the Daleks!”
The Daleks are having a conference. These are the strange creatures that they had a meeting with before. The plan is continuing.
Chen fits well with these others. He chats to Zephon of the Fifth Galaxy, who’s true figure is obscured by a dark robe. Zephon over-values his importance. The Daleks want to start the meeting but Zephon wants to go for a walk. “They will not start the meeting without me,” he arrogantly boasts.
He heads off and is almost immediately ambushed. The Doctor takes his robes while Vyon, Steven and Katarina take over Chen’s ship. The Doctor’s tricks don’t work on Vyon, but they work on others: the person that disguised himself as Maximillian Petuallian, a French Prefect, and a Saxon traveller is now using that trick against the Daleks.
At the conference, Chen reveals the taranium core. A MacGuffin, certainly. But it sounds ominous. It comes from one of the dead planets in the Solar System. The word “dead” has a certain ring. And the Daleks have an association with dead planets since the beginning.
Vyon takes over the ship (Which he does, brilliantly, by entering with his gun to the crowd of shocked pilots and says “I’m taking over this ship.” If the Doctor’s bag of tricks are allowed to work against the Daleks, then Vyon’s trick of using his gun and declaring statements with certainly is allowed to work too).
But then Zephon gains consciousness. He raises the alarm. The conference room becomes panicked. The delegates flee, sirens sound, Daleks swing from corridor to corridor for the intruder. And in the chaos, the Doctor snatches the taranium core. He runs again. He gets to the ship. Despite everything, they escape.
That’s been two episodes. Doctor Who has rarely been that action-packed before. It shows no sign of slowing.
Zephon is blamed for the taranium core being stolen. He protests. The Daleks exterminate him. Then they instruct Chen to get it back. Chen is involved with the Daleks to achieve more power. But while he is in charge of the Solar System, here he is a lackey of the Daleks. He resents this. But he can’t do anything about it. For now, he must obey.
Things aren’t going well for our heroes. They listen to Marc Cory’s tape that they have found. It tells us nothing we don’t know already.
Then, the ship shudders. They’re caught in the gravitational pull of a planet. (Although, Hartnell says “gravitational point”: Maybe it is something different than just a ‘pull’).
A penal colony for the Solar System. It even has a name: Desperus.
“If it’s one of your prison planets, surely there are guards and wardens there to help us?” asks the Doctor.
“There aren’t any,” retorts Vyon. “The only crafts that stop there are prison ships bringing other criminals. If we stop there, we’ll be left there to rot the rest of our lives away.”
And the Daleks know this. They’re in pursuit.
The ship lands… softly. The Daleks are controlling it. The Doctor and company realise this, and that this might provide them an opportunity to lift-off. Vyon and Steven repair the ship. The Doctor and Katarina protect the ship by having a live wire around a swamp. Convicts attack them but are repelled.
The convicts are interesting: They’re scruffy, unkempt. All male. They look incredibly hairy.
Katarina is also interesting. She still doesn’t understand what’s going on. And yes, this is a hindrance. In a few scenes, Katarina is going to die. But these scenes, right now, while tense, don’t give any indication of that.
Katarina dies because producer John Wiles and story editor Donald Tosh felt that as she’s from the past, she wouldn’t understand anything beyond her own time. This is nonsense and worth discrediting. The show will have companions from the past in a few years time and these companions will be incredibly popular. But also, every other Trojan was written to be witty and resourceful, to put what they encountered into their own words. Katarina just babbles. There exist a parallel universe, where Adrienne Hill’s Katarina is debated as a great companion.
But not here. After returning to the ship for take-off, the Doctor remembers he didn’t close the airlock. As the ship takes off, a convict grabs Katarina and holds her at knifepoint.
The Doctor, Vyon and Steven try to manage the hostage situation. It doesn’t go well. The convict wants to go to the nearest planet: Kembel. As in, the planet our heroes have just escaped from. All they can do is pretend that they are.
Really, they’re going to Earth. And the Daleks are tracking this too. The Dalek Supreme orders Chen to intercept them. Meanwhile, the pursuit ship that followed them to Desperus is destroyed for their failure.
The hostage situation is deteriorating. It reaches the ponit where Katarina reaches for a button to open the airlock. Steven screams at her not too. He screams for her.
She presses the button, the airlock opens, and she and the convict are swept into the vacuum.
She dies.
Her corpse floats in the stars. The camera lingers. Indeed, this was filmed in advance of this serial. It was Adrienne Hill’s first thing she shot.
Our heroes spend a moment reflecting on her. “I hope she found her place of perfection,” says the Doctor.
They arrive on Earth just outside Central City. Vyon organises a meeting with Daxtar, a friend of his that he believes will be able to help them warn the appropriate authorities about the Daleks and Chen’s involvement.
Chen is ready to intercept them. He is introduced to Sara Kingdom: a SSS agent like Vyon. Chen’s advisor tells him that Kingdom is the toughest agent they have. Impressed with her loyalty and dedication to duty, Chen tasks her with killing the “traitors” and getting the taranium core back.
Meeting with Daxtar, he believes their story. Vyon is convinced that finally, they have a chance. After three and a half episodes, and Katarina’s death, you begin to think so too. Let’s say this is a seven-parter: well the cliffhanger is obviously going to be Kingdom encountering them. The next episodes will feature Chen’s political opponent who probably is going to be Caucasian. The Daleks will try to invade Earth with the delegates. Earth will be under siege. Chen, now targeted by the Daleks will reveal he has the plans for the Time Destructor. The Doctor and Steven will make it. The Daleks will enter Central City and Vyon leads Daxtar and Kingdom in the fight to give the Doctor time to make it. He does, the Daleks are destroyed. Chen is killed in the process. Vyon becomes advisor to the new Guardian who organises a peace treaty with the other delegates. The Doctor and Steven say their farewells and leave. If Kingdom sees the error of her ways, maybe she can replace Katarina.
Or something along those lines.
Except, Daxtar talks about the taranium core. The Doctor points out that they never mentioned the taranium core to Daxtar, which means Daxtar must be involved. Bret shoots Daxtar.
Kingdom suddenly bursts in. Vyon is glad to see her until he realises her mission. She shoots Vyon. This is a big dramatic tonal shift. This story now has snapped a way out.
The Doctor and Steven run, imagining Vyon is just behind them. They enter a room to hide from the pursuing Kingdom. It is white and vast. Kingdom enters, gun in hand, demanding the taranium core. The room lights up and suddenly the three figures: the Doctor, Steven and Kingdom begin to glow. The screen almost turns white with the exposure. We see them float through a starscape and they wake up on another planet.
The biggest damage to this story’s reputation, is that for a very long time, it was built-up and hyped. Now, I personally believe that the hype is worth it. But that’s because I first saw part of this story in 2004. 2004 was an important year for The Daleks’ Master Plan because that’s when it’s second episode, “Day of Armageddon” was found and commercially released. This episode lives up to the hype. It shows the gritty and tense action adventure this story was promoted as in fan circles. The story that killed off its companions. A story that was so scary and violent, Australia didn’t buy it.
Because before then, the first taste of this story fans could see was the surviving episode five, “Counter Plot”. This episode stopped The Daleks’ Master Plan feeling like the best bits of The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and began a re-evaluation where fans admitted that this was from the mind that brought us The Chase and The Keys of Marinus.
This is a much slower episode. Chen seems desperate here and his advisor seems to be plotting to take over Chen’s position. While some good palace intrigue this could make, it’s done by Chen having a megalomaniacal rant and then his advisor, Karlton, saying to himself that he will be the second-highest person in authority. Which… is lame. Who wants to be the second-highest? You’re already the second-highest in the Solar System?
There’s also a sequence in which the Daleks don’t know what mice are. And for fans, this came across as bad comedy.
However, that’s what happens when we watch ‘orphan’ episodes out of context. “Counter Plot” is not representative of the whole. If you had one episode of The Chase in the archive, you could safely say “Yes, that’s basically it.” What this is, is a moment to breathe. And after four episodes (or four weeks), a breath is what is needed.
The Doctor, Steven and Sara Kingdom wake up. They’re on a swampy planet. The Doctor recognises this as Mira and that the inhabitants are invisible.
Karlton discovers that the room was part of an experiment in matter transmission, and that there’s no way to get them back.
Chen, angry that he has failed again and that he will suffer the same fate as Zephon (made all the more potent considering how the Daleks have exterminated Zephon and their own pursuit ships for failure, something lost when this episode is seen out of context), is convinced by Karlton to tell the Daleks he sent the thieves to Mira on purpose, to make sure there was no heat on Earth.
The Daleks land on Mira, find the mice that were sent as part of the experiment. Instead of being bad comedy, the Daleks not recognising mice is chilling. Because, the Daleks don’t understand it. All they recognise is that the box is sending signals to Earth. So they exterminate the mice. They kill them because they do not care about what they do not understand.
Steven and Sara also get a moment. Steven tells Sara their story. She refuses to beleive them but gradually does. And when Steven berates her for killing Vyon, she confesses that Bret Vyon was her brother. Sadly, now that she’s becoming a companion, she’s hardly the toughest SSS agent and starts to get a bit wet.
But that doesn’t last long, because in one of the show’s greatest cliff-hangers, the Daleks surround the Doctor and his friends. “It seems,” announces the Doctor, “that the Daleks have won.”
And it does seem that way. Cue credits.
Cue opening titles, cut to reprise and…
…the invisible monsters of Mira attack the Daleks. Desperate to get off Mira, the Doctor, Steven and Sara run away in the chaos and find the Dalek ship. They sneak on board and take off. They do this by having the Doctor pretend to surrender and have Steven impair the vision of one of the Daleks. Once on the ship, they lock themselves in the cockpit.
The hijacked ship is heading to Kembel. On the way, they make a copy of the taranium core: a fake. In trying to make it glow, Steven ends up “electrocuting” himself and is in a vegetative state.
They arrive. Mavic Chen and the Daleks are waiting. Sara (she’s Sara now, not Kingdom) acknowledges Chen as a traitor. The Doctor says he will not hand over the taranium core until he is outside the doors of his TARDIS. The Daleks have no choice but to agree.
They get to the doors. The taranium is handed over. Quickly, how heroes run inside. But the Daleks exterminate Steven.
They exterminate Steven. it almost seems like another loss.
Except, Steven keeps moving. From his electrocution, he has a force field that protects him. He quickly enters as the force field has dissipated. The Doctor and Sara fill him in on what’s happened: They have given the Daleks the fake taranium core. They take off.
It’s odd. This is a strange ending. It feels incomplete. It can’t end like this. But it’s been six weeks. Next week is Christmas. And after the horror this story has been, we still need that break. We might not even get it, as the Doctor looks at the dials on the TARDIS console and announces that the air outside is poisonous.
So, don’t go outside then? It seems so obvious that that’s what the response should be. Where in another story now, with Steven’s ridiculous escape. We’ll have to see what happens for Christmas.
References / Further Reading: