The First Doctor with
Susan, Ian and Barbara
Follows on from An Unearthly Child
Background
Only the second ever Doctor Who story to be aired, The Daleks can be quite a daunting
serial to watch for the uninitiated – even hard-core fans of the classic era
have been known to find it hard going, and I certainly did the first time I
watched it. Re-watching it, however, having become more familiar with the First
Doctor and his companions and the structure of their stories, I find it quite
delightful, packed full of character insight and development.
This is one of those stories where the gulf between the old
and the new is at its widest, so it is important to bear in mind the difference
in structure between Doctor Who in 1963 and the 21st century rebooted show.
When we modern viewers look back on classic serials like this one, we tend to
think of each multi-episode adventure as the equivalent of a single episode of
the rebooted show, and are therefore aghast at the thought of that single
episode plot being stretched out across seven instalments. Yet taking that
approach to this story does it a huge disservice because it was never intended
to be viewed in that way– just as a marathon cannot be viewed in the same way
as a sprint. A serial like The Daleks
has more in common with a mini-series like Torchwood's Children of Earth, in fact, in that although the episodes are not
standalone, they are self-contained, each telling its own smaller story which
then feeds into the next, all adding together and building to form the larger
whole; although the complete mini-series may be considered as one story, those
episodes were made to be viewed individually, over a period of time.
When The Daleks
began its run, in December 1963, it was not known by that name, nor was it
known to viewers that this was going to be a seven-episode adventure that could
later be known under that umbrella title, because every episode of the show had
its own title and all formed part of one long ongoing story. So, for instance, what
we now consider to be the opening episode of this serial, the episode titled
'The Dead Planet', was to viewers simply the fifth instalment of the ongoing
story of the Doctor and his companions, picking up where the last episode, 'The
Fire-maker', left off. When approached in that way, the structure and pace of
the serial begin to make a lot more sense.
Bearing all of this in mind, therefore, The Daleks is best approached not as a single entity with one plot
stretched thin across seven episodes, which it isn't – the primary story arc
running through the serial in fact divides neatly into two main plotlines, the
one laying the groundwork for and setting up the other – but rather as a series
of individual episodes, each a discrete entity with its own story to tell while
also adding up to a larger whole. The overall story is long and drags a bit in
places, there's no doubt about that, but the focus is largely on the characters
rather than the plot, which is always going to be the way to my heart. So, if
you watch this serial expecting it to be one long exciting story all about
Daleks from start to finish, you are going to be sorely disappointed and also
rather bored, but if you watch it as it was intended, with each 25-minute episode
viewed on its own terms as part of an ongoing story about the characters and
their adventures, it is a lovely serial to watch.
That said, this is the Doctor's first encounter with the
Daleks, and is well worth watching for that reason alone. Just think about it
for a moment. That long and tangled history he has with them, all those furious
confrontations and epic battles, the Time War and the destruction of
Gallifrey…all of that can be traced back to this story, this first encounter,
which set the tone for everything that has followed. For anyone who ever
watched the Ninth Doctor adventure Dalek
and wondered what the backstory was, well, that backstory begins right here, in
The Daleks.
