Mission to the Unknown

Few stories sound as good as "Mission to the Unknown", which is a shame for at least a couple of reasons. First off, we'll almost certainly never get to see it and secondly, it sounds annoyingly like it could have been one of the best stories of the season, Doctor or no. The chittering, squarking soundtrack makes for the best audio jungle Doctor Who ever pulled off, and the story of a group of stranded astronauts facing transmutation into spiky Varga plants is hard, desperate and gloriously macho sixties space opera.

Best of all, "Mission" paints a wide backcloth around its studio-bound adventure that expands the Doctor Who Universe, for a short time only, from living in a box to being a real, vast, dangerous place. Crucially, in almost every other Dalek story we meet a small disparate group of the creatures. And even when there are more implied, such as in "Planet of the Daleks", they're stored in a big room. When the Doctor meets humans, he doesn't assume they're the only examples of their species in the Universe, yet all too frequently defeat of the Daleks is explicably limited to disposing of the four of them the Doctor encounters.

The difference between the multi-locationed settings of "The Chase" and those of "The Daleks Masterplan" is that of implied proximity. "The Chase" sees the TARDIS arriving in a sequence of unrelated sketches. "Masterplan" simply explores the vastness of the Universe it exists in. And what a Universe it is, full of rocket ships, alliances between creatures from all over the galaxy and of space security agents being hunted through screeching jungles by never-more-menacing Daleks.

And there's no shortage of monsters either - a menagerie in fact. I've always thought of "Star Wars" as being thematically closer to Doctor Who than "Star Trek", mainly due to the infinite variety of alien creatures that inhabit its Universe, indicative of the limitless imaginations of the designers. There's no evidence of even trying in a galaxy of latex foreheads, but like Doctor Who in "Mission to the Unknown", creativity has been stretched to the max in creating a myriad of versatile life-forms with grizzly, outer-worldly voices to match.

Doctor Who was moving so fast when "Mission" was made that you get no impression of any trepidation in this Doctor-less story at all. In fact with the thrill of the Daleks to ease the transition, viewers could probably empathise more easily with the tragic Lowry or Corey than they could Vicki, Dodo or other of the Doctors less-than-engaging companions of the surrounding time. When the Doctor turns up in "Masterplan" he almost feels like a guest in this exciting, deadly serious adventure, at least until he makes off with the Tarranium Core and becomes a part of it. "Victory!" chorus the Daleks at the conclusion of this lone gem. And you can't help but agree.