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Terry Nation – who made his fortune by
reselling used cord, twine and thick hemp cable – famously wrote for
Tony Hancock. The famous comedian. But Hancock didn’t like Nation’s
jokes and sacked him. So what on earth made Nation think he would have
more success writing comedy sketches for Daleks than he did for the
foremost comic actor of his generation?
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Ian Chesterton has made a habit of wearing
exactly the right clothes for the story he’s in. For "An Unearthly
Child" he wears a smart shirt and tie, for "The Web Planet" he wears an
atmospheric density jacket and for "The Chase" he wears a horribly
ill-judged thing that is painful to look at.
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I can’t help but think that the novel of
this story would’ve seemed much more authentic had they filled it with
typos and printed several pages upside down.
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The word "inept" springs to mind when one
considers all the gaffs, blunders, errors, mistakes, misjudgements,
faults, flaws and cock ups. It is a miracle they got the titles right.
Well, apart from "The Death of Doctor Who" but we’ll forgive them
because they knew no better in those days.
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The Daleks launch their death squad on a
mission to execute our heroes. Backed by some sub-Johnny Dankworth
lounge jazz. There is a reason George Lucas didn’t hire Ronnie
Hazelhurst to score the attack on the Death Star.
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Kill Dill. Go on – kill him. You know we
want to. Is there any reason, on this world or the next, why the Daleks
wouldn’t kill Morton Dill? How can we live in an age where you can get
murdered for looking at a teenager in the wrong tone of voice but not if
you laugh at an alien war machine with no sense of pity?
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They don’t do much with the idea of Vicki
being left behind in the Doctor’s haste to escape. Which is a shame as
the format of the series at the time would’ve given the storyline some
real impact. These days the Tardis can go anywhere they want it to but
in 1965 lost meant lost. Instead they arsed about with the world’s
tallest William Hartnell impersonator and some poor quality dubbing.
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Though the robot duplicate isn’t as bad as I
remembered it being. It being an extremely silly thing to even try to do
under the circumstances hardly made it unique for "the Chase". Shot from
the right angles (and they do get the right angles occasionally,
probably more from luck than intent) it works remarkably well. It’s only
the dozen or so shots where you can clearly see his face that ruin the
magic.
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The confrontation between the two appears to
be two cameras on opposite sides of William Hartnell cutting back and
forth to imply a stand-off. The cuts are interspersed with Wimbledon
style shots of Ian and Barbara looking back and forth.
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Why would humanity send a terraforming squad
that only had the mechanical ability to grip Dalek-shaped objects and
set fire to things?
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It is nice to see Ian and Barbara get the
send-off they deserved. As companions they have never really been
bettered. For all the talk of Rose being more "realistic" than any of
her predecessors, Ian and Barbara were more believable in their simple
desire to survive and eventually get home than Rose ever was as a
galactic sight-seer.
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Terry Nation – having scored such a hit with
"The Keys of Marinus" - revisits the multiple-mini-stories theme. Except
without the ‘stories’ aspect. Here we have people arriving in a place,
wandering round, leaving and then some Daleks arrive in the same place,
trundle around and leave shortly after. It’s like me going to the
Trafford Centre. It isn’t a story. It’s just something that fills time.
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Like the space time visualiser – perhaps the
most obvious fifteen minutes of padding in the show’s history. You can
say what you like about Pertwee’s lengthy car/plane/bike/helicopter/boat
chases but at least they are entertaining. Here we have four people
watching television for a bit before the aerial needs adjusting.
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The space time visualiser only seems to be
there so the Doctor can find out that the Daleks are coming to get him.
But the sheer absurdity of the machine accidentally finding that exact
scene at that exact moment is breathtaking. Not to mention that the
Doctor doesn’t need to know about the Daleks until the cliffhanger at
the end of part 1. "Shit – there’s a Dalek – what are they doing here?"
is a much better piece of drama than "Oh right – the Daleks have
arrived. I thought they would. Long time no see."
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Vicki seems to know an awful lot about the
Beatles – even being able to find one specific television broadcast of
no more than a couple of minutes in length – considering she’s never
heard their music. She must’ve heard some contemporary stuff to know
their genre but has never actually heard the Beatles. So we can only
assume that Apple Corps remain bastards even in the twenty fifth
century.
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It would’ve been cool had the "Fab Four"
aged up and done a cameo appearance as they supposedly wanted to do. If
only so Lance Parkin would have to come up with a fantastically
convoluted reason to explain John Lennon’s survival.
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Bab’s loses her second cardigan in as many
stories. Shockingly, the Time Team left "number of woolly garments
destroyed" off their bank of running totals.
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Why is everything touted as "the new Daleks"
so utterly rubbish? Did no one think that Daleks were a success because
they looked seriously dangerous, sounded fantastically evil and never
stopped talking about horrible things? Obviously not as the Zarbi, the
Mechanoids and the Quarks all looked silly, sounded feeble and weren’t
exactly masters of their own fate (let alone the galaxy).
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We know what happened when "The Mutants"
became "Doctor Who and the Daleks". We know what happened when "The
Dalek Invasion of Earth" became "Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D." We
can only shudder at what would’ve happened had "The Chase" been the
third Dalek movie. The visualiser padding would probably have lasted
twice as long, the emotional sub-plot of Ian and Barbara would’ve been
dropped and Jim Dale would’ve prat-fallen his way through a turn as
Steven Taylor – space pilot – and his cousin, Morton Taylor – space
bumpkin.
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If humanity can build robot men that can
destroy Daleks by 1996, how come we got our asses handed to us in
2150AD? When they landed in Chelsea, couldn’t we just have unleashed an
army of Frankensteins and Draculas to toss them back to Skaro? Or did
Peking ban that too?
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It is no wonder the Daleks are cross in this
story. Their civilisation has finally reached the point where they have
time travel capability but it has coincided with positive discrimination
in the workplace and they’ve had to take a special needs Dalek as part
of a quota.
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If this story ever comes out on DVD – and
we’ll need Mark (sorry, MArk) Ayres to work his magic on the soundtrack
for that to happen – I hope it comes with an interactive bingo game
where you can pop the disc into your PC and print off a list of Terry
Nation clichés. Then, you and some friends of the same gender, can sit
and cross them off when they occur. The first one to complete their list
gets to leave and doesn’t have to watch the rest of the story.
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Steven seems to have knocked up his wooden
climbing frame himself. If so, where did he get all that wood from? Was
his cell especially well furnished when he arrived? Do Mechanoids come
flat-packed in crates? Were a few of the Xerons left in the studio after
the recording of "The Space Museum"?
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And, after
two years of trying, while stopping Barbara from falling from the ledge,
Ian finally gets in her pants. Albeit only a hand. But sometimes a hand
is all you need.
