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The Daleks
Pros
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The Daleks is brilliant
because it doesn’t outstay its welcome. You would think that seven
episodes is too many and generally it is. Anyone who has heard Uncle
Terrance and Uncle Barry complain about the format they inherited knows
that you just can’t sustain seven episodes. The flaws in that argument are
(a) the three seven part stories Terrance and Barry made are all brilliant
and (b) so is the Daleks. The reason it is so good – aside from
introducing the freaking Daleks – is that it is a nice, satisfying four
part story which you’re convinced is the end of the matter only for it to
suddenly become apparent that they’ve got to go back to the city they’ve
spent weeks escaping from.
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Just as An Unearthly Child
dismisses the idea that Doctor Who companions were always dim young ladies
who trip over and sprain their ankles, so the Daleks dismisses the idea
that Doctor Who was intended to be just for children. It working on
different levels for different viewers wasn’t something invented later to
keep the series going as its original audience grew up. It was there from
the very beginning. The Daleks is a parable about nuclear war –
specifically what would’ve happened if the Nazis had had a nuclear bomb.
Its one of history’s great near-misses told using grating machine
creatures and hippy pacifists.
-
Basically, everyone
involved just had a few really great weeks. Terry Nation, Raymond Cusick,
Verity Lambert, the cast, the sound guys and everyone else. Doctor Who
probably wouldn’t have become as big as it did without them. It might not
even have survived as anything more than a footnote in a serious
telehistorical reference work. Thirty or forty episodes, most of which no
longer exist, the surviving ones might’ve been released on DVD had the sci
fi classics range not been abandoned.
Cons
Phantasmagoria
Pros
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As the first of the regular
Big Finish releases to stand on its own without gimmicks, Phantasmagoria
is a moderate success. It uses the audio format well to depict things
which would’ve been too gruesome on television (walls made of flesh for
one) while never seeming too far away from something that could’ve been
made during the period. It’s almost like Talons of Weng Chiang for the
Davison era – the historical setting, the alien feasting on the energies
of his victims (in this case mental rather than physical) and the gothic
trappings of an era shot through the lens of a Hammer film.
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It has good radio voices, a
few neat plot twists and the regulars slot back into their roles as if
they’d never been gone. Mark Gatiss knows his era – and we know that the
Davison years was his era because it was for all the New Who luminaries –
and gives us a play which is both traditional enough to feel right and
different enough to feel needed.
Cons
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It is dull. Sorry and all
that but I've fallen asleep during "Phantasmagoria" and that isn't an
expression. I was listening to it - not intending to fall asleep - and
next thing I know, the music is playing and I've no idea what just
happened.
-
The era just isn't as
interesting as everyone thinks it is. By that I could mean either the age
of the dashing highwayman or the time the Fifth Doctor spent with Turlough.
Unlike later pairings such as Colin and Peri or Sylvester and Mel, it
doesn't feel as if BF want to reinvent the Doctor-Turlough relationship.
Perhaps the fact that Mark Strickson has other irons in the fire these
days meant they didn't see him as a long-term project. But what every the
reason, it feels a very dry and unambitious partnership.
The End of the World
Pros
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It looks really good. This
was the one where even the nay-sayers and the "I bet it'll still be
cardboard" mob had to put salt on their words and eat them. This isn't
just good for television - this is good full stop. This is what Michael
Grade wanted in 1985 but without having to (a) invent new technology and
(b) pay for any improvements.
-
It was basically a
whodunnit - Curse of Peladon with nobs on - and who doesn't love a
whodunnit?
Cons
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It was the beginning of the
series’ efforts to shoehorn in as many contemporary references and links
as it thought the audience would need to keep them watching something in
space. So Rose gets a bionic mobile phone so she can call her mum minutes
into her first adventure. The juke box scene where – hilariously – modern
music is considered classical (see "The Chase" for this joke done equally
cleverly). The mention of an iPod. And so on.
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This was also the story
where Davies decided that things in the future had to be MASSIVELY in the
future. No "year five thousand" for Russell. No. We have to go billions or
trillions of years into the future. So far into the future that they’ve
apparently started using fruit as numbers. But apart from that everything
is exactly the same as it is now. Including the National Trust.
-
Cassandra was no good. She
was rendered quite well and Zoë Wannamaker gives good vocals but somewhere
between the 2am "I've had a great idea" and the broadcast of "The End of
the World" the character became a terrible idea.
Conclusion
For me the weakest of the
three is Phantasmagoria. It doesn’t do anything wrong but it (rightly)
aims to be familiar and of its intended period. One can imagine it looking
not unlike Black Orchid or the Visitation. It is absolutely fine but
nothing special. The Daleks is the first Doctor Who classic. If they’d
never brought the Daleks back it would still be an outstanding serial. The
End of the World is big and silly and spectacular. A few of the jokes fall
flat but the story hangs together, the emotional bits work and the effects
proved that New Who would be able to compete visually with anything else
in the genre.
Ranking
The Daleks ~ 3
End of the World ~ 2
Phantasmagoria ~ 1
Totals
Classic series ~ 5
New Series ~ 5
Big Finish ~ 2
Alt Perspective
I decided to accompany this
series with a poll and thread elsewhere so the public (that's you) could
have your say. It seemed an ideal opportunity to demonstrate how out of
touch I am with the mood of the (inter)nation. The results, comments and
running total of these polls will be added as we go along. I could only
ask which was the best story, not the order in which pollsters would rank
them.
The Daleks
~ 52.94% The End of
the World ~ 29.41%
Phantasmagoria ~ 17.65%
"45 years later we're still talking about The Daleks as
excitedly as the first time. 3 years on, as wonderful as it was, we've
forgotten The End Of The World in the mist of all that's come since."
"I
can well remember not being sure before this started, wondering if Rose
was a fluke, and not knowing what to expect from a second episode. Then we
got The End of the World. I came away with a rosy feeling that 45 minute
stories could work really well."
"Phantasmagoria is a blip in the Doctor
Who universe, with little more than a vague passing mention ever likely to
be attributed to it [...] As a story, it was much more fun than either of
the other two stories in this poll, so although it seems a lot less
relevant, I prefer it over the other two and it gets my vote."
"[The
End of the World is] cheeky, irreverent, ridiculous, slim on plot, but
wondrously enjoyable, entertaining, moving, hilarious, exciting and all
those things - and just when you don't think it's going to get any better,
the last few minutes give us the haunting "there was a war, and we lost"
sequence. I love it!"
"Has to be 'The Daleks'. Yeah it's
episode too long, Eps 5 & 6 do get a bit ploddy, but other than that it's
a great story. And not simply because it introduced the Daleks."
"Ive gone for End of the World as its
one of the most underrated episodes of the new series. It was the first
glimpse of a truly modern approach (Britney), it looks fabulous, its
social political, funny, introduced us to great characters and offers the
first real all important glimpse of offering emotional attachment to the
audience (final scenes)."
"Definitely The Daleks - while it does
fall apart a bit in the second half, the first 4 episodes more than make
up for it."
Alt Totals
Classic series ~ 6
New Series ~ 4
Big Finish ~ 2
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