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Mavic Chen (Kevin Stoney), "Guardian of the
Solar System," sells out Earth to the Daleks!
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12 episodes: The Nightmare Begins, Day of Armageddon, Devil's Planet, The Traitors, Counter Plot, Coronas of the Sun, The Feast of Steven, Volcano, Golden Death, Escape Switch, The Abandoned Planet, Destruction of Time. Running Time: Approx. 291 minutes. Written by: Terry Nation, Dennis Spooner. Directed by: Douglas Camfield. Produced by: John Wiles.
THE PLOT:
The Doctor is in a state of desperation when the TARDIS materializes on the planet Kembal. Steven is in bad shape, the wound he took during the escape from Troy poisoned. Vicki is gone, and her replacement, the young Trojan handmaiden Katarina (Adrienne Hill) is willing to help, but has no frame of reference to understand any of what she's now experiencing. To all intents and purposes, the Doctor has only himself to rely on as he exits the TARDIS to try to find help for Steven.
Fortunately, Space Security Agent Bret Vyon (Nicholas Courtney) is also on Kembal, investigating the disappearance of agent Marc Cory. He has drugs that are able to quickly cure Steven. But he is being pursued by Daleks, who are preparing an invasion of Earth's solar system. Bret joins the time travelers, enlisting their aid to warn Earth of the impending attack.
The situation is even worse than it appears. The Daleks have joined in an alliance with forces from several galaxies - including our own. Mavic Chen (Kevin Stoney), the seemingly heroic "Guardian of the Solar System" and effectively Earth's leader, has sided with the Daleks. He has brought them a core of Taranium, a rare element that will power The Time Destructor, the Daleks' ultimate weapon. With this power, the Daleks will be unstoppable!
So the Doctor, disguised as one of the representatives, does the only thing he can: He steals it, rendering the Daleks weapon inoperable, and flees with his companions. But the Daleks and Mavic Chen are in close pursuit. They have no prospect of aid - Chen has branded them all traitors, with orders to Earth forces to kill them on sight!
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: He has several allies in this story, allowing us to see how he behaves differently toward each. He is highly protective of Katarina, gently encouraging her efforts to assist while doing all he can to keep her out of danger. He has more of a partnership with Steven and, later, Sara Kingdom, showing some willingness to listen to their thoughts and opinions. His relationship with Bret is more combative. There's respect on both sides, but also wariness, and the Doctor is outright disgusted when Bret kills one of Chen's associates in Episode Four. "You brainless idiot!" he shouts. "How many times have I told you about taking lives? We have other ways and means of dealing with evildoers... (and) now we shall never know whom we can trust!"
Steven: Continues to be headstrong. After the Doctor has created a false taranium core to use as a decoy, Steven suggests using gravity force to charge it, a suggestion promptly and somewhat patronisingly dismissed by the Doctor and Sara. Steven decides to do it anyway - Which does work, and allows the Doctor to fool the Daleks at a critical turn, but which also nearly kills Steven in the process. Unlike the Doctor, Steven responds well to Bret and works well with the Space Security Agent, seeming on the verge of developing a genuine friendship. He has also developed a healthy respect toward the Doctor by this point, deferring to his judgment more readily here than in previous stories, and even urging Sara early on to trust him.
Katarina: Never really understands the strangeness in which she finds herself, but she is able to contextualize it, to make the situation work within her frame of reference. The Doctor is a god, the Daleks are demons, and their journey is through the Underworld to a "Place of Perfection." She is useful where she can be, and knows just enough to stay out of the way where she can't be of use... And, oddly for a companion who was written out because of the limitations of her historical origin, she ends up showing more personality across the four episodes she's in of this story than her eventual replacement would show in almost twenty episodes!
Bret Vyon: Nicholas Courtney's Doctor Who debut, in a role that is not a million miles removed from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Bret is highly focused on his mission, but not to the exclusion of concern for his comrades. His arc is one of increasing suspicion - Which is understandable, given that his part of the story likely unfolds over no more than a few hours, in which time he loses a friend, discovers that a man he has idolized is a traitor, and watches helpessly as an innocent is blown out an airlock. Courtney's screen presence is immediately evident, as is his natural fit for military roles, and it's easy to see why he was remembered when the same director was casting Lethbridge-Stewart a few years later.
Sara Kingdom: The second of Jean Marsh's three Doctor Who roles. Sara is much like Bret. She is tightly-wound, unquestioning of orders, absolutely loyal to Mavic Chen. Steven berates her for her willingness to believe Chen's story that Bret is a traitor - Though it should be remembered that Bret also found it initially unthinkable that Chen had turned against Earth. When Sara meets Chen again, after his treachery has been revealed, she all but spits in his face, condemning him with a single, icy word: "Traitor!"
Mavic Chen: "You make your incompetence sound like an achievement." The Dalek Supreme accurately sums the story's human villain up with this observation. Chen has a silver tongue, spinning every situation to his advantage no matter how badly he himself has bungled things. One of his best scenes comes in Episode Six, as he turns the Dalek Supreme's potentially fatal accusation of failure back on the Daleks, ultimately putting them on the defensive as he observes how the Daleks have allowed the Doctor to steal a Dalek ship. "And you had the audacity to accuse me, Mavic Chen, of incompetence!" Chen is a pure, B-movie villain, about as close to a "Doctor Evil" character as you can get without actually using Mike Myers - right down to the pinkie gestures. Actor Kevin Stoney leans into this, going just enough over-the-top to make the camp villainy fun, while also maintaining enough of a reserve to convince us of Chen as a larger-than-life figure. Episodes Four and Five see some enjoyable and interesting interactions between Chen and his security chief, Karlton (Maurice Browning), who is clearly a confidante and who actually comes across as both smarter and more dangerous than Chen himself. Unfortunately, Karlton vanishes from the story after Episode Five, never to be so much as mentioned again, while Chen is reduced to a lunatic by the final installment.
The Meddling Monk: Episodes 8 - 10 are, in effect, a three-parter inside the larger arc, with the focus substantially on the return of The Time Meddler's monk (Peter Butterworth). Though these episodes see a sharp reduction in the pace and urgency of the main story, they do make for a fun diversion. Butterworth remains an engaging presence, and I enjoyed his attempts to barter with both the Daleks and the Doctor. He is once again sent off alive, but with a healthy serving of poetic justice, leaving the door wide open for another potential return. Such a return never occurred - Unfortunate, as I rather suspect the bumbling time meddler would have made a fun foil for Patrick Troughton's Doctor.
Daleks: "One Dalek is capable of exterminating all!" I've often said that one of the reasons the Hartnell era is my favorite is that, in broad strokes, almost anything the series would later do was first done (or at least indicated) here. The Daleks' Master Plan's portrayal of the Daleks foreshadows how they were brought back in the New Series, the Dalek's boast in Episode Ten very much in line with the relentless of the lone Daleks in Dalek and Resolution. In Episode Ten (an episode that fortunately exists!), we witness a battle between a large force of ancient Egyptians and a handful of Daleks. It is a slaughter, the Daleks exterminating scores of their attackers, with only a single Dalek getting overwhelmed during the fight. Scenes like that go a long way toward reinforcing these fundamentally rather silly-looking creatures as a genuine threat.
THOUGHTS:
At a full twelve episodes - thirteen if you include Mission to the Unknown, which is a direct prologue - The Daleks' Master Plan is an epic venture. A single narrative sustained for roughly three months of broadcast, or five hours of continued viewing, this features a multitude of guest characters, settings, plot turns, and villains.
Not to mention death. The Daleks' Master Plan has no compunctions about killing characters, including ones you might normally regard as untouchable. With Vicki written out in the previous story, this serial passes us from one temporary companion to another. Katarina carries over from The Myth Makers. Bret Vyon is introduced as a potential adversary in Episode One, then becomes a companion in all but name. Sara Kingdom is an adversary in Episode Four, then becomes a companion over the course of the rest of the story. Each of them has a strong enough personality for us to become attached, each of them is treated as a regular character... And by the end of the story, all three of them are dead, leaving the Doctor to decry the loss of life in the story's last spoken line:
"What a waste. What a terrible waste!"
The story is pure "B" movie nonsense, but for its first six episodes it is surprisingly gripping. The narrative does a good job of conveying a sense of urgency, with strong performances by the main cast and typically dynanic direction from Douglas Camfield, who remains '60's Who's best director. A wealth of existing footage from the story's first half reinforces how strong the production was: Episodes 2 and 5 exist in their entirety (along with Episode 10), and substantial clips exist from Episodes 1, 3, and 4 - including the series' first-ever companion death. This was Season Three's Event Serial, and the production values, which are far above the series' norm, reflect that.
For the first six episodes, this story was on track to earn a "9," possibly even a "10." But ultimately, the story just can't sustain for twelve episodes, and the pace falters significantly in the second half.
I'll be fair to The Feast of Steven, Classic Who's only Christmas special. It isn't particularly to my tastes, with the overly-frenetic slapstick-heavy scenes in a Hollywood studio more annoying than amusing - But it is also made very much as an episode in itself, and wasn't even packaged with the rest of the story when offered for sale abroad. The monk three-parter, however, would have been better as its own story. Episode Eight is a bit of a bore, but the Egypt episodes are quite enjoyable and the monk's fate is worth a solid laugh - But I can't help but think the monk deserved a serial of his own, and that these episodes end up being a diversion that takes away from the main plot. With very little effort, you could remove Episodes 7 - 10 from this serial in their entirety... And the story itself would be much stronger for it.
Overall, Doctor Who is far the richer for The Daleks' Master Plan. The story is B-movie nonsense, but it is thoroughly enjoyable, particularly for its first half. Twelve episodes is ultimately about four episodes too many, and it's easy enough to see why the series never deliberately attempted a single story on this scale again (The War Games' length was a desperate response to other scripts falling through; The Trial of the Time Lord was less a single story and more of an arc of multiple stories). But I'd always rather see a series reach beyond its grasp than play it safe, and despite its failings, this epic is rarely less than enjoyable, and intermittently brilliant.
Rating: 8/10.
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