I was six years old when I discovered Doctor Who. Like most six year olds who discover Doctor Who, my first thought after discovering there were MORE stories was to want to see every possible Dalek adventure. So when I saw that the Day of the Daleks VHS cover was plastered with Daleks, I simply had to see it! I recall being disappointed at the time at how little the titular Daleks featured in the adventure, but still really enjoying the adventure. 25 years on, it’s still a firm favourite with many reasons to enjoy this four part story.
To begin with, despite the name, this isn’t really a Dalek story. Author Louis Marks originally wrote the story imagining a completely different alien race as the foe, before the BBC publicity machine had the great idea to bring back the Daleks to arouse interest in the brand new Season 9. While the Daleks have a disappointingly short amount of screen time, this is more than compensated by the quality of the story itself.
Still trapped on earth, the Doctor is summoned by the Brigadier to Auderly House, home to top British diplomat Sir Reginald Styles. The world is on the brink of a nuclear war, and Styles has been disturbed by an unusual armed apparition, who attempted to murder him before vanishing into thin air. While Styles jets off to try and arrange a peace summit, the Doctor discovers that the apparition was a guerrilla from earth’s future, sent in the belief that Styles caused a nuclear war that left Earth devastated, and unable to repel a Dalek invasion.
The story rises to a thrilling climax as the Doctor and Jo are transported into earth’s future to discover mankind living in slavery. Meeting with the guerrillas they realise that the war began due to a bomb blast as Sir Reginald’s peace summit – but that the bomb was detonated by one of the guerrillas! The Doctor is forced to race the Daleks back to the 1970s to save the peace conference, and prevent a global catastrophe.
The plot is stunning in its simplicity and its brilliance, exploring creatively the classic time travel paradox of past actions impacting the future. Not only do the regular cast put in a superb turn, they are complemented by outstanding performances by the guest cast also. If one ignores the Dalek focus, the story works exceedingly well – it’s a bad “Dalek” story, but superb science fiction.
There is however one but. The story was rather let down by some production decisions – not least the poor quality of the Dalek voices. You do have to get past that – or embrace a crazy alternative option. The BBC Restoration Team took the unusual step when preparing the DVD to create a Special Edition of the story, replacing the Dalek voices and improving many of the special effects. The results were so good that this story could pass muster in contemporary Doctor Who – and that is high praise indeed! I know fans are very much divided on changing anything about the original stories; Day of the Daleks is unusual for the near universal praise for the Special Edition. It is very much worth the price of the DVD.
You can watch both the original and Special Edition of Day of the Daleks in this DVD release, available on Amazon
Next time: You resemble very closely a man determined to be dictator of the world …
Dan Talks Doctor Who 
One of my favourites. I was 5 in 1972 and it was also the 1st time I had seen the daleks along with the Ogeron’s. My memory is vague about it, I just remember how great I thought it was. I couldn’t really remember much about it but as with one of the commentators on the DVD my memory of it was that their were hoards of daleks attacking the house! How untrue when you watch the DVD. The special edition is fantastic though and actually does bring that false memory to a reality.
LikeLike
My biggest problem with Day of the Daleks is that when I first discovered Doctor Who, I ran to my local library to get the novelizations and Day of the Daleks was the first one I found. (It was number one in the American rebranded Pinnacle series). I read it and loved it.
It was one of the first stories adapted and Uncle Terrance did a great job with it. He really added a lot, embellishing some things and making the story just come alive in my imagination. And so it was when I finally saw it on my PBS station a year or so later, it didn’t (and couldn’t) live up to the images I’d painted in my head of the story and I was disappointed with it.
In some way, I never quite got over that. And while Day is the best of the Pertwee Dalek stories, it’s still not among my favorites.
But the novel…boy is that good. I listened to the audio release recently and wow, it holds up well.
LikeLike
Pingback: 25 – Enlightenment |
Pingback: Remembering Jon Pertwee |