The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Sometime after 2164 the Earth has fallen to the Daleks, and the TARDIS brings the Doctor and company back to London during the final days of the Dalek operation. The travellers are separated and fall in with various factions of the remaining humans who are actively resisting and fighting back against the Daleks. Over the course of their separate journeys to the centre of Dalek operations - a vast mine in what used to be Bedford - new allies are discovered and new friendships are made; the future of the Earth hangs in the balance and Susan finds her own personal future linked with that of a young man named David Campbell.

It's not unusual for Doctor Who to go outside of the studio and shoot on location nowadays - indeed almost all of season 26 in 1989 was shot on location - but Dalek Invasion was the first major use of outdoor locations for the show. The bulk of the location work was around Barbara's journey across a deserted and ruined London in the company of the cranky Jenny as they assist a man in a wheelchair named Dortman to flee the retribution of the Daleks; this is where the famous scene of the Daleks crossing Westminster Bridge comes from, as well as patrols of them trundling past Nelson's Column and other landmarks. Years later in theatres 28 Days Later will revisit some of these locations almost matching the shots used here to imagine a deserted London populated by rampaging zombies. There are the odd zombies about in this story, though, but less of the flesh eaters and more of the dehumanized slaves of the Daleks, the Robomen.

The Daleks get a bit of a makeover for their second appearance, featuring a disc attached to their casings presumably for communications and a thicker base for handling terrain and making them taller. There are two new types of Dalek as well; while the regular forces are still silver/grey machines with blue globes, there is a "pilot" class with a black top dome and an alternating black and grey colour scheme to its lower section and an all-black model which is identified as the Supreme Dalek. Given the limited space available in studios the sheer number of Dalek machines on set is surprising; in one shot I counted at least six moving units (as opposed to two dimensional cardboard models in the background used to swell the ranks once more). Ian is horrified to see the Daleks on Earth as one emerges from the murky waters of the Thames, having thought the species dead on Skaro, but the Doctor is quick to remind him that their adventure there was far in the future and they are now seeing the Daleks at the height of their power. These Daleks are a full scale occupying force with considerable air support from their flying saucers, which do not look all that terrifying in the original version of the show but are revamped in an optional CGI enhanced version on the DVD. (And it's nice to see that the same model they are using for the CGI version is the same one in the current series).

The TARDIS crew undergoes its first change here, as Susan is drawn to and falls in love with resistance fighter David. She is torn between her new love for him and her devotion to the Doctor but at only sixteen years old is she really in love or just a big mushpot of jumbled emotions, despite her alien origins. The Doctor spots the developing interest over their time with the resistance fighters and in a sudden twist decides to make the choice for her and locks her out of the TARDIS, abandoning her on Earth and leaving her behind with a casual promise to return and see her again. Looking at the series from a future perspective it almost seems cruel of the Doctor to maroon her in one place and one time, considering how limited and humiliated he is when its his turn in a few years, but the revisionist elements who have been providing the additional novels and audio stories to fit in between the early episodes have worked their own angles on this and its a bit easier to accept having read and listened to them respectively. In The Time Travellers the Doctor alludes to their involvement being noticed and how he must protect Susan from the fallout that is to come, so his opportunity to drop her off somewhere safe can be seen as an act of protection more than one of abandonment. There is talk that the Jenny character who became Barbara's own companion during the adventure was slated to replace Susan on the TARDIS crew, and she was perfect material given that she was an orphan, but I imagine the production team decided there was only room for one cranky character in the TARDIS and they opted out. We do not get to see exactly how Ian and Barbara react to Susan's departure as the exchange between her and Grandfather is the sole focus of the scene it happens in.

There will be new companions to follow as is the tradition of the series, but for now there's opportunity to break from the televised episodes again and see how the smaller TARDIS crew carries on without Susan and how Susan herself carries on without them...

NEXT EPISODE: VENUSIAN LULLABY