Death to the Daleks

The TARDIS experiences a total power failure while en route to the planet Florana, stranding the Doctor and Sarah on a rocky barren world called Exxilon. Also on Exxilon is an expedition from Earth sent to mine for a substance called parrinium which can cure the plague that is ravaging the colonies of the empire, and without power and under constant attack from the natives, their mission does not stand any chance of success. A Dalek taskforce arrives as well, experiencing the same power drain and rendering the monsters defenseless, and an uneasy alliance is formed to determine how to restore power and escape the planet. All evidence points to a gleaming white city which the Exxilons worship as a god. But the Doctor knows that any alliance with the Daleks is doomed, and once they have weapons again they will resume their murderous ways.

This one often gets panned as a bad Dalek story but I don’t really see how anyone can really say that. The Daleks themselves are painted a very shiny silver so they look pretty striking, and they are put right out of their element for a change with their greatest enemy right there in front of them and no power to kill him. Here’s where we see some Dalek ingenuity at work, with them designing a machine gun weapon for themselves so they can fire projectiles and regain their advantage over the others. How, I ask, can this be a bad Dalek story? There’s also this opinion in Doctor Who that a companion isn’t really a companion until they face the Daleks. This criteria makes Sarah legit now - how can THAT be bad?

It’s well moody as well with the foggy greynesss of Exxilon as a backdrop but a distinctly different sound to the score this time; there’s no electronic component to the music, just woodwinds and a little bit of percussion. And then there are moments where there is no music to accentuate the tension of a scene, just as effective in my books. The Exxilons themselves are pretty nightmarish people; big bulging eyes and bald heads, not the smartest things out there but they are a brutish mob able to pummel a Dalek into a dented heap. The second Exxlion species, though, isn’t as primitive and has a better grasp of the situation; they know that the city their ancestors built is the source of the planet’s problems and that it must be destroyed before it destroys everything else.

I found an interesting bit of visual continuity in this one which probably means nothing but is still fun to play with. The members of the Earth expedition, the Marine Space Corps, all have these blue uniforms with a silver sideways arrowhead logo on them, and the TV series Blake’s 7 has a similar motif on its Terran Federation officers and troops. As both were written by Terry Nation it’s fun to think that this might be the some earlier moment in that continuity; Nation used the surname Tarrant a great deal in B7 and here we have another one, this time Jill Tarrant of the Earth force. As far as Dalek continuity goes though its hard to really place this one anywhere as there is no date of reference aside from there having been a Dalek war at some point not too long before this, recently enough for one of the Earth force to have lost his father to that same war.

My personal memories of this one, though, go way way back; I read the Target novel before I saw the

episode. Of all places, the Meadowbrook Public School library had a copy of this one which I gleefully borrowed at a very early age and enjoyed every page of it. I remember not wanting to give it back, so before it was due I recorded myself reading it on cassette, with terrible Dalek voices thrown in. The book will have long since been pulped but I was told that the cassette tape is still in my mother's possession; I only found out because she called the other day asking if I could find her a new player so she could listen to it again. Horrified doesn't even begin to describe my reaction.

If only missing episodes would turn up the same way.

NEXT EPISODE: THE GHOSTS OF N-SPACE