Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) by Robert Shearman, Toby Hadoke Read Free Book Online Page B

where those making the show learn what the series’ strengths are. I’m really enjoying watching these 60s Daleks freed from the shackles of received wisdom about how they should behave – this bunch is quite shifty; just notice the way they’re sneaky with Susan, are bewildered by her very name and react harshly to her innocent laugh. Such attributes would seem clichéd coming from a humanoid with a spangly hat, but they’re creepily alien when delivered by these gliding, menacing machines. I even love the way we blur from an eavesdropping camera into the earwigging Daleks in their control room.
    Back in the cell, the regulars apply a bit of nous to the situation and orchestrate a fight, providing the first look inside a Dalek. Or, rather, the first implied look inside one – we’re actually shown nothing, and it’s left to William Russell (and a bit of frantic scratching inside the Dalek shell) to sell us on the nightmare of the creature that inhabits the Dalek casing. Fortunately, he’s more than up to the task. And the cliffhanger – in which a Dalek mutant extends a clawed hand from under the cloak that’s covering it – is odd and wonderful; it’s a stolen moment that has little to do with plot or the actual danger facing our heroes. And yet, had I not experienced this episode before, I’d be waiting with baited breath to see what horror might emerge from the cloak, and what unspeakable beastliness it would bestow upon our heroes.
    And it’s not all bad with the Thals, is it? Philip Bond capers around gamely as Ganatus, clearly embracing a more modern acting style than his cohorts, and lounging insouciantly on a rock. He’s great even though he’s given so little to do, and of the cast is clearly The One To Watch. (And, interestingly, he’s got his two-year-old daughter – who in future will play Mrs Wormwood on The Sarah Jane Adventures – to kiss goodnight after he gets home from recording this episode.) Also, one of the delights of Doctor Who is observing how designers and directors choose to depict something from “space” – and so here, the Thals have holes cut in their trousers. Okay, there are no beneficial or practical benefits to this that I can see, but it’s pleasingly “space”, that.
    I will grant you that the Thals have a lisping problem, though. Alethea Charlton as a cavewoman was one thing, but the three way lisp-off here between (pardon me) Temmothuth, Alydon and Dyoni gets almost comical. (Temmosus: “Yesth, but we’ve changed over the centuries... the onth famouth warrior rath of Thals...”) For all we know, some viewers watched that exchange and came away thinking that the good guys were actually called the “Sarls”, but that none of them can actually pronounce the name of their own species.
    The Ambush (The Daleks episode four)
    R: This is a much stronger episode – and not only because it’s knee-deep in Thal corpses. It shows the first really sustained piece of action in Doctor Who yet, as the TARDIS crew escape from magnetised floors and lift shafts and the like. It’s genuinely tense, and the entire sequence in which Ian is left trapped in a Dalek casing, unable to move, makes the claustrophobia of the first few episodes of the story seem positively breezy in comparison.
    At first, I’ll be honest, I was a bit bemused by the sequence in which the crew defend themselves from the Daleks by throwing a bit of modern art down upon them in the ascending elevator. Since when would Daleks bother with something as imaginative and emotional as art ? And then it occurred to me that, in spite of all my attempts to free myself from prejudice, I was looking at these Daleks from the jaded perspective of someone who’s got used to all their clichés. (And no doubt, written a fair few of them into the series himself.) At this stage, Terry Nation’s canvas is still empty – why shouldn’t these new enemies of his have a culture, and a complexity indeed, that future stories