Doctor Who Reactions: "Day of the Daleks (SPOILERS)

Episode One:

1)"No one's going to turn me into an interplanetary puppet."  "Interplanetary Puppet" would be a good band name.

 

2)The Ogrons always remind me of the Gumbys from Monty Python - I keep waiting for them to go, "Hello! Shut up! Sorry! Hello! My brain hurts!", and so on.

 

3)"Jo, how thoughtful." Yates, you bum.

 

4)Cliffhanger #1: The Daleks call for extermination! (Well, they would, wouldn't they?)

 

5)Dang, the Dalek voices in this sound stilted and awkward. One of the extras on the DVD release is a "re-edited" version with better special effects and Nick Briggs doing the Dalek voices. Whatever you may think of Briggs, he's a million times better than the guys they had doing the voices on the original version of this.

 

Episode Two:

6)Pertwee's quite good in this. It's funny - when I was akid atching these, I didn't warm to him all that much, but watching him now, I quite enjoy him in the role.

 

7)"Well, that's the Blinovitch Limitation Effect."

 

8)"Don't forget to tell it to the Marines."

 

9)Wow, the Doctor just casually shot down a couple of Ogrons - no, "I never use guns" for this Doctor.

 

10)Cliffhanger #2: A Dalek materializes right next to the Doctor!

 

Episode Three:

11)Maybe it's not such a good idea to hire the dumbest available creatures to be your guards.

 

12)Ah, Pertwee has to get a vehicle chase in.

 

13)Cliffhanger #3: The Daleks mind-probe the Doctor!

 

Episode Four:

14)"Dalekenium?" It's an explosive! It's a metal! It's a floor wax! It's a dessert topping!

 

15)"You're trapped in a temporal paradox!"  You poor dopes!

 

16)Courtney's good in this, too.

 

17)Daleks are kind of slow, here.  they should be just running right over these UNIT types.

 

Overall:

I quite enjoyed this - a fun story that actually thinks about the paradoxes of time travel. I gather it originally wasn't supposed to be a Dalek story, but that they were added in to give it some "oomph".

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  • The first time I saw Pertwee's early stories, it kept annoying me how arrogant and obnoxious he could sometimes be. DAY OF THE DALEKS was the first time he seemed to mellow out and become more likeable.  Also, I'd finally started to like Jo in this one, after finding her mostly a bit dim in the earlier ones. (Actually, she comes across as a lot MORE dim in this one than the previous season.)  So wouldn't you know, in Philly, this was the LAST one they ran until 1979, when they resumed with ROBOT.
  • Yeah, Jo seemed awful gullible in this, buying into the Controller's "I am your friend" act pretty easily.
  • Some reviewer pointed out online that Jo seemed to devolve into the mentality of a 13-year-old in this story.  Which suggested to me that, possibly, the writer had not seen the show in some time when he submitted the story outline. There are many instances in the show's history where scripts were written around characters who had left the show by the time they went before the cameras-- like THE HORROR OF FANG ROCK, where the script apparently kept saying "Sarah screams", and was changed to "Leela screams" and Louise Jameson had to keep pointing out to the director, "Leela DOES NOT scream!"  So DAY OF THE DALEKS may have been written with The Doctor having a teenage girl as the sidekick, instead of someone in their 20's.

     

    The last time I watched these (about a year ago) I was really impressed with Jo.  Originally, I was suffering from the unexpected departure of Liz, who I really liked. But Jo has grown on me over the years.  While she doesn't seem the brightest light at times (and one can understand The Doctor's initial reaction to meeting her-- "I'm your new assistant." "Oh NO!"), she did have a lot of guts, investigating The Master on her own in her 1st story (even if it resulted in her getting brainwashed).  In her 2nd story, she almost single-handedly stopped a prison-break!  That's some girl.

  • This story begins on September 13 and I watched it on September 13.

    I watched the enhanced version so I haven’t heard the original Dalek voices. (I’ll be sure to listen to them soon.) I was disappointed that the enhanced version wasn’t edited into a 96-minute “special” (as has been done in the past and the packaging indicated), but I appreciated the time travel effects and the way the weapons made the targets explode (neither of which I assume were as well-done in the original). You know how, on BTVS, staked vampires explode into dust? In the enhanced versions, those hit with the alien weapons explode into chunks of bloody pulp.

    In the first episode, the Doctor’s experiments to get the TARDIS working opened a timeloop and he and Jo met themselves from the near future. I was disappointed the loop was never closed by later showing the same scene from their future selves’ POV.

    “No ‘I never use guns’ for this Doctor.”

    I remember when the first previews of the 11th Doctor were first shown and many online were abuz that he wielded a gun in one scene. (Gasp!) Even I, a relative Doctor Who neophyte, thought to myself, “So…? And…?”
  • I've watched the first two episodes of the "enhanced" version, I noticed the effect you mention.

     

    There was a scene like the one you mention scripted, apparently it was dropped for time reasons. It's in the novelization, as I recall.

  • Listened to the commentary track last night - The actors who played Anat and Shura, the vision mixer, Terrance Dicks and the late Barry Letts - makes you realize how far in advnace they must record these tracks.  Weird hearing Letts again - he definitely sounded, not ill, but less alert, somehow, for the first time on these tracks. I'll miss hearing him on these tracks, listening to him and Terrance Dicks banter back and forth has been like listening to a piece of history.
  • Terrence Dick was one of the first WHO "celebrities" I ever saw at a convention. It was a "Creation" convention, back when their main focus was on comic-books. There were 2 people connected with the show who were guests that day-- the other-- I'm not kidding!-- was John Leeson, the voice of K9!
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