Solace and Succour

[00:34]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 year diary, the only Doctor Who podcast that doesn't know what a galaxy is and doesn't care to know.

I'm Nathan.

I'm Adam.

I'm James.

And I'm Melvin.

Well, it's been 4.5 months since Ian and Barbara left the TARDIS, breaking both the doctor's heart and ours, and it's been just one week since we got our 1st glimpse of the planet Kemble, the most hostile planet in the universe.

And tonight, 8.30000 people have tuned in to watch a historic moment in the history of the universe, and to find out what happens when the doctor fails to turn up and save the day.

It's time for us to discuss mission to the unknown.

[01:41]

So this thing, which we all watched, is the 2019 remake from the University of Lancashire.

Is that right?

Central Lancashire.

Central Lancashire.

Central Lancashire.

Not on the outskirts of Lancashire.

It's a rich island.

Yes, exactly.

And it's amazing.

I mean, it really is quite extraordinary, I think.

And it really has just an adorable kind of earnestness to it, which works very well because this is, you know, when we finally come back to this story after the myth makers, there's a kind of campness, I think, in particular to that scene, which we've just seen for the 1st time in the control room where Brett Vine is making his announcement into the ether and no one's listening to it.

Like, and that's really fun and funny and stuff.

But this is very, very serious in a very terry nation kind of way.

And I think what isn't really sufficiently acknowledged is this is the fourth iteration of the Daleks.

[02:46]

It's really quite different from any of the previous three.

And this is where we land, I think, finally with the Daleks.

Like, I think this is the moment at which the Daleks are kind of finalised.

Whittaker will come along and maybe make the more mythic and maybe make the more directly the doctor's opposite.

But this is the Daleks that come back in 2005's parting of the ways, I think.

Also, the Daleks, that turn against the people that they're cajoling.

They're like, oh, we could take over, but we'll just butter up some people.

I was just about to say like this.

I mean, they have it all together here.

Like, everything is working on all cylinders and it's, you know, we'll talk about the doctor listness or the doctor lightness of this at length, I think, but like, it's really incredible that they have, you know, assembled this sort of legion of doom, as it were. and Well, I mean, this is the thing is like they're politic.

[03:49]

They have a social order.

They have an arrangement of, you know, they've got plans in order.

I know, I think there were jokes that were told around the time that the 1st and 3rd episodes of uh, Dolex Master plan finally came back that they, you know, might have had like, you know, charcuterie boards out and like, you know, for for the meetings.

Like, I was actually looking for that on the tables there, uh, in mission to the unknown.

But there's a sort of like they have a plan in order and they have roped in these 7 or 6 other cultures to take part in it.

And so they've, they, you know, this is not something that they've hastily put together, but that you also see in their pursuit and hunting down, totally destroy as they say, the ship that's landed from Earth and to hunt down the people who were in it, like they're absolute ruthlessness.

So, I mean, this is one episode where the Daleks just, they have everything going their way.

And that is, it's kind of remarkable.

You could say they're playing a long game. drawing another parallel to series one.

I mean, the thing is that each time we've brought the Daleks back, like the scale has been greater.

[04:54]

And Terry Nation will eventually settle on, when he does Doctor Who for the 70s, he basically drops 3 scripts that are the same.

And, you know, Bob Holmes and Hinchcliffe will call him out on it the 3rd time and so Genesis of the Daleks, which is very Terry Nation, like lots of people who don't want to give Terry Nation credit for being good say, well, obviously Bob Holmes is making that good.

But those 3 are strong, enjoyable screens, but they are very similar to one another.

Whereas this, we go from, you know, the Daleks of these sort of mutants in a in a city.

They're sort of helpless and they don't know themselves and they don't really know the world that they find themselves in.

Then they come to earth, which again is sort of huge and epic and starts to threaten us, the audience at home.

Then they're travelling through time and space, you know, and they're threatening the doctor by kind of horning in on the premise of the show.

And now here, it's galaxies and spaceships that, you know, the likes of which we've never seen before, and all of this sort of stuff, which we think of as the kind of Dalek's natural habitat, and maybe it is because of the the TV 21 comics or something at this time, but this is them on television, sort of finally, they're an intergalactic power, and they threaten not just Earth, but even, you know, Jupiter and Venus and things, you know.

[06:24]

I was wondering about the genesis of this, like the idea of it, because originally the Daleks were coded as Nazis, it was very much, you know, oh, World War 2 was terrible.

The Nazis were terrible.

This is kind of like end stage, Nazism.

Whereas this feels like, because we're a bit further into the 60s.

This feels like the Soviet Union.

Like, it's the communist.

Yeah, yeah. kind of basically going, oh, any recently decolonised countries will scoop all of those up and you know, we've found them all on the fringes of society and we're going to now build our own UN that will attack the rest of the world.

And it feels, because that was very much the sense that was going on then in the 60s where the Western world was terrified of this growing alliance of Eastern European countries and African countries and Asian countries that were all siding with communism.

So it feels like a very a palpable terror that's going on, this this alignment that the Daleks have set up and then kill everyone.

[07:30]

Yeah, it makes it much more immediate.

Yeah, like if you were living through that, you would be like, 0 my god, another country has decided to go over. wasn't that wasn't that a British domain?

Oh, no, lost another one. be New Zealand next.

I think New Zealand's someone with the big tall pointing out in the little eyes.

He's my favourite man.

Yes, we will perhaps try and disentangle who all of those are.

We have Malfa with a delightful regional accent in the ring.

I mean, central Lancashire.

That's great.

Exactly.

So we have him Zephon was going to be in this episode, but was cancelled, apparently, or he turned up late or something.

He missed his pass.

He was always turning on blades.

And it is, I think, impossible because this is directed by Derek Martinez and the other ones are going to be directed by Dougie Canfield. somehow we lose track of which delegate is which, and none of it kind of tends to make any sense.

[08:38]

But the sinister guy with the kind of concertina head.

He's awesome.

He's maybe the best way.

He looks like, um, do you remember the, what was it?

Johnson and Friends, that kids show where one of them was a little accordion.

Johnson in France.

It was like an elephant, I think.

And a hot water bottle.

Yes.

Like an accordion.

The one's Johnson.

Right.

Johnson was the elephant.

Okay, right.

But they are also kind of like the Mekon or something, you know, like it is also just this...

Yeah, yeah. is him just now doing space opera.

You know, obviously, this is a sort of precursor to Blake 7 in tone in many ways as well, but just that the sort of galaxy spanning scale of it and throwing words like universe and galaxy and solar system around, a constellation with absolutely no regard to what any of them mean.

[09:41]

Like it just makes the scale huge.

I mean, and when you compare it to that little dalek city surrounded by swamp or whatever that we had way back in 19603.

It is a huge departure.

And it does make them for the 1st time the threat that we now kind of know them to be, I think.

And I wonder if the part of the ephemerality of the weekly series.

Like you're saying that the continuity doesn't really hold from one episode to the next or from mission to the unknown to the start of the Daleks master plan.

Like the thinking about how this is the 4th time that we've introduced the Daleks more or less.

Like I was thinking about watching Mission to the Unknown.

And this is probably the 1st time I watched it since the recreation came out, that the 1st time you see a dollar, or the 1st time that the Dalek, you know, approaches a human, he kills him.

Like, you know, they're at the end when he kills Corey.

And I'm like, what a dramatic and big and stakes filled way to meet a doll.

Like, I mean, think about a meeting in the Daleks in the 1st cereal, when you, 1st time you see the plunger, you know, it's coming at Barbara, you don't really think that Barbara's going to die.

[10:46]

You know, she's one of the main casts.

Like the fact that the Dalek enters and kills a person or that they all come and sort of like gang up on him and totally destroy him as they as the as the Daleks ask him to, it's really quite stunning, you know, in the way that the Dalek acts in the 2005 Kit Eccleston episode, like that there are that people can die because of these.

This is not just a, like, not just a rubber monster with a giant head.

You know, this is, this is, this is, this is serious.

There's a great moment, isn't there, where one of the Daleks asks the other one if they're capturing them and keeping them as prisoners, and they say, no, you're going to kill them.

We're just killing them all on site and then they go off and kill him.

And that, like, that's the stakes.

He's not going to escape.

Yep, yeah.

And the stakes there are also, he's been trying to warn Earth of an invasion.

And he dies before he can send the message.

So he's failed.

And that's a great hook into, like, into the story we get in 4 weeks' time.

[11:47]

It's like, it's a great teaser.

So yeah, as an as a as a Dalek reintroduction story.

This is, I mean, this is this is the stuff.

It's like, you know, he's, uh, Terry Nation's basically writing the pilot for his American, um, Dalek series here.

He's like, oh, this is how it'll work.

We'll kill the lead actor every week.

I mean, you know, there is a Blake 7ness to it, and there's hints of kind of like a sort of militaristic or sort of authoritarian regime on earth.

Uh, you know, when we go back to Earth in a few weeks time.

And here we have a situation where the space security service are able to kill people, if they want and can press, gang anyone into doing what they say.

[12:48]

So they, they have the authority to tell Lowry to do whatever.

And that is the world, of course, that Blake 7 takes place in as well.

Yeah, in a real sense, they're kind of pitching.

Like, you know, if we take that analogy further.

Earth really looks like an authoritarian regime at this point.

And they're dressed, you know, quite Hugo Bosk-esque man?

I was like, Earth, Earth are the Nazis and they're fighting space communists.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, think about Genesis of the Daleks.

That's not just Bob Holmes.

The idea that in Genesis of the Daleks, the thals are terrible people and unsympathetic.

There's no likeable characters.

There's no one that we can side with.

And that's even almost sort of present in in Planet of the Daleks already when we bring the files back and they aren't the peaceful files from 8 seasons ago or whatever.

[13:50]

They are, you know, they're fiercely militaristic and and they have very little regard for life and and things like that.

And so that is Terry.

And that level of bleakness, that level of real politic and stuff is also present in Dalek Invasion of Earth.

You know, so I have this sort of theory that everyone likes to credit Philip Hinchcliffe for Horror of Fang Rock because they don't want to give Graham Williams a win.

And I think, and we credit Bob Holmes, and I think Peter Griffiths will agree with me.

We tend to credit Bob Holmes for how excellent Genesis of the Daleks is because we don't want to give Terry Nation a win.

But all of that stuff, all of that creating equally unsympathetic opposition for the Daleks to face is interesting.

And, and in the, I don't know if it happened in the original, but there's a moment where Lowry objects to the death of Jeff and adorable little Marco kind of gives him a bit of a punch in the face and he falls so far.

[14:57]

Yes.

And again, you know, like that's creating this sort of anti-hero that Mark Corey is definitely like, supposed to be the square jawed hero with the absurdly part, Edward DeSouza accent in the original recording.

But he's the, he's our hero.

He's our guy, but he is a bad guy in all sorts of ways.

And later on, we'll see Brett Vine and Sarah Kingdom behaving in similar ways.

Whether it's Edward D'Souza with the posh accent or Marco Simeoni here with his impossibly square jaw and good looks, like it definitely belies that, like you say, sort of hint of authoritarianism that undergirds it because, you know, I watched this, you know, because it's just the one episode and I'm like, I want it to be as conversant with it as possible.

And because it's so homespun and charming, like I think I'm pretty sure I watched this 10 times.

But by the time I got to the 10th time, that is when I started to notice these things, that the failure, as you were pointing out, that he does fail, like that every part of this, of the human, of the earth mission here fails, because he is a sleeper agent for the space security service.

[16:08]

He's the one who tells Lowry to land on Campbell, because he has this suspicion, even though he hasn't told any of his superiors, that while this mission is going on, that this is part of what he's there to do, is to scout ahead for, you know, the reports of the of the Dalek activity that's been sort of rumoured or cited or whatever.

And when he gets down to the planet, he fails, he fails almost from the beginning, because when they get onto the planet, there's some sort of like confusion for me about whether they've chosen to land or crashed, because there's a, they keep saying that the, that, that when we crashed, and now the ship doesn't work, but the moment that they get back into the ship, after Garvey's been killed, or Garvey's been taken over by the Varga plant, he comes back.

Corey turns, as soon as he sees that the Varga slash Garvey is approaching Lowry shoots him, and then Lowry's like, what are you doing?

And he starts to panic and he's like, it was either you or him.

Like the, the, the decisive action he takes, both times he does it, is to kill one of his other crew members.

So he, he kills Lowry when it's clear that he is changing into a Varga plant.

[17:13]

But every other time he needs to follow his mission protocols.

He either takes too long or he prevaricates.

He goes into exposition mode when he starts to explain to like, what's the point of the mission?

Like, he's like, well, you deserve an explanation if I'm going to enlist you.

But...

Yeah.

But this is the thing is like once he understands that the ship cannot leave and he realises that the Vargas are here.

So that means the Daleks are here, he should be in mission critical mode, which is, what's the next thing we need to do is to get the beacon out there.

But they, yeah, spend time doing all this stuff.

And then once Lowry is putting the launch for the beacon together, he's still like sitting around monologuing. like you should be recording recording the tape now.

Yeah, there's so many failures on his capacity in this mission.

Like he, he very rarely takes the decisive action he needs to do when he needs to do it.

Like, you were pointing out earlier, when the Daleks say, you know, should we bring these guys in as captive, they're like, no, kill them on site.

[18:15]

Like, Corey doesn't do what the mission requires of him when it does require it of him.

So he has failed along every point of this of this mission.

So I just think that's important to say, like, in terms of the fact that he also represents an authoritarian regime, like, when he has to take command, he fails almost every single point.

I take your point about that, but I think with the type, he's kind of stuck in this thing where old mate wants to send the tape up to get rescued and he's like, I am not doing that.

Like, this is a suicide mission, and when the tape goes up, it's me telling them about the Daleks, but he can't record that in front of the other guy. just to wait till it's like, I've got to wait till his back's turned or he's dead. before I can do this recording.

There is a hilarious moment, isn't there?

Where it's just like, all right, you know, grab this huge giant thing.

Weve got to get out of here. cut it through the jungle.

Just record it now and sit it now.

Why are you carrying somewhere else?

[19:20]

I do love this production because it's like they've gone, oh, what's something we can do at university with our very limited abilities and go, oh, we could make a TV show from the 60s, easy.

We needed some pot plants. and some plyboard.

Yeah, and a lot of...

Apparently they ended up doing a soap opera episode as well.

Like they liaise with people who are making Coronation Street and... a soap episode and obviously that's a sort of reasonably low budget thing. that you can that you can do.

Like I think this was an, you know, just an absolutely extraordinarily brilliant idea.

And it's the one thing that you can remake where because there's no regulars in it, it doesn't matter that you recast everyone.

You know, you don't have someone having to do a sort of Bill Hartnell impersonation or anything like that.

And so this is perfect.

Literally the only thing that you could do this to.

I mean, it's such a gift.

We're so incredibly lucky to have it because so we'll talk more about this.

[20:20]

I think in a couple of weeks time, but like my proper 1st experience of this story was the CD with the MP3s on it.

Oh, yeah.

And loading it onto a 1st generation iPod shuffle, which had the capacity of like 256 or 512 mag.

You know, the one that was like a stick of gum.

Yeah, and you could just clip it on your... didn't have a clip, it had a lanyard.

You had it around your neck.

It was really old.

And I just...

Please, I looked like a highlighter on land.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I just listened to it over and over and over again when I was walking to work.

It would take me, you know, 50 minutes of walk to work, I would get 2 episodes of Dalek, so I was planning.

And so that was kind of my 1st experience of it.

I loved Darlic Monaster Plan.

I just think it's absolutely superb.

But I hadn't really realised until a remake how just superb this is.

Like it is properly good.

And I think that Varga plant thing.

You know, we've had the slither.

[21:21]

The Mayer beasts. and whatever the hell those things were in the swamp in the dialect.

You know, like he's always wanted to put like ridiculous monsters in.

And the Wanga plants are ridiculous monsters, like they are, you know, fabulously silly, dragging themselves in.

I loved that line.

It's what Triffords do.

And even that sort of like got me thinking about, again, that sort of Mark Corey's various failures is that he's so used to things being done a certain way that once he takes command, it is he who is dragging his roots.

Like, and I was just like, oh, my God, it's all, it's all, uh, it's, uh, talking about terry nation, like giving him probably more credit than he deserves.

I was ready to give him some props.

I mean, here too, the faga plants also help sell the idea of a massive communist enemy as well because what they do is that they turn you into a sleeper agent who is going to go and kill people.

[22:24]

And so you can't tell that someone has been subverted and might kill you at any moment.

Until they turn into a plant, obviously.

There's a bunch of cotton wool with sticks.

That's such a great moment.

It's so fun at the moment where Garvey just kind of like stretches his head back and holds out his because, whoa, and then suddenly phoop is a giant plant.

So good. one of the best moments.

I hope it was like that in the original. dragging himself by his human legs.

I also love how cramped it is.

Like an actual 60s episode.

Like, there's like, oh, the Vaga plant's right there.

Right there, and then another one just here.

That was wonderful as well.

Like, that was absolutely wonderful.

Just the minuscule sizes of the sets.

It was like watching snake dance again.

But incredible.

And that scene where they're preparing the recorder at the bottom of the ship.

And I think the ship is beautifully realised, like that's really great. didn't like incredibly cheap.

[23:27]

We'll see them attempted again in a few weeks time and then again in Planet of the Daleks, and I think it's much less successful in Planet of the Daleks.

But it's such a rocket ship.

Like it's awesome that it looks like a rocket ship.

And like that's that's a really cool, but but yes, because there's no space for them to be anywhere else.

The fogs are just sort of like right up against us at that point.

They're terrifying.

Well, it's the sort of, it's the fluffiness that is so contraindicated to the, the giant points that are sticking out of them.

And like the fact that, you know, it's part of the environment, which is a strange thing for me, uh, to associate the Daleks with uh, the Varga plants.

I know that, you know, again, the very 1st time that they're introduced, sort of like they're swampy areas and stuff like that.

But I feel like that's something that definitely, you know, was lost later and and really has never appeared in the new series is that the Daleks have these sort of like ancillary attack modes or like, you know, you're talking about sleeper agents, Nathan, earlier, but like also like the fact that they can bring as mechanical and as sort of solid and metallic as they look, they have a sort of natural component that they bring with them that they can install to like begin to sort of like manipulate that environment in the sort of way that, you know, the sort of Zygon plan in the 50th anniversary

[24:44]

is to terraform the planet to make it habitable for the Zygons that the Daleks have these sort of like, and I wondered about it, again, until I watched it several times and finally got this idea that they bring them with them to the planet, you know, to install them as sort of like, uh, guards or sentries or whatever happens to be.

And as slow as they move, it doesn't matter because as soon as you touch it, it begins to exert that influence.

It's kind it's insidious and kind of excellent.

It's kind of like a slow moving zombie plant apocalypse.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I mean, like, Terry, Terry has some weird idea about plants, I have to say, because we had the, we had the fungoids, which not plants, admittedly.

They were funkis from the chase.

Yeah, they're like tugging.

Stop it at once.

He does that thing where he thinks, he goes, they're plants, but it's like they're alive.

[25:44]

I know what you think alive.

They really are.

Most plants are, Terry.

Just because he can't keep a pot plant going. doesn't mean the rest of us.

I think, you know, the only the only kind of hint of this that we get, like, Terry does like to put sort of monsters in there.

And so Planet of the Daleks has the fungus things that spray Joe. And then there's the roots in death to the dialects.

And then, of course, when we're trying to get in under the Dalek city, much as we did in the Daleks, we've got those giant clams and stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I love the big clans.

I think they might be the most successful ones and it may be because they 1st encountered them when I was 10 and thought they were amazing.

And I hadn't put that together either because once in the Capaldi era, when they do the magician's apprentice and the, when they go and visit Baby Davros or whatever, they've got the hand mines, which I, like, I'd forgotten about, those are genius also.

That is very Terry Nation now that you mention all these other examples that, again, just slipped my mind.

[26:47]

It's a lot of strange genetic engineering that the Daleks are doing.

I guess because, you know, they're internally.

There's a weird genetic modified blob.

And so they're constantly trying to make other ancillary blobs.

I mean, it is also just a sort of a way of delaying the Daleks, because we want to make the Daleks really deadly here.

We can only really encounter them.

Like you get that one moment where they sort of appear behind a dalek and then, you know, quickly get down on the dalek, doesn't notice.

I love that though.

It's really good.

And, you know, the Dalek inability to see people who are quite near them is sort of legendary.

But we essentially have to like the account with them has to be deadly because we're just making them super deadly from now on.

And so we have to have an intermediate threat, which is clearly what the slither is for and clearly what the those octopus things in the swamp or that big drain that that guy falls over near and dies for some reason in the Daleks.

[27:48]

Um, uh, so to have this intermediate threat, he just makes it a Dalek threat, he says, okay, well, the Daleks, they they like to bring pot plants with them to the pilots that they invade.

In a macrame holder.

And it's just a thing.

Can we talk about the sets again?

Because you were talking about how the how crowded the set is with the with the rocket ship and the 2 Varga plants?

Like there's a really like, there's a lushness to that and a fulness to what you see on screen.

But what I really want to mention and shout out is the production staff, the set designers, because for a 24, 25 minute episode, there were a lot of different sets in this episode.

Like the variety is almost constant.

Like you do go back and forth to Corey and Lowry at the ship and, you know, whatever, but you get 3 or 4 distinct sets and in the course of a 24, 25 minute episodes, It feels a lot pacier because you're seeing so many things in the course of such a short period of time.

[28:58]

And also, we get the model set, which is hilarious.

I love that.

Little tiny Daleks going around. so cute. was so great. being pushed on sticks.

Yes.

Oh, I thought they were like had magnets underneath and someone's like dragging them along and they're not quite keeping up.

But no, but they I think they did manage the the feel of a guy in a tricycle. you know what I mean?

Who doesn't have any, like, really good. like that.

The way that the Daleks move in the studio. which is very much guy on tricycle. you know, moving in little fits and starts.

Like I think that they did really manage that.

And I have to say the 1st time I saw it before I saw the making of it didn't occur to me that they were little models.

I did think that they were pretty well done, particularly since they're mostly in close-up.

Like, I think the close-up are the full size ones.

The closer, yeah.

I mean, there's one that looks like it's only, they've only made half of it.

The only thing that gave it away to me was the console thing behind them. because it looked like a little model, whereas everything else moving, like because everything else was in motion, I mean, again, they hit it very very well.

[30:01]

And they do have full-size dialects, don't they?

Yeah, in the actual in in the forest.

I mean, in the original thing, we go away for 4 weeks, don't we, to do the myth makers and then we come back and presumably all the sort of aspodistras and ferns and things that we bought and we're just storing them in the production office and stuff for a month and then we drag them back into the studio or something.

So maybe we amortise that over.

I mean, it's not like this is our last time on the planet Campbell.

No Let's talk about the fact that the doctor and Stephen and Vicki aren't here.

It must have been such a like a mind-blowing experience for people to tune into Doctor Who, and there's no Doctor Who.

Like there's Daleks, which we all love.

But it's like, oh, he's not, oh, okay.

[31:04]

They're having a wake off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I mean, we kind of are now used to that.

And, you know, the show has given its regulars the week off before now.

Up on the head, little 9 eyes.

Yeah, that's right.

I'm just going to pop ahead with his travel dial to episode five.

I'm gonna be in this prison that I can't really be seen in.

So it's not like it hasn't happened before.

This is not the only Dr. Light episode to date, but one with no regulars at all.

And what's really weird about it is the way that they feel like they have to throw the narrative to this place.

Normally the narrative tracks, the doctor wherever he is or the doctor and his friends.

But in order to license an episode without them, we have to have Vicki look out the window or whatever, um, at the end of Galaxy 4, and she kind of goes, oh, look at that planet, I wonder what's going on there.

And then you have the doctor saying, yes, I wonder as well.

[32:06]

And then we actually cut to that opening scene.

Like so we see Garvey regaining consciousness and telling us all that he's off to kill someone.

I mean, so it looks like we're getting a story which starts from the outside and that's not that common.

Has that happened yet at this point?

Have we had a story that starts, you know, how in the 70s, very frequently, you know, the story starts on the planet and then the doctor arrives.

But that's not normal in the 60s, is it?

No, not really.

Like, it's headfirst into whatever the mysterious cliffhanger was.

Yeah, yeah.

And so and so we're probably waiting for the doctor to arrive for the entire time and then he never does and everyone gets killed.

Yeah, if you were a kid, you'd be like, what happened there?

The Daleks just murdered everyone.

And then next week, we get the myth makers, which, again, is 3 really fun kind of comedy episodes and then, you know, a violent massacre in which everyone is killed again. you know, and then we're back on Kemble.

[33:11]

I mean, it is very strange, because what we've decided to do is instead of having a dalek story at the start of the season and at the end of the season, like we did last year, we're combining them into one giant event where we have 3 months of just Dalek stuff happening.

And so for us, because we're used to watching, because for us, the basic narrative unit of Doctor Who, classic Doctor Who is the four-part story or the six-part story or whatever.

And that's what you buy as a DVD and stuff like that.

It's not consumed like that by the people at home.

And because, you know, at this point, it's not part one, part two.

It's not even on screen.

You know, everything has, you know, like an individual title, which we are kind of warned about.

I mean, just think about the experience of the myth makers episode 4 where everyone's horribly killed, all of these fun characters are all sort of killed off and everything goes to hell and the doctor barely escapes and Stephen's really injured and all of that stuff's happening.

And then it says on screen next week, the nightmare begins.

[34:16]

Like, that, that whole way of watching Doctor Who.

And so this thing kind of works.

It's here for kind of weird budgetary reasons because we had to reshoot the Daleks, you know, 1st episode, we had to reshoot an unearthly child, we lost an episode when we combined episodes 3 and 4 of Planet of Giants.

And so we have one more stray episode, this block, and it would be a good idea not to have any of the regulars in it.

So it is here for just a sort of weird reason, but it just works incredibly as setting up what is just an enormous event.

I think that it's kind of impossible to really understand now, given that we, you know, have so little of it and given that our experience of Doctor Who is nothing like this at any other time.

It also gives a moment in that 1st episode of the Dalek Master Plan, when they are ignoring the message from Brett Vion, and they're talking about, you know, having their exposition conversation, that it gives that even more tragedy, having seen this episode.

[35:25]

You're like, 0 man, all of that has been for nothing because they're just ignoring this little warning sign that this he's found the tape.

He knows what's going on, but we're watching the telly.

It kind of shows what happens when the doctor arrives late. to a story because he's not on Campbell.

Like, he doesn't discover it because you think if he discovered that message, maybe it would only be a 4 parter.

And I was going to say, just to bring both of those last couple comments together that, and, you know, we've gestured toward this already, that this is sort of sort of sets, you know, again, we have had maybe had episodes where the principles weren't hugely involved, but this is the, the, as a doctor less episode.

You know, this sort of is an er text for what a doctor light episode can do and can be.

What I mean by that is it sort of sets sort of wide boundaries for what happens, not only when the doctor is late, but when the doctor's not around, like, you know, talking about the inclination towards where Terry Nation will head in Blake 7, that the universe that the doctor occupies is one of, you know, I think it's the 2nd doctor who says, you know, there are various evils out there that have to be fought.

[36:37]

Like, this is showing you what is possible when the doctor is not there.

You know, whether it's because he's not there or because he didn't exist before or because he's late.

Like the people who are in charge, you know, and that is whether that's Captain Lowry here when they land or when Mark Corey takes over, that it's just a succession of people screwing up until everyone's dead.

Like, that is, that is not a very pleasant look at, at what the world or what the universe or what the galaxy or whichever word you want to use is like when, yeah, when, when there's no doctor.

It's a, it can be a, it's a dark place.

It's survival of the fittest.

Which also acts as a kind of trailer to our big Dalek epic at the end of the season.

So, you know, perhaps perhaps that is in some way an inspiration, you know, for how that season ends.

And I think too, as well, maybe Dalek in series one, which is the small scale thing, you know, explicitly Dalek, you know, it's the 1st time that we've had Dalek in the title where it hasn't been plural or a modifier, and then that leads to, you know, more Daleks than we've ever seen in a Doctor Who story ever.

[37:55]

And that's, again, set in a kind of bleak totalitarian future as well, although one that's been kind of engineered for humanity by the Daleks themselves.

But the crazy thing about both of those episodes, about turn left and Dalek, is that you have in the episode, the example of the kind of solace and sucker that the doctor provides.

In this episode, Corey, Lowry, Garvey, these are just normal.

And this is the other thing we haven't really talked about, is this sort of terry nation sort of naming conventions.

Like, there's none of that here.

Like, there are none of the, there are no Dells, no Terrence, uh, none of these, like, they're all just like Mark, Corey, Jeff.

Like, these are these are just regular guys.

Like, there is no, there is no Doctor Who.

You know, there is no, there is no bigger thing that's going to come and say that's what Corey wants to do to get the message out there, is to hope that someone hears the beacon and will come and understand that the Daleks are on their way thinking about our contemporary world.

Like there's no one coming to save us.

And that is that is terrifying.

[38:56]

You know, as far as the guys who are the lead characters, the sort of the nominal heroes of this episode, there's no one coming, guys.

That is that is bleak.

Yeah.

I think it also, it sets up beautifully what has become a trope, for one of a better term, in the more recent series, which is the best episodes are the doctor light ones.

Like, you know, blink is incredible and we barely see the doctor. 73 yards.

The doctor is in it for like all of 12 seconds, you know, and it's it's become a thing where if you get the doctor out of the way, you can make things much more terrifying.

Like, Lucky Day is really unnerving because all of our heroes lose in that, essentially, until the very end, where Deos X Macanab, the monster is unleashed.

But yeah, it's, uh, it isn't, it's interesting that, that that kind of idea goes all the way back to the 60s, that that is something the show has been doing for a very long time.

[40:01]

And I was going to shout out dart and bubble as well, which, I mean, may not be the 1st thing that comes to mind, but this is a scenario in which no one cares.

No one wants your help.

Like that is that's even crueller.

And that's one of the things where, you know, I feel like people sort of overlook the RTD 2 era for the sort of like, for the arc episodes, because a lot of what happens in the more granular, like standalone episodes is a lot darker and bleaker and more pessimistic and and more sort of like look at the world we live in, then I think that the, especially any part of the 1st RTD era was.

But yeah, that sort of comes through here again, like the more times I watched it.

There are lines that just stick out in Mission to the Unknown where, you know, Corey's, what his mission is or what his goal is has to change every few minutes when he, as things get worse and worse.

And there's one part where he tells Lowry, you know, when they're still trying to figure out a way to get people to come and rescue them, where he says, all we have to do is stay alive until we get here.

[41:01]

And like the 10th time I watched that, I was like, that's all you have to do.

That's not going to happen.

I'm like, that is, you've set your sights way too high, guy.

Yeah, I love that he's kind of like Spice James Bond.

Well, I think that was that was very much either.

I think license to kill.

You know, like that line is there.

He's described in that way in order to be Space James Bond.

And it like it is a different type of leading man.

And remember that you've got the doctor who is a very weird leading man for this.

Like when the Daleks master plan comes along and he's going through jungles and, you know, stealing spaceships from the car park at the at the conference centre on Campbell.

You know, like, you know, he's an odd, an odd leading man for this.

But Mark Corey is a more obvious leading man for this kind of story.

And of course, we move the doctor to being more like Corey as time goes by.

I mean, Pat Trouton's not much like Mark Corey, but he is at least younger and a little bit kind of mobile.

[42:06]

Yeah, well, but and resourceful.

Like, he can disguise himself and stuff like that.

Like, James Bond, the doctor, like these icons that come up in this discussion.

Like, that's one of the things that you realise about Mark Corey as you watch this episode is he doesn't have it.

He doesn't have it.

Like whatever they have, he doesn't have it.

And that is, it just, it gets harder to watch every time you watch it when you realise his dad's going to get out.

Was he the George Lazenby of Doctor Who?

Don't tell Palm again that.

It's one of the great things about being able to see this.

You know, what is that, seven, 7 years before, episodes one and 3 of the, like, how lucky we've been over the past, like, 7 years to have this leading the way.

Like this as the sort of vanguard of what we would get to come.

[43:09]

But like to have all of those things restored and to watch it again, uh, you know, listened, I listened to the uh, Peter Purvis linking narration soundtrack a couple of times also.

It really is fun, especially to have sort of that presence in the story before he actually enters the story, as it were.

But one thing I really noticed here that, I don't know, you know, I don't really spend a lot of time and it's my, it's, that's my loss.

That's my failure with the Hartnell era.

Like, I've said on other podcasts before.

Like, I have more exposure to the Hartnell era through big finish audio plays.

Like, I love Peter Purpose playing the 1st doctor in Big Finish.

I love the David Bradley unbound sort of doctor.

But I spend much more time with that than I have with the episodes themselves.

And one thing I noticed in listening and watching Mission to the Unknown several times now is the, you know, we talk about like the sort of four-partness of Doctor Who at this sort of stage.

But with a one parter, you have, I want to say 4 or 5 different cliffhangers and that these are indicated by the sort of like brass flourishes or there's a string flourish at one point.

[44:19]

There's one where the Dalek, you know, announces his I think it's the one where he says like, no, they have to be killed on site.

And there's a sort of, you know, a basso profundo, sort of like really deep and rumbling sort of cliffhanger flourish.

Like, I love that that, again, like, it keeps the pace going that each of these, like, scenes or set pieces is sort of its own sort of mini episode within an episode.

And I'd never really noticed the extent to which music is used in the Hartnell era specifically to indicate rising tension.

And I really appreciated that here.

But they replicated even in the in the UCL presentation.

When you watch it on the Doctor Who YouTube channel, that is a really charming intro that Edward D'Souza gives.

And he says, enjoy the program, but beware the Vargas.

And then they do another little sting.

Like, I'm just like, and I, again, I only noticed that having now watched the episode and listen to the, to the, to the linking narration production as well.

And then at the very, very end when they're, they put up on the screen, the Daleks will return.

[45:20]

There's yet another one.

And I just, and I'm just like, that is such, it's such an integral part.

And again, one that I had never noticed before.

And I have a real appreciation for it now.

And that strikes me as a very cheesy kind of, like a flash gore kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like absolutely that sort of dramatic sting.

And it's nothing at all like the kind of music that we've had in previous dialect stories, which is intended to be for atmosphere more than anything else, including the chase, where the atmosphere is isn't all this terribly silly.

But, you know, the incredible music in both of the 2 previous Stalek serials. which is nothing like that, where this is a absolute soap opera soundtrack, which is coming into just underline the thrilling tension rather than the weird or threatening atmosphere that we get in the other ones.

And so it is all part of that development of what the Daleks have become like in their kind of 4th appearance.

[46:23]

And I wonder also if that rising tension and dropping, you know, almost like there's ad breaks is because Terry Nation is like, how do they do things in America?

How do I sell this to the Americans?

There's going to be commercials.

I've got to find that that rhythm that American TV shows have because I really want to make even more money than I've got now.

I was going to say, the weird thing is I felt, I, you know, as the American on the panel, I fell for it.

Like, I fell for a hook line and sinker.

Like, I really like, I loved the rhythm of it.

I love the paciness of it.

I loved the sort of over the top serialness, the flashboard, the Star Warsness of like almost, you know, there weren't like screen wipes, but like the flourishes had that sort of effect, you know?

I was carried along by it.

It's like, again, it's how you do space opera.

But I mean, compared to like the Daleks episode six, which is just a couple of years earlier, which is almost intolerably slow and boring.

So much of it made it into that 90 minute cut, and I don't know why.

[47:29]

So the show itself, I think, you know, has advanced from being, you know, like the Daleks itself, when it's successful and it is sometimes successful, is atmosphere and design and conceptions and stuff.

It's classic science fiction.

And then it's a little bit more action adventure in Dalek Invasion of Earth, which is the point we made a few weeks ago, is that's where Doctor Who lands.

Do you know what I mean?

That's a little bit more central.

You know, there's the camp nonsense of the chase.

But here, this is us absolutely doing space opera.

Space opera.

So good.

So good.

And again, we you know, we've mentioned it earlier, but the crazy outfits of the of the delegates.

It's just like it all, it feels, it feels right.

It feels right.

It feels good.

And when they're all like having their sort of conference.

Like, it's such a contrast to what's going on outside with Corey and Lowry trying to figure out how to make contact, like, that this sort of like organised, civilised, like, it, it, I really love that contrast as well.

[48:38]

Like this episode does so many things in 24, 25 minutes.

Uh, and you know, we've, we've, you know, we mentioned it's a, it's a running joke about the universe, uh, solar system, uh, galaxy kind of stuff.

But I, again, I love this idea where the Daleks, when, or the scene where the dogs are talking about, you know, how this conquest will, uh, uh, you were alluding to it earlier, Nathan, the sort of, we will go after Mars and Venus and Jupiter and the, and the lunar colony. will be first, like, because it is, and I love because, and the dog says, because it's the centre of the solar system.

And I'm like...

Do the dogs not have...

Do the dogs not have star charts?

Like, I never pictured the Daleks being sort of atavistic geocentrists.

Like, we're past Ptolemy at this point, guys.

Like, yeah, although, wake up and smell like Copernicus.

If this was in my podcast, I would now theorise that they're talking about the economic centre of the solar system.

Oh my, and I would buy into that.

[49:39]

And so when they talk about the centre of it, like the solar system for them is a construct.

It's not even the physical thing.

They talk about the solar system as like, oh, it's an alliance of planets that we're, you know, trying to invade and the earth is the centre of it because that's where all of the, you know, and that's why Maverick Chen is the guardian of the solar system because he's got all of the Excel spreadsheets.

He's got the big key.

I was going to say, I totally buy into that now because we've seen how Maveic Chen like regards everything.

Like, I love that.

What is it?

episode 3 where he's just like leaning against the panel having a cigarette while the dogs are talking about killing everybody.

I'm like, yeah?

But he knows where he knows where his bread is butter.

He knows who's paying the who's paying the bills.

I mean, I think they said sort of terrible, charming thing as well, where I think Corey is explaining about how the Daleks have been expanding.

For 500 years, yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And they've taken over like 70 different planets in like at some nearby galaxy or something and an extra 40 planets in the constellation of mirror.

[50:45]

It just kind of... doesn't seem all that urgent.

And then there's that thing where it's like, but they're 1000000s of light years away from us.

Or so we thought, it's like when they moved.

They do like to move planets.

Well, they do.

That is true.

They do. spin around.

I think there is a kind of level of deliberateness to the just ludicrous inaccuracies of cosmology here. because they're trying to make it sound future and because they're trying to sketch in this sort of weird intergalactic world.

We're going planet hopping in this sort of crazy way, in 4 weeks time, things are going to be really amazing.

We're going to be going from planet to planet to planet to planet without sort of time machines to take us there as well.

Well, I think the other side of that coin, though, is that that discussion between Lowry and Corey just shows how Lowry, especially, who doesn't know any of this, but Corey, for his own part, as much as he does know, they're still underestimating the ruthlessness and the sort of the sort of domino effect that you were talking about earlier, Adam, of in terms of contemporary geopolitics.

[51:59]

Like the dominoes are falling and they're getting closer.

Like, you may think that that's far away, but you don't know the Daleks.

So I think that there's that as well.

Yeah, they're basically going, we're on Vietnam.

Look at the jungle.

It's happening now.

We have to deal with it.

Otherwise, we're all going to be Vaga plants.

Well, that's all the time we have to be some week.

We'll be back next week to discuss a three month Dalek epic that spans every universe in the solar system in the Daleks master plan.

[53:00]

In the meantime, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts and you can keep up with us on our website, 500yeardiary.com, where you'll find our social media links as well as links to all of our other podcasts, including the entirety of flights or entirety, which comprises every episode of our 4 Doctor Who podcasts.

Until next time, if any of you know Marco Simeoni, please shout him a drink for us.

He's adorable.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Good night.

Ta-ta.

Good night.

That was 500 Year Diaries, starring Nathan Bottomley, Melvin Penya, Adam Richard, and James Selwood.

The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.

This episode, Solace and Sucker, was recorded on the 21st of June 2026 and released on the 13th of September.

[54:00]

Adjust over an hour in length, this episode is about 2.4 times the length of the story itself, which means it would be wise to expect next week's episode on the Dalek's master plan to be 12.5 hours long.

So it might be an idea to clear your diary.

What do you think?

That was fun.

Yeah, I think that was good.

Yeah, I think that was, I can't believe that we spoke for so long about it.

We did.

Well, because it's fun.

Also, you know, it feeds into, you know, a lot of ongoing things in the series.

So it's, it's, uh, Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's, and it's also, it's also so much richer than, than I think you, then you, then you give it credit for on a, on a sort of cursory, uh, a cursory glance or, or, you know, you think of it as an, as a sort of like throwaway.

They call it, didn't they used to call it the Dalek?

[55:01]

I tried to get that into the script, actually, of the intro.

It wouldn't work out.

Because isn't the, isn't the, I thought the charlic cutaway was the, that cardboard garlic, that they...

So the thing that we didn't get the chance to say was that tat wood in about time thinks that that final confrontation in the Daleks episode 7 is so ineptly directed by Richard Martin that you, you can no longer believe that those are just a row of daleks up against the wall of the thing.

And then all of the Daleks bring big life-size blow-up photographs of their wives to work. on the wall.

Oh my god, I remember reading them losing my mind.

So they're bringing their macrame in their pot of plants.

It's perfectly in character.

Yeah, around the context. pot plants.

We've got, oh, we've got to bring the accordion man, which the Dalek commandant likes.

[56:04]

That's his...

Oh, yeah, what absolute nonsense.

It's so charming.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm so I'm so thrilled that y'all invited me on to talk about this.

Oh, thanks. thank you.

Well, but ever since I was assigned it, like, because I had several choices.

And, you know, I was like, oh, it's not, you know, thinking about it in the in the in the intervening months.

I'm like, oh, it's just the one episode, but like, the more I've watched it, again, the richer and more sort of like, the more it's blossomed for me in a sort of Varga plant sort of way.

It's really, really perfected.

Like the heart of the year, I don't really rate all that much.

Do you know what I mean?

Like I have to kind of watch it as a historical document rather than something that I can really straightforwardly enjoy, maybe the chase.

Well, like I said, I haven't, well, like I said, I haven't really spent a lot of time with the Heartnell era with the actual, with the actual stories.

So, I mean, recently I did an episode for the vinyl to celebrate the vinyl release of the rescue.

[57:06]

Oh, and, you know, again, but the contrast between an episode like that, an episode like this shows you what the consequences of that doctor, that doctorlessness are, because the doctor is, he feels like he is in command, that entire episode.

He sort of swaggers through the whole thing.

In the end, when he's in the hall of sort of legends or whatever, you know, leaning back in the chair, waiting for Coquilian to come in, like you feel safe, you feel reassured.

And that's the, and again, like, because that was just a couple months ago that I spent a lot of time with that episode.

And then spending a lot of time with this episode in the intervening period.

Like the contrast is, there's I mean, there's so much variety in the Harlem era.

Like there's, it's really, it's really quite wonderful how you can go from something so sort of cosy to something so bleak.

And it's going to continue to be bleak.

I mean that's the other thing.

There's lots of like fun Christmas shenanigans, obviously, around Christmas and New Year in this story.

But even the, you know, like we've got the Daleks heading towards Earth. you know they're going to attack us.

[58:08]

Do you know what I mean?

Like during that time.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and, but, you know, this ends with everyone dies, 4 weeks later everyone dies.

You know, by the time the Dalek's master plan happens, he's lost 3 companions.

Do you know what I mean?

Like by the end of that, like 3 of his friends have been killed, the planet Campbell has been completely devastated.

And that's a thing that the show does as well.

Like he just doesn't, he's not a proper hero and he doesn't save the day.

And so this ends, you know, he does kind of win, but like at that ending, and it's such a shame that we don't have it because that's the other thing too.

He turns up, doesn't he, in episode 11 or something like that, and he's been absent, and it's just like, oh, shit, the doctor's back.

That's so great.

I'm so happy.

But he doesn't, you know what I mean?

Like, and he only barely gets out of that alive, you know, like, it's super bleak.

Do you remember?

Do you remember in the arc, which is a miserably racist story?

[59:11]

Um, we have the, we speculate that we've just been bringing diseases to everywhere that we go.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, yeah, yeah, Dodo, Dodo infects the mono space syphilis.

And but then the doctor says, oh, yes, but we've probably been bringing back, you know, diseases, we listen to everywhere.

They're all those...

Did you know?

I mean, look, that wouldn't be such a loss.

And that was one of actually one of the things that I wondered about early on in my sort of like exploration of Mission to the Unknown was how the Varga plants got there until, you know, I don't know that they actually ever explicitly say it, but it becomes clear that they do bring them with them.

Because I was wondering, like, you know, do they, because, you know, I do a lot of gardening and in past years, I had, uh, had a high breath.

Well, no, but in past years, I had a plant appear in my garden called Amarant, which is sort of what they call a trap crop.

[1:00:14]

So, you know, it grows.

And when you're growing other vegetables, like cucumbers or okra, whatever it is that I grow, like, whatever, for whatever reason, the Japanese beetles or other pests are drawn, it's why I call it a trap crop.

Like they will go to the Amaranth and eat that, which is inconsequential because they're leaving alone everything around it.

And so I was wondering, like, did the Daleks, when they came to Kimble, because they knew it would be, I think Corey at some point says like, because it's not a planet that people visit, or because it's sort of out of the way, it's the sort of perfect place for the Daleks to come.

So I'm thinking like, like with the Amaranth, like, because I used to farm with my friend Rochelle, I must have tracked that Amaranth seed on my clothes or in my shoe.

So because I didn't plant it here, but it grew here and it's the, it was the exact same one.

So I was like, did the Daleks just sort of track Vargo with them from Scaro or whoever?

Oh, my God, did they muddy football?

They do say that they did bring it to defend themselves, don't they?

Like the Daleks actually say that.

And, you know, it is a way of making the sort of silly monster threat into a Dalek threat and it gives us a good way for Mark Corey to deduce at the Daleks of here before he actually sees them.

[1:01:22]

Well, they need to they need to look behind them because they can't see behind them.

Yeah, maybe that's it.

They just have one...

They say one Vargas to follow us at all times.

I love it if they'd brought seeds and they had to wait for years for them to Germany.

Germination, yeah. like a row creator, like a little watering hire, an attachment.

I don't I don't go.

Yeah, what you call it when you...

But yeah, I guess it has 100% germination if you bring dead bodies with you.

Just toss a dead body out there.