The Back End of the Daleks

[00:34]

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to 500 Year Diary, the only Doctor Who podcast fully qualified in space literary criticism.

I'm Nathan.

I'm James.

And Jeremy.

And I'm Simon.

It's the 7th of April, 1973.

It's been no less than 375 weeks since we last saw Terry Nation's version of the Daleks on BBC One, and tonight 11000000 people have tuned in to watch that version's triumphant return.

Can Terry Nation soft reboot of the Daleks, recapture the magic of their 1st appearance, nearly 10 years ago?

Let's find out as we discuss Planet of the Daleks.

I think we're going to do what we've been doing for most of these episodes so far, and we'll start by talking about the production before moving on to Terry Nations contribution.

[01:36]

And I just want to say this is one of those pertwee ones where we had read the novelisation over and over again and had a fairly high budget version of it that we created in our own heads.

Oh, dear.

And then when we actually came to see the tiny, tiny planet sets and the tiny, tiny spaceship and things.

I think I was a little bit disappointed.

But I'm not sure that's entirely fair as an assessment of the production.

What do people think?

Actually think it looks pretty good.

I think there's some good direction and I think that Maloney actually gets the Daleks right.

So you've moved up from underwhelmed to whelmed.

A bit.

Yeah, yeah.

Look, my observation is, yes, I agree that I was quite underwhelmed by this story in 1986.

And for the benefit of non-Australian listeners, whilst we'd had a whole lot of repeats of Pertweis up to this point, Planet the Daleks was one of the ones, one of a couple that was always left out because of the black and white episode three, although that didn't stop them showing entire black and white Pertweis before that.

[02:50]

And yes, it's not just the novelisation, but I want to focus on 2 particular images, the cover of the novelisation, where the doctor and Taryn are struggling with the Dalek.

And also there's a photograph of Joe, and I think there's a version with just Joe and the doctor and the version with Joe and some Mythals and the doctor overlooking, it's actually from episode 6 where they're looking into the edge of the great big pit of all the 10s of 1000s of Daleks.

And you sort of wonder, wow, they're spying on something that's going on, you know, the Daleks are plotting and da da da.

And the production is let down by the images that we created as children in our minds built from those 2 images.

But I think I agree with you that it's unfair to have done that because, of course, we've got the 80s budget version and, you know, we're stuck with the sort of 1973 budget version and I think it does actually watching it this time.

My thoughts on it have definitely improved with time.

I think there is judicious use of filming, which I think works really well.

[03:51]

So in the ice corridors and in that shaft, the exhaust shaft thing that the doctor and the files balloon their way up, I think all of that looks really good.

I think that there's a little bit of location footage as well at the plane of stones, which isn't quite as successful, but it still enables them to do.

Well, jarring, I think.

Yeah, it is a bit jarring, but it does enable them to do action in a way that they could never have done in those tiny studio sets.

And I think all of that works really well because this is, and we'll talk about this when we move on and talk about the writing, but this is a story that lives and dies on its set pieces on various action set pieces, I think.

Very much like the original Daleks.

Yeah, and I actually think it looks, one of the things I was really struck by is that jump from the 60s to the 70s when they started recording in different blocks than they used to.

And you can always tell a really good director of Doctor Who versus a not so good one in that how they use that to build sets.

[04:56]

And the thing that blew me away this time watching it, which I never thought about before.

There's a lot of sets.

Like there's a lot of different locations in this one.

And some of them look really, really good for what they are.

And I was thinking about Planet of Evil, which is another David Maloney one later on, which is lauded for its jungle set shot on film, which is totally appropriate.

But as I recall that one, there's a lot of like, we're in the spaceship, we're in the jungle.

We're in the spaceship, we're in the jungle.

We're in the spaceship, and it does get repetitive.

And here they've got like good use of different jungle sets.

They've got that big entrance way to the spear on caves, which actually looks pretty impressive.

They've got where the Daleks are working in their command place.

Then they've got the refrigerator.

So they have all of these different locations that somehow they've managed to really make, I think, work about as well as you can with about $one.95 to get it done and the time that they have to get it done.

I actually thought it looked pretty good this time around.

They fitted a lot into that studio.

A lot into it.

[05:58]

I think, though, that we are once again confronted with the reality that to do a successful jungle in a studio is incredibly challenging.

Like those bits of Planet of Evil are so much better, the bits that are on film compared to the bits that are in the studio.

You know, I was really wanting a part of this jungle set to have been done in on film.

They do the ice tunnels and the ballooning thing instead, very sensible, of course, and they're impressive.

But it just, it's just like whether it's this, whether it's, you know, Planet of Evil, whether it's face of evil.

It's just, it just, it is always a letdown.

Although I have to think that Kemble is actually pretty great, that somehow, and I don't know what it is, but that Campbell, in the hands of Douglas Campfield, in the Daleks Master Plan, does look pretty great, certainly the sets look better than they do here.

I don't think that's just because it's black and white.

Like, it's shot differently.

Like it's shot from different angles.

I think you see too much flaw in this.

[07:00]

There's quite a bit of flaw.

Yes, which is surprising for David Maloney, actually.

Very surprising.

And occasionally it's reasonably well covered with, you know, gravel or something to make it look a little like it's outside, but often you just see the, like the bare, painted green.

Yeah.

And funnily enough, the worst example of that is the very end where, you know, the doctor and Joe suddenly have to rush back to the Tartars and the Daleks are chasing them.

And that's the most egregious amount of studio floor that I think you see.

That's pretty bad, that's hard.

They had to get around.

They laid down boards all over the planet.

My favourite bit that indicates just how tiny the studios are is the moment where I think it's sort of lartep and Joe kind of meet for the 1st time and Joe has to take lartep to get the bombs.

She literally walks 2 steps and says, and they're here and then she picks it up off the floor.

Let me help you.

There they are.

[08:01]

That is, I'll use the word egregious.

But also, can I say that that is a very odd thing to have happened in the hands of David Maloney.

Something has gone wrong there in terms of something hasn't arrived or something hasn't turned up the way they thought it was going to, and it's just odd, and I'm surprised someone like him didn't fix it, like say, saying, oh, can we just cut this line and move on?

It's very heart and all.

It's the kind of thing you see in heartless stories.

One of my favourite things I saw was the 70s really working to help the story in that when Joe is hiding behind some like beige grass and the dollics are looking for her, because she's wearing that brown coat and she's got her blonde hair and it's so 70s, she actually did, I was like, wow, it's not just hiding in plain sight, like we've seen so many dollic things.

I actually was like, is Joe Oh there she is.

It was kind of a where's Wally moment.

I was like, oh, thank God for the 70s.

You know, we just, we begged it all up and it worked.

It's little known fact that dogs can't see beige.

The entire style expedition is invisible to them.

[09:04]

Yeah.

Yes.

The other thing that I think really was shockingly bad was the, um, I think the cassette tape log is perhaps the worst prop in Doctor Who history.

It's pretty dire.

You know, it's lame.

Weren't cassette tapes like cutting edge barely available, but is at this point?

That would have been my goodness.

They would have been big reels, real school.

It's still pretty lame looking.

It just looks dinky.

It just looks just the fact that it falls apart in his hand when he's trying to casket.

You know, it's got a circuit board stuck inside it.

No, it's got tiny reels.

It's got little reels.

It's tiny drills.

It's just...

Yep, it's not my favourite.

I was like, and this might be the wiggiest.

Is this a pretty wiggy production.

[10:06]

The use of wigs. difficult to tell because it's difficult to tell because, you know, the hair at that time was that size.

So, you know, Joe's hair obviously goes terribly flat and lifeless on location.

And I just think it's clearly the atmosphere around the plane of stones that's causing it to happen.

Usually humid.

Yeah, yeah.

She has her hugest hair, I think, here.

And she does look pretty great.

She does.

And of course, you have all of the files who are all blonde, so they're managing to keep that up, apparently, just 1000s of years in the future.

Bless them.

We can still find peroxide.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's naturally occurring on that dead planet.

Yeah.

Well, maybe there's someone back on Skara saying we must keep the thull.

If I can say something about the production, which is a little bit curious and disappointing, is the Dalek City.

And I think what we're missing that we get in the Daleks and a couple of other Dalek stories is that the Dalek City is Dalekite.

[11:10]

Whereas this city is John Pershwin Height.

And that's the thing that I think one of the things that makes the imagery of the Daleks so effective is that terribly claustrophobic set, which oddly enough would suit a small studio space.

Whereas here it's all normal person height, and I think that's unfortunate.

Yeah.

I mean, I think probably they thought at the time we're going to improve on the sets of 10 years ago and make them bigger and then they've missed what it was that was good about the original.

I don't think that was even taken into consideration because, A, they're not going to be bringing up prints because where the hell are they?

B, there might be some photos, but where the hell are they?

It's just something that was just lost in the mists of time by then.

It just doesn't read as if it's the same building.

You know, you've got the big stone doorway to the caves and then inside is just a Dalek base.

It would have been more interesting if they kind of were inhabiting the space of...

[12:10]

If it had been like an ancient spirad on temple.

Yeah, like they're wandering around in this sort of stone caves with bits of technology grafted into them because they'd taken them over.

But probably be on the budget.

I think that's what they would do now for sure.

It's weird that they don't do it here.

I agree.

It's like you've got all those ruins.

It's just very, it's a little weird.

They probably just would have gone to Wookie Hole.

I mean, I think they want the dialects to be in space corridors because that's kind of a natural habitat of the Daleks.

And because you have a contrast between the Dalek space corridors and the jungle, which they're inhabiting, and that's the same contrast that you get in the Daleks, which this is, in many ways, just a remake of, and like, I don't think that's a bad thing, but we've been observing over the last few weeks that those 60s Dalek stories each open out.

Like they each have a bigger scale and a bigger scope, each one than the previous one.

So, you know, we go from the jungle planet, in the distant future, probably, who even knows.

[13:18]

Then you go to them invading Earth, then you go to the Daleks, kind of threatening to take over the entire premise of the TV show, and then you get the massive galaxy spanning absurd space opera.

And when Whitaker takes it over, he does completely different things with it, and he's really successful, we've already talked about Power of the Daleks, which I think has a strong claim to be the best dialect story.

But now we're back to like the stuff from 1963.

And I can see why Terry wanted to do that.

It's a little bit like Strange New Worlds doing a holiday episode.

It's kind of like it's now many years later.

Let's see what a holiday episode looks like in 2025.

And here this is like, what does the Daleks look like if we're making it in 1973.

And there are things that are not as good, and obviously the Darlet corridors are one of those things.

[14:18]

But there are things, I think, that it manages to do considerably better.

Such as?

I think the action's better.

I do think the action's better.

Like if you compare the balloon escape to the elevator escape, right?

That the ice corridor travails in the 1st cereal versus the corridors here, I think there's no question it's directed better and it's actually structured better.

Like, they have a better idea of what they're good at.

For sure.

I think that the original is directed as well by Christopher Barry, the Christopher Barry episodes, particularly, are directed as well as a 60 story can be directed in the confines.

I think it's made better because, you know, they can do so much more, as you're sort of saying, but I think that broadly speaking, it does bring the excitement levels up.

The exception for me being most of episode one and the back end of episode six.

Like, it's kind of like, it takes a while for the story to get going, which is actually a very heart and more thing when you think about it.

And I think Terry is still writing a Heartnell story, which I think he continues to do in Death of the Daleks.

And I think even in Genesis of the Daleks, it's still somewhat writing a Hartnell story in that you get the, you discover the planet, the environment, through the eyes of the regulars, you don't cut away after the 1st scene to hear all the alien people having their conversations in rooms and so on.

[15:36]

And so we decided, get to know them before the doctor and company meet them.

We meet them through the doctor and Joe, like you do in a heart little story.

But I think it does achieve much more, and I think it does get the excitement level going quite a lot, and obviously the action's better because it's very difficult for them to do it when they were doing action back in the very, very start of the show.

It was very hard to do actually in the studio.

But given that that's what Terry wants to do.

And we said in our Daleks episode that in fact, you know, the things like calling the, calling the episodes things like the expedition the ordeal and so on, indicates that for Terry Nation, the focus is these action sent pieces.

And they're done much better.

And even, like I still find per 26 partners, a little bit of a challenge.

And I did watch this in 2 goes.

And I wasn't bored in the way that I was bored rigid by, say, the ordeal, which I think is the worst episode of the Daleks.

But what we do lose, and I think it's the thing that we lose almost immediately that never really comes back after the Daleks, is the weird sound that we have in the Daleks, like the sound, I think, is extraordinary.

[16:48]

The sound is good here in places, but, you know, it doesn't compare to the sound of the dalek city towards the end of episode one of the daleks and the design of the daleks.

The miniatures, you know, what the city looked like from the outside, and what those space corridors look like from the inside.

I think that that was amazing.

And I think that that's moving into the sort of realms of art.

Like it is beautifully designed and directed.

This is doing a job, but it doesn't aspire to be quite as interesting looking, I think, as the dialects did, quite as weird.

I mean, this is presenting something that is now 10 years old that is familiar to everyone in the audience and kind of showing us where it was good and for Terry Nation.

He's not doing the images, particularly, he's writing a script and that script is full of action set pieces, that I think actually managed to mostly work.

Whereas the ones in the back end of the Daleks are a bit of an ordeal, I guess.

[17:50]

So it had individual episode titles, what would we call them?

The coma?

Oh, my God.

Fascinating.

One of my 1st notes I wrote was the doctor saying, I'm suffocating, but by God, if I suffocate, it'll be in purple.

He chooses the weirdest time to change his clothes.

I love I love that.

He's running out of air and he goes and changes from that natty green number into the sort of plush purple outfit.

I mean, it is a gorgeous outfit.

Like, don't get, he looks...

John Perti looks spectacular throughout.

I think he's probably rarely looked better than he does in this one.

His dressing for the occasion.

It is always a little bit rough on Blu-ray just to see quite how much slap he's got on.

There's a lot of foundation.

But it is funny that costs a gym change thing because it's the sort of scene that you get inserted because they'd already done the location, work in a different costume and suddenly realise, oh gosh, he's only in the green thing at the beginning of the scene.

[18:58]

How we going to fix this?

Yeah, yeah.

Because it doesn't make any story since he already knows that the oxygen's running out there, as you say.

But first, I watch change.

In a couple of weeks, Sarah will stop and change into camouflage gear. in order to sort of make the transition from one story to another as well.

So it is a thing.

I think what's really super weird about that.

I think that 1st episode, it is slow and it is obviously working because we've established that the Daleks appear at the Cliffhanger to episode one, that that's part of the deal.

That's how these stories work.

So we can't see the Daleks until then.

And so getting to know a subset of the Thyle characters, which again, I think is really good structure, the way that we get a whole extra expedition coming along in episode two, after we've had the chance to meet Codal Weber and Taron.

And I think all of that thing of Joe exploring, I think, giving Joe the chance to sort of go out and do something, and she fails, but she doesn't seem pathetic.

[20:00]

There is an issue, I think, around how this story treats women.

But that bit where Joe gets to be the person telling the story and the person going out and doing something, it's a little bit, I guess, like Susan going out into the forest in the Daleks to get the radiation pills or whatever the hell she thinks she's doing.

But she doesn't fail.

I mean, you know, you know, a bad thing happens to her and all of that sort of thing.

But I do think that that actually largely works.

And I actually found that 1st episode pretty engaging surprisingly.

I think Katie Manning as an actor, so really good at curiosity.

Like, she's always really good at being kind of engaged with what's going on around her.

And poor Susan was just told to be petrified and panicky about everything.

But I think one of the things that makes Joe so great is, I mean, they would probably in a very sexist way call it plucky, but it's more than that.

It's like a curiosity and an engagement in the circumstances.

And so you kind of, she's really good at making you as the audience kind of want to go with her and be with her and be on her side.

[21:02]

And I think that's a, They're really lucky.

I think Terry Nation was really lucky because in the hands of a different companion, that could have been interminable, but with her, you really feel like, she may she may screw it up, but she's going to try to figure it out. and you trust her.

I think it's a template of companion that basically begins.

I think perhaps with Zoe, uh, because the girls before that are kind of a bit rubbish apart from Vicky and um, Barbara in their own ways.

But from Zoe onwards, they have a lot more agency and you know, Liz has it, well, they just haven't much time to develop it.

Joe certainly has it. get it with get it with Leila and then you get it with Romanas and onwards from there.

There's a bit of a regression with some of the 80 early 80s companions.

But yeah, having her do all that and be curious about it, be interested about not wandering around like Susan is absolutely petrified looking petrified the entire time, which is just tedious.

Joe is actually discovering things whilst being cautious and a bit afraid and all the rest of it.

But yeah, episode one, Nathan.

[22:04]

I have to say that was actually the beginning of my disappointment when I was watching it in 86 when it was on, and I had so much expectation for it, and that expectation was almost utterly annihilated in the watching of episode one.

I actually think the big disappointing moment for me is episode 2 because I remember the destruction of the Thal shuttlecraft where Terence Styx describes it as glowing cherry red and then exploding.

And I can't imagine that I'd ever heard the expression cherry red before.

And I just thought, that is so vivid.

That's going to look great.

And then, of course, it's pretty terrible.

Disappointingly, they don't fix that in the special edition.

Yeah, it's weird.

And that spaceship's pretty bad all the way around.

It shakes like crazy.

I don't know.

I don't know what that is.

I don't know how to feel about that because, I mean, you know, the advantage of it shaking is that it does at least feel like it's not just a built part of the set.

You know, it does feel like it's a box that's kind of landed in the set. and badly it's crashed.

[23:06]

Yeah, yeah.

But it is it is a little bit rough.

And then, and then you've got Paul Wester who is being realised with various sort of yellow fringed physical objects.

I think they actually CG eat all of those.

Like they're not just redone.

They'd CG the scenes.

Like most of those scenes don't have other people in them, so they just got a steal photo and then did CGI versions.

Yeah, I think that's right.

My favourite thing about Westerns.

When he's helping Joe, and he's invisible, but they want the audience to still know he's there.

So they've given him a stick to hold on to for various points, which kind of defeats the purpose of having an invisible companion, you know, hiding you because there's people just be like, why is Joe there with a stick floating mixture?

It's very weird.

It's this great line in reference to that when Joe and the doctor made back up against it.

And then I was saved by a bull.

[24:09]

Let's talk about the Thal characters.

So, we have Bernard Horsville, who David Maloney seems to like casting quite a lot.

Yeah, we have Penters Hancock, as Weber, and Tim Priest's curdle.

Yeah, and like, I actually think that, you know, Terry Nation doesn't create vivid and memorable characters in the Daleks.

Like there's Dione and Ganitis and all of that, but none of them are super memorable.

Here, though, I think Taryn and Weber and Kodal are all really kind of well drawn.

And Prentice Hancock is kind of the right actor because he's so massively unlikeable.

He's an excellent choice to play Weber, I think.

And we do actually get, you know, that conflict between Taryn and Weber, which flares up in episode 2 and then is diffused by the arrival of the 2nd expedition.

And then there's a moment of apology, and it sort of goes down, and then it flares up again when we're at the plane of stones a little bit later on.

[25:13]

And it actually creates peril.

It gives us another thing that we need to do.

You know, it becomes an important part of the plot.

We need to go and get Weber and the bombs that creates, you know, an action sequence and stuff like that.

Like, I think they're all really actually quite good.

I have to disagree quite violently.

Oh wow.

I feel they are like, I mean, whilst I like various ones and various actors.

I'm liking the actors more than the characters because the characters are not even a paragraph.

They are purely functional to create, you know, the initial trio that you've got.

You've got the, you know, the noble and cautious leader, you've got the rebellious and headstrong, um, Weber, and then you've got the more thoughtful and quiet, nerdy curdle.

You know, they all just fit that.

And, and, and I, I'm sorry, but Prentice Hancock is probably my least favourite Doctor Who actor in the entire run of the show by a substantial margin.

[26:14]

He has the same performance ticks in every story he's in as Salamar in Planet of Evil.

He is dreadful.

In this, he is annoying.

It's also one dimensional. and the way he kind of holds his mouth when he's, you know, making one of those serious points.

It's not even acting.

It's like you're watching a school production of something and he's the bad guy.

You know, I mean, I don't, I didn't watch space 1999, so I don't, I don't know what he's like there, but I believe he has a moustache in that.

So that's an equally egregious sin, regardless of what his performance is in that.

So, but, yeah.

And then the others arrive and Rebeck is obviously the kind of, to some extent, the damn...

She's the woman.

She shouldn't have come, you know.

She shouldn't have come.

She shouldn't have come.

No, she shouldn't have come.

But not because she's a girl because she's Taryn's girlfriend or wife.

You know, that's that's why she shouldn't have come.

But she's playing the damn cell in distress, although she has got some excellent Doctor Who acting, especially at the end of part 3 with Doctor, It's not going to work.

[27:16]

Absolutely, for me, sells that cliffhanger.

So she gets full marks from my point of view.

Marritt is basically...

Which is a space philosophy to die.

Um, and he's, he's in Genesis of the Darling extent, you know, as the guy who dangles Sarah off, um, uh, the, the top.

Is he the one who says right?

Come on back down now or something.

Is that that guy?

Come on back down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And um, and then he's also, um, the, the general in LOL.

Oh yes.

There you go.

So he's just a space filler, obviously fine, whatever.

And, but I, I've always liked um, uh, last hip.

I always thought, you know, my 14 year old loins were kind of feeling something there.

I thought he was quite pretty.

And I was a little bit disappointed.

I thought he was prettier than Cliff, for instance.

Oh, yes.

I always thought that Jack, yes.

But anyway, the point being that they are all just plot functions.

I mean, I enjoy the characters in the Daleks.

I like Ganitis, for instance, I think he's interesting and there's a bit going on there.

[28:17]

But you know, I mean, Terry Nation is never known for his interesting characters until basically you get to Genesis of the Daleks, where you've got some fabulous ones.

In case of horribly blonde 2, electric boogaloo for you.

You're not allowed to do an electric boogaloo joke again, no.

Look, I mean, I have to say that that's fair.

But what I do think is that because interrogation's not trying to write interesting characters and failing, he just doesn't want to do that.

But what he does do is he creates fairly programmatic characters and we know how they're going to behave and they interact in a way that drives the plot along and I think that gives us a couple of good moments for pertry as well.

So I think Pertuy and Kodal, in the lift, that's a really great scene.

It works really well in the novelisation as well.

Super memorable.

All that stuff about courage and what courage is.

I think is really great.

And I think the tail end.

[29:17]

In fact, that scene where Kodal says goodbye to the doctor and thanks him, which is pretty unusual, you know, like having a character arc for someone in a terriation story where they grow and learn something and then they reflect on that episodes later.

I think that's pretty good.

That's pretty good, but I just counter slash add to that to what I was saying before.

It's the performance.

I think it's what Tim Price is doing in the performance there.

You see it in his face, you see it in the way he shakes his head.

It's like, you have helped me, and I think that is far more than, he's done something with the lines he was given there.

Yeah, I think he's probably the most, not realistic because he's a Doctor Who story, but the most embodying of his character as an actor in this story.

Yes, he is actually.

I also think too, the other thing that works really well.

And strikes me as a bit of an apology for the Daleks, because I thought that, you know, whenever Doctor Who does the, these people are pacifists thing and that's utterly unreasonable, and what about if I was to come along and threaten your woman?

[30:24]

You know, like, like, all of that is kind of, that's kind of a bit unfortunate.

Watching Ian goad that guy.

Yeah, going Aladon into attacking.

Like that's not fun and it's not pleasant.

But you can see why it's happening in 1963 with World War 2 being sort of a fairly present memory.

And, you know, the need to stand up and fight against evil is super pressing and all of that. and so we make that point Here, what I really like is that scene at the end, which is surprising.

And I found it actually quite affecting where the doctor congratulates the thal for being a peace loving people.

Like, the tharls are a peace loving people.

And the doctor says, that's great.

You know, good for you.

Don't forget that.

Keep that.

When you tell this story.

And again, it just seems like, again, looking back on World War 2, but from, you know, 10 years on, where what we remember isn't the triumph of conquest, but the people that we lost and the people that came back affected by it.

[31:36]

And I thought that was surprisingly grounded and interesting and almost like an apology for the Talax.

Remember, Vietnam has happened in the interim.

But although Britain wasn't really involved in Vietnam in the same way that the US and Australia were, but nevertheless, they got all the media, they knew what was going on and the kind of the futility.

Vietnam spoke to the futility of war, whereas World War 2 was more of a kind of a good versus evil kind of thing.

I actually don't feel that they are the 2 sequences are inconsistent with each other.

Oh, no, no.

Because I think what is still the underlying moral of the story is that we don't want war, but sometimes you need to stand up and fight for something because otherwise, you know, you know, the old thing of, you know, evil triumphs because good people do nothing.

It's just the difference, I think. just the difference between a scene where the peace lovingness of the farms. is an obstacle to overcome compared to a scene where it's celebrated and the doctor talks to them about how to maintain that.

[32:43]

I don't think that's inconsistent with the idea that it is necessary to fight.

You know, the files do need to stand up and fight the daleks in the daleks.

I'm just saying it's a question of kind of emphasis.

Interestingly, too, though, too, whilst, you know, there is no story Bible, there is no series Bible in existence.

There is actually sort of a continuity thing going on there too, because when you think about it, the original story is set 100s of years, 500 years or something after the detonation of the bomb and the 2 races of the dolls and the dolls have evolved, you know, to become either blonde things or to go into their machines.

And so the files have had 500 years of being completely peace loving because they've rejected war because they were the warriors there.

Plan of the Daleks being set, however many years, 500 years, maybe again after it.

They've kind of had to adapt to the fact that the reality of the Daleks.

And so it sort of it does sort of work that they're still a peace-loving people, but they're kind of having to do this because they need to stop the daleks.

It actually is a great extent.

[33:44]

They're fighting to protect the piece in a way.

It is kind of funny, though, that the, I mean, it's incredibly surprising to hear a reference to Barbara Ian and Susan in Doctor Who in 1973.

It never happened until last point, yeah.

That's that's amazing.

I'm thinking maybe the final episode of the massacre is the last time that we think about previous companions and mention them.

But, you know, that was way back during the Dalek Wars, and you kind of go, what are you talking about, the Dalek Wars?

You know, like, like, it really is the thinnest possible kind of continuity reference.

It is very vague.

Terry himself doesn't seem to have really remembered.

What's going on in that 1st story?

And that's perfectly fine.

Do you know what I mean?

I do think that referring to that story is in a way, Terry Nation saying, and this is what we're getting back to.

You know, we're going to be doing the Daleks, like this now.

Well, like this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[34:44]

Yeah, that's right.

But we wanted off that.

Do you know what I mean?

We wanted off that in the 60s.

He went back and things went bigger and bigger.

There's nowhere else to go.

What do you do?

I guess you have a reality bomb that's going to destroy everything if you want to. you want the scale to be bigger than Dalek's master plan.

And it's just like, no, it's a Dalek city, there's a jungle, there's thal, you know, there's a plague, bomb, there's all of the things that we usually do that we're used to an interrogation thing.

All of those ingredients are here.

They're all back again.

We're vaccinating daleks, everything.

It's hugely exciting.

I tried to count all of the different elements from the original story and I lost count.

There are some things.

I mean, there was that sort of crawling through corridors and stuff.

I do think that creating a planet which is interesting geologically and has these different features is something, you know, the plane of stones is interesting.

The ice cano is interesting.

[35:45]

The crawl through the ice ducts where Marat gets killed, you know, like that's, that's tense, that's well done.

That's a, you know, that's a, a decent action sequence.

Like we get action sequences out of it and it feeds into the plot.

I think all of that stuff is extremely well done.

No, I think it's all, it's all done very well and I think, you know, to speak to your, um, your idea of sort of resetting the Daleks, um, or scaling them back.

It's an interesting, what's interesting to me about this one in particular is that it's both a kind of restatement of what they are.

But what has always been troubling to me and this is more about the writing, but is that they had been involved in such an incredible plot in this story before this.

And they had such a great surprise.

I do think that it feels a bit small in some ways, this story.

I do think the scope and the scale of it, at times feels a bit just claustrophobic or reduced in scale to a point where I kind of do think it feels a little more parochial than perhaps we would want the story to feel based on the positioning of them.

[37:03]

And that's hard when, you know, David Daleks only has like 3 Daleks on location or something.

How is this smaller scale?

But it's because it's like most of Death Dalaxy's on location, apart from the big set pieces and the house.

I think we should talk about Day of the Daleks.

Is this a reaction against Day of the Daleks?

Is this Terry Nation kind of saying, actually, no, I'll have this back now.

No You don't, really?

Well, no, because the chances of you having seen David Daleks is slim to none.

His lawyer saw the script.

But the reason Day of the Daleks feels, and I think it's a much better story is, despite the fact that there are only being 3 Daleks is, well, I would actually say because there are only 3 Daleks in it, it's a much better story.

I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again, that the best Dalek stories like Power of the Daleks, like Genesis of the Daleks, are the ones where the Daleks are actually this almost the secondary things, or at least they take a while, like there's so much else going on in the universe that's being created.

[38:06]

And whenever they become too central is when the story starts to become a little bit dull, by comparison, stayed.

I mean, Jeremy, you said claustrophobic.

It's not claustrophobic.

Daleks was the original Daleks story was claustrophobic.

This is just stayed.

It's kind of, and they're not stayed because it's using some of those same story features again. just, you're right.

You needed something else.

There needed to be a kind of a change of location, a change of locale, more than jungle versus city versus plane of stones. which is extraordinary because the story immediately before it, frontier and space does that.

It goes from place to place and has this epic feel, even though it kind of doesn't do as much with it as you think it should.

David Daleks feels more epic because you've got this very traumatic sense of you've got these different sense of people.

You've got Aubrey Woods as the controller and all this stuff going on there.

You've got the gorillas and all the stuff going on there.

And then you've got unit and all the stuff going on there in the 20th century.

And yes, you've got the 20th and 22nd century.

So you've got this kind of epic flavour to it.

[39:08]

So it's, it's just, it's so much more broad whilst, and yes, it's got more location work fine, but it's, it's broader in thought rather than in number of speaking parts.

Also, I think this story is let down by the fact that the only location shooting you get is almost at the end of the story.

So you've been in studios in a, like even when you go to the Plane of Stones, which they could have realised on location in the dark and might have improved it a little.

Well, they've got 70 filming days, yeah.

I mean, and look, that last, that scene, even the quarry or wherever it is, with the dry ice in the water and the Talax is great.

It's where that image comes from, that image that Simon mentioned before.

But it feels like it's just it's tacked on at the end almost as an afterthought because they, you know, they had some location days and they're like, oh, what can we do here?

I don't think it's a what can we do here?

It's this is what we're doing.

[40:09]

How much of the plane of stones, do we have time to realise on location?

Because you may have found that if they'd have had time, they would have done those sequences when they're by the campfire, you know, day for night or whatever.

I think it suffers from that.

So often location work in Doctor Who is front loaded into the 1st episode or two.

You know, often it's spread out, but you often get that impressive opening episode with all this all the locations.

And you're right.

Exactly.

It's the other way around here.

I just think that it's, like some of the other stuff that Terry's written for the show, I think the Chase, the Artic Master plan, he's maybe getting ahead of the capacity of the program to deliver them.

Maybe his mind is thinking of the 60s feature films rather than, you know, what actually was capable of being done on television.

Because imagine, imagine if the jungle was on film at Ealing, in all of it.

Imagine if the Dalek city was a bit more enclosed.

Imagine if the plane of stone scenes were all was night filming.

[41:09]

Look, think how incredible and therefore engaging, that would look in comparison.

The version that we constructed in our heads when we were reading the novelisation, essentially.

Look, I mean, I think that, you know, there is something insane, maybe quixotic about the desire to stage massive, complicated action sequences in a corner of a studio, in BBC television centre.

Good luck to them.

I mean, I shouldn't I shouldn't critique that.

They are not bad.

I think that things like the caves, you know, the stuff that they do in Ealing as well, you know, the crawling through the corridors. crawling through the ice tunnels, all of that stuff is really fun.

Like, I think that that does work really well, but there are also plenty of action sequences that adjust in the studio, like, you know, trying to recapture Weber or whatever, or, you know, get the bombs and all of that sort of thing.

But I mean, that's what he kind of wants to do.

And I think that trying to push the show in that direction isn't a bad idea and shooting something just slightly beyond what we can comfortably achieve is something that Dr. W. does.

[42:22]

Yes, it does.

So that's quintessentially, doctor.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, I don't know whether this is apocrypha, but was the original intention, or the original thought, that there was going to be another 12 part 10th anniversary thing, and basically whoever it was, whether it was Terry Nation, whether it was other people saying, said to them, do not do that, it will go horribly wrong.

And that's why you get frontier in space and plan with Dalx as source of interlinked 6 parties.

And this definitely suffers from being the kind of the back half of that, if there is to be an arc.

But because what you get in master plan is you get that sense of, we're going from here to there and everywhere, which I critique is being a bit too chaotic.

But a little bit of that goes a long way and that's definitely what's missing here.

I mean, I actually think this kind of works as a follow-up to frontier in space, though.

[43:27]

And even though the continuity, like, there's not a lot of effort, clearly, Terry has no idea what was happening in front of its face.

He isn't interested and will take no effort to find out.

I didn't read the briefing next.

But that's absolutely fine.

And I do think that the scale that we get is a very Doctor Who kind of scale where there is a giant frozen army of 10,000 Daleks entirely achieved by Jane Howe's delivery and some little Louis Mark's toys.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, like, but that still does create a sort of galaxy threatening scale in a way that the Daleks Masterplan attempted as well.

So, like, you know, like, it is small, and it is small scale in a way that the Daleks is, and the Daleks comes in the show's history where there's no out to look at.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, there's nowhere else outside this where we can kind of direct this, whereas this is been part of a, we've seen the Daleks in the, in the previous episode.

[44:32]

We've seen them attack the doctor.

We know about the Daleks from the previous year and from sort of 10 years of their history.

And so this does have a bigger scale while still being essentially as confined in locations as the Daleks is.

It feels like Terry hasn't even read his own script in places because at the end of episode one.

The doctor is very surprised to see an invisible Dalek, even though he asked the time lords to send the Tartars to the planet where the Daleks were conspiring.

Like, what?

That's just a convenient reaction for the cliffhanger.

I mean, that's a very doctor-y thing.

And there are worse. sins like that all littered throughout the show.

At least it's not world peril, like half the other episode endings in this story.

Yes, yes, darling peril.

Oh, no, I like a bit of word peril.

It's not going to work.

And somewhere on the planet, there are 10,000 dollars.

When you think about it, $10,000 Dialects isn't actually that many to take over the universe or galaxy, but anyway, what I will say, though, in its great defence is how, and this is one of the reasons why I think we all loved reading the novelisation is because it is the most Terry Nation Terry Nation story.

[45:42]

I mean, even though, yes, it's probably mainly the Daleks, but it's got the Dalek Master Plan in.

It's got Dalek Invasion of Earth in it in places.

It's got the chase in it and places.

It's got it all.

It even has keys of America.

It's got keys of marinace in it.

And Terry Nation fundamentally understands about incident driven drama, and that is what we, as 10, 11, 12 year olds loved.

We don't care about the characters.

We want stuff to happen.

And it does with the with the exception that episode one is unnecessarily slow just so that we can have the Dalek reveal at the end of part one.

It does actually keep going.

There are things happening.

You don't feel like, I mean, Nathan, you said before that, you know, you struggle with Pertwe 6 partters.

I tend not to in the same way, but having said that, I think that after you get through episode one, it does keep going and you don't feel like you're going around in circles.

The great thing about the classic era, um, structure, particularly with things like the perfect 6 part, is that you arrive, you find out what's going on.

You get captured or into the alien base and find out some stuff, do some stuff.

[46:46]

You escape from that, regroup, and then do your final attack.

That's the way the kind of the art goes.

And I think this has actually got that perfect structure going on in that aside from a slow episode one.

But that's why we love the novelisation.

That's why we were so looking forward to seeing it.

And it's only because it stretched out, you know, a little more than it should be.

And the production is not as interesting as it might be.

That's what's letting it down.

Yeah, and I think it's a good time too to bring up Terrence Dix a little bit because if there's one thing that he helps writers achieve is a shape of their story and remarkable consistency, right?

So I think like there is something to be said for his contributions, which were prob- I mean, I imagine he's probably due to nation's stature, probably not editing it as much, but he is able, you know, it is an era defined by the fact that everything feels remarkably of a piece and of a whole, and that the stories are structured in a way that feels very similar.

[47:49]

And not in a bad way. you know, you get less of the sort of, you know, uneven peaks and valleys that you do in a lot of other eras.

And it's because you have such a steady hand on the till, sort of keeping it moving.

And I think there's for a 6 part story with the Daleks in it written by Terry Nation, who's written a bunch of these by now.

The feeling of incident and kinetic energy in it is pretty great.

I think one of the things that we discovered when we did our Terrence Dix season was that what Terrence often does is he gives the villains something to react against and he allows the villains to have plans that develop.

And it, like, compared to something like snake dance, right?

Where the Mara can only achieve its coming at a particular date in the future and we all just have to hang around and wait for that to happen.

Whereas, you know, something like robot, you have the scientific reform society has plans and its plans are in motion and we see the plans happening and we react to them and they react to what we do and all of that sort of thing.

[48:58]

And so a thing is developing over a period of time.

And Terence is very, very good at just getting things to happen.

But Terry Nation is good at that too.

And so here, like here, I think, maybe, maybe the big flaw that I identified in the Daleks is that we have a lot of action sequences at the back end, which don't involve the Daleks.

And the Daleks are in their city talking to each other about the vaccine program or God knows what.

And we're over here somewhere else climbing over chasms and panicking and all of that kind of thing.

And there's a, like keeping the Daleks away from those action sequences, I think, is a mistake and it makes them less interesting.

But here the action sequences do involve the dialects.

And in particular, the incredible set piece.

That imaginative set set piece. of going up the shaft.

You know, the Daleks are right behind us and then the Daleks react to it and they're speeding towards the top of the shaft and they're coming up the shaft behind us and stuff like it's escaping the Daleks the entire time.

[50:05]

And so they're all there.

And I think that that's absolutely, that's brilliant.

And it's a rare moment of verticality in a Doctor Who story in the classic era because we can't go up normally.

Especially not with Dalek.

Yeah, that's right.

And so here they do.

And I think it's really properly good that those sequences.

It's always a race in time against the Daleks.

The exception, I think, is the ice cano thing. where we're crawling through those corridors and we have to get there before there's an explosion, but I think that's really well done as well.

And of course, the dialects are kind of at the end of that as well.

So, like, just making sure that Daleks remain involved in everything, I think, is the reason why, as far as the plot goes, as far as filling the allotted number of episodes with things goes.

I think this beats the Daleks in that respect.

I think my favourite part of the keeping the dogs involved is Joe ducking and weaving past the really unobserved dog.

[51:09]

There's always a bit of that.

It's one looking directly towards her, just slightly down, and it just doesn't see her as she walks straight across.

I think my favourite Dalek moment and it made me laugh.

I had to stop.

I was laughing so hard.

And then people forget that Daleks can be funny, but they're doing the bacteria thing and the one dollar slaps up against the side of the cannister and the other all goes caution, caution, and it's just...

It's just great.

I love those moments where they're, you know, like they, we forget that they're also silly at times, you know, like anytime someone throws a mic over them, they lose their minds and stuff and they're really perfect monsters for children because they are scary and weird and threatening and dangerous, but you can also make fun of them.

I don't know how they pulled that off.

It's a real achievement of terry nation and the people who've made Doc stories to make them that scary but funny.

It's a hard thing to do.

Who was it that described the Daleks as being like a child having a temper tangent?

[52:12]

And like, like, they're very driven by emotion, ironically. given that they're supposed to have got rid of a lot of those things. at various points in their history.

Oh, the way that they like have a meltdown when Wester knocks off the lid.

It's like, we can never leave.

I think too, this is Michael Wishes 1st time. is a Darlic voice.

Yes, I think so, like voices.

So we have Michael Wisher and Roy Skelton.

Michael Wishes the one who is doing the proper dialect trick of occasionally lengthening a syllable for no particular reason. his homework.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. which is adorable.

Yes, he is the one that Nick Briggs, I think models his performance on.

I actually think Nick Briggs does some David Grahams and Peter Hawke...

No, you're quite correct.

You're quite correct there.

Well, I think he merges them all together, which is why he was he was the logical choice.

He actually, like when you listen to a lot of big finishers, some of us do, he goes on about how he, how, like in the behind the scenes stuff, he's like, oh, yes, I was doing a David Graham here.

[53:20]

But in Adventure in Space and Time, he does that, like, where he actually plays David Graham, sitting at the side of the studio.

I said immediately.

Just going back to a disappointing thing of production is when they bring one of the movie dialects in to be the Supreme Command Dalek or whatever the title it's given. stick a torch on it.

Yes, but right from the get go, as a child, what were we 14 year old?

The thing that gave me the era so much was the fact that the lights didn't do not flash in time with that particular dialect.

Is it the actor inside?

What's going on there?

I don't think that's being unnecessarily picky.

I think that's bad and that that shouldn't have been allowed to happen.

See, I love, I love the, I think it's bad to themselves look really cool. sort of jam jar lights.

Oh, I mean, it's gorgeous.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just annoying.

[54:21]

Yeah.

And that is the kind of thing that a child, you know, takes you out the drama, you pick up on.

And yes, suspends the disbelief even, one could say.

Well, it annoyed the hell out of me this time around.

And I was prepared for it, but it is very bad, I think.

Yeah, worst, the worst sin of Dalek operation.

Well, apart from Peter Messalin in Day of the Daleks, obviously.

The 2nd one.

No, no, no, actually they are as poor as each other.

Can we talk about things that don't make sense in the plot?

how cold affects Daleks and Daleks are insane.

Canadian.

It depends on the episode.

Depends on the episode, so the cold makes them not operate and then pushing them in the cold, but then you can't let them get cold.

It was bonkers to me that I never noticed it before, but watching it this time, I'm like, so wait a minute.

They use the cold as a weapon, but then also they can't let them get cold and then they're destroyed by cold, that's very inconsistent in all over the place.

And that's just that's just messy scripting, right?

[55:22]

Like, all you had to do was have a line that said, like sudden drops in temperature, which they kind of say in one of the episodes, the sudden dropping temperature killed them.

But then, they just needed to sort of work around the, they, this has been a controlled kind of, a controlled, slow freezing, and they're like, and like I said, they're being put slowly into the surrendered animation, not, whereas, you know, the gush.

See, the gushing ice volcano should have destroyed them because it's just a sudden, a sudden dropping temperature. temperature.

That would have made it work, I think.

It's just it's just, yeah, it's just messy.

I do think the ending where they're just entombed, though, and we will come back to that ending in, what, 2 weeks time?

Yeah.

Is a better ending than they're destroyed by the ice cane notes.

And because the entire base is filling up.

We don't actually get to see them fully entombed the little models, but we imagine that they're entombed in a solid block of ice by the end of it and we would never be able to unfreeze it.

[56:25]

And that's kind of cool.

Terry Nation is doing his 1st draft of their final speech from Genesis.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he's like, oh, it's almost there.

It's almost there.

Given up a couple of years, I'll give this write down pat.

I also love how everyone is very comfortable putting their hands in puddles of goo on an alien planet.

We and Rebecca both do that.

I don't think I'd do it.

I don't think I would.

Oh, that's, you know, that boo is interesting.

It's just Swaffiga.

It is very weird, isn't it?

Like, I think, I think that, you know, like, if it's so cold, I think there's some attempt for Marat to look like he's kind of a bit frostbitten and slow on his feet, which is why he gets killed by the Dalek.

But, you know, if we're really super anxious about them being touched by the oncoming ice, I think it's a bad idea to have them just wading, you know, like crawling on their hands and knees through it without kind of being more panicky about it.

[57:25]

It undermines the threat of it a little bit.

It should be sort of too cold to the touch.

But like whatever.

Do you know what I mean?

I still think that that is a pretty great sequence and and having having the doctor encodal, you know, actually come across them and they're talking to each other through the ventilation thing.

All of that is really great.

Like I do think that sequence is really good.

I think killing Marat is the right thing there to remind us, you know, that there's a threat and to get one superfluous and undercharacterized Thal out of the way.

So all of that, I think, is pretty good.

But I was kind of wondering about how cold that goo was.

It's like the other thing I like, too, is that point you made about keeping the Daleks involved, too, because not only do the doctor and Kodal meet up with them and they pull them out of the vent.

But then the Daleks are, I believe, immediately right behind them and then the ice stuff comes out of it and destroys those Daleks that are chasing them.

So it all ties together so well.

And that's all, I think, that's a combination of Terry Nations, writing it, you know, an understanding action, and then Maloney knowing how to film it in a way that keeps it moving and propulsive.

[58:31]

So...

Well, that's all the time we have for this week.

We'll be back next week to see if Terry Nation can take the Daleks in a bold, new direction in Death to the Daleks.

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 through entirety, which comprises every episode of our 4 Doctor Who podcasts.

Until next time, remember that a single Louis Mark's toy is now worth 100s of pounds.

[59:32]

So if you can actually locate the planet Spirad on, and you bring a big enough shovel, you'll make a fortune.

Thank you very much for listening and good night.

Ta-ta.

Good night.

Bye bye.

That was 500 Year Diary, starring Nathan Bottomley, Simon Moore, Jeremy Braddock and James Selwood.

The theme was composed by Cameron Lamb.

This episode, the back end of the Daleks, was recorded on the 16th of August 2026, and released on the 27th of September.

As a lifelong fan of Planet of the Daleks, sometimes I find it helpful to remember that though life might seem a bit low budget and studio bound from time to time, the novelisation is going to be an absolute page turner.

[1:00:38]

Just going back to the thing of, you know, episode 3 being in black and white when a lot of us saw it for the first time, whenever that may have been.

And I remember at the time, a lot of us thinking, gosh, episode 3 is the best episode of them all because it's in black and white.

Now, I think episode 3 is the best episode despite the fact that it was only in black and white.

But there was something that we haven't had the chance to talk about it on another episode yet, and that is what happens to the image when it's telescinied.

Now, remember that the video is not actually 25 frames per 2nd or pal video is not 25 frames per second.

It's actually 50 fields per second.

It's 50 half frames, right?

Every other line is refreshed.

Film collapses that to be 25 images.

Now, when we were watching in the 80s on the ABC, and I'm sure in North America too, um, you know, whether it's the Salurians or Masses of Death or Terror of the Orzans in black and white, they weren't just in black and white, they were, they had a filmic quality to them because of the fact that it's been transferred to film.

[1:01:39]

Now, kudos to the restoration team and all that for introducing vidfire and getting back the video effect onto the image as it should have been.

But I remember thinking in 1986, would my view of Planet of the Daleks have been better in 1986?

Had the whole thing been sent to us as a black and white print rather than them just sending us episode 3 in black and white?

Because, of course, there were other stories like the demons, which you still had one 625 line episode, but the rest of them were black and white prints, yet they sent us black and white copies of all of them, right?

I actually think that the story would have been the production would have been better served, if that's the way we'd have seen it, because not just not only do you lose a little bit of the definition, but you lose that clarity that video gives you, and it hides some of the scenes.

James, you said before that Kemble looks better in master plan.

It's not just because it's in black and white.

I agree with you that it's not just because it's in black and white, but I think a lot of the reasons the jungle looks better in master plan is because it's in black and white.

[1:02:42]

I think that is a thing.

And also because it's come via that that Telesinied film print, which gives inevitably, regardless of how much it's cleaned up, inevitably gives the image a slightly different quality to it.

It's just an interesting observation.

And with the Blu-ray box sets, I sometimes wonder, they miss a trick by not putting something, just one story, just ambassadors of death, just the demons on there as the black and a cleaned up black and white, unvidfired print because that's how so many of us experienced those stories for the 1st time.

It does surprise me that they don't do that, that they don't give you, even just compare and contrast, and they have.

They actually have on some sets included like versions of episodes, I think, which haven't had all that processing done to it.

But it's just a surprise that they don't go, here are the elements.

Yeah, here is the untreated sort of copy from Canada on VHS.

You know, here is the black and white, like master that we went with.

[1:03:45]

And here is the, here is the rest, all its restored glory.

I think that would actually, a lot of fans would actually really be interested in that.

And it's just a surprise they don't.

I mean, I totally get that the ultimate goal is to recreate, reproduce, bring back to the standard that it was when it was made.

Totally get that, and that should be the goal.

But I think so much of being a Doctor Who fan, especially Doctor Who fans of our vintage is a nostalgia.

And I think some of that nostalgia was having the end credits with, you know, continuity announcer's voices over them.

Which you get on those boxes.

Yes, yeah, but just in stepping, but no, there's nothing about watching the episode and then having, you know, the announcer come on immediately after.

It's not just not just English. look, that's just the nostalgia element.

It's just something I've mentioned it.

I may have mentioned it to one of or 2 people who have something to do with the creation of these.

Let's just say it's not going to happen.

Can I can I just mention how good episode 3 looks?

[1:04:45]

Oh, stunning.

Absolutely. previous attempts.

There had been previous attempts for VHS.

It was colorised, wasn't it?

No, I don't believe so.

Yeah, it was for one of the TVD releases.

I believe.

But that was soft. it was much softer And I was expecting that again.

It was very clear and sort of disappointingly clear.

I think on the DVD release that 3 was a different type of thing, like a, you know, but here, like dinosaurs one.

Yes, yeah, yeah. that's right.

Where it's really rough looking, isn't it?

But it looked great.

Like, I thought it was indistinguishable in quality from the other ones.

The only thing you can tell is the fact that the soundtrack is slightly tinnier because you're using a 16 mil sound stripe rather than what would have been the richer sound on the 2 inch quad.

Okay, okay.

That's worth noting.

But certainly the colour.

And famously, it's that weird chroma dot thing, isn't it?

Like some colour information. recovery.

Yeah, yeah.

So what you want you'd find with invasion of the dinosaurs one is that they don't have the chrome adopt.

[1:05:45]

So that is, I think, James, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't that using that thing where they've tried to colourise, you know, black and white films that were made in black and white, where the computer decides what shade of gray it is, therefore, it's this colour, and I think that may have been the way they did Plan of the Daleks 3 in the 1st place.

Does that ring a bell?

plausible.

Because colourisation is quite a while ago.

Like, I'm just really looking forward to the season 11 box set to see how... because that has to be done by hand.

Because, I mean, because remember, the original ones were stripping, stripping the colour out of the eumatic Canadian copies.

And then, and then that's why, and that's why masses of death was a failure for, in the 1st instance, because the Canadian copy of that tape wasn't as good in good quality so that they were losing some of the colour in some of the episodes.

But the fact that, you know, the chromodots, that, you know, inside the black and white image, there's the, you know, what makes up the RGB, the red, green, blue, um, dots, um, which merged together to give us the sense of colour, those weren't suppressed correctly as they were supposed to be.

[1:06:49]

But the fact that then we can use that to generate the colour.

I mean isn't that absolutely extraordinary. that we can do that.

And I think it's only because of obsessive people like us and our friends that work for the BBC and other organisations.

This is the kind of thing that has happened because of Doctor Who, because no other program generates this kind of interest in this kind of obsession to make people come up with such an ingenious solution.

Is Vidfire like that?

I mean, is that where Vid fire is?

Exactly the same.

Now, because I discovered, I didn't discover it.

But I, the same thing.

That's going to occur to me.

Well, no, because back in the day, because the university degree that Peter and I did the communications degree, which had a bit of video production in it, and, you know, that was in the early 90s when we were kind of at peak fan and we were making joke tapes and clips tapes, and because of this, you know, quite sophisticated console, we were able to, you know, there was a knob and you could run the videotape through a different speed.

[1:07:50]

And when we had it running through at precisely double speed.

Suddenly, when we had a black and white story, I don't know what it was, it was like, 0 my god, that looks like it's on video now.

And because that's what they discovered as well.

They discovered that if you run it at twice the speed, it looks like video again, which is, as I said before, 50 fields per second, not 25 frames per second.

But that's the kind of thing that Doctor Who has, you know, generated, this kind of, these kind of discoveries.

I mean, isn't that extraordinary?

And all because they junked some of it.

Like, all this creativity to try and recover it.

Like, it's pretty amazing.

What other show would have, you know, like multiple cartoons of missing episodes made and and have things reconstructed in the way this program has?

I mean, I'm not saying that I'm happy about the episode's being chunked, but like, look at look at what it created.

But there are other programs that have been junked and they don't have anything close to this kind of love and attention.

[1:08:51]

Yeah, and even then, and the other thing too, not to forget is like the, all of it, the linchpin of it all working is the fact that some fans went home and they stuck a microphone up to their speaker or they hardwired it in and they got the audio because without having audio of all of them, then we wouldn't, you know, I don't think those efforts would even make sense.

So Doctor Who's been really lucky out of all the all the television that's been wiped and junked since long history.

What a stroke of luck that we had those audios too.

Peter just talks about it being the most, uh, heavily kind of, um, uh, documented uh, television production in history.

And, yeah, I mean, you think you think Star Trek is a show from the 60s, that is still kind of a going concern and whose original episodes are still watched and broadcast and stuff, and whose episodes were in a state.

Like I remember when I was a kid, there were episodes of original track that were kind of unwatchably bad and did need quite a bit of love and attention and restoration and stuff.

[1:09:57]

So I guess that's the maybe the nearest, um, the, you know, the runner-up, perhaps.

Yeah, even then, a lot of the restoration of Star Trek is because it was made by a reasonably wealthy, American production company, on film, exactly, whereas the creativity that's brought a lot of Doctor Who back is kind of grassroots by fans who saved it, fans who put in all this effort in the downtime after their day job was finished because they worked at the BBC.

That's kind of cool.

It's been done with love.

It's not been done because there was lots of money.

It's been done because they've, they were there and they had access to the equipment and they were working like nights just to try and fix these things and work out how to, to restore them.

I think that's a tag.

What do you think?

I think that's probably...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.