"Now you’ve squashed my favourite Beatles!"
TECHNICAL SPECS: Part 1 of The Chase, available on DVD, packaged with The Space Museum (but see Versions). First aired May 22 1965.
IN THIS ONE... The TARDIS crew watch history and the Beatles on TV before landing on a desert planet and getting lost there. Plus, Daleks.
REVIEW: A new Terry Nation script and three Nation tropes are on show. Daleks, of course. Then there's introducing new kit for the TARDIS. And what's not necessarily apparent from a first episode, except that it is, this is going to be one of those "each episode is a vignette"-type deals. You know, just so the production team can't financially cope with the script's demands. Director Richard Martin really does have visual flair (the sequences on location on the desert planet, the time rotor POV), but most of the time, the episode is a leisurely mess, and features such head-scratching elements as the funky jazz music played over the TARDIS flight. Indeed, the sound design in this thing is terrible, full of annoying sounds, characters badly whistling or singing, Daleks chanting random words, and absurd music cues. This hardly distracts from one of the most padded scripts in Doctor Who history, and I suppose if you're going to waste a director's time on padding, might as well be Martin's. He knows how to pad so that you KNOW it's padding.
It takes 10 minutes for the TARDIS to land, and while some of that time is spent on character - Vicki being bored and ruining a dress Barbara is making for her, or Ian reading a "far-fetched" book called Monsters from Outer Space (quite silly) - most of it centers on the time and space visualizer the Doctor just picked up on Xeron. It's a good-looking prop, to be sure, but it forces us to watch the TARDIS crew watch tv (and at one point, watch the Daleks on tv who are watching them - the meta will devour you). These guys have a time machine and can VISIT Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare. Why would they want to just look at them on a tv screen? More to the point, why would WE want them to so passively interact with history? It goes against the very premise of Doctor Who! Though cut from the Region 1 DVD release, the TARDIS crew also looks at the Beatles playing Ticket to Ride - the only bit of stock footage in the show (which means actors came in to play historical celebs who never interacted with the cast) - as the cast grooves along. Catering to the public and to the band, I suppose, they all go crazy for the Fab Four, no matter their age. It's no wonder the Doctor hides behind the vizualiser during the scene. He's perhaps the one highlight in the episode, getting off a number of good comedy bits.
It's a giddiness that carries through the whole of the episode. They titter at the visualizer as is it's the greatest thing they've ever seen (it's not!). The Doctor sings in his sleep while sunbathing on an arid desert world. And the way they carry on and giggle, you'd think there was something going on between Ian and Vicki (to your keyboards, slash writers!). Either that, or they're drunk. No, the characters aren't very well rendered in this episode, with Ian calling out American history dates from memory and the Doctor and Vicki spouting some of the most ridiculous science ever to explain the visualizer's abilities. Might as well admit the show's educational mandate has been abandoned. And what of the Daleks? Yeah, they're here, and they've invented a time machine of their own (one with a harsh and unpolished dematerialization effect, if you can call it an effect). It's a crucial moment in Dalek history (see Theories), one that will make them the Doctor's greatest enemies, right up to and beyond the Time War.
I condemned the sound design, plot and characters, but visually, this isn't half bad. The desert planet has a location component that's really interesting, and a sandstorm that might evoke the one in Marco Polo. we even see night fall in the studio. There's a sand octopus in the gloom that looks pretty neat from what we see of it. Only the Dalek rising out of the sand leaves something to be desired. Nation is trying to recapture former glories, but this little model pushed up like some kind of periscope is nowhere near the Dalek coming out of the Thames.
THEORIES: The Daleks' invention of time travel may or may not be a signpost in Dalek history. One way of looking at it is that it divides stories where the Daleks don't have time travel (the first two, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, Genesis obviously) from those in which they do (the rest). They still seem pissed about their foiled invasion of Earth, but this may just be a long-standing grudge, or their recognizing the first Doctor as the one who defeated them there. Attacking the first Doctor even if they know there were others is something the Daleks would do, perhaps in the hopes of nullifying some of their defeats. Indeed, they might even mistakenly believe they might be attacking him BEFORE he defeats them on Earth. The point is that the Daleks don't care about history's integrity so long as they come out on top. That's why the invention of time travel may not be a marker in their history. It's entirely possible that Daleks from the future went back and gave time machines to their past selves, polluting the timeline and attracting the ire of the Time Lords. After all, these guys went from a static cling-powered enclave of failed invaders to Temporal Enemy #1.
VERSIONS: For copyright reasons, the Region 1 DVD cannot show the scene in which the TARDIS crew watch the Beatles on the time and space visualizer (a great shame they didn't include it, even in censored form). Internet to the rescue - HERE IT IS (the scene goes on from 9:15 to 11:20).
REWATCHABILITY: Low - There's a very real sense here that audiences are so hungry for Daleks, they'll accept anything. Don't count me among that number.
TECHNICAL SPECS: Part 1 of The Chase, available on DVD, packaged with The Space Museum (but see Versions). First aired May 22 1965.IN THIS ONE... The TARDIS crew watch history and the Beatles on TV before landing on a desert planet and getting lost there. Plus, Daleks.
REVIEW: A new Terry Nation script and three Nation tropes are on show. Daleks, of course. Then there's introducing new kit for the TARDIS. And what's not necessarily apparent from a first episode, except that it is, this is going to be one of those "each episode is a vignette"-type deals. You know, just so the production team can't financially cope with the script's demands. Director Richard Martin really does have visual flair (the sequences on location on the desert planet, the time rotor POV), but most of the time, the episode is a leisurely mess, and features such head-scratching elements as the funky jazz music played over the TARDIS flight. Indeed, the sound design in this thing is terrible, full of annoying sounds, characters badly whistling or singing, Daleks chanting random words, and absurd music cues. This hardly distracts from one of the most padded scripts in Doctor Who history, and I suppose if you're going to waste a director's time on padding, might as well be Martin's. He knows how to pad so that you KNOW it's padding.
It takes 10 minutes for the TARDIS to land, and while some of that time is spent on character - Vicki being bored and ruining a dress Barbara is making for her, or Ian reading a "far-fetched" book called Monsters from Outer Space (quite silly) - most of it centers on the time and space visualizer the Doctor just picked up on Xeron. It's a good-looking prop, to be sure, but it forces us to watch the TARDIS crew watch tv (and at one point, watch the Daleks on tv who are watching them - the meta will devour you). These guys have a time machine and can VISIT Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare. Why would they want to just look at them on a tv screen? More to the point, why would WE want them to so passively interact with history? It goes against the very premise of Doctor Who! Though cut from the Region 1 DVD release, the TARDIS crew also looks at the Beatles playing Ticket to Ride - the only bit of stock footage in the show (which means actors came in to play historical celebs who never interacted with the cast) - as the cast grooves along. Catering to the public and to the band, I suppose, they all go crazy for the Fab Four, no matter their age. It's no wonder the Doctor hides behind the vizualiser during the scene. He's perhaps the one highlight in the episode, getting off a number of good comedy bits.
It's a giddiness that carries through the whole of the episode. They titter at the visualizer as is it's the greatest thing they've ever seen (it's not!). The Doctor sings in his sleep while sunbathing on an arid desert world. And the way they carry on and giggle, you'd think there was something going on between Ian and Vicki (to your keyboards, slash writers!). Either that, or they're drunk. No, the characters aren't very well rendered in this episode, with Ian calling out American history dates from memory and the Doctor and Vicki spouting some of the most ridiculous science ever to explain the visualizer's abilities. Might as well admit the show's educational mandate has been abandoned. And what of the Daleks? Yeah, they're here, and they've invented a time machine of their own (one with a harsh and unpolished dematerialization effect, if you can call it an effect). It's a crucial moment in Dalek history (see Theories), one that will make them the Doctor's greatest enemies, right up to and beyond the Time War.
I condemned the sound design, plot and characters, but visually, this isn't half bad. The desert planet has a location component that's really interesting, and a sandstorm that might evoke the one in Marco Polo. we even see night fall in the studio. There's a sand octopus in the gloom that looks pretty neat from what we see of it. Only the Dalek rising out of the sand leaves something to be desired. Nation is trying to recapture former glories, but this little model pushed up like some kind of periscope is nowhere near the Dalek coming out of the Thames.
THEORIES: The Daleks' invention of time travel may or may not be a signpost in Dalek history. One way of looking at it is that it divides stories where the Daleks don't have time travel (the first two, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, Genesis obviously) from those in which they do (the rest). They still seem pissed about their foiled invasion of Earth, but this may just be a long-standing grudge, or their recognizing the first Doctor as the one who defeated them there. Attacking the first Doctor even if they know there were others is something the Daleks would do, perhaps in the hopes of nullifying some of their defeats. Indeed, they might even mistakenly believe they might be attacking him BEFORE he defeats them on Earth. The point is that the Daleks don't care about history's integrity so long as they come out on top. That's why the invention of time travel may not be a marker in their history. It's entirely possible that Daleks from the future went back and gave time machines to their past selves, polluting the timeline and attracting the ire of the Time Lords. After all, these guys went from a static cling-powered enclave of failed invaders to Temporal Enemy #1.
VERSIONS: For copyright reasons, the Region 1 DVD cannot show the scene in which the TARDIS crew watch the Beatles on the time and space visualizer (a great shame they didn't include it, even in censored form). Internet to the rescue - HERE IT IS (the scene goes on from 9:15 to 11:20).
REWATCHABILITY: Low - There's a very real sense here that audiences are so hungry for Daleks, they'll accept anything. Don't count me among that number.
Comments
d: That's true. The failure isn't on the characters' parts, but on the production team's.