11x3. Death to the Daleks
Writer: Terry Nation
Director: Michael Briant
Script Editor: Terrance Dicks
Producer: Barry Letts
Synopsis: The Doctor and Sarah
arrive on Exxilon when the TARDIS mysteriously loses power, discovering
a small group of humans from the Marine Space Corps (MSC) who have come
to look for a substance called
parrinium needed to cure a deadly plague. Soon after their arrival, the
Daleks also arrive in search of the same substance, while the native
Exxilons -- a once-advanced people that have reverted to superstition
and barbarism -- and their abandoned city pose a series of dangers as
well. With the MSC ship, the TARDIS, and the Daleks' technology out of
commission due to the power drain caused by the city, some unusual
alliances are formed.
Review: "Death to the Daleks"
is a strange combination of complex setup and not-so-complex
resolution. If
last season's "Planet of the Daleks" could be summarized as, "The
Daleks are on a planet being evil, so let's blow them up," then I guess
"Death to the Daleks" could be summarized as, "The Daleks are on a
planet being evil, but so is one of the humans in a way, and the
Exxilons are not really being evil but are still dangerous, and the
abandoned city possesses its own intelligence . . . so let's blow the
Daleks up. Oh, and the city too."
It's odd, because at first this one seems like it might be a "Planet of
the Daleks" retread -- it begins with the TARDIS malfunctioning, the
Doctor being separated from his companion, and encounters with strange
aliens whose intentions are unclear. But while "Planet" quickly settled
into simple adventure formula with the Doctor and the Thals teaming up,
"Death to the Daleks" offers a more varied set of characters and alien
races, each with their own agenda. The Exxilons are an obvious example:
they don't really seem to care about the parrinium, and they react to
the humans and the Daleks with a sort of instinctive hostility. It's
not clear how exactly their conflict with the MSC crew started, but
they're not hesitant about using lethal violence, and they're more than
ready to kill Sarah for approaching the city, which for them is a
heinous religious transgression. The MSC crew are focused mostly on
getting what they need and getting off the planet, but they differ over
the methods they're willing to countenance in order to achieve that
goal. Galloway, as his dying commanding officer noted, is something of
a glory-seeker and is ready to cooperate with the Daleks' ruthless
methods and demands, putting a slightly unconventional spin on his
"self-sacrifice" at the end -- should we see it as a sincere moment of
redemption, or, as Alan
Stevens suggests, merely indicative that he'll literally do
anything to ensure his own
reputation, which has been tarnished by his moral compromises?
The Exxilons' peculiar relationship with their abandoned city is also
interesting. Having created it as an intelligent entity of its own at
the height of their civilization, they came to fear its power and
sought to destroy it, and it retaliated by driving them all out. Now
most of them worship it, while a small group of outcasts (including
Bellal, who eventually accompanies the Doctor inside) still see it as
evil and seek to destroy it. I found this an imaginative and realistic
look at a society that has regressed after a dramatic disruption, in
that their fear of the city, rather than being purely pragmatic, has
become a religious taboo that they apply to everyone, even those such
as Sarah who have nothing to do with them and their history with the
city. On an aesthetic level, the dark cave scenes where the Exxilons
chant and prepare for the sacrifice are suitably hypnotic and
disorienting. The scenes of the Doctor and Bellal navigating the city's
logic tests are a mixed bag, if only because some of the tests are kind
of lame. I mean, really -- a small maze drawn on the wall? And we're
supposed to think that people got trapped in a room and starved to
death before figuring it out? Granted, most of the Exxilons don't seem
very bright, but this is the sort of thing an average third-grader
could figure out in about ten minutes. Still, I liked the sequence at
the end when the city creates humanoid "antibodies" to fight off the
Doctor's and Bellal's attempt to destroy it, and the Doctor's theory
that the Exxilons had once traveled to Earth and helped build a temple
in Peru is, if nothing else, an amusing shout-out to the "alien
origins" theories about early human architecture.
Unfortunately, "Death to the Daleks" isn't much more than an average
serial for a reason to which I alluded earlier: despite the complexity
of the situation, the moral questions raised by Galloway's conduct, and
the novelty of seeing the Daleks having to cut deals with other races
because their weapons aren't working, everything is still resolved with
a couple of explosions. I'm not saying that complex stories can't ever
be resolved with explosions, but in this case, the script doesn't seem
all that interested in any but the most immediate consequences. One
might argue that the other MSC officers are guilty of at least minimal
acquiescence to Galloway's collaboration with the Daleks, but it's not
clear what, if anything, they think about that at the end. The question
of what will happen to Exxilon society now that the city has been
destroyed also receives no attention -- in fact, the script seems to
have forgotten altogether that there's still an unconscious Exxilon in
the TARDIS. A particularly strange moment of abrupt resolution is the
scene where the Doctor and Bellal arrive in the city's main control
room, causing a dead person seated in front of a monitor to dissolve
into dust because they created an air current that broke the surface
tension. Maybe this was meant to be mysterious, but it reduces the
preceding scenes -- in which we see this figure supposedly watching the
Doctor and Bellal on the monitor and are led to believe that he is
alive -- to an elaborate tease, and we never find out who this person
is or why he died there.
I realize that I may simply be barking up the wrong tree here. Doctor Who is not supposed to be an
anthropological survey, and obviously the Doctor isn't going to stand
around speculating about Exxilon history when there are Daleks to worry
about. Still, I think more could have been done with the MSC
characters, and if the first episode hadn't spent so much time with the
Doctor and Sarah running around and getting lost, they might have been
able to develop the story a little more without slowing it down too
much.
Rating: **1/2 (out of four)
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