Doctor Who: The Evil of the Daleks

As a kid I watched any sci-fi on TV my favourite then being any of Gerry Anderson's super-marionet shows and occasionally, Dr Who, until I saw: THE EVIL OF THE DALEKS.

This had a complicated plot, plenty of drama between the Dr & Jamie as the Daleks force the doctor to conduct an evil experiment.

And how many Dr Who story's do you have Daleks playing choo choo trains.

Here the Daleks seemed more fleshed out for the first time rather than just mechanical mustache twirlers, especially showing Terry Nations Neo-Nazi inspiration for the armoured Fascists.

The Dalek Emperor was obviously based upon Hitler forever screaming for everyone to OBEY and that included the other Daleks while his Body Guard the Black Daleks where ever paranoidly vigilant like the SS.

I had been watching Dr Who since William Hartnell but this was the story that got me hooked on the show, but is it as good as I remember, yes.

Its sad that only one episode remains but this is an excellent reconstruction built around the surviving sound track.

Patrick Troughton was always my favourite Doctor, although Matt Smith's first season is a very close second.

So yeah I'm giving it a ten, the best of epic TV using cardboard, tinfoil, glitter & toilet plungers.

The second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and Jamie (Frazer Hines) find themselves in Victorian England as prisoners of the Daleks who want the Doctor to help them isolate the factors in humans that allow us to repeatedly avoid 'extermination'. Although stretched a bit thin at seven episodes, the story is clever and it's always amusing to see the wily Timelord outsmarted (albeit only temporarily). Only the second episode survives intact, so the animated recreation is primarily based on recorded audio tracks and still images. Too bad most of the final episode is missing: as the season 4 finale and (as thought at the time) the final appearance of the iconic polycarbide-armoured blobs, it looks like it was a spectacular swan-song for the show's most popular villains (by vintage Whovian standards anyway). Troughton and Hines are one of my favorite Doctor/companion pairs, and they play off each other well in this episode as Jamie tries to figure out why the Doctor is so willingly to cooperate with the nasal overlord-wannabes. This episode also introduces a new distaff companion, Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling). Unfortunately, many of the subsequent episodes featuring her have been lost (one serial, 1967's 'The Abominable Snowmen', was recently recreated as an animated hybrid). The BBC policy of deleting previously broadcast shows, the consequences of doing so, and the efforts to recover/recreate the missing parts of the venerable series makes for interesting reading. Hopefully more animated recreations are forthcoming. The DVD I was watching had a couple of interesting 'making of' videos. The first follows Hines as he revisits the shooting location 50 years later; the second (made much earlier) is a 'behind the scenes' look at the episode's special effects (such as the pulsing Dalek brain) with a commentary from two of the original production team.

The Daleks trap The Doctor, as they seek the human factor.

For many, this was the most anticipated animation, the release that many Dr Who fans craved, along with The Dalek Masterplan, and it doesn't disappoint.

The story is fabulous, it is one of the classic series best offerings, it works on multiple levels still, it entertains and surprises, the final few episodes manage to deliver an epic scale.

I favour the black and white animation, it has plenty of atmosphere.

If you were going to be super critical, you could perhaps say that some of the animation is a little dubious at times, but then I suppose time and money were factors. Some of the body proportions are a little out, that's a minor gripe though.

Fabulous release, 10/10.