Doctor Who: Day of the Daleks Two Disk DVD

Doctor Who: Day of the Daleks two disk DVD set, from BBC Video / 2 entertain

The four episode serial Day of the Daleks, originally broadcast in January 1972, was one of the earliest Doctor Who stories to be released on VHS, back in 1989. In a turnaround, Day of the Daleks has become one of the last Doctor Who DVDs, coming out in 2011, ten years after the BBC began re-releasing the series on disk. However, it was worth this decade-long wait. The two disk set of Day of the Daleks, in addition to the original broadcast show, has a "Special Edition" with new visual & sound effects, as well as an assortment of extras.

Day of the Daleks is one of my favorite stories to feature the Third Doctor, portrayed by Jon Pertwee. It is certainly among the most well-written, well-acted serials from that era of the show.

Examining the complications and paradoxes inherent in time travel is fairly common in the revived Doctor Who series. Father's Day, Blink, The Big Bang, The Girl Who Waited, and practically every episode to feature the character River Song have all touched upon the notion of just how strange, convoluted, and dangerous time travel can be. But back during Doctor Who's original run from 1963 to 1989, this was very seldom addressed. Ninety-nine percent of the time, time travel was simply a plot device to get the Doctor and his companions to the particular place in the past or future where they needed to be for the story.

The first Doctor Who serial to address the complexities of time travel was the underrated, thought-provoking 1965 serial The Space Museum, written by Glyn Jones. It would not be for another seven years that another Doctor Who story would dive headlong into the same waters, when Louis Marks penned Day of the Daleks.

Most long-time fans of the series will already know the plot of Day of the Daleks. The basic premise revolves around a group of guerilla resistance fighters traveling back in time 200 years to the late 20^th Century to alter history. By assassinating the politician Sir Reginald Styles, they hope to prevent the outbreak of World War III and, in its aftermath, the total subjugation of the Earth by the alien Daleks. The dramatic twist of the story is the revelation that the guerillas are caught in a predestination paradox, that by attempting to alter history they have actually caused those events to take place. When I first viewed Day of the Daleks on PBS in the mid-1980s, this curveball blew my mind. It was both clever and frightening.

It's worth noting that the Daleks are implied to be the original instigators of history being altered. They inform the Doctor "We have changed the pattern of history," and later on explicitly travel back to the 20^th Century to destroy Sir Reginald Styles' peace conference, thereby causing nuclear war to occur, ensuring their future domination of Earth. It appears that the guerillas, unaware of the Daleks' own manipulations of time, then went back in time themselves to alter history, but instead became trapped in a paradox.

If Day of the Daleks was made today by the Doctor Who production team, I wouldn't be surprised if they removed the Daleks as the causa prima of Earth's apocalyptic future. In keeping with the notion of history as "a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff" (to quote Blink), the guerillas' actions would probably be part of what is commonly referred to in sci-fi as a "stable time loop," with no actual involvement by the Daleks in the initial alteration of the time stream. That said, for a Doctor Who serial filmed four decades ago, the time travel concepts Louis Marks introduced in Day of the Daleks were very though provoking and revolutionary at that time in the show's history.

There are a number of fine actors on hand inDay of the Daleks who do a superb job of bringing to life Louis Marks' brilliant script. Foremost among them is Pertwee himself, turning in one of his best performances as the Doctor. The moment when he deduces the cause of history being altered, he gravely proclaims to the guerillas "You're trapped in a temporal paradox. Styles didn't cause that explosion and start the wars. You did it yourselves!" It's a powerful scene made even more so by Pertwee's forceful delivery, one that that all of these years later still sends a chill up my spine.

Other great moments in the story are the Doctor's verbal fencing with the Controller, the Daleks chief human lackey in the 22^nd Century. Pertwee delivers stinging condemnations raining down on the Controller. And on a lighter note, I've always enjoyed the scenes where the Doctor is, to quote Jo Grant, "carrying on rather like a one man food and wine society."

Also excellent is Aubrey Woods, who plays the Controller. Although at times a bit too theatrical, it is nevertheless a very striking and three-dimensional performance. For much of the first three episodes, the Controller appears to be a willing agent of the Daleks. However, as the story progresses, we see he is not genuinely evil, but rather weak. He is terrified of the Daleks, believing them invincible. The Controller rationalizes his collaboration by regarding himself as someone who can reason with the Daleks, gain concessions, and make the occupation of Earth slightly less brutal. His interactions with the Doctor, who labels him a traitor and a quisling, slowly begin to reawaken his buried conscience.

In the fourth episode, Woods delivers a haunting recitation of the Earth's nightmarish future to the Doctor and Jo Grant, relating how after decades of war decimated the globe, the planet was crushed by alien invasion, humanity's survivors turned into a slave labor force to mine resources for the expanding Dalek Empire. Woods' monologue vividly illustrates what would have been impossible for Doctor Who to actually visualize on-screen with a shoestring budget and early 1970s special effects, painting a grim picture of a shattered world under the domination of the Daleks.

The actors portraying the guerillas are also very good. Just as the Controller is nowhere near as clear-cut as he first appears, neither is the anti-Dalek underground. The guerillas straddle the fine line that can exist between freedom fighter and terrorist. Though their goal is a noble one, to free Earth from Dalek rule, they are seen utilizing such morally ambiguous tactics as assassinations and suicide bombings to achieve their aims. The actors really bring across the desperation and fanaticism that the guerillas have become gripped by as a result of their gargantuan struggle against the Daleks.

Mention should be made of composer Dudley Simpson. He created the incidental music for nearly all of the Doctor Who serials produced between 1970 and 1979. That includes Day of the Daleks. His work on the series has a definite consistency and, in retrospect, there was a certain "sameness" to a lot of his Doctor Who work. There were occasions when I think certain serials might have benefitted from another composer to shake things up. (Along those same lines, I like Murray Gold's work, but does he really have to compose the music for every single episode of the revived Doctor Who series?) The score for Day of the Daleks falls within the earlier period of Dudley Simpson's work, before his signature became quite so uniform. He was a bit more experimental at this time. That said, he did go crazy with the synthesizer from time to time on this serial, although it's not as insane as what he did for The Claws of Axos the previous season! The music on Day of the Daleks is quite odd in places, but at times it is effective.

While the writing and acting in Day of the Daleks is almost consistently top-notch, the serial does have a couple of striking deficiencies. Much has been made over the years of the fact that the Daleks actually have very little screen time. This is probably at least partially due to the fact that Louis Marks' initial story did not even contain the Daleks! As interviews on the DVD with script editor Terrance Dicks and producer Barry Letts reveal, Marks' original conception was to have a fascist human government ruling the 22^nd Century. However, Dicks and Letts felt the story would make a stronger season opener if the Daleks were in it, and so instructed Marks to insert them into his scripts.

In Marks' defense, he did this in a rather seamless fashion. True, the Daleks aren't actually seen very much. But the other characters talk about them throughout the story, making them a sort of unseen menace looming above the proceedings. In a way, it is more effective than having scene after scene of them gliding into shot, death rays blasting, shouting "Exterminate" over and over.

However, I think a much more tangible reason for the Daleks' limited appearances is that the crew of Doctor Who only had three Dalek props on hand. True, with some creative editing, a director could make a trio of Daleks appear to be a much bigger force (something David Maloney would achieve in Genesis of the Daleks a few years later). Unfortunately, someone had the none-too-bright idea to have the lead Dalek in Day of the Daleks painted gold. This made it much more difficult for director Paul Bernard to have it appear there was an entire army of Daleks, especially at the end of the fourth episode.

Due to the story's less-than-spectacular final battle, some have faulted Bernard's direction on Day of the Daleks. However, throughout the majority of the serial, he does very strong work. He frames his shots in a striking, dramatic fashion. I like how he filmed the Daleks' apelike henchmen, the Ogrons, often shooting them from a low angle, so that they appeared to be these towering monstrosities. And the editing, the cutting from one scene to the next, is very good, heightening the drama.

Really, one cannot place too much blame on Bernard for the final sequence. In addition to only having three Dalek props, he had to film them on location. It was never easy to get the Daleks to maneuver around the studio back in those days, so I can only imagine the difficulties in trying to have the Dalek prop operators trying to move about outside on an uneven field. It's no wonder that final battle was underwhelming. This was a case of the story's ambition outreaching the budget & technology available.

Much more of a sticking point for me were the Daleks' voices. The two actors who spoke the dialogue in Day of the Daleks have not done any other Dalek stories before or since, so the tones sound unfamiliar. Additionally, a lot of the dialogue is spoken in a drawn out, stilted monotone, with each syllable pronounced almost as if it is a separate word. Many Doctor Who fans regard these as the worst Dalek voices ever heard on the series.

As I mentioned before, Day of the Daleks is an intelligently written, thought-provoking story with top-notch acting. Because of this, it is easy to overlook the problems with their only being three Daleks, and their voices sounding odd. Many Doctor Who DVDs have featured updated effects, so I thought it would be nice if, when Day of the Daleks came out on DVD, the producers could change the Dalek voices. Specifically, I was hoping they'd ask Nicholas Briggs, who has very effectively voiced the Daleks for Doctor Who on both the revived television series and on numerous audio adventures produced by Big Finish Productions. And if they could also add some extra Daleks to the battle sequence, that would be the icing on the cake.

It turned out the DVD producer Steve Broster felt exactly the same way. With the help of a small group of talented individuals, he created the Special Edition of Day of the Daleks, adding new visual effects, extra Daleks, and having the Dalek voices re-recorded by Nicholas Briggs. As the DVD extra on the making of the Special Edition explains, these were not simple tasks. I really have to compliment Broster and his crew on creating a new, more visually exciting version of the serial with effects that nevertheless manage to mostly remain in synch with the original 1972 footage. For the most part, none of the new visuals blatantly appear at odds with the look of the rest of the serial. Perhaps the new CGI-rendered Dalek headquarters, but it looks so cool that I'm willing to overlook the inconsistency in picture quality.

As for the new vocals by Briggs, well, until I heard them in this story, I don't think I really appreciated just how much of the Daleks' effectiveness as monsters is due to their voices. Re-doing the Dalek voices in Day of the Daleks made them so much more menacing. At the same time, Briggs knows when to inject arrogance, panic, and incredulity into his delivery of the Dalek dialogue, so that they are not just screaming non-stop, instead possessing a certain amount of nuance.

Of course, if Special Editions are not your cup of tea, the original 1972 broadcast version of Day of the Daleks is still available for viewing on the first disk of this set. So you can choose which you prefer.

There are a number of other excellent extras included. "The UNIT Family - Part Two" is a retrospective by cast & crew members on the UNIT stories from Terror of the Autons thru to The Green Death (Part One was on the DVD of Inferno, incidentally another of my favorite Pertwee serials.) "Blasting the Past" is a half hour piece focusing specifically on the making of Day of the Daleks. "The UNIT Dating Conundrum" humorously addresses one of those contentious issues that keep hardcore Who fans arguing endlessly among themselves, namely when did the UNIT stories take place. Were they set in the years they were broadcast, ten years in the future, or some time else? The quick answer is there is no answer, because there's just too much contradictory information in the stories. Or, as they say on Mystery Science Theater 3000, repeat to yourself "It's just a show, I should really just relax!"

One extra that was especially interesting was "The Cheating Memory," which examines how the brains of children process information, and how our memories from when we were young are often not reliable. This is looked at in the oft-common context of very young Doctor Who fans who watched the stories in the 1960s and 70s when they were first broadcast, and remembered them as being incredible. This being before the era of television repeats on the BBC, video recorders, or DVDs, it might often be years, even decades until fans might have an opportunity to re-watch those same shows, only to find that the actual programs were nowhere near as good as they recalled.

I remember that when I first began watching Doctor Who in the 1980s, I would always hear about older fans who complained that the new stories were nowhere near as good as the old stories. In response, then-producer John Nathan Turner would often respond "the memory cheats." Indeed, when some of the episodes that had been missing since the 1960s started to finally crop up again in the 1990s, a number of fans had to admit that, while still very good, the stories were nevertheless not nearly as brilliant as what they remembered watching when they were little kids.

Even I've experienced a bit of this myself with several Doctor Who stories, when I would see them aired on PBS in the mid-1980s, and then not have an opportunity to re-watch them until they were released on VHS or DVD a decade or two later. Talking specifically about Day of the Daleks, I think I viewed in for the first time around 1984, when I was eight years old. Only half a decade later, when I was thirteen and able to buy it on video tape, yeah, watching it again I felt it was still very good, but nevertheless wasn't quite as fantastic as I seemed to remember it being the first time round. So I could certainly identify with "The Cheating Memory."

Steve Broster is quoted in Doctor Who Magazine #438 that the Special Edition was his attempt "to try to recreate the version of Day of the Daleks I thought I saw as a six-year-old." I can relate to the sentiment. In a certain way it does almost seem a bit more like the show my fuzzy childhood memories tell me I watched back in 1984, rather than the actual program contained on Disk One!