You're listening to Fusion Patrol, a listener-supported podcast.
Each week, we take a single episode of a science fiction TV series or movie
and overanalyze it to within an inch of its life.
Welcome to the discussion.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Fusion Patrol. I'm Eugene.
And I'm Simon.
And tonight we're looking at another one of our special animated recreation Doctor Who missing episodes.
Stories this time, Evil of the Daleks.
Patrick Troughton episode. We'll do the synopsis first and we'll talk about it.
The TARDIS has been taken from Gatwick Airport on a lorry.
The Doctor and Jamie chase the lorry as fast as possible with their lurching, awkward running strides,
but eventually must give up on the foot chase.
Instead, they conduct an investigation to find the TARDIS.
Little do they know, they are being given a series of increasingly unlikely clues
designed to lead them inexorably to an antique shop run by a Mr. Edward Waterfield,
who specializes in really high-quality Victoriana.
Waterfield is a Victorian with a time machine.
He is also in the employ of the Daleks.
As his final clue to lure the doctor and Jamie to his shop,
he sends them an actual invitation to his shop.
When they arrive, rather than meet with them,
he lays further clues and traps to knock them unconscious
and transport them back to June 1866,
somewhere near Canterbury and the home of Mr. Theodore Maxtable.
Maxstable is a wealthy man and dabbler in sciences.
He has hired Waterfield to help him build a time machine.
They succeeded after a fashion, but their experiment brought Daleks to Earth.
The Daleks took Waterfield's daughter Victoria captive and forced the men to help them trap the Doctor.
With Victoria's life on the line, now the Doctor is coerced into helping the Daleks too.
They want him to isolate the human factor,
the collection of emotions and properties that humans possess that has allowed them to consistently beat the Daleks.
The Doctor agrees, and the Daleks insist that Jamie will be the test subject.
Jamie must attempt to rescue Victoria Waterfield,
all while the Doctor and the others are watching and identifying the human factor in Jamie.
Also, a man named Arthur Terrell, who is Maximal's daughter's fiancé,
is around, behaving erratically, and apparently also under control of the Daleks. He pops up
occasionally to make things move along or slow down as fits the demands of the episodes. A mute
Turk named Kemmel, who is kindly disposed towards Victoria, is tasked with stopping Jamie from
reaching her. When Jamie saves his life, they team up to save Victoria, which they sort of do,
But Victoria is recaptured and taken to Scarra.
It has become clear that Maxtable, despite his attempts to appear innocent,
is fully complicit with the Daleks and their actions.
They have promised him the secret of turning metal into gold.
Absolutely no one except Maxtable believes they will keep that promise.
The Doctor isolates the human factor and installs it into three newborn Daleks.
When they awaken, they have a sense of fun and friendship with the Doctor.
He names them Alpha, Beta, and Omega.
All Daleks are recalled to Scarrow, including the new ones,
and a bomb is left behind to destroy Maxtable's house.
Maxtable follows the Doctor's to Scarrow via the time closet,
leaving the others behind to die.
The Doctor, Jamie, and Waterfield escape in the Dalek time machine and head to Scarrow.
They're all captured and put in a cell.
The Doctor is given an audience with the Emperor Dalek.
The Doctor explains that he has destroyed the Daleks
by introducing the human factor into the test Daleks.
They will question orders and it will spread to other Daleks.
Soon, they will be destroyed.
The Doctor has been fooled.
While the point of his work was to isolate the human factor,
somehow that also means he isolated the Dalek factor.
Now, with the Doctor's TARDIS secured on Scarrow,
he will help them spread the Dalek factor to all humans through Earth's history.
Maxtable is the guinea pig, and he is turned into a human Dalek.
The Doctor is next.
However, as he is not human, he is immune, but plays along as a ruse.
With a death swap of positronic brains and the right word in the Dalek Emperor's ear,
the Doctor tricks them into sending more Daleks into the device that will insert the Dalek factor.
But it is now actually inserting the human factor.
Dalek's civil war breaks out.
Waterfield, who has been increasingly upset by the things the Daleks have forced him to be complicit with,
sacrifices his life to save the Doctor.
With everyone else dead and Skaro being destroyed,
the Doctor and Jamie take the orphan Victoria in, and she joins the TARDIS crew.
Oh, we are so close, Simon. We are so close to having the entirety of this season.
Well.
Well, it's just the Highlanders and redoing Underwater Menace properly, right?
Smugglers.
Is the Smugglers in season four?
yeah it is it's episode it's uh first cereal i thought the first cereal was power of the daleks
no oh you're talking about the ones from the the the that's a that's a heartnell isn't it
yeah no and then and then you've got it and then 10th planet yeah right i guess that counts but
they won't sell that as a box set they'll start with uh power of the daleks so oh no no no no no
They will sell it as a box set.
I tell you what, though, thinking about getting this season completed,
it's quite an interesting season because we don't have any of the serials complete.
And yet, as you allude to, we've now had animations of quite a lot of them.
And one of the things I was thinking about, you know, in terms of reviewing this for the podcast, was how little I have to say about the animation in this.
Me too.
Because of the fact that it is essentially identical to the animation in the Faceless Ones.
I don't have any particular information about how they did this, but it would not surprise me in the least if they had just sat down as soon as they'd finished the Faceless Ones and just carried on through the evil of the Daleks.
I mean, obviously, there are some additional models and things to produce, but the style and everything is so strikingly similar.
And in a way, that's terribly good because there's a big continuity between the stories.
And there's something nice about the fact that Macro Terra, yeah, there are some more noticeable differences there.
But it's a block of stories where you can just sit down and watch them.
And because they've animated the whole serial, you can just sit down and watch the whole thing animated in the same style.
And it's almost, almost making me wish that in addition to, you know, as you say, doing the Highlanders and Smugglers and, of course, most importantly, the Underwater Menace, the best serials of the season.
I wish they would also go back and do the moon base,
even though I love the animation in that,
and Tenth Planet, which much less.
Because if they did the whole serial and they did it in the same style,
it'd be like you could watch the whole of season four
and there'd be a kind of coherence to it.
Although I have to say, actually, taking a quick peek at the power of the Daleks,
it's not that similar.
it's it's obviously the same you know it's the there's a continuity between the that being the
kind of charles norton directed one and these other anne-marie walsh ones because she worked
on all four of them well i want to quote something out of my notes here that i that i would have
paraphrased but i'll just read it word for word quote i've reached the point where i can just
ignore the animation unless it jars and that is followed by um the sentence the running oh god
the running but apart from that apart from that i just when i was watching the animation it's like
you know something i got nothing to say this is perfectly acceptable and there are a couple places
where I really quite like what they did.
And I did watch, of the seven,
I watched five of the seven in color.
I watched the existing episode two, I believe,
as it originally aired in the human version.
And I watched one black and white episode
just to get the whole thing.
And the thing that I noticed most about the color episodes
is that I really got a hammer horror vibe off this thing.
Yeah, I can see that.
And I love that.
Now, of course, it's set in a Victorian house.
So therefore, sure, that's what I think of
when I think of Victorian stuff in Britain anyway,
is that you've got that beautiful, sumptuous color
and the sweeping widescreen hammer.
And even the dust motes in the sky, in the air,
were kind of, it's like, that's a little arty, but it works.
It works because they've really gone,
they've really gone with trying to play up the bright, sunny Victorian era
down to, and they may have done this in the original,
down to the fact that in the very opening scenes
when the Doctor and Jamie wake up in 1866,
all the birds are chirping,
and it's obviously meant to be bright, sunny, lovely day.
And they get that.
I think they managed to achieve that in the animation and in the presentation.
And I like it.
I'm not enthused enough about it to say, sure, they should go back and redo the others.
Because I got lots of other stories I want to see.
But I get what you're saying.
I mean, if it had a consistent style.
But I'll put it this way.
You know what's not consistent between this one and the last one, as far as I can tell?
or as i can remember the music you know well no that's true so the stories are not necessarily
stylistically the same from one to the next anyway so i can i can deal with it i can deal
with the animation oh yeah yeah yeah no i i mean i so i i can deal with it and it won't it won't
surprise me if we do end up with new animations of things that have been animated before and i
don't want i don't want to suggest i'm itching for it i don't want i don't want to to give the
impression that this is my top priority over as you say getting some of the other stories animated
or whatever but it's just the fact that we've got this block now i think you can sort of sit down
and watch macro faceless ones and evil in a row with the same visual animation style and that in
a way that that kind of helps it disappear it it it makes me think because i've i've for a while i
think i've mentioned this as well before that that i won't be surprised if they come back to animating
some of the same stuff again purely because what they can do for the money is getting better and
better all of the time and so it will reach a point where they will go oh well we can do far
better than this but not only that because of the affordability of it you might then look at
well there is merit in animating a whole season with the same animation house and the same
animation style for this reason and I and it's it I mean it's just something I've been thinking
while I've been out on the beach and out walking around you know it because because I know that I
know that they will be thinking about this kind of stuff do I do I think there is a value in that
and I'm not sure I do place a lot by it for some of the reasons that you've just said.
But it's just interesting watching this serial as the third in this kind of trilogy
where there is this kind of coherent feel to it.
It is the first time where I've actually thought, quite like that, yeah.
Whereas previously I'd have gone, don't really care, like you just suggested.
And I'm not saying it's a big thing for me yet.
It's just that's interesting.
Yeah, eventually they'll probably be able to do this so cheaply.
It's not funny.
But whether or not they'll have built me out of a few more Blu-ray box sets before then is another story.
Well, yes, of course, that is the thing, because every every time it gets released on Blu-ray, of course, it will have to include every previous version because we Doctor Who fans are absolutely completist.
And well, wouldn't it be nice if they released them on Blu-ray over in the United States?
they don't even release these animated ones over here and in blu-ray only dvd but but eventually
a box set maybe yeah yeah so i mean in terms of the animation i i don't think there is a lot
um to add to the the the kind of criticisms and and i mean criticisms both good and bad that i made
in the faceless ones I agree with you there's a kind of artiness of this shines through
it's there's a there's a quality to it now where I think I particularly think that they've got the
measure of the limitations of what they can do and that makes the whole thing just feel a lot
more solid they're really there's a there's a confidence to producing something that does look
good and part of that is is the artiness um the the criticism that you make about the motion is
something that i banged on about in the faceless ones the only reason i might think it's worth
coming back to now is because since then we've had a little chat about the um web of fear where
the motion is very very different and i i've kind of looked back i mean since we recorded on the web
of Fear it I've I've kind of read a few what a few other people have commented about the animation
quality and I kind of alluded to the fact there's a bit of a split between people who like the
animation and people who don't but that I think that may have been slightly overstating it it's
basically a split between me and everyone else because I'm having difficulty finding anyone else
who likes the animation and yet when I went to have a look back at the web of fear to sort of
compare the quality of the motion in that and the and the quality in this there are different
qualities about it so i i do aesthetically it's just a lot more pleasing watching evil of the
daleks it's it's it's more take any still frame from it and it's just it's more nicely drawn it's
more nicely done and yet there are still sequences in it where you have kind of victoria blinks
and stares and they're obviously just holding the camera on her because they have no clue what's
happening they've got well they've got that they've got that much of the soundtrack to to kind of fill
in and then you know kemel blinks back at her and stares at her and it is one of those situations
where i think well actually what you need to do is you need to couple of cut a couple of seconds
silence as the soundtrack and tighten this up but in the web of fear they would have had the benefit
of being able to use a bit of the movement,
of the body language to actually represent
that nonverbal communication on screen
in a more effective way.
And looking back at the Web of Fear,
I can completely see why the kind of,
the fact that everyone looks like
they have had way too much caffeine
is alienating to some people.
But I still like that very, I appreciate that.
And I appreciate both styles,
But I do appreciate that ability to communicate through the whole body movement that you just really, really don't get in these in these Norton and Walsh animations.
I, you know, I've watched the Web of Fear again since we recorded.
And what it reminds me of the most is say there's a certain amount of the actors have been told to move more than they should.
Or maybe it's just being translated in the animation.
So there does seem to be that sort of, I can't keep still.
And even though humans aren't perfectly still, these people do.
Caffeinated is a really good way.
But it also reminds me of early 90s.
Let's go 90s.
The first wave of computer-generated characters.
where they just, even though they made them move more than they would have been able to in standard animation,
I think is a way to say, look at the cool thing we can now do.
And yet, because of the way they're rigged, they still don't look natural.
And I think that's part of it in the web of fear, that there's still not enough articulation points, maybe.
I don't really know.
There's one motion I can...
I think that's true.
I think there's still a motion with a brigadier I can still see in my head every time with him,
with a crop and a leg and just something about the...
It's exactly what he would do, but it's not how you would do it,
or how anyone would do it, I should say.
And I think that it's the uncanny valley, almost, maybe.
Yeah, yeah.
Because I don't think there's any doubt about it.
It's the kind of early generation for that style of animation,
whereas what we're looking at with evil is the fourth iteration
of them getting this right.
Well, the fourth iteration of them trying it,
and they are now getting it right.
And the kind of, because obviously it's a totally different thing.
They are not getting actors to make these motions
because actually all of the humans in this are two-dimensional animations.
And what they're getting right now, which I did find jarring with Power of the Daleks,
and I still think when I go back and look at it, it looks a bit jarring, is that mix of 2D and 3D.
I think it's quite an odd thing to have tried.
And it is kind of now paying off, I think, because it does look pretty good here.
It looks much more natural.
I think they're understanding the limitations of it and they're finding ways of blending it more.
But obviously, you particularly notice it.
I think the reason this episode is a good comparison to look at against the first one that these guys did,
the power of the Daleks, is because the Daleks are taking full advantage of being 3D models.
You know, they have this incredibly smooth, complete 360 degree motion.
And when a Dalek rotates its eyestalk, it actually rotates.
And indeed, that would look very strange if it didn't.
But when one of the human characters rotates,
they go from full face to three quarters in an instant.
And there's no kind of in-betweening.
And it jarred a lot, that kind of discrepancy in Power of the Daleks.
And it doesn't now.
And whatever they've done, they've made it look right.
Have you seen the remade Power of the Daleks?
No, I haven't.
I was just thinking about that, you know,
in terms of it being the one animation that we haven't reviewed,
just, you know, because we'd actually done Power of the Daleks twice,
and I'm not sure how different it actually is.
Although reading some of the reviews of that,
I think one of the things that they obviously did go back to do
was take out things where they had overstretched themselves,
where they had, through the subsequent animations they'd done,
realised some of their limitations.
So I'm thinking of the doctor's checked trousers,
and I think they actually made a cut
where there was something that they didn't think
the animation was up to scratch,
so they just chopped it out of the episode.
A bit like the tumble machine in Macro Terror.
Yeah, I'm still upset about that.
Okay.
Well, but I'm not. I'm not because I mean, I was more upset about Polly's hair.
I kind of think that what makes these episodes satisfying to watch, more satisfying to watch now than they were when they started doing this stuff with power is that they are operating more within the limitations of what is possible under the constraints they're operating under.
And I prefer that.
you know right right right from the beginning the fact that the invasion looked really really good
was because you had really experienced animators who were doing something that they were very very
comfortable with and yeah it was basic but it was just really really artistic and I feel like we're
getting more into that territory now with these guys doing doing this series I'm not I'm not quite
sure where they're going to go next um underwater menace one hopes but uh it's good i take it they're
not doing galaxy four no that's another big finish one okay um i you know really expected based on my
thoughts on this animation that we would save that for the last and and and not have much to say about
it but obviously we've we've had some time i've got a couple points i'll just throw them out here
for short things. One, kudos to them for actually reasonably successfully dealing
with a character who is mute. Yeah. That tough call on that one. When you're animating a soundtrack,
you think, that's bold, but all right. It kind of worked. There was a couple spots there where
you're just like, yeah, I don't think that's what he was doing, but okay. My interpretation.
And one in the, you know, don't do something that the animation doesn't support kind of thing.
And we could make the same argument that says you don't do things, you don't make things in certain colors when you know you're shooting in black and white, for example.
So that you get, you know, you have to work on the limitations of your medium.
And you have to work with the limitations of the medium in the animation.
one of the limitations of the medium is the trickleur was hideous in this uh it's like yeah
i mean maybe that's what it looked like when they were shooting it in black and white but
no that's just awful just ah didn't like it i i see it i've been critical of of the coloring
I have tended to prefer to watch these things in black I kind of feel like this totally goes
against me saying this is a completely separate work of art but I've been I guess it's because
when you're watching one episode that has survived and I am glad that episode two has survived
because it's the first appearance of Victoria and all that but it feels like it fits better
with watching black and white 4.3 than watching colour widescreen.
And yet, actually, I did watch quite a lot of this one in colour widescreen.
I am warming to it.
I think that in terms of the colouring, kudos to Adrian Salmon.
He has done generally a really good job.
I think the tricolour was probably pretty hideous.
The whole thing with the big face of the model,
That comes directly from Chris Thompson's original design, apparently.
So I think that criticism may be one that is more for the design of the original than for the realization in the animation.
If you're going to be altering it, for example, removing the tumble machine for the animation, it's hideous.
I mean, it is hideous in color.
Yeah, so they could have toned it.
or something it's like but and all right and they and they did they did um they did make changes
which i i don't know i found one change really really odd um and i i did not um watch a lot of
the the kind of telesnap stuff to look for all of the changes and i've alluded to the fact that they
they haven't bothered with the doctor's check trousers or whatever but they put kennedy in a
in a jacket and tie and it fitted with his character really well it's this you know the
kind of oh yeah but he's i did see he was in a sweater or something yeah he's in a as soon as
you cut to the real thing in episode two he's in a polo neck uh which also kind of kind of fits but
it totally changes um and so and so yeah i watched both both i did notice that it's absolutely they
They have made a choice. They have decided to add in in the animation this costume that I guess they think fits with his character better than the real costume.
Because I can't imagine that. I mean, I don't know anything about it.
But animating a jacket with a tie is any easier than animating a plain polo neck, is it?
Yeah, I don't know. I did notice that, though. I did notice that change.
It was kind of strange, but it didn't bother me.
You know, when I when I put them all on the Plex server, they will end up just being the color widescreen versions for watching.
And the others will be relegated to sitting on the shelf on the on the Blu-ray.
So for archival purposes, you know, I'll watch that someday.
But all right.
Well, let's let's turn our attention to the actual evil of the Daleks, which I.
Yes, indeed.
I don't know. Was that ever released on a target novelization?
If so, I've read it. If not, I haven't read it and only know about it from vague episode guides.
So the whole thing was very fresh and new to me.
I knew that it was originally designed to be the final at last, finally, finally, finally get rid of the Daleks forever.
again is this again i thought this was the last final well i guess in the the original
or the first final um yeah the first yeah the first episode it was a one and done and then
from that point on they've been it yes it feels like there is a there is a kind of
final defeat in every episode but the difference here would be what was going on behind the scenes
in terms of Terry Nation trying to spin it off,
you know, give the Daleks their own series
and then sort of deciding he couldn't have that,
he didn't want to write any more Daleks.
Yeah, so that's the interesting part.
I have always heard that Terry Nation
was trying to spin it off from Doctor Who
and that's why this was written to end them.
But this is the first time I've ever heard
that he got soundly rejected about spinning it off
And this was basically kind of a snit.
Like, all right, fine, I don't want to write any more Dalek stories.
That's a completely different take on what I had heard on this over the years.
Anyway, so as a Dalek story, what did you think of this one?
I thought, well, let me first of all say it's an interesting story,
partly because of the obvious influence it has had down the line.
Well, to me, what seems like this,
it seems like it's influenced later Doctor Who in a couple of ways
that I will come back to.
But just, yeah, just in terms of how it works as a Dalek story.
Yeah, I think it's pretty terrible.
Pretty terrible, even for a Dalek story.
It is ridiculous.
I found myself, I enjoyed it.
Don't get me wrong.
I really did enjoy watching it.
But at the same time, it was like, so the first episode is entirely them taking someone they know, they've captured the thing that they want, and then making it hard for them to find out where the thing is when what they want is for them to come there so they can be captured.
It's like the doctor has to be clever enough to figure out the clues, but not clever enough to avoid being trapped.
That's a fine line to walk when you're making a maniacal, diabolical plot.
And I ask questions like, what if he'd followed the Leatherman clue?
How would that have led him to Waterfield Shop?
What is Waterfield Shop for?
what what is the point of that is he's he's making 1966 buck and then what taking it back
with him to the victorian times where he can't spend it i i like it's i i never could figure out
is that strictly nothing but a trap for the doctor or have they set up that whole ruse
for some other purpose as well can't tell it's just it's interesting but it kind of kill you
Now, it's an interesting idea, but why have we done this when you ultimately just show up and give the doctor a card and says, here, be at my place at 10 o'clock tonight?
And everything up to that point is just nullified to what they've done.
It's strange.
It's obviously to play time.
I have bigger questions.
I mean, I think the plot is absolute nonsense.
It's poppycock.
Why are the Daleks in 1866?
I don't understand.
Were they dragged in by the time machine?
I thought.
I thought Waterfield's time cabinet or Maxstable's time cabinet,
whoever you want to attribute it to,
somehow opened up a path for the Daleks to come through.
And I guess.
I don't.
The time.
Why they would do.
Yeah.
I realize there's probably more.
I don't understand because the time cabinet and the time machine seem to be
different.
Yes.
Yes,
they are.
And I don't understand.
I mean, the time machine obviously lets the Daleks travel to however,
however they ended up in 1866,
it lets them travel through to 1967 or whenever.
And so I don't know why they need the doctor to come back to 1866 because
they could just go to 1967.
Yep.
And yeah, I mean, the Dalek factor stuff,
I didn't understand it.
I mean, they come up with all this stuff about the human factor, which goes nowhere.
Right, right.
In terms of the story arc, that feels somewhat unsatisfying.
And then the Dalek factor stuff comes out of nowhere.
So, again, that feels somewhat unsatisfying in story terms.
How is it identifying the things that make the humans win?
How is that exercise what leads them to understanding what the factors are that make a Dalek a Dalek?
I don't get that at all.
No, I think I think that just that comes out of nowhere as a plot convenience.
To me, to me, it feels like it's OK.
I mean, so the so the interesting thing about how I think the the the story feels quite influential.
but also um this may be me reading stuff into it because we're a few as we record this we're a few
days out from uh the announcement that russ c davis is coming back as showrunner on doctor who
and so i've dived into the writer's tale just you know out of interest of how he how he goes about
writing doctor who and he he he has a very kind of visual approach he he sees particular scenes or
kind of uh the the feed the emotional the the atmospheric sense of of of what you're seeing
before he gets to the the plot stuff and you can kind of see how you can you can tell that
that's that seems to be how david whisker has come and come at this stuff because
that there is some nice atmospheric stuff in this i love the i love the shop i love it
and I do actually quite like the fact that he's there selling Victoriana that is brand new because
he has a time machine and that's wonderful it's a clever idea yeah it's a clever idea that is kind
of wasted because it goes nowhere but it for an episode it works really really well and I also
like all of the stuff in the in the Victorian house there's that kind of that closed house
small cast real kind of claustrophobic sense of mystery that you get and having daleks in a
victorian setting is a really nice contrast again you know i kind of like that but it but it but it
does feel like those kind of things have been stitched together and then the details of how the
the plot weaves in between them have been added on as pretty much a an afterthought and not much
of a thought at that okay fair enough i will i will say while i'm talking about rtd that a direct
influence of this in terms of the human factor because the human factor itself is not a bad idea
that that you might having i mean i i find it difficult for them i did difficult to think that
the daleks have difficulty with the human race even dalek invasion of earth that's thwarted by
the doctor interfering not the humans themselves but but not tossing ropes over a dalek and throwing
him i mean exactly the the the the idea is is a nice one and it is the idea from the cult of
skaro in in the lost planet right yep i mean there's even the thing in this of the stolen
planet sorry um actually i don't think so it's um it's doomsday with a cyberman that's when they
pulled the scaro out oh he comes back he comes back in the stolen planet yes sorry i've just
i've got that image of dalek khan gibbering away but yes no you're quite right they're introduced
in doomsday um but it but but there is that similar thing of the daleks there have been
given names and in this the human the daleks with the human factor the doctor names them i must say
I, you know, we don't the doctors.
The doctor needs a better book of names.
Boy, does he?
I mean, what?
Who on earth?
First off, who names them?
I'm going to call you A, B and Z.
Right.
Am I by remembering my alphabet well enough to know that that is not alpha, beta.
Yeah.
Omega.
I mean, you've gone.
Yeah.
Alpha Omega is first to last.
Yeah.
That's a weird.
But even so, it does demonstrate a certain lack of imagination in terms of...
Tom Baker would have had better names.
Fetal Sigma.
Curly.
He'd call them Curly.
Larry Moe and Curly, yeah.
Larry Moe and Curly, there we go.
Things like that.
Spiky.
You know, just things that don't fit...
That sounds more Capaldi to me, but...
Fair enough.
But yeah, later doctors would have better names for their Dalek pets.
But yeah.
Well, yeah, I have I don't have any trouble. I don't have any trouble with the notion that the Daleks can be defeated by humans, because frankly, up till this point, the Daleks aren't that impressive and have never been that impressive.
Yes, they did conquer the Earth.
And yes, it took the Doctor to save them.
But it wasn't that huge of a leap.
And if Earth had been a more space-faring race, I don't feel like they'd have been defeated by the Daleks as easily.
They're coming in just like if the Daleks invaded Victorian Earth.
Yeah, no, there's no hope there.
But if the Daleks invaded 23rd century Earth, different effect.
So I do not like the Russell T Davies era Daleks for the very reason that they're so powerful they can challenge the Time Lords, which is nonsense.
It has always been nonsense.
And, you know, they've gone from comical tin pots to comical tin pots that somebody says is the most powerful beings in the universe.
No.
Well, I'm not sure.
I'm not sure they were comical tin pot I mean I I think I think that when Daleks work best
is when you see less of them so if I think of the Daleks actually the Daleks in aren't in the Daleks
that much and what conveys how fearsome and how terrible they are are people's reactions to them
it's what it's what they it's what they've done it's the effect of it so you you know you see
how the thals react to them you see the effect they have had on the on the city in skaro does
it have a name i don't know what the city um the city and similarly you know in dalek invasion of
earth it's it's how the it's how the human survivors all all react and i and i felt like
the stuff in the in the Victorian house was working better because the Daleks were there
or it was working better when the Daleks were there in the background and you were seeing how
Waterfield and and Maxtable were very jittery you know just do what they say because they're
they're terrifying and you don't kind of need to demonstrate why they're terrifying you just need
to show how frightened these men are and equally you know when the doctor reacts that's what scares
you it's in it's in Dalek when the doctor realizes what this artifact actually is and it's the way in
which he suddenly you know snaps into this there's this terrifying transformation in him that's what's
frightening it's not having you know lots of daleks going round and round in circles and
shooting each other and the emperor and all this yeah but you know eventually they have to they have
to put their money where their mouth is you can't be afraid of something that never does anything
scary eventually you've got to have you've got to have something and the daleks have always had
stupid plans i mean they are the worst planners ever and i would say invasion of earth is a
pretty stupid plan it is a stupid plan yeah and i do like that story a lot yeah so i mean then
they're not great at plotting and they're not that invulnerable because you can just take a piece of
rope and throw them off a thing and they're dead and and i on the other hand i wouldn't i wouldn't
exactly crown the time lords as being brain of the universe in terms of their own plots no not
no no they're not but they certainly should have had far more power than the daleks could ever have
achieved their their pathetic attempt in genesis of the daleks to stop the daleks was could have
been averted some other way if they really wanted to worry about it but but nonetheless you know it
It is the Daleks just have never been particularly good.
And, you know, in the new series, we're just told they're so incredibly scary because they've done these incredibly scary things.
They're still kind of rubbish and have not been served very well.
Well, I think that I think that I mean, I'm not really arguing with you here.
I'm not a huge Dalek fan,
but I do think there have been better Dalek stories and worse Dalek stories.
And that is true now.
And that was true then.
I feel like this is,
this is definitely one of,
one of the lesser Dalek stories of the sixties.
A couple of things I'll point out here that I thought were kind of other
things,
ignoring the Daleks.
Here's another one.
Jamie was dumb as a post in this episode.
um yeah repeatedly like but the tardis doctor it's like shut up jamie or doctor why are we
arriving 30 minutes earlier for an appointment why are we sneaking in at the top of his voice
it's like shut up jamie how dumb are you today but doctor we've got find the tardis but doctor
shut up shut up shut up like got it i know we're looking for the tardis i can talk to this person
for 30 seconds about other things you don't need to shout what about the tardis any more times
and the sequence where at the midpoint somewhere it's like when we're when we're out of this i'm
done doctor you're too callous um really that just i don't know it just doesn't feel right
on his character it doesn't feel it doesn't feel very jamie-ish but again i am going to pick up on
something where i feel like there is quite an influence in evil i mean it's the it's it's the
earliest example of this that i can think of and it becomes a a kind of touchstone of the of the
the, I'm going to say the Seventh Doctor, but it's really specific. It's kind of going into the
Virgin New Adventures kind of Seventh Doctor era of the idea of the Doctor being the arch
manipulator and in particular manipulating his companions in a borderline abusive way.
And you see that in the way that he is not honest with Jamie. I mean, at first he says,
no I'm going to be absolutely honest with Jamie but then he isn't and he starts using reverse
psychology on him and it does make you think of the Doctor being that that kind of master planner
and the friction that that then creates between Jamie and the Doctor does feel to me very kind of
Doctor and Ace because there are innumerable times when Ace sort of says you know how could
you do this and I'm not traveling with you anymore and that's that feels much more like
they they've earned it because they build up to that kind of showdown that that it's there within
their relationship whereas there's nothing about the doctor and jamie's relationship
that makes you think jamie would do that also also jamie's never seen daleks before so the first time
the doctor mentions the daleks jamie is talking about you're always on about a daleks or something
it's like really you think he is really good point there's also another one uh not not jamie's fault
it's victoria's fault uh at some point before she's ever met the doctor she says something
like and that's when jamie and the doctor came to rescue me and it and it wasn't or she she
mentions jamie and the doctor in the act of rescuing her whether it's they did or they're
they tried or i i don't remember what point it was but she clearly said in the doctor it's like
haven't actually met him yet so um why i think she meant camel and they just flubbed the line
and yeah and it it went through because it sounds natural it's jamie and the doctor yeah but yeah
yeah yeah jamie bothered me in this episode at several times so while we're while we're kind of
picking on things there are plot plot holes i mean it's not just that the whole thing is poppycock
it's that when you get down to the nitty-gritty details there are things that just don't make
sense like the the victoriana shop is in london right they're fairly explicit about that yeah
how do jamie and the doctor get to london it's in gatwick just right there
gatwick is like a good 30 miles away did they just walk it
uh taxi i don't know it it feels like there should have been some because obviously they
couldn't have done a short hop in the tardis or whatever and usually if you see them you know
traveling anywhere it's because they they meet someone and get a lift or that yeah i don't know
because but um i i think that's just an oversight because then later on it feels like a bit of a
bigger deal that they're on scarrow okay yeah how did they get to scarrow uh the dalek time machine
i guess he programmed it to take them to scarrow the dalek time machine that lets them travel
through time yep i'm guessing it's a time and space that doesn't really make much more sense
than well they got to scarrow in a taxi to me fair enough fair enough yeah yeah there is some
holes in this story. There's no doubt about that. One of the things that is interesting
that I thought, and I felt like they were trying to say something, and I don't know if it's
germane to something at that time or whether it's just a universal thing. There was an awful lot of
I can't be blamed for what the Daleks do. No court in the land would convict me. I think that's even
Maximal has that line. This isn't a court in the land that would convict me for what I'm doing here.
And Waterfield uses something similar. I can't be held accountable for what I'm being forced to do, which I don't think is morally defensible. But at the same time, it is interesting that they repeatedly make that argument. And I realize Maxstable is lying about it.
He's using that as a justification, but that justification is a lie and he knows it.
He is complicit with the Daleks.
He's been going along with them.
He's the one that kidnapped Victoria.
Waterfield, on the other hand, is doing it under duress.
And he is getting increasingly upset, like when they kill Kennedy, which seems to be the first time they killed somebody.
And yet we're supposed to think that they think the Daleks are so terrible.
Because what have the Daleks done that was terrible prior to that except shout?
at them and kidnap Victoria. Don't know. But what I thought was really strange, and this kind of
comes back to the animation, it's tied to that. So Maxwell is evil. Waterfield is not evil, but he is
being forced into doing his things. But when you watch the surviving episode, Waterfield is a
decent looking guy. He's just an ordinary looking person. Max Stable is so obviously
a crazed bad guy from his hair and his look and his demeanor on the screen that, you know,
it's easy to see where these things come out. But in the animation, it's exactly the opposite.
Waterfield practically looks like a vampire, the way they've done him up, with the gaunt cheeks and the dark shadows and everything.
He looks evil.
He looks like he should be coming out like, Uncle Suck, you're blood, from behind drapes.
And Maxstable looks presentable.
I realize they probably can't do that crazy wild hair, but they really kind of flip them around.
That's interesting because I didn't get that from the live.
I mean, I don't disagree with the way that you described the animation,
but I didn't feel like it was that discrepant.
I didn't feel like Marius Goring's hair is obviously bad guy hair,
whatever bad guy hair is.
The thing is that, you know, I've watched, you have to watch episode one.
That's where we meet Waterfield.
Yeah.
You meet Waterfield.
He is obviously the master manipulator.
So you're perfectly acceptable thinking he's the bad, bad guy.
And he is gaunt and he is dark and he's kind of mean to his employees.
But we really learned that's just Victorian manners.
And, you know, he has that almost Christopher Lee look to him in this animation.
So you're like, you know, fine, that's the bad guy.
Okay.
Then we hop to the live action and we meet Max Stable.
and you're like oh that guy is okay that's it and but waterfield doesn't convey that sense of
menace anymore that he did in the first episode and then you switch to episode three which is the
first time you see the animated maxable and it's like wow that's just not the same guy i don't know
that i would well yeah it's well i don't i yeah i mean i didn't think the hair was i didn't think
the hair was animated but i don't i like you said i don't know how you could do that really but in
in other respects i certainly didn't didn't get the same feeling that he did about waterfield i
felt there was a kind of a good a good sense of him in the animation when you see the live action
yeah i get it and i i can see it's the same person uh i can see it's yeah but also but also
So that it's, you know, it's highlighting the same aspect.
He is quite sort of, he's quite stern.
He's quite overbearing in some respects.
And Maxwell feels softer.
He feels more kind of avuncular and playing the, playing mine host.
It feels more in tune.
My impression of the live action episode feels more in tune with your impression of the animated episodes.
i i it would be like if uh half the movie they took a character and they and they lit him in
horror lighting all the time and then in the other half they didn't it's kind of like that
that's the feel like no i understand i just didn't get the same impression of it um is this the first
time the doctor ever explicitly said he's not human i was wondering that i mean obviously
He says he's from another planet in the future, but it could be in the future and it could be a human.
He could be an ancestor of humans. And the regeneration could have been a function that his people have developed.
That's part of the TARDIS, you know. So, I mean, all that we just know he's from another planet.
We did not know. I don't think we knew that he was not human, but I'm not I'm not absolutely sure on that.
It just it felt like it that they were a little more explicit with it in this episode than they have been in the past.
It certainly stood out to me, the fact they were hammering that.
And then obviously it became clear the reason for that was because they needed it as the explanation for why the doctor is not affected by the magical doorway.
That could make this the very first time that they pulled out a new feature,
biological feature for the doctor, apart from their generation,
which might not be a biological feature.
Yeah, generation is a big one.
To get out of a plot hole.
Oh, you've got a respiratory bypass system.
Why didn't we know that before?
And I still want to know where that bypass goes.
It's an influential story.
Yeah.
Let's see.
Dizzy, dizzy Daleks.
that was a bit fun I have to say stupid little bit fun yeah I yeah it was a strange cliffhanger
I felt a pretty strange way to end the episode I thought that it was it was it was a fun thing to
do but you have to be careful with if you've got your kind of arch baddies of showing them in any
light where they appear a little bit ridiculous because as soon as you realize they're ridiculous
they become the kind of cartoon monster that you just get portrayed as yeah being being these kind
of comical baddies and you know during the kind of decline in the 1980s this was always the kind
of pastiche or or joke about Doctor Who and I thought they trod the line okay on that but then
later in the episode when they have characters just doing the dalek voice they went well over
the line that that just seems like they are sending it up yeah there's no reason for them
to actually do the funny voice no and i mean that comes part that's partly to do with the
poppycock plot it it it it doesn't the dalek factor thing it doesn't really connect with
the whole thing of Daleks and what they are and this idea of them being genetically engineered
in that particular way because the magic doorway just undermines that. Don't you think the Daleks
already knew that about themselves anyway? If we could just make humans like us, then we could win.
They already know what they're like. The bigger issue for me is that it cuts against this
dalek purity thing that they should not want humans to be like them because even if they
they took the human gene and created something that was that had all of the kind of qualities
and character of a dalek they would still feel like yeah but genetically it's a human and therefore
yeah but i don't think i don't think that the plan was to swell the ranks of daleks i think
the plan was to turn as many humans into dalek like creatures as it could tell them to go kill
all the rest of the humans and then they just wipe out the dollar the human daleks afterwards
i think their ultimate goal is still to wipe out all the humans well you can you can possibly
rationalize it but you're still left with the question of why does a dalek sound like a dalek
And the answer is nothing to do with its character and those traits.
It's a physiological question.
It's the fact that they have genetically manipulated themselves into these nuclear proof creatures that have to move around inside these machines.
and then given the machine's voice synthesizers that are very basic because Daleks don't care about,
you know, such aesthetic niceties as having a musical speaking voice.
Yes. So the human factor, the ability to modulate and calm your voice.
I didn't hear them put that one in the human factor when the doctor was calculating it.
That definitely needed to be in there because then when they made the Dalek
factor by doing the opposite,
that would,
that would cause Maxwell to talk funny.
Let's see.
It's interesting that they were so concerned with Victoria's weight.
Reminds me.
They,
they just like,
you'll eat.
And then they,
they measured her and you're like,
you're down seven ounces or 17 ounces or something.
It's like,
eat,
don't feed the flying pests.
It's like,
I get that they want to keep her alive,
but really, that level of weight control
didn't make a whole lot of sense.
They just get an excuse to put her on the machine
to weigh her, which apparently hurts.
Arthur Terrell, was that character
completely and utterly pointless,
as was Maxwell's daughter?
As opposed to, yeah.
I mean, he didn't do anything, really.
a lot of these characters they they yeah they sort of came into the story and then disappeared
i mean even even characters like kemmel and maxtable or whatever i mean i i don't know i
don't know that why maxtable is the is the classic he has a he appears to be one thing he's revealed
to be another he has an obsession the obsession leads to his current co-op skype actually doesn't
lead to his car because as far as i can tell he completely gets away with it waterfield didn't he
die on scarrow did he i don't know i didn't i think he ran back into the battle and we didn't
see the shot but i didn't i we didn't see we didn't see it i don't again i don't know whether
that's the animation or whether it's just me getting extremely bored by that point because
obviously you know waterfield water again waterfield has more of an arc because he's
He is, as you say, forced into doing some things that he deeply regrets.
I guess his death is a form of redemption because he saves the Doctor.
OK, no idea what Kemmel's death is about.
But then Kemmel doesn't really have much of an arc because he's just there, friends with Jamie and then tends to do everything right, is jolly good and virtuous and then gets chucked into it.
chasm for no reason um and yeah toby i don't i mean i guess toby kennedy you've got to have some
people who get killed by daleks all right i can i can understand that but it doesn't it doesn't feel
very satisfying i guess yeah it's it's a it's a definitely a middle of the road episode of doctor
who there are there are many better out there i'm absolutely uh i don't think underwater menace
is one of them but there are many better out yes it is i i will reserve my final judgment
on underwater menace until they animate it uh and see if it's if it's any if i think it's any better
but um there are there are some things that i liked about this episode and somewhat to my
surprise one of them is the score um which is dudley simpson but i i mean often dudley simpson
doesn't actually do a lot for me i really liked this one i'm trying to remember what i thought
about the macro terror whether i mentioned that or or not i'll have to go back and listen to the
podcast um obviously if i did like it it wasn't sufficiently memorable for me to um to be able
think it was not sufficiently memorable uh my recollection is is nothing i am yes it does have
the crazy dance in it doesn't it um i i am just going to say uh once again i will just quote my
notes here uh i have a section uh heading music subsection yuck it's all i got interesting
interesting um there was there were sections of it particularly the uh kind of background
skara music that i didn't like i thought that it was a bit more kind of standard dudley simpson
stuff but i generally did think the music was effective and yeah no i mean no stronger than
that i i enjoyed it i liked it i found it intrusive it was it was enough to stand out i mean i love a
good i love a good strong piece of music that i am the doctor for example that that swells up at
the right moment and it carries the mood along uh or or you know not not necessarily an exciting
action piece i didn't find this to be that i found this to be like who who let a musician
into the room and he's playing the wrong tune right now oh no i thought it was it was appropriate
it felt yeah it felt it felt appropriate it added to the drama for me anyway let's see uh i i only
have one last thing and i'll but i'll i'll turn it to you first and see what else you got
that's pretty much it for me except for the guest stars um not not a huge uh starring role for either
them but windsor davies uh was toby i didn't recognize him in this um not that i was ever a
regular watcher of it ain't half hot mum but you know a name um and bridget forsyth who was in
whatever happened to the likely lads a few years later.
She playing Max Doolstard.
Yeah.
I don't recognize either of those two.
So,
uh,
I guess the one thing I want to add is that I saw a tweet online earlier
today and someone had posted a picture of a newspaper review.
Oh yeah.
Evil.
You saw that talking about the guy who watched it twice at the guy who
watched it twice.
And thought it was terrible.
Thought it was terrible and thought,
and it's something about his wife mentioning the scene
where Jamie pops his head in
and has to visibly wait for the trap to spring in the thing.
And I thought, isn't that nice of the animators
to keep that in?
Because that's exactly what happens in the animated version.
It's so slow for the trap to spring.
You'd have thought they could have, I don't know,
somehow made that i thought it was the animation that looked unconvincing like well they just they
didn't get that right they didn't get the timing right but apparently apparently they didn't get
the timing right on the original one either so yeah those are in lost episodes so i think i think
i think that's a a factor of the style of the animation that you watch it and you are willing
to give the credits to the original makers
for having got that right
and just put this down to the animation.
Yeah, but apparently not so much.
So it's an homage.
We'll call it an homage in the animation to the original
instead of a deficiency.
All right.
The next, it's been announced, Galaxy 4.
Well, hey.
It's coming out in October.
It's amazing how quickly they're coming now.
I mean, I was amazed that they announced Evil so soon after Web of Fear.
I mean, literally, it's been like a six-week gap, I think, between releases.
I'm not sure it's October, but I think it might be November.
I don't have the date to hand.
But it's still another one this year, which, you know,
I would have expected it would be spring before we got another one
because we were on a two-a-year cycle.
Yeah.
We've had Fury from the Deep this year already.
So this is three and a bit animations, right?
Yeah.
It's really ramping up.
I'm not dissatisfied.
Maybe it's because they're working at home in pandemic.
And this was good work to work on.
I mean, seriously, it could very well be.
I think they were working at home anyway.
Right.
But they may have been doing other work.
And it's like, this is one we can do in this kind of situation at a higher rate.
So I would like to think that something good has come out of it or,
or they're just getting up to speed.
I don't care.
I don't know.
We can talk about this offline as to whether or not we're actually going to
do another episode on galaxy four.
Cause we have come on.
We reviewed the like 25 minutes of it without any animation.
No,
I think,
I mean,
I'm interested in it as a full story.
And I'm also interested because although we've had these,
we talked about the kind of consistency in these four serials
that have been done by the same people,
the big Finnish ones, it's almost like every time they change style,
they go out to a different, you know, they outsource the animation,
they go out to some completely different animation studio.
It looks to me, I mean, it's really,
really hard to tell from the clips that we've seen.
It looks to me like it might be a bit similar to Fury from the Deep.
I was hoping that it would be an evolution from the Web of Fear style.
It may be something completely different.
I think, I think we've got to have a look at it and do a review.
All right.
You twist my arm.
But, but you heard it here first, folks.
Simon's idea.
No. Blame me. Yeah. Yep. Thanks. Just in case. But come on.
As I recall, as I recall, we liked Galaxy four in its 30 minute form.
Well, there we go then. Another reason to. I feel like I can't remember, to be honest, but seems to be my recollection.
It's like, wow, this is really a shame. This story is not in because I enjoyed it.
So here we go. I'm good with it. I am very, very good.
But this is the first Hartnell we've had in a while, isn't it?
yes yes so that's another another reason to take a look at it i mean i am certainly not complaining
about having a whole slew of new trout because i love my trout but it's nice to have some variety
too yeah fill them all in every last one all of them don't wait to the last to do the historicals
because it's going to be like what they did with the doctor who vhs line they released all the
ones people liked first saving the ones they didn't like for last and then sales trailed off
well oh i see yes that is a that is potentially a worry i mean the reason they're waiting on the
historicals is more to do with the technical difficulties of animating them and i would also
add i like the historicals but i i see what you're saying which is that's me buying it is not
necessarily going to cover the cost so it needs lots of people to like them and lots of people
like them or to just go you know something there's another hole to fill in my collection i want it
not not oh now we've got the smugglers and we've got the can't even think of some of the other
missing historicals but uh the crusades marco polo the highlanders marco yep see i want all those
i want all those i'd like them to i'd like them to split them up two science fiction one historical
that's how I would think they should do them
and then get them out of the way
Simon thank you for joining me
it's a pleasure as always
listeners
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On the next episode of Fusion Patrol, please join me, Eugene.
And me, Simon.
And we are talking about the Bugs episode, Hot Metal.
We're talking about sonic technology.
In fact, two completely separate and unconnected sonic technologies.
We're talking about inconsistent villains and their pointlessly elaborate traps.
And we're talking about the team Bugs and their relationship to Her Majesty's government.
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