First things first, if you want to watch along, the episode I’m reviewing is available from Amazon. Additionally, a lot of these old Doctor Who episodes are available on YouTube or on services such as Netflix. I encourage you to watch along with me and leave your thoughts in the comments!
Secondly, a big spoiler warning for anything I say after this sentence. I’m not sure if it’s still common courtesy to put spoiler warnings on content that is almost 50 years old, but I’m going to air on the side of caution.
Disclaimers out of the way, lets watch some Who!
Serial 2: The Daleks
Part 3: The Escape (1964)
Starring: Doctor 1 – William Hartnell
Quick recap: Doctor Who and his granddaughter Susan accidentally kidnap two of her teachers, Ian and Barbara, and take them on a trip through time. When investigating a mysterious planet, the travelers are captured by a race of silly looking robots called the Daleks. Also, they’re dying of radiation poisoning, and Susan, the most useless member of the group has to go get them medicine.
Susan meets an albino man who was creepily waiting for her outside the TARDIS. They talk about some stuff that moves the plot forward, but first, lets point out something far more important.
HIS CAPE IS DOPE.
I want one. Seriously.
He admits to Susan that he is the dude who scared the shit out of her in the woods, so obviously she trusts him immediately. He then gives her his bitchin’ cape and takes her off into the woods. Obviously the doctor never had the “Stranger Danger” talk with her. Alydon (the cape man) then gives her more drugs to take around to her friends. All this scene was missing was the phrase “the first hit’s free, babydoll”.
Seriously, though, the reason he gives her more medicine is so that once she brings it back, she can keep some of it hidden from the Daleks. She completely fails to do this, luckily the Daleks let her keep some anyway, since they are such nice chaps. It’s worth pointing out that this whole scene happened off camera. It cut from Susan going into the forest with the creepy dude, to her back in captivity with the gang, explaining to them (and the viewers) verbally what just happened.
The drugs Susan brought back seem to have an instant effect on everyone, except Doctor Who, who can’t be bothered to get better and sit upright. My guess is everyone else thought not dying of Radiation Poisoning was a good idea, so to be stubborn and contrary he decided not to get any better. Being stubborn and contrary is what he’s best at!
Susan is crushing on Alydon pretty hard (about as hard as I am crushing on his cape) and decides to help him and the Thals form a truce with the Daleks, but the Daleks spy on her. Also, she gives the Thals the “everything is okay” code, despite knowing that everything is not, in fact, okay.
One thing about this show that is an artifact of another time is the blatant sexism toward women it displays at times. Normally it’s restrained to the women of the group being useless at everything but screaming and being rescued by men. But this episode really kicks it up a notch. The Thals are all hanging out discussing the plan and one person says to Alydon about the medicine “It would be better if you had given it to a man”, implying that a woman couldn’t possibly be trusted with carrying something. The thing that really stuck out to me about this though is that it was a WOMAN who said it. A WOMAN was cracking jokes about how useless women are.
To be fair though, Susan did manage to screw it up. Anyway, back to the plot!
The group doesn’t like being spied on, so they “accidentally” break the camera. They then start planning their escape. Susan comes up with the oh-so-original idea that they could pretend to be dead, and then sneak out the back while the Daleks are distracted. Sure it worked last time, but there’s not a skulltorch to be found, so the idea is scrapped. Instead, they come up with a different idea based on what they have available. They may not have skulltorches but they do have a bitchin’ cloak!
Since the Daleks pull their power from contact with the floor, they jump one and push it onto the cloak, disabling it. Then they use the cloak to pull out whatever’s inside so Ian can hide inside and pretend to be a Dalek escorting the Prisoners. It’s the whole “Lets dress up like stormtroopers transporting the wookie to the cell block” plan, only, you know, before that happened.
They make it out the door and a fair way down the hall when the camera pans back to reveal that they LEFT THE CLOAK BEHIND. Lets all have a moment of silence for Cloaky, the greatest companion Doctor Who ever had. He died a hero.
Oh, and right before the credits, a slime monster crawls out from underneath. They may have stolen his Dalek armor, but at least they left him a bitchin’ cape.
That’s it for Serial 2, Episode 3! Check back soon for more Who!
Miss one? Check out our previous episodes below:
Serial 2 – The Daleks; Part 2 – The Survivors
Serial 2 – The Daleks; Part 1 – The Dead Planet
Serial 1 – An Unearthly Child; Part 4 – The Firemaker
Serial 1 – An Unearthly Child; Part 3 – The Forest of Fear
Serial 1 – An Unearthly Child; Part 2 – The Cave of Skulls
Serial 1 – An Unearthly Child; Part 1 – An Unearthly Child
Introduction
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