"The Daleks" is arguably the best-known of the 60's Doctor Who adventures and, of course, to thank for the existence of Doctor Who's most enduring returning villains. With their distinctive voice patterns, memorable design, and terrifying similarities to the Nazis, the Daleks are a marvel of creative writing and design, the former courtesy of Terry Nation and the latter courtesy of Raymond Cusick. Interestingly enough famed film director Ridley Scott would have done the design for this serial had he had the time. Thank God for busy schedules.
As a story "The Daleks" is excellent but also flawed. There is some awful Dalek dialogue of the worst obviously expository nature and sometimes you wonder what the Thal are all about. Still, "The Daleks" is astonishingly consistent in its tone and delivery. The direction is static but the story itself more than makes up for it.
"The Daleks" is essentially a hostage escape story featuring the Daleks. What is fascinating about this story is that the Doctor himself doesn't feature nearly as much as he does in most later Dalek stories, with Ian and Susan featuring in key roles here. It feels odd how humble the origins of the Doctor's battle against the Daleks are, really. Nation's scripts for the story are solid and contain plenty of valuable characterization and some interesting subtexts. Many complain about episode 6 being padding but I found it quite exciting personally. Then again a heck of a lot of episodes of "Doctor Who" which are accused of being padding appeal to me, since I don't mind a story taking diversions that aren't key to the conclusion. That's not to say there isn't some really boring padding, but it all depends on how well it's done.
The design is absolutely gorgeous, not just the Daleks themselves but Skaro as well, which is astonishingly well-realized. "The Dead Planet", the first episode of the lot, is my favorite simply because of how creepy and alien the planet feels. How important it was that the first off-Earth story Doctor Who had began with an introduction to such an eerily alien world.
Not much to say about "The Daleks" that hasn't been said already so I'll leave it at that. All in all an excellent story that never quite hits the 'great' mark but is always involving and exciting.
All episodes rated 8/10.
Average rating: 8/10
