Review of The Dalek Invasion of Earth (#10)

DVD Release Date: 29 Jul 20
Original Air Date: 21 Nov – 26 Dec 1964
Doctors/Companions: One, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Stars: William Hartnell, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill
Preceding Story: Planet of Giants (One, Susan, Ian, Barbara)
Succeeding Story: The Rescue (One, Ian, Barbara, Vicki)

For once, during my rewatch for an entry in the Everything Else series, I found that the things I could spontaneously recall beforehand were both accurate and fairly important details. Although that recall was on the slow side, once I got my head in the right story space, a picture formed pretty easily: a “No Dumping” sign, cyber-ized humans, a bomb in the center of the earth [okay, that part was slightly mixed up], and Susan gets ditched.

The story opens with the TARDIS crew landing—finally!—in London. Ian and Barbara aren’t fussed about being off by a couple of years either way from their departure, but it soon becomes apparent that they’re actually 200 years in their future, in the year 2164. Worse, the world is in a post-apocalyptic state where the Daleks are the self-proclaimed “masters of Earth.”

Given that the adventure spans six episodes, it is unsurprising that our TARDIS crew of four soon gets split into two, then three, and even four groups. Each of our heroes make their own acquaintances and allies among the human resistance as they are chased, and sometimes captured, by the Daleks and their enslaved human “Robomen.”

After performing too well on an intelligence test (which serves as a reminder to the modern viewer that these episodes were first broadcast only a year into the show’s run, while it was still very much meant to be teaching history and/or science to a young audience), the Doctor is himself selected to be robotized. Luckily, our story arcs converge here and Barbara and Susan help bring the chaos that allows for a rescue.

One of the things that keeps this particular six-parter from dragging too much is the aforementioned splits and convergences of subsets of the TARDIS crew. More often than not, Ian gets to hare off by himself and do something heroic (par for the course) while the others each do their own thing. But we get more instances than usual of other party members having interesting experiences, too.

For one thing, Barbara gets to be even more badass than usual, driving some sort of tanker truck (conveniently stolen from a vehicle museum, in perfect working order) straight through a rank of Daleks. Her experiences with the Doctor serve her well in other sections of the story, too, allowing her to contribute important ideas and skills to a group or to devise her own plan of resistance to escape from Daleks and try to stop their plan.

Perhaps more obviously, though, Susan finally gets a little more screen time. Although her romance is not very well developed, writer Terry Nation at least gives it a jolly old try. He’s clearly not a romance writer, but he even takes it so far as to give Susan and David an on-screen kiss, which is vastly superior to the romantic endings some Companions have had (:cough: Leela :cough:).

And then we reach the iconic First Doctor speech. “One day, I shall come back,” he tells Susan, who he has locked out of the TARDIS to force her to stay on a ruined Earth with her new beau. “Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.”

I’ve always been kind of angry with the Doctor for treating Susan that way. But this time, somehow, it wasn’t as hard to swallow, and I’m not sure why that is the case. Perhaps this time I bought into Susan’s attachment to David more than I had before. Perhaps it’s just that I was expecting it, mulling the idea over in the back of my mind all along. Or perhaps I’ve just had that much more time to think about familial separation from both generational directions.

Whatever the case, I’ve come out the other side of this rewatch with an overall more positive impression of The Dalek Invasion of Earth. While there are still a few cringe-worthy “product of its time” moments, it’s a relatively solid story that speaks to both the continuing will to resist oppression and the mental and emotional exhaustion that come with that. It’s a good reminder that even though those in power might, like the Daleks, insist that “resistance is useless,” it is instead one of the most important—and human—experiences we can ever have.