Recap / Doctor Who S2 E2 "The Dalek Invasion of Earth"

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The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Subtle.^note TOO SUBTLE.

Written by Terry Nation
Directed by Richard Martin
Production Code: K
Air dates: 21 November - 26 December 1964
Number of episodes: 6
Episode titles: "World's End", "The Daleks", "Day of Reckoning", "The End of Tomorrow", "The Waking Ally", "Flashpoint"

"We are the masters of Earth!"

— A Dalek

The one where Barbara runs over some Daleks. Also the one where Susan says farewell.

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After the runaway success of "The Daleks" in season one, the Green Blobs in Bonded Polycarbide Armour are back. And they've invaded Earth.

It's the future — some point after 2164 — but our heroes don't know that yet. They've landed the TARDIS in London, and take a while to notice that it's become a post-apocalyptic Crapsack World. Susan investigates, and manages to simultaneously twist her ankle and drop half a bridge on the TARDIS, leaving them stuck in place for a while.

When Susan and Barbara wander off a bit, they're taken in by La Résistance, led by wheelchair-bound Dortmun, who explains what's going on. Ten years ago, the Daleks brought a plague to Earth. Then war. Then slavery. Then conversion into mindless robomen. These are later Dalek models than the ones the Doctor found on Skaro, and they're stronger as well. Barbara immediately sets to work in La Résistance's kitchens, and decides to fight the Daleks as best as she can. Susan befriends a soldier named David Campbell. Meanwhile, Ian and the Doctor are treated to a more intimate encounter with the Daleks, and find out that the Daleks are mining into the core of the Earth (in Bedfordshire of all places).

It turns out that they are planning to plant a bomb in the Earth's core which will hollow out the planet, so they can replace the core with an engine and pilot the planet around like a spaceship.

Ian rigs up a barrier in the mineshaft which detonates the bomb prematurely, conveniently destroying the Dalek mothership and most of the Daleks in the process, not to mention creating a new volcano in Bedfordshire. Barbara and the Doctor imitate Daleks and command the Robomen to attack their pepperpot masters. Susan has meanwhile fallen in love with David Campbell, and is absolutely torn between the choice of staying with her grandfather and making a life of her own rebuilding Earth. The Doctor catches on quickly, mumbles an excuse, goes into the TARDIS and vworps off before Susan can protest.

"One day, I shall come back. 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. Goodbye, Susan. Goodbye, my dear."

It was adapted as Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the sequel to Dr. Who and the Daleks. Susan returned in "The Five Doctors", and her fate on future Earth would eventually become the main plot of season four of the Big Finish Doctor Who New Eighth Doctor Adventures.

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Tropes:

• After the End: Before the invasion Earth was bombarded with meteors and then depopulated with a Synthetic Plague, leaving the survivors too scattered and demoralized to offer organised resistance.
• Alien Invasion: Obviously. This was the first time Doctor Who did this trope, but it would not be the last...
• All Women Love Shoes: Susan mentions having dozens of pairs of shoes in the TARDIS.
• The Apocalypse Brings Out the Best in People: The full spectrum of human behaviour is shown. Dortmun, the Genius Cripple Rebel Leader who's willing to throw away lives just so humanity can be Defiant to the End. Jenny—who keeps up a Jerkass Façade but still helps Barbara—is contrasted with the women who casually betray them to the Daleks for extra food rations. Tyler refuses to make friends for fear he might lose them, but likewise helps the Doctor. Wells helps his fellow slave workers in partnership with Ashton, the amoral blackmarketeer who exploits them.
• Apocalypse How: Class 1
• Apocalyptic Logistics:
  • A black marketeer smuggles food into the mine in exchange for gold, precious metals, and jewellery—all of which would be worthless without a civilisation to value such trinkets.
  • There are tales of people starving, yet mentions of food stockpiled in buildings. However this is more plausible given that distribution networks have broken down and the food stockpiles might be irradiated or have some other means of 22nd Century preservation.
• Artistic Licence – Gun Safety: David at one point takes a clip out of his gun while pointing that very gun at his head.
• Asshole Victim: The amoral Ashton gets eaten by the Slyther.
• BBC Quarry: A quarry is used to simulate the Dalek mine in Bedfordshire.
• Big Bad: The Black Dalek is in charge of the mining operation, although he makes a reference to receiving orders from "Supreme Command".
• The Big Damn Kiss: Susan and David — a Time Lady and a human celebrating their newfound love in the middle of an interstellar occupation.
• Black Market Produce:
  • An old woman reports the main characters to the Daleks and is rewarded with bread, sugar and oranges. In the novelisation she thinks, "I haven't tasted an orange in years and years..."
  • Ashton smuggles food taken from abandoned villages and exchanges it for whatever jewellery the slave workers can scrounge up. Wells says he's their only source of proper food.
• Bomb Disposal: At the start of episode 4, David and Susan have to resolve last week's Cliffhanger by defusing a firebomb—apparently not atomic, according to Susan, but enough to destroy the entire area.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: Instead of just EX-TER-MIN-ATING Barbara and Jenny, the Daleks leave them to die in an explosion, bound to a pillar in the control room. Inevitably, someone turns up to rescue them.
• Book Ends:
  • In the first serial of the show, and by extension, the first story with Susan, the Doctor bitterly notes how he and Susan are exiled from their home planet before pondering that "one day, we shall get back; yes, one day." In the last episode of this serial, and by extension, the last episode with Susan as part of the main cast, the Doctor starts his farewell speech with the words "one day, I shall come back; yes, I shall come back."
  • At the start of the serial the Doctor is disturbed that he can't hear the chimes of Big Ben. After the Daleks are destroyed he returns to London and hears it chime as the city is being rebuilt.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: A literal version when Barbara and Jenny break into the Civic Transport Museum and get a 20th Century truck working. The exhibits are kept in working order for parades and exhibitions, which also explains why there's fuel on hand. Barbara would also have a good idea how to drive it.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Barbara imitates a Dalek voice when giving a radio command to the Robomen.
• Bury Your Disabled: Dortmun, the wheelchair-bound Rebel Leader, goes to test his improved bomb on the Daleks. Unfortunately it doesn't work any better.
• Canon Immigrant: The look of the Dalek Flying Saucer, which first appeared on the DVD release as replacement special effects, and later appeared in the series itself, was originally from the comic strips.
• Can't You Read the Sign?: A malfunctioning Roboman staggers past a sign saying it is forbidden to dump bodies in the river and then throws himself into the Thames.
• Car Fu: A lorry driven by Barbara Wright scatters the Daleks like skittles.
• Chekhov's Gun: Dortum's bombs are useless for their intended purpose, but the acid meant to burn through a Dalek casing is used to break into a firebomb to defuse it, while Barbara uses the design notes to convince a Dalek that she has important information on the rebels.
• Les Collaborateurs: An old woman and her daughter make clothing for the slave workers at the mine, and so are left alone by the Roboman patrols. They betray Barbara and Jenny to the Daleks in exchange for food.
• Comically Missing the Point
  • The Doctor complains about the sign forbidding the dumping of bodies in the river, asking why they'd put a sign like that under the bridge, not why it was put up in the first place. Ian points out that under the bridge is quite a practical place to dump bodies, in a city stricken with plague.
  • The Daleks find a waxwork dummy of a milkman in the Transport Museum and dismiss it as a "subcultural effigy" of the primitive humans.
  • Barbara tells the Black Dalek that the humans are about to launch an uprising that involves the Boston Tea Party, General Lee's Fifth Cavalry, and Hannibal crossing the Alps. The Black Dalek demands of his minions why he wasn't informed of all this earlier.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The TARDIS crew make several references to their previous encounter with the Daleks, including that the Daleks have adapted a way around their reliance on static electricity for power.
  • Part of The Doctor's farewell speech to Susan is based off of a line he said in "An Unearthly Child".
• Crapsack World: Earth has been subjugated by the Daleks, with humanity reduced to working as slaves in mines and some irreversibly converted into mindless Robomen. Food is so scarce that those humans who still have their own minds are willing to betray others to the Daleks in exchange for food.
• Creator In-Joke: Several signs read "VETOED" throughout the serial. Supposedly part of a resistance code, this was actually a joke from the production designers, in particular Spencer Chapman. If sets were too ambitious, then the designs would be stamped with the word "VETOED" and handed back to the designers.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Robomen speak in a Creepy Monotone, shamble around in tattered clothing no-one bothers to repair, seem incapable of independent thought, and are eventually driven to insanity and suicide.
• Darker and Edgier: Easily the darkest Doctor Who serial made up to this point.
• Day of the Jackboot: Despite being set in the 22nd century, the serial uses just about every common trope imaginable from the "Third Reich conquers the UK" Alternate History subgenre such as La Résistance, Les Collaborateurs, the Black Market and a bombed-out London that would have been within the living memory of most viewers at the time.
• Doom as Test Prize: The Doctor realises that his cell contains items that will allow him to escape, and does so. Oops, it was an intelligence test to select people to be turned into Robomen.
• Early Instalment Character Design Difference: The Daleks' design continues to evolve. Here, they have clunky-looking satellite-style disc aerials on the backs of their casings, conceived by the designers as a wireless power supply (the original Daleks had been unable to leave their city as they drew electrical life-support power from the floors).
• Earth That Used to Be Better: There's lots of talk about magnificent future London with its heliports, moving pavements and astronaut fairs, before the Daleks bombed it back to The '60s.
• Enhanced on DVD: The DVD release digitally enhances the Dalek spaceship and the Battersea Power Station.
• Evil Plan: The dastardly Daleks plan to drill down to the Earth's crust and blow a hole in it, then remove the magnetic core so it can be replaced with an engine to pilot the Earth anywhere in the Universe.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Daleks have invaded Earth.
• Exty Years from Publication: The story is set in 2164, exactly 200 years in the future when it was broadcast in 1964.
• Fake Shemp: William Hartnell's stand-in plays the Doctor in Episode Four, as Hartnell was recovering from a back injury.
• Family-Unfriendly Violence: The story opens with the image of a Roboman staggering in agony to a festering river and drowning himself in despair, while the final episode shows Barbara and Jenny chained to a wall with neck cuffs.
• Fantastic Slurs: In the 22nd century, the humans who survived the Dalek invasion of Earth call the Daleks "dustbins" as a slur.
• Fate Worse than Death: Being a Roboman is said to be this and they're likely right, give that they eventually kill themselves when the Dalek control breaks down.
• Foreshadowing: Susan tries to convince David to escape with her on the TARDIS instead of staying on Earth.
  Susan: Well, it's suicide to stay here.
  David: This is my planet! I just can't run off and see what it's like on Venus!
  Susan: I never felt there was any time or place that I belonged to. I've never had any real identity.
  David: One day you will. There will come a time when you're forced to stop travelling, and you'll arrive somewhere.
• Flying Saucer: Back when this was de rigueur for all alien invaders, though the trope would be continued into New Who.
• From a Certain Point of View: Even the Daleks do this, with one of them complaining of the "unprovoked" attack by the rebels on their spaceship. Given that they've already killed billions of humans, one would hate to imagine what the Daleks consider a provoked attack!
• Future Society, Present Values:
  • Dortnum has some very 1960s attitudes towards women such as Stay in the Kitchen, despite being from 2174. When told the Doctor and Ian have been captured he's disappointed at losing a couple of potential soldiers (never mind that one of them is an old man) and never thinks that he's got two young women he could use in their place.
  • The Doctor says to his granddaughter: "What you need is a jolly good smacked bottom!" Apparently they don't spare the rod on Gallifrey.
• Hand Wave:
  • As the first (of very many) examples of attempting to explain how the Daleks can still be around despite being totally destroyed in their last appearance, the characters decide that this must be an earlier point in history, and they really were destroyed forever last time.
  • When Craddock points out how unlikely it is that the Daleks would have a means of escaping inside their prison cells, the Doctor says it's a way to exit if a Dalek is accidentally locked in there.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A ton of them. If there is a character that's not The Doctor or a companion, there is a 1-in-2 chance they will die trying to protect someone. And most of the others die anyway.
• Hypocritical Humor: The Doctor is complaining to Susan that he should be in charge instead of David, when the latter returns and asks the Doctor what he thinks they should do. The Doctor then 'suggests' the same thing that David wanted to do.
• I Choose to Stay: Susan stays on Earth to help rebuild civilisation, though arguably the Doctor makes the decision for her.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Larry finds his brother in the mine, only to find he's been turned into a Roboman. He tries this trope to no effect, and the two end up killing each other.
• The "I Love You" Stigma: The Doctor, saying goodbye to his own granddaughter for what he clearly expects to be a long time, gives her a poetic speech about being true to your beliefs. At no point does it include the words "I love you" or "I'm proud of you".
• I'm Standing Right Here: The Doctor stage whispers to Ian while standing right next to a Dalek that they need to pit their wits against the alien invaders. Naturally the Dalek replies that it can hear everything he's saying and Resistance Is Futile. The Dalek then makes a point of letting the Black Dalek know what the Doctor said, so he can be tested as a potential Roboman.
• Irrevocable Order: When Barbara seizes the aural control for the Robomen, she tries the "This order cannot be countermanded" trick but is stopped before she can say what the order is. She's more successful the second time, when there aren't any Daleks to interfere.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: The Doctor seems ill at ease and when his companions call him out on this, he points out that they've been there for nearly twenty minutes and not heard anything. "No sound of birdsong, no voices, no sound of shipping, and not even the chimes of old Big Ben. It's uncanny. Uncanny." At the end of the serial they're glad to hear Big Ben sound after the Daleks are destroyed.
• Karma Houdini: The two women who sell out Barbara and Jenny to the Daleks are never seen again afterwards, and presumably went on with their lives after the Daleks were defeated.
• Kill All Humans
  • The Daleks need slave workers and Robomen so they're willing to take prisoners rather than just exterminating anyone who resists. However after the attack on his spaceship, the Black Dalek loses patience and gives orders that the remaining rebels be tracked down and killed. Supreme Command follows this up with an order that London be destroyed with firebombs to eliminate any survivors in hiding.
  • Once Project Degravitate is complete, the Black Dalek orders the extermination of all humans. Not just the humans on the mine workforce, but every human on the planet!
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: While trying to get a look at their surroundings, Susan collapses a wall on the TARDIS and gives herself a Twisted Ankle. Barbara stays to treat her ankle while the Doctor and Ian go to find equipment to clear the rubble. La Résistance then snatch the women off the streets before the Robomen can get them, but the Doctor and Ian are captured before the rebels can get to them.
• Logic Bomb: Wells tries to excuse the presence of two escapees by telling a Roboman that he took them from another work detail. The Roboman clubs him to the ground, saying he should have referred all decisions to his 'masters'. Ian tries to help Wells and when the Roboman tells him to obey orders and leave him, Ian responds by telling the Roboman to "get new orders." The Roboman promptly leaves to do so.
• Mayfly–December Romance: While not evident at the time of the story's original airing, Susan will definitely outlive David. Even without Time Lord regeneration, she could still live to be one thousand years old.
• Moment Killer: Some playfighting between Susan and David starts them kissing, but the sudden appearance of the Doctor from off camera cuts it short.
• Monumental Battle: Not a battle so much, but Barbara and Jenny's flight through London with Dortmun takes them past Daleks milling around some of central London's most prominent monuments, such as Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Trafalgar Square. The 'Daleks parading across Westminster Bridge' image in particular has become quite iconic, and has been restaged for publicity shots several times since.
• Monumental Damage: The characters are shocked to discover that one of Battersea Power Station's iconic chimney-stacks has collapsed, presumably during the chaos of the Dalek invasion.
• Mook Horror Show: The Dalek POV shots — when the Doctor is just about to get the upper hand over the Daleks, we're suddenly in a Dalek's head for the scene as the First Doctor stares it with a Psychotic Smirk and we know he's done something very clever.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: While "The Daleks" had elements of Fantastic Racism, here the Dalek = Nazi parallel becomes overt. For example, Daleks greeting each other by jerking their plungers up in the air (see photo above) and referring to the genocide of humanity as "the final solution".
• Newspaper Dating: The TARDIS crew discover the year is 2164 (or later) via a calendar in an abandoned warehouse.
• No Peripheral Vision: The Doctor avoids the Daleks by pressing himself up next to a door. It works. Slightly justified as later we get a Dalek POV shot that reveals the limitations of the eyestalk. It still doesn't excuse the Dalek who looks right at The Doctor. And you.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The story opens with a shot of a cyborg committing suicide near a sign that informs us "it is forbidden to dump bodies into the river". The crew spend the first episode wondering around, trying to imagine who or what could be responsible for the total collapse of civilisation. Then something comes out of the Thames... with its eye stalk wobbling back and forth and its plunger waving.
• Operation: [Blank]: Project Degravitate. Doesn't quite have the same ring as the Dalek's usual Catchphrase.
• Our Doors Are Different: A fan-like door that pivots at the base is used at the entrance to the Dalek control room at the mine.
• Pesky Pigeons: The Doctor comments on the lack of birdsong, but even the Daleks have been unable to exterminate all the pigeons in Trafalgar Square!
• Patrolling Mook: The Robomen. The cover of the Target novelisation has them be Gas Mask Mooks as well.
• People in Rubber Suits: The Slyther. Curiously it's considered by fans to be the first true "monster" of the series (the first non-humanoid, non-robotic adversary).
• Public Secret Message: The VETOED signs left up by the rebels to let their colleagues know they've moved to the south coast.
• Puny Earthlings: How the Doctor realises that invasion alone isn't the Daleks goal.
  The Doctor: You see, man, to them, is just a work machine. An insignificant specimen that is not worth invading. Absolutely useless. It doesn't matter to them whether you live or die.
• Riding the Bomb: An episode cliffhanger has Ian sealed up inside the penetration bomb the Daleks are about to drop down a very deep shaft to blow a hole in the Earth's crust. Fortunately playing Are These Wires Important? gets him out in time.
• Right-Hand Attack Dog: The Slyther — a man-eating creature the Black Dalek keeps as a "pet".
• Rule of Cool: The Daleks' master plan is to turn Earth into an enormous spaceship...even though they self-evidently have an invasion fleet that can get them get them anywhere they want. Why? So viewers get to see Daleks gliding around contemporary London.
• Scenery Porn: The story benefited from heavy Prop Recyclinginvoked of the first Peter Cushing Dalek movie, meaning the Dalek ship interiors looked brilliant, and also delivered some gorgeous shots of an abandoned London.
• Sequel Episode: To "The Daleks".
• Sewer Gator: Susan is almost eaten by alligators that escaped from zoos during The Plague and managed to thrive in the London sewers.
• Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale
  • The Doctor says that moving Earth out of its position will affect the entire constellation.
  • Averted during the discussion of what the Daleks are up to in the mine. When it's assumed they're Planet Looters, Dortmun points out there are hundreds of other planets where they could have found minerals.
• Sound-Only Death: As Susan and David crouch in a corner hiding from the Daleks, we hear a man in the street begging a Dalek for his life before he gets killed.
• Space "X": Earth being bombarded with meteors as a prelude to invasion was described by scientists as a "cosmic storm."
• Stay in the Kitchen: Barbara and Susan get taken in from wandering around unprotected by the Resistance against the Daleks, and their leader presses them on their useful skills. He asks Barbara if she can cook - she says she can get by - and then asks Susan what she does, who replies "I eat". Though in the novelisation he clarifies that he's not asking for gender-based reasons — they're just currently short on cooks. Susan's sarcasm is confirmed when we later see her cook an apparently delicious rabbit stew from a wild rabbit she hunted and prepared herself.
• Subhuman Surfacing Shot: The cliffhanger of the first episode features a Dalek slowly and ominously emerging from the River Thames - which was repeated in the film adaptation Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D..
• Take Up My Sword: Hearing that the Doctor is also a scientist, Dortmun gives Barbara his plans on the bombs he's designed in case something happens to him. He knows full well that a man in a wheelchair has little chance of escaping alive, so he then goes to find the nearest Dalek to test his bombs. Barbara never gives the plans to the Doctor, but instead uses them to convince a Dalek that she has important information on the rebels so the Dalek will Take Me to Your Leader.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Ian doesn't mind if they've finally been returned to Earth a year or two out. More like a century or two...
  • Dortmun is fully convinced his bombs will work until they don't.
• Temporary Substitute: In Episode Four, David fills in for the Doctor due to William Hartnell's injury.
• Throw-Away Country: Craddock casually mentions that the entire populations of Asia, Africa and South America had been completely wiped out by a plague induced by the Daleks.
• Throwing Off the Disability: Dortmun confronts the Daleks and buys time for the others to escape by climbing out of his wheelchair and standing to face the Daleks at last.
• Take Me to Your Leader: Barbara does this so she and Jenny can gain access to the control room and sabotage their plans. The Daleks are not amused when they realise they've been tricked.
• Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: Deconstructed Trope when Dortmun insists that his handthrown bombs will work when the rebels haven't tested them on a single Dalek, even though they're protected by a metal (dalekenium) that Dortmun admits he's unfamiliar with. All he does is get his men massacred.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: The Robomen.
  Jenny: There aren’t that many Daleks on Earth. They needed helpers. So they operated on some of their prisoners and turned them into robots... The Transfer, as the Daleks call the operation, controls the human brain. Well, at least for a time... I've seen the Robos when they break down. They go insane. They smash their heads against walls. They throw themselves off buildings or into the river.
  • It's implied they are effectively dead from the moment the Transfer is carried out – there is no way they can be "cured" or "freed" as the film versions possibly can; the only freedom is death. In some ways, they make the Cyber-alternative look almost merciful. But then, that's the Daleks for you...
• Vichy Earth: In the 22nd Century the Daleks have wiped out 9/10ths of the population with a plague, leaving the survivors as slaves. The Dalek Supreme rules the planet from his unlikely capital in Bedfordshire. While there are only a small number of Daleks overseeing proceedings, the population is kept under control by the Robomen who are unwillingly made to do their bidding via intrusive cranial cybernetics.
• Villain World: The Daleks have taken over the Earth. Since the Daleks are Nazi expies and both serial and film were made in the Sixties, the iconic image of Daleks on the streets of London was pretty powerful for its time.
• Visible Boom Mic: When the group of rebels led by Baker is ordered to stop by a Dalek, a boom microphone appears in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen and pulls away, but not before being lit up by a spotlight.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The Daleks use wireless power transmission to remove their reliance on static electricity to ambulate. Susan and David blow up the transmission mast at the mine, rendering the Daleks helpless as the prisoners and Robomen revolt. Unfortunately the Daleks have removed this vulnerability in later appearances.
• Wham Episode: This was the first time the TARDIS crew changed at all, with Susan leaving at the end of Episode Six.
• What Measure Is a Mook?; The Doctor talks David out of killing a Roboman when it's not in self defence.
• Whip of Dominance: The Robomen use what appears to be a combination of whip and club to enforce their masters' will.
• Who Dares?: On being told of the Planetary Core Manipulation, David asks if the Daleks will really "dare to tamper with the forces of creation."
  The Doctor: Yes, they dare. And we have got to dare to stop them.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Dortmun and most of his resistance colleagues are under the illusion that he's The Hero who is destined to take down the Daleks, and that the Doctor is just some fool who's in over his head. They're wrong on both counts, of course.
• The X of Y: The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

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"He knew you could never leave him."