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YMMV / Doctor Who S10 E4 "Planet of the Daleks"

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  • Broken Aesop: The Doctor delivers a heartfelt speech that the Thals must tell their people War Is Hell, and not to make it sound like their adventure was a 'fun game'. The story involves, amongst other things, them escaping fun, toyetic Always Chaotic Evil nasty pepperpot people by dressing up in purple fur coats and MacGyvering a hot air balloon. The reason for this discrepancy is at least partly because the scene was appended to the end by Terrance Dicks at the last minute because the script was underrunning, although his correspondence with Terry Nation regarding the episode suggest that there was always meant to be some idea that, after the Doctor and companions convinced the Thals to fight in "The Daleks", the Thals had now "gone a bit too far".
  • Informed Wrongness: Taron chews out Rebec for volunteering to be part of the second team that joined his own team on Spiridon, saying that their relationship might cause him to make a mistake that'll get them all killed. Given Taron was originally meant to be the medic (albeit technically second in command), it’s reasonable to think that when Rebec volunteered she had no way to know that he’d be put in this position.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The most common complaint about this story is that it's essentially just a retread of the first Dalek story, with some elements from "The Daleks' Master Plan" thrown in, right down to the jungle backdrop sound effects. Of course, at the time this wouldn't have been as bad, since serials weren't repeated and "The Daleks" had aired a decade earlier. Though it seems to be a deliberate sequel to it.
  • Padding: The "Lesson of the Day" Speech scene at the end was added by Terrance Dicks at the last minute to extend the final episode, which is why it doesn't fit with the rest of the story. It does vaguely tie in with a discussion between the Doctor and Codal late in the second episode about how the latter felt pressured into going on the mission by all the talk of glory and prestige that would come with it, but good luck remembering that when two-thirds of the story have passed in-between the two conversations.
  • Retroactive Recognition: Marat is played by Hilary Minster, who would later be best known for playing General von Klinkerhoffen in 'Allo 'Allo!.
  • Special Effect Failure:
    • By the time the serial was made, the production team had realised that the shortage of Dalek props could be a problem, and in any case the originals were ten years old by then. But instead of building one or two really good new props, they made SEVEN solid wooden Daleks... none of which could actually move. In this story, we therefore see the same three tatty old Daleks do most of the work while all those in the background seem dead.
    • Roy Skelton and Michael Wisher can't seem to decide who's voicing the Dalek Supreme and who's voicing the underlings.
    • The shot of an army made up of miniature toy Daleks is one of the most notoriously awful special effects in the show's entire run, thanks to how Off-Model the toys are (they were the Marx Toys bump-n-go Daleks, previously used in "The Evil of the Daleks" to similar results) — Barry Letts notes on the DVD commentary that it was actually just supposed to be used as a background with full-size Dalek props in the foreground, but ended up being shot at the wrong angle, making it impossible to achieve the effect — and it gets worse when the "ice volcano" submerges them all in liquid ice.

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