Tuesday 10 May 2011

169 The Evil of the Daleks: Episode Seven

EPISODE: The Evil of the Daleks: Episode Seven
OVERALL EPISODE NUMBER: 169
STORY NUMBER: 036
TRANSMITTED: 01 July 1967
WRITER: David Whitaker
DIRECTOR: Derek Martinus and Timothy Combe
SCRIPT EDITOR: Peter Bryant
PRODUCER: Innes Lloyd
FORMAT: CD: Doctor Who: The Evil of the Daleks
TELESNAPS: The Evil of the Daleks: Episode Seven


In the Dalek city, Daleks start to question the orders they have been given. Maxtible is lured out of his cell with the promise of the transmutation machine he craves but passes through an arch that puts the Dalek Factor into him. The Doctor is hypnotised and likewise seemingly converted but the process fails because he isn't human. The Doctor converts the machine to inject the Human factor and then gets the Emperor to order the Daleks through it because the Daleks the human factor has spread from the other three Daleks. The two Dalek factions quickly end up battling each other. Waterfield is killed saving the Doctor's life, while Maxtible kills Kemel. The fighting spreads to the Emperors chamber causing him and the city to be destroyed. Jamie rescues Victoria and she, now orphaned, accompanies them in the Tardis.

Another final episode where it all goes bang bang bang and everything happens at once leaving everyone dead bar the Doctor and his old & new companions. The function of Evil as as a story is to provide a final end for the Daleks removing them from the series so Terry Nation could launch them in their own series. Unfortunately that plan goes awry and the Daleks do return but not for a few years in the program's life, their longest break from the show. While we see the city Daleks killed (again: see The Daleks) we now know there's the possibility of others surviving elsewhere in space. The only thing is the last of, in Dalek terms, is the use of Peter Hawkins for their voice. He'd been with the show since it's second serial but when the Daleks returned they had new voice artists.

Model sequences from this episode survive and can be found on several Doctor Who DVDs.

Evil was the last original series story novelised. It appeared in 1993 and was written by John Peel who tackled many of the outstanding sixties Dalek stories. This left five stories un-novelised for Target books: The Pirate Planet, City of Death, Shada, Resurrection of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks. Three are Douglas Adams stories, two are Eric Saward Dalek stories. A tape version of the soundtrack was released in 1992 with narration by Tom Baker, which topped the spoken word charts for sometime, while a CD version was issued in 2004 with narration by Fraser Hinds.

This also brings us to the end of the fourth season if Doctor Who, the only one without a complete story. It used to share this distinction with season five, but it doesn't any more! From tomorrow we'll be starting season five by watching the first episode of the first complete story since the War Machines.

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