Oh No! It's The Pathetic Daleks!

In a bid to understand the Daleks better, I finally sat down to watch all seven episodes of their Season 1 debut, "The Dead Planet", "The Mutants", "The Daleks", whatever you personally choose to call it. And I must say, while it's a little unfair that I've chosen to name this post after the Viz comic strip "The Pathetic Sharks", I don't think it's absurdly off base.

Compare the Daleks of their preliminary outing to the terrifying monster we meet in "Dalek" in 2005, and... well, they do look the same, and the word "exterminate" is at the forefront of their vocabulary. But apart from that, nothing much in common at all.

The Daleks of "The Daleks" are a sorry bunch, all told. Sickly, dependent radiation and static electricity addicts, they mercilessly paralyze Ian's legs on first meeting him, and also gun down the Thal leader after his speech about peace and cooperation (boo! hiss!) but other than that they are easily bested in a fight by even the weakest humanoids throwing rocks at them, or just grabbing them and spinning them around. In fact these Daleks seem much more suited to bringing the Doctor and his companions trays of refreshments - they do this several times - than conquering the universe. By the end of the story, they have been wiped out by a tribe of pacifists, an old man and a couple of girls, thus meeting the first, and most ignoble, of their something like five "final ends" in the history of the programme so far.

So there's an obvious disconnect between Daleks as we think of them now, 46 years of mythologizing later, and how they appeared in their historic first outing. But this is Who Positive, so let's not be too quick to write off these proto-Daleks as a joke. History relates that they were an overnight sensation with the Great British Public, that Dalekmania swept the nation and that we'd get 13 episodes of Daleks a year until Evil of the Daleks declared that it was time for the poor dears to have a rest. So what was so great about them?

Well, first of all, the fact that they look pretty much identical both in 1963 and 2009 (in contrast to the Cybermen, whose appearance has been reworked for pretty much every story, never mind every era) should tell you that the design is a stone-cold, knocked-straight-out-of-the-park classic. There is a non-negligible possibility that Terry Nation owed his entire career to Ray Cusick, in much the same way that George Lucas arguably only got where he is today thanks to Ralph McQuarrie. Look at any other Nation-created Who monster and the less said the better, really: the Voord and the Kraals, anyone?

But to give the man his due, there is something about the original concept of the Daleks... even if it's very little to do with the Daleks as we know them today. The idea of a post-apocalyptic race so hideously mutated that they scoot around inside travel machines rather than expose themselves to public view: that's quirky enough that it's actually rather good. And I think what we see in the adventure - Ian getting inside a Dalek shell and wandering around impersonating one - does bear out the theory that, initially, the Daleks were just wizened little gnomes riding around in futuristic, heavily armed and armored bicycles. Did I just call that "rather good"? I'm upgrading it to full-blown genius.

The rest of the story, after the creepy tension of the first couple of episodes before we know who is out there in the city and jungle respectively, is sadly pants. The Thals turn out to be "perfect" blond-haired and blue-eyed specimens that Susan and Barbara are quickly crushing madly over. The "hideous" Daleks naturally seethe with hate for anything that is not like them. All the women are passive, and present solely to be protected by and fawn over the men; Ian is an unpleasant he-man who persuades the Thals from their pacifist ideals by manhandling one of their females.

Kudos to William Emms for subverting this silly scenario with his much sharper Galaxy Four script two years later, where the ugly aliens are benevolent, the beautiful ones are hostile, the women are shrewd and aggressive, and the male companion (Steven this time) nearly comes a cropper thanks to letting his chivalry/libido do his thinking for me. Needless to say, Galaxy Four languishes in the bottom 20% of DWM's recent "Mighty 200" poll, while The Daleks makes it into the top 20%. It's a bit lame; but of course fandom is notoriously intolerant of anything that smacks of even affectionate send-up - witness the generally low regard in which the ingenious Cartmel era is held, and modern episodes such as Love & Monsters - and besides, no one's ever seen or can remember seeing Galaxy Four.

So, once again, we have a story that seems highly rated more due to its historical importance than any intrinsic merit of its script. In it we see the first (and greatest) alien race and planet in Doctor Who, but also the first deeply unconvincing romance between a female member of the TARDIS crew and an alien; once the historicals were phased out due to lack of public interest, this would be the main blueprint for Doctor Who for the next twentysomething years. The fact that it's nowhere near as good as the criminally underrated The Tribe of Gum on one side and Marco Polo on the other is neither here nor there: thanks to the runaway success of the genocidal pepperpots themselves, their debut story, flaws and all, became a lasting template for "real Doctor Who".

And to give Nation his due, he certainly knows how to keep a six- or seven-parter packed with incident. Escapes, ambushes, expeditions, ordeals, rescues: not only did he include them all, he nabbed them for his individual episode titles, thus probably precipitating the shortage that would result in them being phased out within a couple of years. It's all faintly adorable boy's own adventure hokum from a more innocent time, and certainly a fabulous way of spending a couple of hours. It's got the first ever, hilariously useless Daleks in it, and a splendidly selfish and conniving First Doctor, and plenty of hunky Thal boys with posh British accents, perfectly coiffed hair and ridiculous trousers. In short, camp as Christmas, and I may not be entirely sure to this day why British telly-watchers took it to their hearts, I'm certainly glad they did.

RIP Terry Nation. They certainly don't write 'em like they used to.