Episode DC:
- 10/9/65, 8.3m viewers
Sound Bytes:
"We were given an extra episode and plans were already afoot for The Daleks' Master Plan, so we used the extra episode to 'trail' the Dalek story. For economic reasons we didn't use the regular cast because they were away having a well-earned holiday and having to change all that would have caused untold difficulties and expense." - Donald Tosh, story editor, quoted in The Handbook: The First Doctor by Howe, Stammers and Walker (Virgin, 1994)
"Macho, with a sinister atmosphere." - review from The Discontinuity Guide by Cornell, Day and Topping (MonkeyBrain Books, 2004)
Comments:
Mission to the Unknown has got it all -- rocket ships, ray guns, a secret agent, poisonous plants, futile gambits, and a conference room full of weirdo aliens. Whenever something scary happens, or a scary thing is even mentioned, the stock music booms DUM DUM DUM! This episode needs only a guest appearance by Larry "Buster" Crabbe to become an honorary installment of Flash Gordon.
It must sound like I'm making fun of Mission to the Unknown (and I suppose I am, at that), but I do enjoy listening to the surviving audio version. This is a fun episode.
Thankfully, the Daleks are good villains here. In their previous appearance, they had spent much of the time bickering, getting beaten up, and tumbling from a sailing ship for no discernible reason. In Mission to the Unknown, they are a threat again, on no less than a galactic scale. For the first time, we learn about an actual Dalek Empire, and its relations with other alien powers. Rarely have the Daleks seemed so influential and, well, cool.
Another nice touch is that the Daleks have created their own species of lethal plant, the Varga plant (not to be confused with the much softer, friendlier Vargas girls). The Daleks certainly were smart in the 1960s; they weren't all that tough by themselves, but they used creatures like Robomen and Varga plants (and nasty tactics like disease bombs) to win their victories for them. Nowadays, a single Dalek is tough enough to exterminate all 1,000,000 residents of Salt Lake City, so there's simply no need for them to be clever anymore.
On the human side, Edward de Souza seems to give a good performance as secret agent Marc Cory (I say "seems" because it's tough to tell without visuals). I've always liked de Souza, based on his amiable performances in two of Hammer Studios' horror films (Kiss of the Vampire and Phantom of the Opera), and his menacing turn as a villain in Sapphire and Steel. I'm sure he could carry a Doctorless episode of Doctor Who.
That's really all I have to say -- this is a good adventure yarn, and it proves that Doctor Who can entertain without its star (for 20 minutes, anyway), even if it does end up feeling like some American action show.
Grade: B