Serial R, in six parts:
- The Executioners - 5/22/65, 10.0m viewers
- The Death of Time - 5/29/65, 9.5m
- Flight Through Eternity - 6/5/65, 9.0m
- Journey Into Terror - 6/12/65, 9.5m
- The Death of Doctor Who - 6/19/65, 9.0m
- The Planet of Decision - 6/26/65, 9.5m
Sound Bytes:
"The Daleks...are thwarted at every turn, outwitted by faster-thinking, faster-moving humanoids of the story and made to look like lumbering fools at almost every opportunity. Yet the magic of it is that, at the end of it all, the Daleks retain their dignity -- their charisma and genius carrying them through the excesses of the plot." - fan Paul Mount, quoted in Doctor Who: The Unfolding Text by Tulloch and Alvarado (St. Martin's Press, 1983)
"I guess [the production team] just thought [The Chase] was worth trying out. In retrospect, it just looks like this horrible little blind alley of Dalek development, and we as Doctor Who fans all go, 'well, that didn't really happen...' " - Nicholas Briggs, fan writer & contemporary Dalek voice artist, in The Dalek Tapes documentary (BBC Worldwide, 2006)
Comments:
I thought The Chase was awesome... when I was seven years old. Now, I have a hard time sitting through it. I'm tempted to remain loyal to this story anyway, but unfortunately, it's just too damn annoying for me to defend it.
Most six-part Doctor Who stories are padded, usually in the middle. But The Chase, bless its heart, has the nerve to start with padding. The Doctor and his friends spend a healthy chunk of episode one watching the Time-Space Visualizer, a souped-up TV set that enables them to witness any event in history. First, they watch the Gettysburg Address, delivered in a stale monotone by a Lincolnesque actor standing in the middle of a vast wasteland (any resemblance to Pennsylvania is purely accidental). Later, they tune in to stock footage of the Beatles, and dance around a bit. Then the Doctor turns off the TV, and everybody goes outside to catch some sun rays on the planet Aridius (which is hot, naturally).
So, whereas the first Dalek serial started with mystery, and The Dalek Invasion of Earth started with tension, death and drama, here we begin with the Doctor and company passing the time on a dull afternoon. I guess you could say this is witty stuff, but I say it's dead air. To make matters worse, the Time-Space Visualizer emits a horrific shrieking sound when it's not properly tuned. It annoys the characters, and it sure annoys me, too -- why subject the audience to such obnoxiousness?
The action picks up a bit when the Daleks finally arrive on Aridius, though they're not at their best here. In fact, they carry on like tin-plated versions of the Three Stooges; they sputter, cough, wheeze, snap at each other, and nod their eyestalks when in agreement. Our heroes run around making faces at them.
Now, I'm not opposed to having a good laugh with Doctor Who, but I'm not sure that the show's main villains should be the butt of the joke. The Daleks are just too important to devolve into morons. The production team can't quite get away with running roughshod over their mystique in The Chase, and then reinventing them as a major galactic menace in The Daleks' Masterplan. The Daleks must be consistently presented as dangerous, since their credibility hangs by a thread at even the best of times.
It's worth noting, though, that the Daleks have a rather impressive TARDIS-style time machine in this story. Their technology appears to be at its peak in The Chase and The Daleks' Masterplan, and it went noticeably downhill in future stories.
The Daleks make good use of their newfound time-travel abilities. They pursue the Doctor from Aridius to the Empire State Building (where the audience gets treated to crude but amusing British spoofs of American southerners and New Yorkers), and then to a futuristic haunted house, an old sailing ship, and finally a jungle world populated by giant mushrooms. The mini-adventures set in these locales are fun but forgettable.
The final episode is pretty good, though. The Daleks are finally destroyed in an epic (sort of) clash with the Mechanoids, fat robots that look like Christmas tree ornaments. I like the Mechanoids, actually -- they're another good Raymond Cusick design. Their battle with the Daleks is pretty exciting, and features some fancy camera tricks, though I could do without the cartoon explosions.
Once the Daleks are destroyed, Barbara and Ian decide to go home using the Dalek time machine. This is a perfectly logical plot development; unlike the Doctor's crazy teenage companions, these two mature schoolteachers were never particularly keen on facing death every day, even if they did enjoy visiting other planets and bygone eras. Just for old times' sake, they have one last blistering argument with the Doctor before zooming back to 1960s London.
One could argue that William Russell and Jacqueline Hill cut out of Doctor Who at precisely the right time, when it was creatively stagnant and relying on a third helping of Daleks to bring in viewers. I used to think their goodbye scene was great, but now it seems merely cute, nothing more. Still, their departure is bittersweet, and it gives The Chase a sorely needed lift in the emotion department.
Some fans consider The Chase so-bad-it's-good. Steve Lyons captured this sentiment in a 1994 review, writing, "Without a doubt, The Chase is one of the most appallingly scripted, the most shoddily produced and the most apathetically performed pieces of TV trash that has ever... given me such immense pleasure. And I guess that's something I love about Doctor Who; that indefinable magic that can make such a load of rubbish so thoroughly enjoyable to watch."
I would I could agree with Lyons, but honestly I get very little joy out of watching substandard Doctor Who. I like the show best when it's cheap, serious and good, not cheap, stupid and bad. The Chase falls into the latter camp; it's so-bad-it-stinks. But my inner seven-year-old still likes it, and I guess that's worth something.
Grade: C