The Daleks' Master Plan

Chapter The 112th, On the twelfth episode of Daleks' Master Plan, my true love (Doctor Who, natch) gave to me...

Plot: 
The Year 4000 on the planet Kembel: the Daleks work with a group of corrupt politicians from different galaxies to gather the necessary resources to build a Time Destructor weapon, with which they want to threaten the universe into submission. Mavic Chen, guardian of the Solar System, provides the rare mineral taranium, which will power it. The Doctor, Steven and Katarina stumble across this plan, and join forces with Space Security agent Bret Vyon from Earth, who is also on the planet investigating. The Doctor disguises himself as one of the alien delegates and steals the taranium. The Daleks and Chen chase him - first through space, and then through time - trying to get it back. Katarina and Bret are both killed, the latter shot by his own sister and fellow agent Sara Kingdom, fooled by Chen into thinking Bret was the traitor. It takes - ooh - minutes for the Doctor and Steven to persuade Sara otherwise, and she joins them to help defeat the conspiracy, and avenge her brother (probably... she never mentions him again, so it's hard to be sure).

In the latter stages of the chase, the meddling Monk joins in too, keen on revenge after his last encounter with the Doctor. With help from the Monk, the Daleks capture Steven and Sara, forcing the Doctor to return the taranium. He exchanges it for his two friends, and gets them away to safety. Using the directional control stolen from the Monk's TARDIS, the Doctor pilots his own ship back to Kembel, where the Daleks have discarded their co-conspirators and are readying the Time Destructor. The Doctor starts it up prematurely, and it rapidly turns Kembel from lush jungle to arid wasteland. It looks like the Doctor will be a goner too, but Sara rescues him at the cost of her own life: she ages to death in front of him. Steven then helps, managing to put the Destructor into reverse, regressing all the Daleks to embryos. Finally, the taranium is all burnt out. Leaving the desolate planet, the Doctor and Steven mourn the allies they have lost.

Context:

More minor cheating with this one. Like The Next Doctor, it did come up randomly, but a few weeks back. This time, it wasn't held back for reasons of topical festiveness; though, as the story contains the first ever Christmas and New Year special episodes, it is fitting to cover it at this time of year. No, it was more to do with the story being twelve episodes long; the only time I was going to have a hope of watching it all and writing it up was during my break for Christmas. This blog - proudly and without regret - considers The Trial of a Timelord to be four stories glued together under one overall title (it also considers Utopia to be part of a three-part Master story and it'll fight anyone who says different, but that fight is for another day). As such, unless Chris Chibnall were to take things in a very unexpected direction in 2020, Master Plan is going to be the longest story with which I will ever wrestle.

In the Summer, my response to the second longest story coming up randomly was to binge watch the whole thing in one go. I considered this for Master Plan, but I don't think it's feasible. The major obstacle is that most of it is missing, and there's very little visual material surviving for the missing parts (though the soundtrack of all twelve episodes remains); but, there's just enough - three whole episodes are intact, and are nicely spaced out, 2, 5, and 10 being the found ones, plus there are clips from earlier parts too - that I'd feel I'd missed out were I not to see it as well as hear it. As such, I ended up going through the whole thing twice - 24 episode's worth. First of all, starting in mid December, I listened to the audio version with Peter Purves' narration while walking to the shops or doing the washing up or whatnot. Then, starting just before Christmas, now and again as I found a quiet half hour, I would watch the episodes from an online 'recon' interspersed with the surviving episodes from the Lost In Time orphaned episodes DVD set. Given their previously voiced opinions on watching "black-and-white slide shows", I did not try to engage any other member of the family to share this experience.

First-time round:

I first saw episodes 5 and 10, the only ones then known to be in existence, on a compendium video called Daleks - The Early Years, which was released in the summer of 1992, between my first and second years at university. It was presented by Peter Davison in a very 90s burgundy jacket; he provided various links between the orphan episodes and clips, many of which were accurate. The audio version, I heard in full late in 2001 when it came out on CD. Finally, a film copy of the second episode, Day of Armageddon, was discovered early in 2004; this was the primary driver for the release of the aforementioned Lost in Time set, which came out towards the end of that year. It was a big deal at the time, being one of only two episodes found in over a decade after the last big find - all four parts of Tomb of the Cybermen, in 1992.

Reaction

On the twelfth episode of Master Plan, Doctor Who gave to me... a slightly restrictive template for a blog post. It's inevitable, I suppose: twelve episodes, twelve days of Christmas; and, as I write, we're still in the middle of those twelve days of Christmas in 2018: I couldn't really avoid doing a Who twist on the "Maids a-milking" structure. It's apt too, as it puts me in mind of poor John Wiles, the producer of this story. He'd recently taken on the role, and was keen to put his own stamp on the show. But he inherited a restrictive structure of his own: the twelve episodes of Master Plan were already a done deal when he arrived; so, rather than being able to do anything new, he was stuck with an enormous and hard to realise serial - which would eventually take up half the episodes of his short tenure - containing the same old baddies (and to a certain extent, the same plot) that the series trotted out regularly.

Eleven episodes with Daleks: aside from its length, the story is probably most noteworthy for containing the first ever Christmas special. The seventh episode, The Feast of Steven, happened to fall on December 25th, and - in common with shows at the time - paused its ongoing plot for a week of throw-away frolics. The Daleks and their universal machinations get barely even a mention. And it is awful. Oh my stars, it's so so bad, you wouldn't believe it. Anyone versed in Who lore knows that writer of the ep, and person who conceived the Master Plan story as a whole, Terry Nation, previously earned his living as a gag writer. So why are there no jokes in his supposedly comic one-off? There's some inoffensive but tedious whimsy in the opening Z-Cars pastiche, but the latter section - a runaround in silent film era Hollywood - is just noisy and unpleasant. It's so disposable that one could skip the episode and barely notice. In fact, that's what they did - when it was sold abroad, it was sold as an 11-parter. The Feast of Steven was therefore probably never copied onto film before its transmission tape was wiped, making it the one most unlikely to ever be found. I suppose if they've got to lose just one forever, better that it's a stinker.

Ten different settings: Kembel, Desperus, Mira and Earth (all in the year 4000 time zone), Tigus, Silent Era Hollywood and ancient Egypt are all visited. Plus, there are three contemporary stops - the police station, the cricket match and the New Year celebrations; it's amusing to note that - after the first couple of years of Doctor Who had been predicated on the Doctor's inability to reach present day Earth - he lands there thrice in quick succession by accident. The galaxy-hopping also showcases designer Barry Newbury's great work. Based on the visual evidence still remaining, he handles each locale with aplomb.  Nine sections missing: alas, only a quarter of the story remains, and it's one episode prologue Mission to the Unknown is gone too; very little in the way of off-air pictures exist either. Thanks to the fans that recorded the story's soundtrack at the time, and the fans that more recently wielded every bit of Photoshop and CGI trickery imaginable to create the recon, it can be enjoyed in something approximating its original state.

Eight gnomic titles: typical of many Terry Nation stories, the individual episode names connect only very loosely to the events depicted within the episodes themselves. I'll give 'em The Nightmare Begins, The Traitors and Volcano; Devil's Planet too, at a push (it's how the inhabitants refer to the planet, even if there is no devil evident upon it). But none of The Feast of Steven takes place on the Feast of Stephen; there's no counter plot in Counter Plot, The Abandoned Planet isn't abandoned, etc. etc. Escape Switch?! Coronas of the Sun??!! Answers on a postcard.  Seven aliens a-delegating: another fascinating visual presence in the story is the many alien members of the Daleks' co-conspirator council. When the second part of the story was found, it was the first time anyone ever saw them moving, and there are definitely seven of them on show there, resplendent in the many different costumes that wardrobe have managed to pull together for them. The one that looks a bit like a Christmas tree is conspicuous by his absence in episode 2, though, and there's photographic evidence that he was in it at some point; so, they were chopping and changing them as they went along. Master Plan is unashamed to be inconsistent.

Six parts per writer: Terry Nation roped in Dennis Spooner to help complete the workload on this epic. Nation kicks everything off, then there's a brief period where they alternate (and reportedly, set each other every cliffhanger as a 'now get out of that' challenge), and finally Spooner brings things to a conclusion. Such a long tale was inevitably going to fall into discrete sections anyway, but this dual authorship accentuates it. The beginning section is a taut and exciting action adventure; this segues into a slightly more whimsical scenario including Spooner's Meddling Monk creation, before the final two episodes take us back to the feel of the beginning again. The festive episodes act as a breakwater that separate these sections.  Five bad guys: there's the Dalek Supreme, impassively watching on at key moments as terrible things happen; then, there's the wily Monk, who's very good value twisting and turning and not being entirely trustworthy. The desperate criminal Kirksen gets a special mention, for being responsible for Katarina's early exit. Who's left? Well, the majestic madman himself, Mavic Chen. Kevin Stoney does a remarkable job, sustaining one character's descent into megalomania over 300 minutes of action. But who's the fifth? Well, in episode 5, the character of Karlton acts as something of a Iago to Chen's Othello, manipulating him with guile and cunning. And this is paid off... well... never! At the end of the story, Karlton is presumably still waiting on Earth for word of the plan's success. Master Plan is unashamed to leave loose ends untied.

Four companions: Bret Vyon is as much of a companion as anyone else in this story, isn't he? Maybe it's the familiar Nicholas Courtney playing him (Courtney would later play the Brigadier), or maybe it's just that some moving footage exists of him (from episodes and clips), but he comes over very well. It isn't so massively good a showcase for Steven, but he remains stoic and heroic throughout. The sweetly naif Katarina works nicely too. Sara Kingdom is a pretty one note character, all blind unquestioning loyalty, but Jean Marsh manages to find moments of fun here and there in her interactions with the other regulars. Three companion deaths: if we accept that Bret's a companion, then three get offed during the 12 episodes. Katarina's and Bret's abrupt demises are very shocking, but Sara's long drawn out death - ageing to a skeleton in the final episode - is worst of all. Kudos to director Douglas Camfield for handling these, and all the character moments, sensitively.

Two holidays: not content with introducing the Christmas special, Master Plan has the first ever New Year's episode as well. This one is much more successful than the one the previous week, with only a brief interlude at a cricket match trying one's patience. Even this has one joke (the commentators are much more interested in how it will affect the match than how a Police Box appeared from thin air) but it's executed very poorly.  And a Doctor in a TARDIS: keeping all of this sometimes disparate, sometimes episodic material together is perhaps the finest single turn from William Hartnell as the show's titular hero. This period is often looked on as the time that he lost it, getting ill and thereby giving a lacklustre performance most weeks. But this is clearly belied by all the evidence: he storms through the material, and is nothing less than magnetic on screen whenever he appears. His breaking of the fourth wall at the end is the only good bit of the Christmas episode. Shame he disappears for almost the whole of the 11th episode. Where was the Doctor supposed to be all that time? Who knows! Master Plan is unashamed to leave things unexplained.

Connectivity: 

Both seasonal Doctor Who offerings featuring premiership-level monsters who are building a device that wreaks havoc at the denouement.

Deeper Thoughts:
"None of us wants to go on, but we must. The Quest is the Quest." So says Jackson in the Doctor Who story Underworld. I'm beginning to know he feels. I am now three and a half years into my experiment to blog every episode of Doctor Who in a random order, including the ones they are still making. To be fair, though, they're making it easier on me than they could: 2016, the first full year I was doing this, only saw one new story added to my stack, and 2019 is going to be the same. Even so, the remaining effort is still daunting, despite my clearing of the two longest stories (at 10 and 12 episodes) this year, reducing the average length of the stories remaining. I have crunched the numbers, and overall I am only 38% through (including Resolution, the episode yet to air, planned for 1st January 2019).

Breaking it down, I'm 43% though the episodes from 1963 to 1996, but only 34% complete for the new series stories. This is probably because the most popular length for those second phase stories is one part, which means there's many more of them. I made a decision early on that the only sane way to cover Doctor Who was story by story; you can't review only a subsection of something (except Trial of a Time Lord, of course). It's a bit tough on The Daleks' Master Plan that its twelve episodes get the same coverage as its one episode prologue, Mission to the Unknown, but that's showbiz. Looking at things Doctor by Doctor, it seems that random selection, and the occasional override to watch something deliberately, spread things out evenly, with no particular era favoured. Apart from a couple of outliers (100% of Paul McGann is done, and only one story has so far been covered of Jodie Whittaker's tenure, as those stories have only just been broadcast), every Doctor's era falls within a rough 35 to 45% completion rate. By a narrow margin, Jon Pertwee's stories are the most completed - again, this is because of average duration: all his are quite long, so there's less of them.

This year, the most popular Doctors by stories covered were William Hartnell and the two pretty boy Doctors, Matt Smith and David Tennant - each had five stories apiece. Everyone else was at a similar level, between two and four stories each, with only those outliers previous mentioned bringing up the rear. Unless Chris Chibnall were to take things in a very unexpected direction, I can't see me covering another Paul McGann story any time soon, but I will undoubtedly do more of Jodie Whittaker's stories in 2019 and 2020. A good thing, too: I enjoyed all of Jodie's run this year, with only minor reservations, and it will be good to revisit them after some time has passed. (I think my top three of the year would be the one that was basically an episode of Quantum Leap, the people versus Amazon, and the Solaris homage with the mad frog bit at the end). I'm very excited to see tomorrow's New Year's special too, particularly as - if the teaser trailer from Christmas day is anything to go by - Chris Chibnall seems to have given up on his resolution from 2018, and we may well be seeing a big ol' invasion of gun-totin' traditional monsters!

In Summary:

The moral of the middle episodes of The Daleks' Master Plan is that no matter how your Christmas might have gone, the following week can see things get better. Happy New Year all!