The Evil of the Daleks

Chapter The 203rd, which sees various humans come together to be inoculated with the Dalek factor.

Plot:

Instead of just capturing the Doctor and Jamie, the Daleks use human accomplices in 1966 to steal the TARDIS and leave an over-complicated trail of clues to lead the two time travellers to an antique shop in London. The shop is a front for another time traveller Edward Waterfield, who is really from 1866. He gasses the Doctor and Jamie to unconsciousness and uses a Dalek time machine to transport them to his scientific partner Theodore Maxtible's mansion in his own time. He doesn't do it immediately, though, he leaves an over-complicated trail of clues for them first. Waterfield is an unwilling accomplice: the Daleks have taken his daughter Victoria hostage in another wing of the house. Maxtible, though, is secretly doing a deal with the Daleks to give him the secret of turning base metals into gold (yes, really, in 1866 this is his number one desire).

The Daleks want to isolate the Dalek factor to inject into humans and turn them Dalek-y, but instead of experimenting themselves, they con the Doctor into doing it by asking him to isolate the human factor; then they can make the Dalek factor the exact opposite (or something - it's not an 100% clear nor logical plan). The Doctor monitors Jamie as he is manipulated into trying to rescue Victoria, escape booby traps in the house, and fight a mute strongman Kemel. This provides the data to form the human factor, which the Doctor injects into three Daleks. The Daleks are transported to Skaro after the experiments conclude, as are the Doctor, Jamie, Victoria, Waterfield, Maxtible and Kemel. They meet the Emperor Dalek there. Then, the three humanised Daleks spark a civil war, which destroys the race finally, but everyone except the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria, including her father, end up killed. Victoria joins the TARDIS crew.

Context:

The BFI Screening of The Evil of the Daleks was a hot ticket: a well thought of story, and the biggest animation yet at seven episodes, with encouraging glimpses seen online beforehand. Plus, there hasn't been a new Doctor Who animation shown at the BFI Southbank for over 18 months because of Covid. This wasn't why tickets were limited to two per person - it seems to be the new policy for these events, and was the same for the Galaxy 4 animation screening, which went on sale this week. It made coordination of obtaining the tickets more difficult than usual for the group of us that attend, but had the benefit of creating a few new BFI members (members get to order tickets in advance of non-members). We ended up with one ticket too many, so I extended the invite to Phil, university friend mentioned many times before on this blog, who watched new Doctor Who videos and DVDs with me when they came out in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when we both lived near each other in Brighton. David, Trevor, Alan, and Chris were also in attendance. Another change that seems only for this screening was that there was no allocated seating, it was first come first served, and the BFI had sold all the seats (they still had distancing gaps between seats for the screening of Dragonfire in June). As well as being a hot ticket, it was a hot auditorium too, very stuffy on a warm September Sunday. This made me a little worried about the quality of ventilation in NFT1, though everyone was masked. At the time of writing, a few days after the screening, nobody has shown symptoms or been pinged. Fingers crossed.

First Time Round:

The first time I experienced this story was when it came out as a cassette tape with linking narration voiced by Tom Baker in July 1992. I believe I got the tape from Volume One in Worthing when at home during the Summer Vac between my first and second years at university in Durham. I had told Phil before we went to the BFI that the Evil tapes were the ones he was very sniffy about back in the day ("I've got orchestral recordings from the 20s better quality than this") when I was listening to it in my room in college. I'd not known at the time that they were home made rather than official recordings (the audio of the episodes otherwise missing from the archives only exist because young fans in the 1960s taped them from the telly). I have just realised though that the story to elicit his response was instead Fury From the Deep; I found the audio of Fury in a Newcastle shop in term time - as related in a bit more detail in the First Time round section of the Fury blog post from 2016. Coincidentally - I do not believe it was coordinated, that wasn't the style of the ranges at that time - the extant episode 2 of Evil was also released in July 1992 on the Daleks The Early Years VHS tape. I bought this, also from Volume One, at around the same time as the audio tape, and was able to experience all the surviving material of the story at that time. In between then and now I have watched an online reconstruction, but the story is long and has many action sequences, so it didn't feel very effective as a slide show with accompanying audio despite sterling efforts by the re-constructors. Finally, I recently read the very expensive novelisation (see the Deeper Thoughts section of a recent post for more details).

Reaction:

The late, great US film critic Roger Ebert often used the term 'idiot plot' to describe a narrative that would be "resolved in five minutes if everyone in the story were not an idiot". It's a good gag, and like all good gags contains a certain amount of truth; but, the more I've learned and thought about the craft of creating stories, the more I've come to believe that all plots are idiot plots. Some, though, are better at justifying their characters' idiocy than others. The fatal flaw of a tragic or comic character is the thing that blocks them from realising they are being an idiot. The Evil of the Daleks is the second of two 1960s Dalek stories written by David Whitaker in the season that saw Patrick Troughton take over as the Doctor. The former, which also got the full animation treatment in recent years, was The Power of the Daleks. In that story, had the Doctor had been listened to early on, the Daleks would have been destroyed and everyone would have lived reasonably happy ever after. But almost all the characters in the story apart from those that arrived by TARDIS are blinded by obsessive scientific curiosity, or desire for power and status, and so a relatively simple Dalek plot ends with a bloodbath that a lot of the guest characters do not survive. Evil too ends up with almost everyone dead and an explosive civil war playing out on Skaro, but its characters have made mistakes to lead up to this that seem too hard to explain away.

For example, if the Daleks never wanted the human factor injected into the Dalek race, why did they provide three test subject Daleks to the Doctor at all? It's bound to lead to trouble. If the Doctor cares for Jamie's life, why send him into a dangerous booby-trapped scenario? Why does everyone trust the Daleks to be good to their word and return a daughter / provide the secret of alchemy? In Power, the Daleks are cunning and hide their strength and true nature, but here they are violent and dismissive from the off. At first glance, the screenplay for Evil seems more complex than Power's, but it's really only convoluted. The simplicity of Power's narrative through-line - the Daleks growing stronger and stronger - allows the character plots to shine as they dance around that straight line. The characters are more colourful in Evil, but their actions don't always make sense. Why doesn't Waterfield just kidnap the Doctor and Jamie and send them back to 1866? Through his criminal associates, he has the means and opportunity. Why do the Daleks need someone who has travelled in time, but not too much, to experiment on? Why hypnotise Victoria to go off with the Daleks to another wing of the house rather than just force her at blaster-point, or knock her out and carry her? Why bother trying to do a dodgy conditioning job on Arthur Terrall to obey the Daleks when they already have other people in the house serving them, willingly or unwillingly?

The answer is that it takes up time, and seven episodes is difficult to fill. The first one and a half episodes of the story set in 1966 are pure padding, but it's quite entertaining padding. The Doctor picking up clues without realising he's being manipulated is great to watch, and once the action moves to 1866, all that's gone and forgotten about, and the story moves on to, well, another few episodes of padding. Watched episodically week on week, it might not have caused anyone issues, until they could look back on all seven weeks and reflect, and by then it was probably fading from memory. Terrall's subplot could also lift out and not affect matters one jot, but is mysterious as it happens. All the hocus pocus of creeping around dark rooms in abandoned wings of old houses, and hypnotism, and talk of ghosts - it's all unnecessary for plot, but perfect for atmosphere. Once we're on Skaro, the story changes gears into a third different genre, and forgets about the stuff in the stately home. Even this last section is padded, and could be done in half the time. Do the Daleks really need to pretend to Maxtible that they're giving him the secrets of gold production he's been hankering for, just to get him to walk through an arch? They could - as dialogue later states baldly - just push him through. But it's nice to watch him get his comeuppance, even if it seems inefficient from the Daleks' point of view.

The Evil of the Daleks is a strange brew for sure, and some gulps go down nicer than others, but floating in it are some absolutely delicious fruity segments: scenes that epitomise the best of this era and Doctor Who as a whole. However badly it hangs together ultimately, it's good to have Evil in existence with wonderful animated visuals just so we can enjoy these scenes. The conflict scenes between Jamie and the Doctor are an example. Also, watching with an audience hammered home that the heart of the piece is the collection of sequences with Alpha, Beta and Omega, the humanised Daleks. Without Dalek movement synced to the audio, one loses the full incongruity of the child-like voices emanating from the traditional pepperpot shapes of Doctor Who badness. Being limited to audio reduced these three Daleks to just silly voices, but now they can be seen as characters in their own right. A huge "Awwwwww!" emerged from the audience when one was killed in a skirmish towards the end. The reveal of the Emperor Dalek and the final sequences of destruction as civil war rages on Skaro were marvellous at the time, as much as one can tell, but are - dare I say it - even better in the 2021 version of the story. Animation producer AnneMarie Walsh confirmed that they got an unprecedented 18 months to work on Evil of the Daleks and it shows; but, I believe that every release from this team betters the last anyway. Details in Evil caught my eye that I thought improved on anything we'd seen from the Who animations before; for example, many scenes with candlelight and smoke, and motes of dust floating about; plus, the swordfight between Jamie and Terrall is much better than the punch-up in the airport car-park in last year's Faceless Ones animation.

The movement of the 2D animated characters seems smoother and more expressive than previously. I compared what was on screen to the live action of surviving episode 2 in my mind's eye, and most moments seemed just as good if not better. No animated face can show as much emotion as Troughton does in the wonderful moment when he first realises that it's the Daleks he's up against, but the animated version almost matches the effectiveness of the moment in its own medium. It's a shame that the very first scene of episode 1 of the story involves the Doctor and Jamie chasing after the stolen TARDIS, as running is the one thing that the characters cannot do convincingly. Everything else was perfectly good, with bravura scenes like the Doctor riding on the humanised Daleks (a technical challenge as it is a 2D character on top of a 3D character) coming off very well. The backgrounds and character designs are uniformly excellent. The hypnotism scene has some close-ups of the faces of Molly and Maxtible, and they looked amazing on the big screen of NFT1. There was a difference of opinion amongst my viewing companions about some shots that couldn't have possibly been achieved by the 1960s production. The mansion is introduced with a sweeping establishing 'drone shot', which for some took them out of the action briefly as it didn't fit with a 1960s story style; others didn't mind it at all, mind.

A few other random points of interest after this watch: having a character in the early episodes share the same name (Mister Perry) as me was nice, though for a plot point they have to reveal his first name eventually, and it isn't the same as mine, alas; Kemel's characterisation is a trifle dodgy, a mute Turk in traditional dress who strips to the waist to do strongman feats, and is accompanied by on-the-nose music. Waterfield and Maxtible's successful time travel experiments are in keeping with the general tone of Victorian prestidigitation rather than sensible science: they created a link to another space/time event by applying static electricity in polished mirrors?! (Did they rub a balloon on the mirrors, perhaps?) Maybe for padding reasons again, but the Doctor's being a bit thick in the latter episodes musing how the Daleks expect to persuade him to cooperate (they're going to inject you with the Dalek factor, Doctor, it's obvious - they basically just said they would!!!). Finally, having a credit on the earlier episodes for "Skaro Concept and Design" does give away that the action is going to switch to scenes on that planet before the end. This wouldn't bother the hardcore fan, of course, but Phil knew nothing about the story going in, and there were probably a few unspoiled souls like him elsewhere in the audience too.

 

Connectivity: 

Both The Evil and the Daleks and Smile feature a new autonomous form of robotic or part-robotic life (the Human Factor Daleks and the Vardy / Emojibots) coming into being and this causing conflict with another group.

Deeper Thoughts:

Waterfield and Maxtible's Experimental Notes: BFI Southbank The Evil of the Daleks screening, 12th September 2021. Our hosts as ever were Justin Johnson and Dick Fiddy. As with the last screening, restrictions meant that there could be no quiz at the beginning nor audience Q&A at the end. Johnson dropped a hint that this might change for a soon-to-come screening that hadn't been announced on the 12th (but which I now have to assume is the November screening of the animated Galaxy 4). As the story was a mighty seven episodes long, the programme didn't have much time for extra content anyway, but we still got a brief interview after the interval (between episodes 4 and 5) and a more substantial Q&A at the end  Before the episodes were shown, Fiddy paid tribute to Roger Bunce, a camera operator on many Doctor Who stories including Evil, a pioneer of green-screen shooting, and before it "luminous overlay", a similar approach for black-and-white shows, which was used in The Evil of the Daleks. Roger had died two weeks earlier, having been due to make an appearance on stage that day. His family were in the audience and got to witness an appreciative and celebratory round of applause in his honour, and Fiddy dedicated the screening to him. After the first four episodes, the midway interview was with Mark Ayres, music and sound Maestro. He cheerfully explained that days before he'd been called to the BFI as they were having a rehearsal for the screening (an intriguing glimpse of the behind the scenes preparation that goes into these sessions); a BFI technician thought there was something wrong with the sound. They weren't aware of the home-made nature of the 50 year old recordings, and what they were hearing "didn't meet the expectations of a modern HD presentation". I think this is actually a compliment: Ayres has clearly got the sound as good as it can be so it almost sounds like it was recorded recently.

He mentioned that he had got the "noise floor" down, and been able to pull out a few buried lines, though he can't change the mix (as he does not have the elements like studio sound and music separately for stories of this vintage; the BBC didn't often retain those even for stories that it kept). Fiddy thought that elements had been enhanced, but Ayres put that down to him being able to hear the higher frequencies for the first time. On the musical side, Ayres commended Dudley Simpson's score and its pioneering use of synthesisers (and it is great, that Morse code-like rat-a-ta-tat Dalek theme is so memorable). Music was also the reason Ayres had to make so many different versions of the animation soundtrack. In the episode 1 coffee bar scenes, two contemporary pop songs were playing in the background. One of these has always been problematic because of rights issues, as it's The Beatles' Paperback Writer. For the UK, Ayres has (miraculously) replaced it with a number by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tish. For the US, both tracks had to be replaced by library music. Then different versions of both have to be made for alternate versions that are also going to be included on the DVD / Blu-ray: the 1968 repeat version of the programme (which was presented to TV audiences in 1968 with a couple of additional Troughton voiceovers as he was supposed to be relaying the tale to new companion Zoe, and the narrated telesnap version. Ayres made a version to keep on file with Paperback Writer included too, just in case it ever becomes possible to release it in future.

(L to R) Fiddy, Ayres

After the final episode, Johnson welcomed three people involved with the animation on to the stage: producer AnneMarie Walsh, storyboard artist Barry Baker, and 2D character animator Tom Bland. Interestingly, the team are not as big fans as many others that are involved in projects like this (like Ayres, say, or 3D animator Rob Ritchie who was in the audience and pitched in some comments and took some applause after a shout out from Walsh). Walsh mostly missed the show as she was too young for the original series, and too old for the new. Bland described himself as a "Doctor Who virgin". Baker was more of a fan, having watched the original series from the beginning up to the Tom Baker years, but displayed he wasn't quite as obsessive a fan as presumably 90% of the audience when he did a gag about the show being cancelled one week because of the "assassination of some US president or other"; true obsessive fans know that this is a myth, and the first episode of Doctor Who (that aired the day after JFK's death in November 1963) was barely even delayed. An early question was on how the particular stories are chosen for the animation treatment. Walsh would not be drawn on what was coming next despite some friendly interrogation from Johnson, but said that conversations happen between her team and BBC studios, and various factors are taken into consideration. They have their favourite Doctor and companion combos, but there's also an aim to complete seasons and close gaps, and they currently have to veto any story that they know features something that they currently could not handle such as large crowd scenes.

The balance was discussed between being sensitive to fans by not deviating too much from the story as it was originally, versus doing things that work better for animation. They reference any material they can get (camera scripts, stills, surviving footage) and do a certain amount of detective work. The location for Maxtible's estate Grim's Dyke had been used for filming of various Hammer horror films, so they were watched to get colour references. The 'drone shot' of the house was justified as being something the 1960s production would have done if they could have, and I just about buy that. Elsewhere, the audio has to be edited to remove dead moments that would work if one were looking at the human faces and movements of actors, but are too static when it's just animated characters not talking. 1960s TV favoured longer shots, and the modern animation, as would be expected, cuts more frequently. The extra time given for the production allowed more "in between" drawings, and so animated faces are more moveable; this made it possible to have more tight close-ups as in the hypnotism scenes I mentioned above. When asked whether the pandemic had impacted production (the 18 months of work, 6 pre-production and 12 for animation, fell pretty much entirely in the Covid lockdown period), the panel's answer was perhaps surprisingly that it had made no difference at all. The team - of about 11 full and part-time people - tend to work from home anyway, and share information on calls, emails and spreadsheets.

(L to R) Bland, Baker, Walsh, Johnson

Favourite bits, or bits that stood out on this watch, for each of the panel members: Bland's favourite character was Maxtible, and he enjoyed working on his face and hand movements to make him as expressive as possible; he could relax during the screening for anything he hadn't been involved in animating, but for those bits he had worked on, he was scanning the screen looking for mistakes; Baker liked the three humanised Daleks, and storyboarded their sequences to be as funny as possible, liking that they had gone down well with the BFI audience; Walsh likes the Skaro sequences, but thought they might prove controversial with fans as the animators have gone their own way rather than recreate what the 1960s production did. I think anyone unhappy would have to be a bit ungrateful as those sequences are excellent, and I think in keeping with the sprit of the original. Walsh hoped that fans would be as supportive of this animation as they have generally have been for the team's work previously. They made it as good as it could be in the time they had; if they'd had five years and a huge budget it would have been much better. The Q&A ended with her entreating fans to lobby the BBC for that treatment for the next story! After that, it was the usual trooping out to the BFI Riverfront bar, followed by a few drinks and chats with my friends and with other fans. It only occurred to me later that the one thing there wasn't in the whole day was a single Dick joke, not one instance of a double entendre based on Mr. Fiddy's first name. These are usually ubiquitous, but then so was Frank Skinner attending in the audience back in the day, and he doesn't seem to come along anymore. Will this aspect of the BFI experience return next time? I'll tell you in November, as I was lucky enough to get a ticket for the Galaxy 4 screening...

In Summary:

Padded, but gorgeous; rather like Yours Truly in his middle age! It's now more animated than I tend to be, though.