The Evil of the Daleks - Doctor Who: On Screen, In Script, On Stage

The Evil of the Daleks was a seven-episode adventure broadcast been 20th May and 1st July 1967. It starred Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines, and introduced Deborah Watling as Victoria. It was written by David Whitaker and directed by Derek Martinus. It's serial code was LL and it was the 36th Doctor Who adventure to be produced.

The Plot

Following directly on from the events of The Faceless Ones, the Doctor and Jamie are on contemporary Earth on the trail of their stolen TARDIS. Following some detective work they find Edward Waterfield's antique shop and a hidden room containing alien technology. Waterfield has set a trap for them and they are gassed and taken back to 1866 where they meet a co-conspirator, Theodore Maxtible.

The Doctor learns about Maxtible and Waterfield's experimentation with static electricity and mirrors, in trying to create a time machine. Soon the Daleks reveal themselves as the driving force behind the unfolding plans, using Waterfield's daughter Victoria to blackmail him. The Doctor is forced by the Daleks to conduct an experiment on Jamie, tricking the youngster into rescuing Victoria, and in doing so, provides the data the Doctor needs to give the Daleks what they want - The Human Factor. Once implanted into three Daleks named Alpha, Beta and Omega, they develop child-like behaviour, wanting to play and make friends.

Waterfield's house is destroyed and the action moves to the planet Skaro where the Doctor, Jamie and Waterfield meet the Emperor Dalek who reveals the Human Factor will actually show them what the Dalek Factor is. The Doctor is ordered to spread the Dalek Factor through the entire history of Earth. Via a conversion-arch, Maxtible becomes the first Dalekised-Human, with the Doctor apparently second. Because Humanised Daleks are still on the loose the Doctor suggests that if all Daleks are systematically put through the arch then the Human Factor will be wiped out. However the Doctor has switched the arch and all Daleks passing through it become humanised. Civil war erupts between the two Dalek factions. Waterfield sacrifices himself for the Doctor who escapes with Jamie and Victoria as the Dalek city explodes in flames.

Cast and Crew

Background

The 'Space Security Service' and Sara Kingdom were created by Terry Nation for the 1965 serial The Daleks' Master Plan. Nation was eager to use these two elements as the core of a spin-off series in which they would do battle against his Daleks. Whilst work was under way on the debut of the Second Doctor, The Power of the Daleks, Nation took the spinoff idea to the BBC in November 1966 and he suggested that production should begin on his pilot entitled The Destroyers before Christmas.

But the BBC did not like the idea and Nation decided to take his pilot across the Atlantic to NBC. In case the option was taken up abroad, the production office decided to write the Daleks out of Doctor Who for good and conceived of a story in which they met their final end in an epic battle.

For the third story in a row, Nation surrendered writing duties, and like The Power of the Daleks, the story was penned by David Whitaker who provided his story outline in January 1967. Nation was paid £15 for each episode in which his creations featured.

Whitaker was ideally positioned to write this adventure as it featured a multitude of ideas which harked back to the very start of the series, of which he was a part. The Doctor's oldest enemies would be supposedly destroyed, and the story would move from the present day, to the past, and then to the Dalek planet, exactly as the first six episodes of the TV series did in 1963. Furthermore it would see the Doctor behaving in a more manipulative way, much as the first Doctor did, and with Jamie left alone to be the hero, as Ian often was, the Doctor would be left working apparently with the enemy.

In Whitaker's early story idea, the Human Factor was to be found in a caveman called Og and the Doctor and Waterfield had to travel back to 20,000 BC to find him. This was the only real difference to the plot, with all the other elements present from the outset, including the Daleks using the Human Factor against mankind and the story would still have ended in a pitch Dalek battle. Ben and Polly featured in the whole of the story meanwhile Jamie was held hostage by the Daleks along with the relatively minor character of Victoria.

Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davies made the decision to partially write Ben and Polly out though, and David Whitaker was asked to leave them on Earth during episode two. As a consequence David Ellis and Malcolm Hulke who were writing The Faceless Ones at the time, were asked to mould a female character into a suitable companion. David Whitaker also fleshed out Victoria's character to this end, to allow the producers a choice from which to elect their new regular. Subsequently Ben and Polly were written out in the previous story, despite their contracts running for two extra episodes.

The idea of having two options for a new lead female backfired when they chose the modern-day character of Samantha from The Faceless Ones, only to find that actress Pauline Collins had no desire to take up a permanent role. Innes Lloyd had to fall back on his rejected choice, and have Victoria as the new companion. Once again, these plans went wrong when auditions in March and April of 1967 resulted in Denise Buckley being cast in the role. But after she had done a camera test on 11th April and was contracted and paid for six episodes, two days later she was dropped. The role was given to Deborah Watling, who hadn't even been listed at the audition.

Deborah Watling was contracted for six episodes and producer Innes Lloyd included an option in her contract for both the following The Tomb of the Cybermen and the first story to be recorded in the next season block, The Abominable Snowmen.

Production

The first recording work done was on location at Grim's Dyke Mansion House at Harrow Weald in Middlesex which was to be used both as Maxtible's mansion and the setting for some contemporary Earth scenes. The Gatwick Airport material was shot at Kandal Avenue Hangars in Ealing and the railway arches scene was completed at Warehouse Lane in Shepherd's Bush. The recording dates were April 20th, 21st, 24th and 25th. Studio filming took place at Ealing in the days thereafter with extra days added in mid-May to pick up shots of the Dalek battle in the city, and also some scenes with the Doctor to allow Patrick Troughton a holiday during episode four.

Sydney Newman was mindful that the Daleks could still return and some felt that a spinoff would always fail, especially in America where the popularity of Doctor Who was not significant enough to launch the Daleks without their parent show as a popular platform. For this reason Newman asked director Derek Martinus to include a shot to suggest that the 'final end' might not be quite so final.

This story was transitional in many ways. As well as Michael Craze and Anneke Wills being replaced, both story editor Gerry Davis and producer Innes Lloyd were were moving on too. Peter Bryant thus became promoted to script editor, but was also given a trial run as producer for the following The Tomb of the Cybermen. Actor and writer Victor Pemberton was brought in to assist in script editing.

Broadcast

The story was well-received at the time, with the final episode showing a high audience appreciation figure and contemporary audience reaction, particularly amongst children, showed strong disappointment at the idea that the Daleks could be gone for good.

The story was repeated in 1968 at the end of season five, but was worked into the narrative as the Doctor showed new companion Zoe what she could expect if she joined him and Jamie in their adventures.

Content and Continuity

In episode two a new Dalek voice artist is employed for the first time - Roy Skelton. He would go on to provide Dalek voices for almost every Dalek story until the series was cancelled in 1989. Although he is the voice of the first Dalek we see in episode one, he is used primarily to represent the 'Human' Daleks, whilst veteran and original voice man Peter Hawkins provides most of the normal Daleks.

One question frequently raised is: when is the story set? Is is often billed as the final destruction of the Daleks at the end of time, perhaps to be tied in with the Doctor's subsequent vapourisation of Skaro in Remembrance of the Daleks. All this clumsy ret-con is ignoring the fact that in contemporary terms this was not whole-heartedly meant as the end of the Dalek race. Firstly, as mentioned above, Sydney Newman foresaw their potential return and therefore asked for a hint of them surviving. Secondly in the next Dalek story, Day of the Daleks, some dialogue was originally written but edited out in which the Daleks explained that the civil war had been won, and the 'Human' Daleks had been destroyed. Therefore, despite subsequent fan attempts to re-jig Dalek continuity, all the Doctor's encounters with his foes happen in sequence, relative to him, with the exception of The Dalek Invasion of Earth and Genesis of the Daleks. Even these two however maintain continuity, with The Chase referencing the previous serial, and in the 70s and 80s every Davros story referring to the previous one.

This is the first time in the series that the Doctor has returned to a previous location (although this time he travels without using the TARDIS). Back-references and heavy continuity were not a hallmark of early television, because without home-recording and multiple repeats, viewers did not have such an opportunity to revise and remember past stories. Up until this point only the Daleks had warranted more than one return to the show, with the Cybermen and the 'Meddling Monk' each having appeared twice.

Deletion

During the late 1960s and throughout most of the 1970s the BBC took the decision to wipe or destroy videotape or film from their libraries to make space for new programmes. The reasons for this were varied, but it fundamentally boiled down to lack of foresight for a home-viewing market of the future. Whilst various factors at the time all contributed towards the seemingly obvious decision being made, all could have been (and have since been) overcome in order that the commercial potential of old shows has been realised. At the time, the actor's union Equity, along with other bodies, ensured that television shows were limited to a number of repeats within a certain amount of time. The theory behind this being that if the repeat potential of shows was capped, then there would always have to be a continual supply of fresh material for their workers.

The recordings of Doctor Who were originally done on large videotape and transferred to 16mm film for overseas sale. With no procedure in place to archive material, and no dedicated storage facility, they only had to wait for a nod from the production department of a particular show, or from BBC Enterprises to say that tapes were no longer needed, and they would be destroyed. On 9th March 1967 The Highlanders became the first Doctor Who story to have its master tapes wiped and the systematic destruction continued for seven years, with Fury from the Deep being junked in 1974. Broadcasters around the world were switching to colour and so even the film-transfers became of little value.

The Evil of the Daleks episodes 1-6 were wiped in August 1968 and the final installment survived for nearly another year before being wiped in September 1969.

And so, along with many other hundreds of episodes, this Dalek adventure seemed lost for good.

However, whilst at a car boot sale in December 1983, film collector Gordon Hendry bought two 16mm film cans marked as Doctor Who. Fueled only by his fond memories of the show, and with no clue as to their value, he paid £8 for episode two of The Evil of the Daleks, along with episode three of The Faceless Ones. You can buy The Evil of the Daleks episode two on DVD here.

A few seconds of the end of episode one survives as a 'mental projection' on the TARDIS scanner at the end of The Wheel in Space, but as this is essentially identical to the recap which survives in episode two it is of very little value.

Only one other clip exists, and this features two model Daleks moving through the destroyed remains of the Emperor's chamber in episode seven. It lasts only 3 seconds and forms part of a 10 second piece of the 'rushes' most of which would have gone unused as it includes a pair of hands holding the Dalek models.

More exciting was the discovery of a behind-the-scenes film called The Last Dalek which was made by the special effects team at the time to document their creation of the epic civil war on Skaro at the end of the story. This footage can be seen on a DVD release which can be bought here.

Like all the other missing adventures, the story also exists in it's audio form, thanks to a number of devoted fans who made off-air home recordings at the time of broadcast. You can buy The Evil of the Daleks audio CD here.

For more information on how the fans and the BBC are working to recreate this story visit the reconstructions page.