Classic Who

Episode 16: The Dalek Invasion of Earth

/ Kari / Leave a comment

On this episode of Daleks Aren’t Robots!? we return to Hartnell and to the Daleks as we also say goodbye to a companion who has been with us from the beginning.

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Look for us where all podcasts are found.

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Tardis FINALLY reaches London but it’s not the London Ian and Barbara came from. We know this because there’s a sign that says “Emergency Regulations: It is forbidden to dump bodies into the river.” Despite this a guy immediately dumps himself into the river.

Susan gets hurt trying to figure out when they are, the Tardis’s door gets blocked by rubble and the men go off to look for a way to remove the rubble. Some rebels show up and there is a flying saucer that is adorable. The boys find a whip and a guy packed into a box, which like… no comment.

Then a Dalek comes OUT OF THE WATER. There are aquatic Daleks now? WHAT.

It is the future, 2164. The Daleks are “masters of the planet,” are digging under Bedfordshire, and are able to turn humans into robots, but there’s still human resistance. The boys get taken onto the saucer, the girls meet more resistance people and the rebels plan to attack the Daleks. There’s a LOT of stuff with the rebels, a lot of whom die, and/or become robo-men. Eventually they go to Bedfordshire and find out the Daleks utterly absurd plan, which is to replace the planet’s core with an engine and turn the whole thing into a spaceship, which is not how any of this works, but whatever.

Barbara runs some Daleks over with a truck, a tiny alligator in a sewer menaces Susan, and a Dalek keeps a hilariously adorable monster called a Slyther as a pet. Everyone is reminded that the Daleks ARE the Nazis, actually, right down to firebombing London and being very fashy.

Eventually they manage to use the Daleks’ system to tell the robo-men to turn on the Daleks, there’s a massive rebellion and the Daleks are either killed or chased away, exploding into stock footage.

One of the rebels asks Susan to stay and she doesn’t want to have to choose between him and her grandfather, so the Doctor chooses for her and locks her out of the Tardis. She doesn’t object, though, and Susan leaves the show.

The end.

THE TEAM

THEY STOPPED SPLITTING UP ON PURPOSE.

  1. Susan leaves the show in this episode, which kinda sucks. While I can totally buy that she falls for the rebel David, there’s not enough of this relationship shown to make it plausible. Also, she’s given a few lines about how she doesn’t really have an identity, which is bull, and that they always just leave planets when there are problems. The thing is Susan HAS an identity and a pretty great character… when the writers bother with her at all. If only she’d stayed as smart and cool as she was in the first serial!
  2. The Doctor has some great moments in this one. His speech at the end to Susan is really touching, and he doesn’t ACTUALLY take the decision wholly out of her hands–had she said anything to stop him he probably wouldn’t have left her. He says some condescending stuff to her earlier on but in a way that makes it clear that he doesn’t really believe it, about how she needs to be “taken in hand” and stuff. There’s also a great series of scenes where he solves a Dalek puzzle and brags about how smart he is, only to be dragged away by the Daleks because he just proved he’s smart enough to be a robo-man. Oops.
  3. Barbara is a boss here, as usual. She bravely escapes from the Daleks, helps the rebels out regardless of what that entails, and bowls for Daleks while driving a massive freaking truck, which was awesome. She’s paired with a rebel woman for a lot of this episode and she’s by far the more active and decisive of the two. She even bullshits the Dalek leaders to try to get to the transmitter so she can tell the Robo-Men to rebel, but this doesn’t work. Eventually this plan IS used to win, though!
  4. Ian is also pretty great in this episode. He has come a LONG way, and not only does he use his Action Physicist powers to good effect, evading Daleks and the Slyther, but he ALSO is responsible for the ultimate failure of their plan, because he puts some sticks in the way of their “destroy the core” capsule thingy.
  5. The Tardis. Is mostly under the rubble in this episode, probably because no one has fed her. Why do they keep parking the Tardis in the worst possible places?

THE GUEST STARS

Honestly there are a lot of rebels and most of them aren’t that memorable but at least do have a couple character traits.

Rebels

  • Not Churchill Guy: Is a “smart” rebel and makes bombs to use against the Daleks, but ends up killing himself when he thinks he’d stop Barb and Blondie from escaping. His bombs don’t really work–are they meant to be an analogy for what if we didn’t have the atomic bomb?
  • Blondie: The most prominent female rebel, she has been resisting the Daleks a long time and is kind of worn down from it, but she’s still doing it and she’s still brave and smart.
  • David: The guy Susan stays behind with. He’s brave and seems nice but like… we don’t know him that well. They have a couple good moments together but it’s not enough and he’s not compelling enough to make it work because the actor just doesn’t have the time to do it.
  • There are a couple other rebels that get nice vignettes, like the guy who is just looking for his brother, who finds that he has been turned into a robo-man and then is killed by said robo-man brother. Then there’s a greedy war profiteer black marketer who is killed by the Slyther. And a couple others.

Other Humans

There are two women living in the woods who betray Barb and Blondie to the Daleks and receive food from it. While the show clearly doesn’t approve of this action they aren’t portrayed as negatively as they could have been.

Daleks

  • Clearly my comments about the Daleks from the previous episode went back in time and Terry Nation heard them because this episode really hammers it home: THE DALEKS ARE THE NAZIS. They firebomb London. They have a leader called a Commandant. The Daleks make a Selection from their prisoners to decide who becomes robo-men. They enslave and brainwash people and use them against their fellows, like the sonderkommandos. Some of the imagery looks like it could have been taken directly from the actual Blitz and I think this would have hit home MUCH HARDER with audiences that fresh from World War II and the Nazi bombings they would have experienced or heard their parents talk about.
  • I feel like Nation really asked himself “what would a British resistance have looked like?” and just made that. Everyone has a stiff upper lip, even those who are exhausted by all the fighting and only one guy seems to be genuinely villainous. Even the women who betray Barb and Blondie are mostly just desperate.
  • The Daleks now have air power and can submerse themselves in the river. They are no longer bound to roll only on metal and seem significantly faster too. They also come in multiple colors now, including black and striped, though it’s still black and white so it’s kind of hard to tell what other colors they are.
  • There is now a Dalek leader with a voice slightly different than those of the others. Is this where Trek got the Borg Queen from?

THE SETTING

  1. Well, we’re back in London. The scenes of the group sneaking around London and evading Daleks and robo-men are amazing and wonderful and I love them.
  2. It’s also a decayed London. Some places look pretty decayed, others don’t, it just kind of depends, but overall they did a great job. The “It is forbidden to dump bodies into the river” sign is kind of iconic.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. What were the connections with World War II in this movie?
  2. There was some stock footage in this movie and I wondered if they actually used any real footage from World War II?
  3. Why did Carole Ann Ford leave? What was her career like afterward, and how did she feel about being part of the Who phenomenon?
  4. Why did they write Susan leaving as they did?
  5. How many Daleks did they have for this serial? I can tell there are more but are there more than 4? What color WERE they IRL?
  6. What locations did they shoot at and what was done on set?
  7. Were there toys? What about soap? Dalek soap? Is there Dalek soap?
  8. DALEKMANNNIIIIIIAAAAAA.

DALEK SCORE

This episode drags a bit, and honestly there are too many characters. They should have cut some of the rebels and given more time to David to make Susan’s departure more plausible. Overall, though, it’s pretty well paced and beautifully filmed, especially given the budget they were probably working with, and so I’d say 4/4 Daleks for this one. It’s everything I want from a Doctor Who so even though it sometimes drags a bit things are still HAPPENING during the dragging parts.

Sources Include

Dalek Product Pictures

Sources: What Did People Think About Doctor Who in 1964?

/ Zach / Leave a comment
An interesting summary to start with. This article feels like not only has the reviewer not watched the episode, but the author also seems to think Ian Chesterton is the focal character. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/A_new_adventure_on_a_strange_planet_begins_today
The news really was pushing at the time that the Voords would be more popular than the Daleks. As you can tell by the fact that you almost never hear about the Voords, they were wrong. They also barely appear in the serial that was their debut, and as yet their only, onscreen appearance. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/New_TV_monsters_will_rival_the_Daleks , https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/After_the_Daleks_a_new_horror%E2%80%94_VOORDS
Here are some promotional pictures of Carole Ann Ford with a Voord. This monster was pushed quite hard for being just someone in a modified wetsuit. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/In_the_grip_of_a_Voord! , https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/My_word%E2%80%94it%27s_a_Voord
An interesting background piece on William Hartnell, especially for us nowadays who may not know that he was often typecast as a military actor. The Doctor was very much outside the normal roles that he got, and in my opinion he did it amazingly. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/The_Man_Who%27s_Who
And so pretty much from the start the legend of Dr. Who causing kids to watch from behind the sofa even hits some newspapers. It may not seem like it with today’s eyes but back in the 1960s this really was frightening but engaging for children. https://wordpress.com/post/daleksarentrobots.com/552
This one is more tangential; however it addresses an important issue then and now — representation in all aspects of any business but particularly women in entertainment. And none of these writers interviewed here seem particularly bothered by their attitude and of course none of the writers are women. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Why_can%27t_they_write_for_women%3F
A nice picture of the main cast of the first season with Verity Lambert. It’s a sign of how worldwide the show would end up going, to Canada and Australia even then. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/The_cast_of_BBC-1%27s_Dr._Who
To end on for now, an odd one loosely tied to “The Sensorites” by the Daily Mail. It’s about scientists developing a “thought machine.” I have searched and this is the only record I could find of it; still, it illustrates the show’s influence in that the go-to in 1964 for a telepathy comparison was Dr. Who. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Scientists_invent_a_thought_machine#tab=Description

Episode 15: The Silurians

/ Kari / Leave a comment

On this episode of Daleks Aren’t Robots!? we meet another of the Doctor’s famous adversaries, the sympathetic Silurians.

This episode opens us up to such topics as genocide, misinformation during an epidemic, the hazards of nuclear power…and an adorable pet dinosaur.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Find us on Buzzsprout: https://daleksarentrobots.buzzsprout.com/

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Look for us where you get your podcasts!

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

Two guys in spelunking gear are attacked by Godzilla. It turns out an “atomic research center” is experiencing power losses described as “leaks” and UNIT, including LBS, Liz and the Doctor, are brought in to find out why.

They eventually find out that the Silurians are the culprits–they are lizard people that resemble the Gill Man, native to Earth, that put themselves into suspended animation a long time ago because they believed an asteroid was going to hit earth, and now that they know it didn’t they want to wake up their whole population and take over the earth, as they were legitimately here first.

The Doctor spends most of the episode trying to convince the Silurians not to murder all the humans and trying to convince the humans not to murder all the Silurians.

Unfortunately, the Silurians have an internal power struggle a lot like that of the Sensorites, but it ends in a Silurian murdering the peaceful Silurian leader and releasing a plague on the humans that seems to have a 100% kill rate and an incredibly rapid spread. Literally incredible, as we see a TON of people die and the disease spreads to France and likely the whole world.

The Doctor finds a cure to the “bacteria” that cause the disease but it’s not penicillin or some other antibiotic. Nothing about producing enough of it for everyone quickly enough or distributing it, and apparently UNIT managed to cover all this up SOMEHOW even though a massive number of people in London and elsewhere have DIED, which is absurd.

There’s some power jockeying with the Silurians, they take over the atomic research center, the Doctor manages to scare them all back into hibernating by convincing them the whole area will be irradiated and he expects to come back and study their setup.

Then LBS commits genocide by blowing up the Silurian compound and sealing the door shut. And the Doctor and Liz are sad and I’m confused about why a kids’ show just showed the good guys genociding some lizard people, and sad and angry that we just watched The Sensorites but with a really depressing ending that again, is the GOOD GUYS GENOCIDING SOME PEOPLE with no consequences shown and barely any discussion of the fact that the GOOD GUYS GENOCIDED SOME PEOPLE.

THE GENOCIDE

  1. I’m actually not sure on a second watchthrough that it WAS genocide. Maybe he just bombed the entrance to close it off? It doesn’t sound like it.
  2. I just… what… THIS IS A CHILDREN’S SHOW.
  3. WHAT THE HELL SHOW. I’M TRYING TO LIKE YOU. STOP MAKING IT DIFFICULT.
  4. Here’s the thing. The episode ENDS with the genocide and it’s BARELY addressed. Does the Doctor stop working with UNIT after this? Does Liz? Does LBS get called up on war crimes? Does ANYONE?

OUR TEAM

  1. The Doctor gets a lot of great moments here, trying to convince both sides to not murder each other. He also makes it clear that he’s not a human, though he claims to be several thousand years old (I think he’s lying but it’s not totally plain). At one point he does hide information and it does come back to bite him in the butt. Also the doctor wears a spelunking ascot and it’s adorable.
  2. Liz gets some good moments too, helping with the scientific stuff but also some of the skullduggery. She gets attacked (pushed gently) by a Silurian and has a pretty sensible reaction to it, particularly compared to the reactions of others.
  3. LBS commits genocide and also acts like an asshole throughout a lot of this one. Sometimes he’s reasonable but he’s also very jerky in a lot of it for no obvious reason. Also he should pay for his war crimes.
  4. Bessie is cute and cool and I like her. Tell us about Bessie.
  5. The TARDIS is nowhere to be seen and I hope someone is feeding her. Maybe she could eat LBS.

THE OTHERS

So many characters.

  • Combover: The lead scientist of the facility, he’s also an antivaxxer and doesn’t believe in the Silurians. He gets the plague and dies yelling at people about how the plague is totally fake you guys, which is hauntingly on point.
  • Martin Freeman: Another scientist who tries to use the Silurians to get scientific advances, ends up holding one captive and then is kind of killed by them, but actually had a heart attack.
  • Martin Freeman’s secretary: She helps Martin Freeman and after he is killed she advocates for murdering all the Silurians before they murder us.
  • Baker: A nut who wants to kill all the Silurians and also is patient zero of the plague. He dies.
  • Politician: He comes to figure out wtf is going on in the facility and basically spreads the plague to London when he tries to go home. and dies.
  • Silurian Leader: A decent person who is concerned about the humans but becomes convinced we’re intelligent and doesn’t want to genocide us. Then he’s murdered by another Silurian.
  • Mean Silurian: He wants to kill all the humans so the Silurians can have the whole world, even though they probably don’t want all of it because it’s too damn cold.
  • Fido: The dinosaur pet of the Silurians, who looks like a man in a godzilla suit, but is supposed to be bigger. It’s adorable.

Lots of others we don’t really care about.

THE SETTING

  1. Earth in the 70s. There are lots of caves and a research facility. The facility looks pretty sciency and the caves look pretty cavey.
  2. The Silurian area of the caves looks pretty neat, with green slabs of material made to a proportion humans wouldn’t make things, to accomodate their dino pets.
  3. There’s NO WAY the public doesn’t know about the plague with a death count that high. How the HELL do they cover this up?

THE PRODUCTION

  1. The plague. How did they come up with that and what was it based on? I knew the antivax movement was old but I didn’t know it was that old.
  2. The sets look really good here, are they sets or real?
  3. More about Bessie?
  4. Music.

Sources Include

General Sources

Contemporary reviews

Fan discussions and analysis

Bessie

BTS pictures and articles on production

Nicolas Courtney Acting

Carey Blyton Composer

Moon Origin theories

Silurian Hypothesis

Silurian Book adaptation Written by Malcolm Hulke

Sources: Dalekmania Strikes in 1964 Britain!

/ Zach / Leave a comment
So to start, here we have one of the guest stars of The Daleks, who really did not get that much screen time and many people probably do not remember. She would later get bit roles appearing in some Hammer films, but Wetherell is most well-known a small role in “A Clockwork Orange.” https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/A_Down-to-Earth_pose_for_a_TV_Space_girl, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0923145/
Here’s a nice touch– the BBC donated two of the Daleks to a children’s home so children could, I guess, roll around pretending to be Daleks. It’s great that they didn’t just dispose of them, though the production probably regretted it when they did indeed bring the Daleks back. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/TV_Daleks_go_to_the_orphans
One of the donated Daleks is shown being played with by some of the children at one of the homes. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Picture_parade
Here, the BBC publicly started realizing they could market the Daleks. It’s interesting that they come right out and claim that they completely own the design of said monster. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/If_you_want_to_buy_a_Dalek_try_the_BBC
As you can see, it was no time at all before people started making their own versions of Daleks or Darlek in this case, This one was even useful! Also neat that this article also thinks that Daleks are Robots. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Robot_to_sell_rag_magazine
A rather rare thing–a picture of Carole Ann Ford with her daughter, paired with a nice story about having her daughter watch the show. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Guess_Who_..
As is seen here, the public demand was so intense that Verity Lambert agreed to bring the Daleks back. For the first monsters to appear in the show, they made an impressive impact on the British public. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Coming_Back_–_The_Daleks!

Episode 13: Planet of the Giants

/ Kari / Leave a comment

The Dalens Aren’t Robots team returns to the First Doctor and the group that started it all: Susan, Barbara, Ian and the Doctor, plus the ever-beautiful and half-starving TARDIS. 

As it turns out, size DOES matter, but maybe not in the way you’re thinking. Who will hold the idiot ball this time? Listen and find out!

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

Facebook: ​https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Tardis has a malfunction, with the doors popping open and everyone having to shut them by force. They land and start exploring, finding a bunch of dead giant bugs, including an ant the size of a doberman. They eventually work out they ARE on earth, but shrunk to the size of an inch high. They split up and have to look for each other a couple times.

There are some full-sized humans in this episode. Forrester, Farrow and Smithers. Forrester is a businessman, Farrow a safety inspector and Smithers a scientist working on a new pesticide. Farrow finds the pesticide works but TOO WELL–it kills EVERYTHING, including beneficial bugs like bees and earthworms, and persists in the environment afterward, making it unfeasible as a pesticide. Forrester has been producing the pesticide for a year and will lose everything if it’s not sold, so he kills Farrow, which the Tardis Team sees. Smithers finds out about the murder, but he doesn’t realize the pesticide is bad, so he agrees to help Forrester cover up the murder of Farrow.

This means the Tardis team can’t just ask for help–even if the humans could understand their tiny high pitched voices one of them is a MURDERER and isn’t gonna want witnesses no matter what size they are. They also work out that the pesticide is unworkable–and Barb touches it before she realizes it’s on a piece of grain she’s picking up. Unfortunately she does not tell ANYONE and holds the idiot ball instead. UGH.

The Tardis team tries to call the cops about the murder, using a GIANT TELEPHONE but they can’t be understood with their high pitch. They set up an explosion to burn down the lab, which doesn’t really work but does wound Forrester, just in time for a policeman to come in and arrest him, because he ALSO tried to get away with pretending to be Farrow on the phone even though he sounds nothing like him, AND Smithers has worked out that the pesticide is bad and is determined to stop Farrow anyway.

The team gets back to the Tardis and the Doctor manages to restore them to their original size, which cures the by now VERY ill Barbara because… SCIENCE! I guess. and the Tardis starts to materialize again!

THE TEAM

  1. Barbara gets the worst treatment in this one, and she holds the Idiot Ball. It’s super unfortunate. She touches the poisoned grain, which isn’t unreasonable, but then she doesn’t tell anyone she’s touched it when she finds out it was poisoned. There’s no real reason given for this either, and it sucks. She even faints, although I’m willing to attribute that to getting poisoned rather than being a wimp.
  2. Ian also carries the idiot ball a little bit early on, in that he sees a giant seed thing with a bunch of text including “Norfolk” on it and can’t concede he’s tiny, even when he and Susan find the matchbox. Otherwise he does pretty well, and serves as the muscle and tries to illuminate some of the science.
  3. Poor Ian’s actor when he’s in the matchbox knocking back and forth. It’s hilarious and terribly fake but he’s doing the best he can with what he’s got!
  4. Susan doesn’t have a huge part here but she’s plucky and smart. She catches on to the fact that they’re tiny first. She climbs the drain spout. She does get a bit upset when Ian is picked up in the matchbox, but not to the point that it’s unreasonable.
  5. The Doctor has shown so much character growth here. He gets very snippy at everyone early on, but he apologizes SINCERELY to Barbara without being made to, and he voluntarily opts to look for Ian when he gets taken up in the matchbox.
  6. It is however HILARIOUS when he says he can’t expect sympathy from a murderer. WE’VE BEEN WATCHING THIS SHOW, MY DUDE.
  7. Also the Doctor has a cape now and it’s great.
  8. The Tiny Tardis is freaking adorable. I love that they use the miniature for the Tardis and it looks kind of silly and like it’s a miniature, and then you find out IT IS.

THE GUEST STARS

  1. There’s a cat, and at first I thought that was going to be the main antagonist, but the cat is not. Pretty cat, though.
  2. The plot with the guest stars is absolutely inspired. It adds a lot of complication to the story and gives them another reason not to just ask for help.
  3. Forrester is a murderer, and he’s pretty threatening, but also not very smart, as he assumes he can pretend to be his victim easily.
  4. Farrow is the one who’s been charged with testing the new insecticide, and he finds that it works–but TOO well. It kills EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. He tells this to Forrester, who says he’ll be RUINED financially if they publicize that the pesticide is a bad one. Farrow won’t budge and says he’ll turn in the report with the truth in it. Forrester shoots Farrow.
  5. Smithers is another scientist who’s absolutely desperate to get the new pesticide out, because it will enable them to feed more people. He doesn’t know that the new pesticide kills ALL the insects and Forrester lies to him about it. Smithers decides rather than allowing Forrester’s murder of Farrow to derail their pesticide, he will help Forrester cover it up so that they can get the pesticide out and feed the world. When he finds out the pesticide is bad he tries to act.
  6. Smithers and Forrester seem like a couple. They stand super close to each other and Forrester is the worst boyfriend.

THE SETTING

  1. The science in this one is ridiiiiiculous so many times. From the pressure on the Tardis shrinking them, to the “fact” that Barbara’s tiny body is “too small” to fight off the insecticide. Also, I don’t think they get bio-accumulation thing quite right–they say the scientist has made the pesticide “everlasting.” rather than pointing out it persists through the food chain (like some real pesticides do, such as DDT).
  2. The setting is glorious, though. Things blown up to giant size are great. Sometimes they use rear projection and sometimes not. The bugs BASICALLY look like the bugs ought to look like. The “giant sink” set is pretty great, and the giant bit of grain is a cute prop.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. I really like the story in this episode. It’s a lot better than “honey I shrunk the tardis crew.” By adding the murderers as a plotline it gives you an added element of danger. The episode isn’t fast-paced but it steadily builds the tension, with a ticking clock in the form of Barb getting poisoned.
  2. How did they do the effects? What was their budget like?
  3. Where does this fit in with DDT/Silent Spring, which basically kills everything AND bio-accumulates?

DALEK SCORE
I really liked this one. It’s slower-paced but the tension keeps building and building.

Sources Include

Episode 3 and 4 Ian Levine Official Reconstruction

Sources: What Did People Think of Doctor Who in 1963?

/ Zach / Leave a comment
Here’s an example of an article written before Doctor Who came out, detailing the setup and the people behind the show. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/ITV_can_expect_a_jolt_when_the_BBC_launches_its_%27Dr._Who%27
The reaction to JFK’s death led to the first episode of an Unearthly Child being aired again the following weekend. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Circumstances_were_hardly_favorable_for_the_An_Unearthly_Child_of_the_B.B.C.%27s_space_satellite_Dr._Who
A brief but interesting scientific-minded comment on the first episode of Doctor who, referencing an educational show hosted by Professor Hermann Bondi of E=mc2. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/High_camp_for_kiddies , https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cb5a826e73d749e68cd46bd51642f05e
Here’s a rather amusing review from Variety where the writer messes up the relationship between Susan and the Doctor, referring to her as his daughter. This reviewer certainly does not seem impressed by the first episode. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Dr._Who_(Variety)

A discussion of the very iconic Doctor Who theme and how it was made! Of course it would be decades before Delia Derbyshire would get the public acknowledgement she deserved for her work on the theme. It wouldn’t really get widespread attention till after her death in the early 2000s. https://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Verity%27s_tune_is_way_out_of_this_world! , https://www.openculture.com/2016/01/the-fascinating-story-of-how-delia-derbyshire-created-the-original-doctor-who-theme.html

Episode 12: Spearhead from Space

/ Kari / Leave a comment

The DAR team travels to the 1970s to see the first serial of the Third Doctor era.  With the Doctor now stuck on Earth, do we feel as trapped as the Doctor or as happy as non-body slammed Nixon?  Find out.

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentr…​

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

OUR TEAM

The Doctor:

  1. This Doctor is great. He flirts with Liz and seems very debonair. He is handsome for a 51-year-old guy and wears an apparently Edwardian-era opera cape and a cool hat (which needs more feathers). Also there’s another topless Doctor shot in this one and he has a hilarious white butt, though you don’t see it, just his tan line.
  2. This Doctor has a TATTOO and he wears a gold bracelet. Do we ever find out what the gold bracelet is from or says? Does it say anything? Do we ever find out what the tattoo is? Did they give it to the Doctor or does this actor just have a tatt? What is it and what does it mean?
  3. The Doctor knows how to drive. He is also very tricksy like First and tried to escape from Lethbridge-Stewart. He has a ton of charisma and he seems brave. Hasn’t tried to murder anyone who wasn’t already hostile… YET.
  4. At one point he runs away in a wheelchair and that’s hilarious and also very in character.
  5. At another point he bulls***s his way back to LBS and essentially he Karens his way into speaking with the ranking military guy onsite.
  6. He also cons Liz into stealing the Tardis key from LBS.
  7. He extorts LBS at the end to get a lab, facilities to fix the Tardis, a car like the one he LITERALLY STOLE, clothes, and Liz as an assistant. He lies and says his name is Doctor John Smith. SUUUUUURE.

Liz Shaw:

  1. She’s our only Companion at this point. She seems to be primarily a researcher but also has a medical degree, apparently? She’s super smart like Barbara but doesn’t take any crap from anybody, and needles Lethbridge-Stewart fairly often, which is fun. She is a skeptic and doesn’t believe in all this space crap until it happens.
  2. She seems pretty brave, and though she’s very creeped out by the mannequins she reacts a whole lot better than most of the other people in this story.
  3. She actually rolls her eyes when the old man general hits on her, but doesn’t seem to object when the Doctor hits on her… he IS pretty good looking for his age.

Lethbridge-Stewart, AKA LBS:

  1. He is a military dude in charge of UNIT, which… what is UNIT? Why did they call it that? Do they know what it’s slang for?
  2. He has a Mustache of Authority.
  3. To his credit, he points out to the general that Liz is not just a pretty face when the general makes a sexist comment to her. He seems to have a somewhat adversarial relationship with Liz and has worked with the Doctor before–presumably, the Second Doctor. What did they do together?
  4. He’s not technically a companion, but he kind of is?
  5. What are UNIT’s resources? Who ARE these people? Is this like a military Men in Black? HOW do they cover this s*** up?

The Tardis:

  1. We haven’t seen the inside of this Tardis yet, and apparently it’s broken.
  2. It sounds tired, when was the last time it had a Gavroche?

THE OTHERS

There are a lot of guests in this one.

  • Hibbert, AKA Good Factory Guy: The person who runs the plastic mannequin/doll factory, he’s being brainwashed into being an unwitting pawn of….
  • Channing, AKA Evil Factory Guy: He’s the local representative of the Nestene Consciousness and is actually a mannequin himself. He’s trying to collect the plastic globes so that the Nestenes can reform into the PERFECT BEING and take over the world. Also he’s got a plasticy complexion and is satisfyingly creepy and threatening but also capable of being VERY upset.
  • The Nestene Consciousness, which in this isn’t a pool of melted plastic but a bunch of plastic wrap around an eyeball with tendons that’s covered in applesauce. Then it becomes what looks like felted tentacles and I don’t understand why there aren’t plushies of the felted tentacles. WHERE IS YOUR MARKETING DEPARTMENT.
  • Evil Mannequins. These are actually creepier than the ones in the modern Doctor Who, I think. They look less human and their eyes are icky.
  • Ransome, AKA Inventor: He was involved with the factory and tries to blow the whistle on the weirdness going on there but gets brutally murdered. He has a fantastically rubbery face and mugs his terror for the camera beautifully. He dies horribly and gets vaporized.
  • General Scobie, AKA The General: He’s an annoying regular army guy that LBS reports to, and he makes a sexist comment to Liz. He gets replaced by a plastic mannequin but doesn’t die.
  • Sam the Poacher: He finds one of the plastic globes the Nestene consciousness is in and brings it home.
  • Meg, his wife: She’s awesome, when the mannequin comes to take the plastic globe her husband hid in her house, she GETS A SHOTGUN and shoots the mannequin. She gets clobbered but DOESN’T DIE and why can’t Meg be a Companion?
  • Assorted doctors and nurses and an evil vacuumer that calls the press, but we don’t really care about them.

THE SETTING

  1. It’s the 70s in Britain. Are we gonna stay here? It’s… very 1970s Britain.
  2. The hospital building is cool, it has some really nice wooden paneling. The woods are… woods. There’s a nice car.
  3. Everyone sounds like they’re in a cave now. 😦 And the offices are very impersonal, even the science room is very impersonal. Doesn’t anyone put up posters or pictures of families or even a “hang in there” cat?
  4. When you see glowing stuff from space why don’t you think “maybe it’s radioactive?”
  5. The factory is terrifying there are no safety shields ANYWHERE. HOW IS THIS ALLOWED???
  6. So the autons… the first time they shoot, are people dead or just stunned? The second time is disintegration. Why was this changed for NuWho?
  7. We did not get a fight between wax Gandhi and wax Nixon. 😦 😦 😦

THE PRODUCTION

  1. OOH COLOR
  2. THE SOUND IS “EVERYONE IS IN A CAVE NOW.”
  3. I wanna know about Pertwee. Why is Liz the way she is?
  4. WHY ARE THEY STUCK ON EARTH?
  5. WHY IS UNIT?
  6. Is this the first time we’ve seen blood in a Doctor Who?
  7. We did get some fire in this one, as there’s an explosion, also several gunfights. LOTS OF GUNS. No more angry complaints to the BBC?

Sources Include