Appropriately for an episode with the word 'end' in the title, I'm going to start with the cliffhanger. This is an iconic moment, and deservedly so - the image of the Dalek gliding out of the Thames is so powerful it makes for a fantastic reveal. Except... well, it isn't really a 'reveal', any more than the numerous, similarly-timed moments in later stories which have the name of the monster in the title. This was the most hyped appearance in the history of the show so far - and the first ever reappearance. I'll have more to say about that later, but the key thing here is that this is an episode which is about the Daleks, but without them actually being present until the final few seconds. So how does it go about this?
Jumping back to the beginning, following the theme tune we have the closest thing to a pre-title sequence that you'll get in this era. A man with a strange metal helmet staggers down to the river, throws himself in, and drowns. This is an explicit suicide on teatime TV - quite shocking - and then we get the shot under a bridge of the poster about dumping bodies in the river, the episode title appears, and as it fades out again the TARDIS materialises.
There's so much in this sequence that sums up the episode overall. The music by Francis Chagrin (what a fantastic name!) is both dramatic and appropriate; Richard Martin's direction is interesting, using low and high camera angles in quick succession, and creating the link between the episode title and the TARDIS; and on top of that we've already seen almost as many location shots as there were in the whole of the first season. You can tell this isn't going to be small-scale, or cozy.
Throughout the episode, the scenes that focus on the world after 2164 build up an impression of decay and despair. The poster, the crumbling docks and unsafe bridge, the abandoned warehouse, Barbara running across a barren London (I particularly like the shot of her coming to the gate) and the view of a broken-chimneyed Battersea power station next to the dome of a nuclear power plant all paint a picture of city that has suffered a terrible calamity sometime in the teachers' future. all the sets are convincing; the Daleks may not be in evidence, but the consequences of their presence are all around.
(Speaking of the power station, this is one of the shots that was redone with CGI for the DVD release - though the most obvious is the Dalek spaceship, which started out as a risible hubcap-on-string affair. Some people object to watching the program in anything but its original form, but I'm not a purist; and if it helps with the atmosphere I say go for it! So long as the unaltered version is there as well, of course - even I want to be able to compare them. The CGI saucer looks much better - I won't be tackling the Doctor-free Dalek strips for a while yet, but it does remind me of them. I only wish something similar could have been done with the robomen's voices, which turn them from fairly effective shambling zombie wannabes into, quite frankly, something a bit rubbish.)
Of course, the future-scene-setting is only half the story, and the rest is the travellers' more personal tale. This part of it begins with the camera rather shakily zooming out from the TARDIS scanner to reveal the central console, then holding fairly steady while the Doctor moves around it, and in and out of shot, adjusting with a small ped-and-tilt before the others enter. It doesn't quite work, but it almost does; and it grabs the attention so much that I had to go and look up what the camera moves were called so I could describe it properly. Well, nearly properly - I'm still not clear what to say when the camera does the equivalent of a zoom through physical movement rather than adjusting focal length. This is the thing with Martin's direction, though - he's always experimenting and pushing things as far as they will go. I think that most of the time to date this has worked (though I admit I am probably in the minority); but sometimes he misses some of the basic directorial touches while concentrating on the flamboyant, and when his experimentation goes too far it can fall right over.
Anyway, our heroes leave the TARDIS, and we have the prospect of Iananbarbara reaching home. They look suitably hopeful, but the one to watch is Susan. Carole Ann Ford does a splendid job of being disturbed that they'll soon be leaving, looking lost as the realisation of what it means hits her. In fact, Ford does a great job throughout - with one exception. Like William Russell in The Survivors, she is really unconvincing at failing to walk.
The two threads of the episode come together towards the end; and the fact that Ian doesn't want to know what has happened, together with his frustration at Barbara and Susan wandering off, is a fine way of showing his disappointment that he's not got home. Terry Nation's script is good, and the Return of the Daleks is off to a great start...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 21st November 1964
Viewers: 11.4 million
Chart Position: 12
Appreciation Index: 63
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
The Daleks!
No comments:
Post a Comment