TV21 33-39: Plague of Death

The Comic

First, a note about the dates of publication. Mission to the Unknown went out on 9th October 1965, which means that the Dalek Chronicles (which began before The Chase was broadcast) are now overtaking the point I've reached in the TV strand of my marathon. And what's noticeable is that, in terms of tone, the TV series is only just catching up with the comic. Anyone who enjoyed Mission will have done so largely due to the sight of Daleks being both implacable and deadly, with additional variety provided by other alien threats. Basically, you have to possess a fascination with fear and death (as many humans do), a sense of horror that is at the heart of the comics' appeal as well. This, however, was almost entirely absent from The Chase, and to be honest not a major component of The Dalek Invasion of Earth after the first episode. No, you'd have to go all the way back to their debut as the title monsters of serial C to watch this mode of storytelling in action, and in that story the Daleks were confined to a single city and therefore in some way "safe". Like dinosaurs. Now they are out in the universe.

But enough of that - what of this serial? Structurally it's very interesting. Up until now the stories have been entirely linear, but most of this adventure takes place on Skaro while The Penta Ray Factor is happening elsewhere. What's more, the next serial begins before this one is fully resolved! It definitely adds something to the series.

[Spoilers all the way.]

Unfortunately I'm not so enamoured of the content. I'm not one to complain about dodgy science usually - oh, OK, I suppose that's the opposite of true, but generally I'll do so in passing and move on. Here, though, I find it particularly silly. The problems start with an explosion of dalatomic radiation, which fortunately exits in a column through a hole in the roof, leaving the laboratory area uncontaminated. Now, in a genre where we have energy beam weapons I can imagine that happening with a controlled process, but in an explosion? I mean, one of the things about radiation is that it, well, radiates. But it gets better. The beam strips the rust off the metal roof on the way out, creating a radioactive cloud of rust, the one thing Daleks fear.

(Incidentally, this leads to one of my favourite scenes, with Daleks running away from a wall while their leader yells at them to stop panicking. Very Monty Python and the Holy Grail...)

Now, this rust voraciously destroys any metal it touches, including desert stations and Dalek casings. What's more, when fired upon, it climbs the energy beams to contaminate the attackers. Fortunately the brain machine (remember that?) gives them the answer, and the cloud is stopped using static electromagnets. David Whitaker does love his static electricity, doesn't he? Though I can't see how it can create an electromagnet, which produces a magnetic field with an electric current. Perhaps my school just didn't teach me enough physics.

Anyway, this is when things get really weird. The rust turns into a plague, and Daleks start shooting each other to prevent their fellows getting close enough to pass it on. The Emperor returns to find that it isn't being spread between members of the general population, but only from one carrier Dalek - who just happens to be the Black Dalek, the one whose role means that he comes into contact with more of the populace than anyone else. The poor guy should have learned to delegate. He tries to sacrifice himself, but the Emperor refuses, saying they will build him a new casing. So, a happy ending, after a fashion.

I suppose the problem isn't really that the science is dodgy per se, but rather that each twist feels like a completely random magic-wand way of extending the story. There is no logic to it, and no story progression: each page or two a new way for the Daleks to be threatened by the rust appears. This is the serial, episode by episode: (1) create the cloud, (2) show the effects, (3) now it can climb energy beams, (4) the wind blows it towards the city, (5) it turns into a plague, (6) the Black Dalek is the carrier, (7) conclusion, but an alien ship lands. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

I take it back. Regardless of the way it overlaps with the stories on either side, this serial has no structure whatsoever.

Rating:
Comic: 2.5/10.

Published:
Dates: 4th September to 16th October 1965

Next Time:
Altered Vistas' take on Plague of Death.

TV21 18-24: The Amaryll Challenge

Spoilers from the start.

The Comic
Finally, the Daleks make it into space! The first instalment of this serial is a bit like a teaser trailer, concentrating on the Dalek space program. You almost get a sense of the heroism of the early Dalek pioneers sacrificing their lives for a worthy cause.

And this is what makes me think hard about my reaction to these stories. The Daleks are evil empire-mongers, and yet they are undoubtedly the heroes of the comic; which gives me a kind of double vision. I've never understood the attraction of programs like Dexter or Hannibal, where the audience is meant to be, in some sense, attracted to utterly horrible serial killers; and yet, here I am rooting for the Daleks to get into space! Maybe I'm not so different from the fans of those shows after all. My approach to superhero and spy fiction is similar: in real life I would abhor the actions of violent vigilantes and government agencies who put ordinary people's lives at risk, but I can put that to one side and enjoy them on their own terms.

This way of reading is certainly put to the test in the rest of the comic. First we get the thrilling spectacle of Daleks fighting sentient vegetation (no joke - it is thrilling, and my moral sentiments are nowhere to be seen as I enjoy the sight of Daleks being killed in a variety of inventive ways); then the Daleks cause the destruction of the entire planet. I guess spectacle is what it's all about rather than black and white hats, but whatever; it works brilliantly. The only thing that makes it inferior to the previous story is that there is no characterisation on display at all.

Rating:
Comic: 9/10.

Published:
Dates: 22nd May to 3rd July 1965

The Animation
It may be because it was a long time since I last watched one of these, but it felt as if this was a step up. The sound recording quality is still a little subpar, but in general Altered Vistas continue to push against the limitations of what they can achieve. I noted last time how a 'making of' documentary explained why they had to use still shots when Daleks spoke; here, we actually get some shots with speech and character motion, and even the static shots are less noticeable. This is partly due to careful direction, with motion that comes to a natural halt just before the static section; and partly because for some shots they use a scrolling backdrop - an advantage of the Daleks having made it into space.

Speaking of which, the first episode of the comic is expanded to a ten-minute sequence. Again the additional material is mixed. The Emperor's speech at the end is perfectly in keeping with the source material - in fact, it's quite chilling, just as, later, on the speech about "one Dalek is still an army, one Dalek is still an invasion force", set in a beautifully-lit cavern, is a brilliant addition; but the meetings where the Emperor bangs on about how the Daleks are failing seem out of character.

Once we reach the planet, I was pleased to discover that mobile vegetation and lizard-worms don't give the makers as much of a problem as humanoids. Again, the care and attention that has gone into this really shows.

Overall it's nicely done, but rather slow-paced (there was no room for any extra material this time). I would have preferred it if it were five or ten minutes shorter overall, but I still feel getting the whole set of these was a worthwhile investment (especially since it only cost me blank disks, postage, and a little printer ink).

Of course, it's a long time since I've posted one of these reviews as well; so I should point out that I don't make conscious allowances for this being an amateur production. I think there might be an unconscious bias, and the subect matter certainly helps, but even allowing for that they're really not doing bad! For comparison, I rated the BBC productions Dreamland 1.5 and The Infinite Quest 3.5...

Rating:
Animation: 4.5/10.

Next Time:
The Penta Ray Factor.

TV21 11-17/AV02: Duel of the Daleks

Bigger spoilers.

The Comic
The punchline first: this is undoubtedly the story that cemented The Dalek Chronicles' place in history. Almost everyone rates it highly, and in my opinion they are right to do so. Having got that out of the way, then, let's turn to the more interesting question: what makes it so good?

First off, it's just a riproaringly fun adventure serial, perfectly suited to its medium. Pacing is key in something like this: each instalment holds the interest and - six times out of seven - ends on a dramatic cliffhanging moment. (Even the seventh is better than some of Terry Nation's TV efforts, and he's actually pretty good at this sort of thing.)

Oddly enough, in a story that features only Daleks, it's the characterisation too - basically, that there is some. Zeg (the first Dalek with a name, possibly also the last until the Cult of Skaro? I'd have to check) and the Dalek Emperor are contrasted by their personalities, which are broadly drawn but definitely present. Both are confident, but it's a different stripe of confidence in each. Basically, they embody the brash spirit of energetic Youth and the calm wisdom of experienced Age.

Interestingly, Age wins by cheating. The Brain Machine says that Zeg must prove that he is smart, and the Emperor must prove that he is strong; but all along it is the latter setting traps for the former, destruction testing Zeg's casing. He succeeds eventually, ignoring the Machine's dictum in order to do so.

What drives the Emperor is revealed in the final instalment: he genuinely believes that the Daleks can only thrive with him at their head. It's not as visible, but he is just as arrogant as Zeg - and indeed the Black Dalek, making his first appearance here (with an imperiously callous air) as the Emperor's enforcer. Really, it's a key feature of the Dalek psyche, and it's impressive that characters driven by the same basic forces can be made so different.

I haven't said much about the artwork, but it continues to be effective in ways I've already described, and also adds its own spin to the atmosphere. For instance, during the duel Zeg is very prominent, foregrounded or featured on his own three times as often as the Emperor, who tends to lurk around the edges. This really helps to show us that the duellists are not the same.

Published:
Dates: 3rd April to 15th May 1965

Rating:
Comic: 9.5/10.

Terry Nation's The Daleks?
Having talked about the scripting a lot over the last few reviews, it's probably worth saying something about the writer. The logo panel says "The Daleks by Terry Nation". Apparently for some strange reason a few people believed that this meant the strip was written by Nation, though I can't imagine why: it's pretty obvious that Nation had nothing to do with it, and that David Whitaker was the writer (along with TV21 editor Alan Fennell for the first story).

Whitaker needs no introduction to readers of this blog, but this is the first time we've seen him as an actual writer of the Daleks. He had already written some printed Dalek stories - which we'll get to in a little while - and he'll get to write them for TV during Patrick Troughton's time on the show. What he does here is to create much of the imagery that people who grew up in the 60s associate with Daleks, despite much of it not appearing on the show itself - even the Dalek Emperor was conspicuous by his absence until Nation stopped writing the scripts. There are many figures who contributed to the success of the Daleks, and Whitaker is right up there among the most significant.

The Animation
The sound quality here is much better, which is a relief; and Stuart Palmer has reduced the number of times he pro-noun-ces each syll-a-ble se-pa-rate-ly, though he still does so on occasion. The fact that this story features no humanoids also means that it is ideally suited to animation. It's still very primitive compared to the remastered Genesis of Evil, and in a way I'm sorry I watched that one first; but I did enjoy it. Given that this is AV02 and the previous story was AV04, I'd expect this one to be the less advanced; but for the reasons given above it feels like a slightly later effort. At the moment the comic is still considerably better, though!

VCD Extras
This disc has a "making of" documentary, which was really useful for helping me understand quite how much work goes into an animation like this. I can see why almost all the shots featuring speech (and hence flashing lights) were done as basic, 2D animation, and boggle at the hours that go into producing the sets. Worth a watch.

Rating:
Animation: 4.5/10.

Next Time:
The Amaryll Challenge.

TV21 4-10/AV04: Power Play

Only minor spoilers this time.

The Comic
The first thing I notice is that, within the comic series itself, there appears to be nothing to mark the break between one story and the next. Rather like the original program itself, in fact! Still, as with the TV series, there are definitely serials (or perhaps chapters), so it makes sense to give them names. This second chapter in the sequence is over twice as long, at seven pages, which becomes fairly standard - seven out of the next ten stories are this length.

The story itself is not as strong as the first, but then origins are always a good hook (which is why superhero comics and film series reboot so often). What is clever here is that for a long time it feels like a simple incident, one that doesn't progress the overall narrative; but then, in the final instalment, something key happens that expands the canvas on which future chapters can work.

The Daleks are well-characterised. They are clever and devious, but also limited in key ways (although how they have managed to rebuild a city without slaves is not explained, despite this being a key point last time). There is a nice nod to The Chase, and the various betrayals that happen meant the story held my interest.

Unfortunately, the heroes of the piece are - once again - young, attractive, white humans (or at least indistinguishable from humans), while the villain is ugly and purple. This feels less extreme than last time - it's not something we've escaped in the half-century since, after all - but it still rankles a little.

One welcome artwork change is that the Daleks are now portrayed with their correct proportions (the title panel changes to reflect this partway through the story). The continuity-obsessed part of me can easily justify this, happily: the first, overly-tall Daleks were prototypes, and they have now improved the design. The Mark 2, perhaps.

A less happy change is that the inking on the fourth through sixth instalments is much lighter and less detailed. This makes everything look sketchier, and definitely takes away from the atmosphere. Fortunately the original inker is back for the finale, a very nicely done page in which the climactic event - the launch of a spaceship - distorts not only the panel where it happens, but bends the next row up as well! A simple trick that gives a sense of enormous energy.

TV Century 21
Time for some background. The first comic to feature anything from the world of Doctor Who was the venerable TV Comic, which had already lasted 673 issues before the Doctor came on board. TV Century 21 was a different beast, and had the Daleks - in colour! - out of the gate. The new comic was focused mainly on Gerry Anderson's stable of shows, and cleverly pretended that they all fitted together when they were clearly not designed that way - something us Whovian continuity obsessives would know nothing about, of course.

Throughout much of the 1960s, Anderson's shows (Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, and so forth) were massive - in fact, for a while, TV Century 21 (later simply called TV21) was by far the biggest comic on the stands. It took a unique tack, dating the issues a century in the future and presenting itself more like a newspaper, as if reporting on events in the world of the future. More details can be found in Stuart Palmer's narration of The Story of TV Century 21, an extra on the remastered Genesis of Evil VCD, which is accompanied by a slideshow of covers from issues featuring the Daleks.

Published:
Dates: 13rd February to 27th March 1965

Rating:
Comic: 4/10.

The Animation
One of my problems with the story in the comic was that the Daleks had apparently built their city on their own despite claiming to need slaves for handiwork. The VCD addresses this straight away, with a narrated series of still shots showing the Daleks' extermination and capture of survivors of the neutron bomb. It's just what was needed to set the scene.

Unsurprisingly, this is a much less sophisticated animation than the previous one. The sound quality is poorer (I had to really concentrate to make out some of the dialogue), Palmer hasn't quite got the pacing of the Dalek voices he was to develop later, and some of the scenes are not cut at quite the right point. More importantly, the human characters have no lip sync at all, and are often shown in still shots. It feels much more like a recon than the last!

At just over half an hour for a comic that is more than twice the length, this is a faster-paced adaptation. Some of the cuts are neat, using techniques such as zooming in on the emperor's eye, and I can see the seeds of a very good director in Palmer's work here. In a way I would be much more impressed if I hadn't just watched what he produced later on!

VCD Extras
Dalek Cutaway is an animated guide to the Dalek machine. There have been a number of these published in books; this one is based on Terry Nation's Dalek Special (1979) and The Doctor Who Technical Manual, which I haven't seen. I mostly like it, but the teletype-style text comes up at too slow a pace for me (I'm a fast reader), which means I spent some of the time waiting for the next word to appear. Still, a good effort.

Rating:
Animation: 3/10.
(I should note that I am judging the animations by pretty much the same standard I use for professional work; 3/10 is therefore not as bad as it might sound!)

Next Time:
Duel of the Daleks.

TV21 1-3: Genesis of Evil

OK, last post I reviewed a TV episode which now exists only as a recon but has been adapted into a comic; next I am journeying 8½ months earlier in 1965, to review a comic which has been given an animated "recon" of its own. Which, I suppose, requires some context; but since I've got 17 of these reviews to fill, I'm going to space that out. And, since everything is new here - which means I've so much to say I'm splitting it anyway - I'm just going to concentrate on the content. With major spoilers!

The Comic
Genesis of the Daleks this isn't: rather than six slightly bloated 25-minute TV episodes we have three single-page comics. The economy of storytelling on display is impressive, with the entire war happening on page 1 and feeling surprisingly unhurried. Unfortunately, this instalment also has enough space to be rather problematic.

Those of you with total recall may remember that when I reviewed serial B, back near the beginning of this marathon, I complained about the racist and (particularly) ableist themes, with the idea of the Daleks as Nazi analogues being undercut thanks to them being the horrifying mutants and the Thals being noble, physically-perfect Aryans. Unfortunately the beginning of this story is, if anything, even worse, with the "tall, handsome" Thals petrified of being assaulted by the "short, ugly" Daleks - even though the current Dalek leader, Drenz, is a pacifist! And, of course, the Thals are right, because nature will out: the Dalek Minister of War Zolfian assassinates his ruler and takes control once his ultimate weapon is prepared. You can't trust nasty little blue trolls like these even to get war right, though, and a natural disaster sets off their neutron bombs early, wiping out all civilisation on Skaro.

I'll tell you what's short and ugly: this instalment of this comic. But you know what? When I was a child I wouldn't have blinked an eye at that. So I'm going to swallow my privileged, righteous 21st Century anger and move on. 'Nuff said, in the words of an unpleasant character who I used to really admire.

Ahem. Anyway, there are a couple of continuity issues you might have noticed mentioned in passing. Yes, the Daleks (not Dals, not Kaleds) are blue, and humanoid but not quite human in shape. Fair enough; nobody has to pay for makeup here, so why not turn them into a cross between the Mekon and the Smurfs? And I'll tell you what else is different: the machines that will house them are built by chief scientist Yarvelling. Not Davros. The other Genesis is a long way in the future.

I've only covered one-third of the story, so let me plough on. The second instalment opens two years later, with the only two Dalek survivors (Zolfian and Yarvelling, naturally) coming out to explore their dead world. The phrases 'neutron bomb' and 'cobalt bomb' probably don't have the same resonance with people of younger generations that they do with me, but this doesn't strike me as an unrealistic image - it feeds into a fear that most of us had growing up in the 60s and 70s. This was quite possibly how the world would end.

Life hasn't quite ended, though, because there's the traditional final-panel reveal of a "proper" Dalek, encased in a travel machine (sorry, "war machine"). Well, I say proper; the artist hasn't got it quite right. It's too tall and thin. Perhaps it's a Mark I. Nevertheless, this is what we have been waiting for - and in the third instalment Zolfian and Yarvelling work hard to fulfil their sick ambitions before dying of radiation sickness. And we get to witness the creation of the golden emperor!

So: well-written, well-painted, with some unpleasant politics. Oh, and a continent called Darren: that has to be worth something.

Published:
Dates: 23rd January to 6th February 1965

Rating:
Comic: 6/10.

Next Time:
Genesis of Evil revisited.