Day of the Daleks

Reviewed By Alden Bates

'The Daleks are the masters of Earth.'

This is undoubtedly one of the best Dalek stories. It's also one of the few stories where time travel is used as a plot device. It even comes complete with a UNIT firefight. In fact, there are few things I can fault the story on.

One scene which disturbs is where the Doctor casually guns down an Ogron with a disintegrator gun before making off in the Brigadier's jeep. The guerillas seem to ignore most of the Doctor's dropped comments about time travel until later in the story. The location footage is shot on film and therefore doesn't match the studio work. Never mind. All minor points. The acting is of a good standard all of the way through; though I still can't stand Katy Manning's acting. Perhaps it's just that Jo seems to be incredibly dim ... Jon Pertwee is at his best, getting wonderful scenes like when he grapples with one of the guerillas with one hand while drinking wine with the other. It's great to see him explaining his identity to the guerilla taskforce, and debating ethics with the Controller.

The special effects are fairly well done, though the monitor pictures tend to wobble about. The final big battle between UNIT and the Dalek forces was very good. The use of footage from the title sequence, especially for the time travel effect, was oddly bizarre.

The time travel is handled excellently, the whole situation is a temporal paradox that has to be unravelled before the story's end. There is very little padding, and the story moves along happily with plenty of explanation and action and so forth. A lot better than the TV Movie.

All in all, a great Pertwee era story which deserves to grace anyone's shelf.

Five Dalekenium bombs out of five.