Death to the Daleks

This had a lot of potential.  At first I was really excited by the idea of the Daleks being off balance in this story.  Lacking their usual power, it really looked like they would need to make a sort of uneasy truce with the Doctor and humans to survive on a strange alien world.  That idea has a lot of potential for a story.  Unfortunately in execution, it feels like a bit of an unfocused mess.  The Doctor and Sarah Jane remain strong here, but the story and everything around them is pretty lacklustre.  I did like the design of the Type V Daleks used here.  They just stand out a little bit and help them being taken seriously in a story where they kind of aren't the biggest threat.  There are fun moments to that but it really doesn't come together.  The aliens look way too goofy for me to take them seriously and too many of these episodes end on awkward little cliffhangers that kept taking me out of the story.  I didn't have a good time with this one.

Terry Nation has brilliance in him - but this is not brilliant. Whilst not without merit, this is pretty boring/ average Doctor Who in the shape of a boy's adventure tale. I loved The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth but since then I've been disappointed with Nations' The Chase and The Daleks' Master Plan which seemed to wander aimlessly. Then The Planet of the Daleks and this, Death to the Daleks which have both have good moments but quite a plain generic flavour (to my tastes). I am still waiting for Nation's triumphant return.

I was particularly disappointed with Sarah Jane's depiction in this story. Her first two adventures introduce her as a professional journalist with a strong will, more of an equal to The Doctor than Jo Grant. Here she is a wet pushover, there to scream and ask questions - what a shame.

The unique aspect of the story which worked was the power drainage that was felt throughout the planet. The holidaymakers/ power cut scene in the TARDIS at the beginning of episode one was beautifully shot and refreshingly different - it was nice to see the lighting played around with so effectively. The Dalek guns as an alternative for their usual weapons was another brilliant consequence of this concept.

The Exxilons are dreadfully boring creatures without any defining features - they are bland and uninspiring. The "nice" one was embarrassingly overacted, mawkish and had bizarre movements making it impossible to get into the story. The "bad" ones left less of a negative impact - but they felt like they were just filling screen time chasing our heroes. Does anyone love these creatures? Also, side note, when the Exxilon is on fire and in that pond, why did it not extinguish the flames before dying? It decided to stay stood up and burn to death - completely bizarre.

I liked that the guest human characters had to make tough decisions and as a viewer we are left to decide how moral the individual's actions are. I wish this moral complexity was visible elsewhere in the script.

This was not the first story to include tasks which our heroes to navigate in order to get to the next stage. These tasks do not translate to TV well at all - they are disinteresting and as dull as dishwater.

I didn't hate this story, but I just cannot feel the passion in Nation's writing which was so clearly visible in his initial 1960s Dalek adventures.

Bilal my beloved <333

An intriguing concept, with all the different factions at odds, but badly paced, with an overlong exposition leading to a rushed, underwhelming climax. The characterization is generally flat to boot, though at least Sarah gets to hold her own apart from the Doctor. And what ever happened to the probe-roots?

Death to the Daleks gets its 2.5 stars generously rounded up to 3, because the idea of a living city as seen in the final part was fun! I liked the eerie antibodies, I liked it screaming in pain, the puzzles were far too easy to warrant the drama given to them but I guess you can't have it all.

The rest of the serial was. not good. It wasn't even bad it was worse than that: it was boring. The human crew only really got interesting near the end, the way the indigenous species of the planet was treated was bad, and the Daleks could have been any other villain and it would have worked the same. I've previously said that everyone thinks they can write a Dalek story and few people actually can, and this was an example of that

The Daleks having a little TARDIS they use as target practise was an inspired choice though, fair play