A barely serviceable story and one of the least memorable set of Doctor Who episodes I've encountered, especially when it comes to the Third Doctor Era. There's nothing specifically bad about it, their just isn't a lot of great content to grapple with. It very much feels like a boring rehash of past Dalek stories, particularly "The Daleks." The stuff with the Thals really just bored me this time around more than anything, while something just felt off with the scenes and the sets. It just all felt cheaper and more phoned in compared to stronger Dalek adventures and really just comes across as lacking against what I've come to expect with this Doctor and this production team at their best. Also missing some of that more essential character work, or at least delivered in a way that doesn't leave a mark like even other, Third Doctor stories. Jo really feels like she could have been any female companion, when that wasn't what I've liked about her up until this point. The chemistry between Jo and Latep really wasn't there for me and in comparison to how Manning normally bounces off the Doctor this was kind of hard to get through. Even some other weaker ones do this a lot better than Planet of the Daleks, in my opinion. I think in some ways this story is worse than some other more spectacularly bad Doctor Who content out there - at least that stuff sticks in your memory and leaves you with some kind of emotional reaction. Planet of the Daleks just felt like nothing.

Planet of the Daleks is a proper Dalek adventure story. It is a fairly enjoyable serial and there are a couple of especially inspiring moments. It is not however the triumphant return it could have been for writer Terry Nation who had at this point not contributed to Doctor Who since 1965/66's The Dalek Master Plan. I imagine this story would have worked better in front of a general 1970s audience. However, from the perspective of a modern day fan with access to the whole of Doctor Who's back catalogue, it is difficult to get beyond the fact that we have seen all this before.

Jo Grant was brilliant in this story, especially in episode one where her scenes are almost entirely just her. She carries the show incredibly well - she has never looked more comfortable in the role. The way Nation writes these scenes is commendable and ambitious. I wish that the themes of her gathering information for The Doctor and looking after our sickly hero had carried on further through the story. Remarkably similar ideas are far better realised in Paul Cornell's Human Nature/ Family of Blood (which I'm sure was influenced by Nation's script).

On the other hand - the Thals are unbelievably boring in this story. I can't be the only person to have found it at times almost impossible to distinguish between the characterisation and look of each of the "non-Taron" male Thals. Rebec, the female Thal is written terribly and gets very poor treatment from her male counterparts, who seemingly blame her for being a woman on a number of occasions. It was not Rebec's place to be at war, she was a "distraction" for Taron which could jeopardise the mission. All of these ideas were delivered with bile-like dialog.

The Spiridons are fantastic as an invisible force, we have a beautiful scene with Jo being cared for by this intriguing un-seeable creature called Wester. Regrettably, once the purple rugs are thrown on them they just look stupid - it completely throws you out of the story. Why do the Spiridons not just throw off their rugs when the Dalek's are not looking? We know that some of them have the instincts to try and overthrow their evil leaders.

I was impressed with the number of Daleks that they managed to fit into this story, it was exciting. The miniature Dalek props looked great for the most part. I loved the jungles and the squirting poisonous plants. These elements gave this studio bound show a surprising visual flare. My favourite visual idea to come out of Planet of the Daleks is "molten ice", I thought it was a really neat concept from Nation and was very well realised on screen.

As is often the case with companions love interests, the buildup was rushed, unbelievable and a bit flimsy. Jo's star crossed lover apropos of nothing decides he wants Jo to come home with him, but of course it does not occur to either of them for him to go back to Earth instead of Skaro... Side note, but Skaro is portrayed as fairly neutral planet in this story, rather than a thing of terror in a constant raging war/ Dalek control - has that ever been the case before or since?

Perhaps my greatest problem with this adventure (which I really didn't hate, but just didn't love) was that it is all about placing bombs in various places, which even in Pertwee's "action era" is just not what I like about Doctor Who.

Not the most original Dalek story, but it's brilliant fun. The Daleks are at their most evil, with the pepperpots having cooked up deadly bacteria, and the Thals get an interesting development from their 60s days, with them being decidedly more violent as opposed to pacifistic. However, it's a shame that the story doesn't use the concept of invisible Daleks presented in this story more, as it's a really strong idea that's abandoned early into the narrative.

Not terrible by any means, but pretty uninteresting after the first two episodes. It didn't really offer anything new, and I've never cared much for stories involving the Thals. I would complain about Latep's instant crush on Jo, but she's just that lovable, I can believe a guy would fall for her in 12 hours of meeting her. Amazing fashion from the Doctor, a couple of very good lines about courage and about war. Jo's motormouth explanation to the Doctor of being saved by a Spiridon has THE funniest line: "it was terrible, and then I rescued by this bowl!!!" (since the Spiridons are invisible, and the bowl he was holding all she could see). Wait a minute, did she actually think Wester was a floating bowl? I'm very that the next serial is her goodbye, but I am super excited to see Sarah Jane next season.

Planet of the Daleks is a serial that looks good.  David Maloney is one of those directors who knows exactly how to shoot the types of sets Doctor Who works with to give a false sense of scale even if it is limited by the studio.  This is also his first serial shot in color and the colors are quite vibrant greens and blues throughout.  The image of pools of molten ice are the perfect kind of dumb contradiction that I love from science fiction like Doctor Who.  Likewise Jon Pertwee commands every scene he’s in, even in a first episode that sidelines the Doctor and puts Jo Grant front and center while writing her as a generic companion (Katy Manning trying her absolute best with the material).  Bernard Horsfall is also here with commanding screen presence.  The Daleks themselves are presented as truly menacing and that’s also great.

The trouble with Planet of the Daleks lies in the script itself.  Terry Nation was given first right of refusal on Dalek serials after Day of the Daleks entered production without his permission, and the story that he came up with is basically the greatest hits of The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Chase, and the first half of The Daleks’ Master Plan.  Essentially we have a story made entirely of spare parts, The Daleks being the main basis for the story itself.  Now these weren’t bad stories, and in 1973 when there was no home media outside of Doctor Who and the Daleks being rereleased on paperback later that year, viewers likely didn’t notice, but watching it in a marathon in the age of streaming, you can tell how little this serial has to say.

It wants to be anti-war which is good but feels like an afterthought when Nation’s earlier work did it far better.  Not helping matters is a first installment that is the closest direct rewrite of “The Dead Planet” but keeping the lead in that the Doctor and Jo know the Daleks are behind things while the script refuses to acknowledge it.  The second episode then builds to a revelation that there are thousands of Daleks on the planet.  The planet also has other Nation tricks: deadly plague, deadly fungus, invisible creatures, etc.  It’s certainly not a bad serial, but it is a tedious one.