The Daleks – The Destroyers

So, quick history lesson: After the massive success of the Daleks in Doctor Who, creator Terry Nation tried to take them away from the Doctor and turn them into their own TV show. This story is an adaptation of the pilot for that separate TV show.

The original split between Doctor Who and the Daleks happened in 1967. They tried divorce counseling, but it was just too late. But why am I reviewing this story in 1965? Well, because it features characters from upcoming stories and works well as a prequel because of that. It hints at some events that’ll happen in this Doctor Who season, so here it is.

“The Destroyers” focuses on 3 characters, namely Sara Kingdom, Mark Seven and Jason Corey. Together, the three of them are looking into a recent Dalek invasion on a meteorite, while also looking for Sara’s brother.

The story presents itself very slow and static. A bit too much for my liking. With every character introduced, we get expansive information on their looks and background, presented like a military report. While I can appreciate the attention to detail, it slows the story down to an absolute crawl. Combine that with the formal presentation, and you get a story that’s not very engaging.

An example is this. In Sara’s introduction, she fights a mud monster. It’s not that interesting: She basically struggles in the mud until she gets free. A very simple premise, but it takes 8 minutes of story time because every move is described in excruciating detail. That’s almost 1/7th of the entire story, just for some opening moments of 1 character!

After this mud battle, the party comes together and looks for clues. They find that the Daleks have hidden themselves underground, so they follow. Just as they’re about to confront them, they fly off. The end.

That’s might seem like I’m cutting it down to hard. But that’s really all the story actually is. There is a few smaller encounters in between. 2 with daleks, 1 with a sort of spider monster, but those mostly feel like they’re there to pad out the run time.

And that’s the big problem: This story does not earn its 70 minute length. It seems to do everything it can to pad itself out. The whole Dalek invasion and discovery of their hiding place could’ve been 20 minutes. Yet we keep on stretching and stretching by describing details and adding small roadblocks.

In the meantime, some other aspects have received no attention at all. Our main cast, for example. Besides first impressions, these people have no defining character traits. I’ve listened to these people for 70 minutes, but I could tell you nothing about their likes or dislikes, except that Sara likes her brother. No connections or relations are established between them.

And that’s really all there is. An incredibly padded story with no saving graces. Some of the underlying stuff isn’t bad per se, like the scene where they have to be completely silent to escape the Daleks, but every scene is stretched to the breaking point. Even the small, fun moments aren’t allowed to fully land, because they can’t be small. This makes “The Destroyers” a sort of pretend-epic. Looking on the surface like a vast, massive story, while actually being incredibly simple and with a short-trip amount of content.

Do I think a Dalek-only spin-off can work? I think so. The Daleks are relatively simple enemies. They don’t really have the ability to develop or emote. That isn’t bad, but to engage the audience you need that emotional connection. So, it’s up to the opposing force to give us that core.

The Doctor allows us that emotional connection, while this small military team does not. If there was another lead or a group that we could bond to, I do think a Dalek spin-off would work. You’re just not going to find that essential ingredient here, and that’s a shame.