On Spiridon, Thals Vaber (Prentis Hancock), Codal (Tim Preece) and Taron (Bernard Horsfall) come face to face with their eternal enemy… plus their legendary friend, the Doctor (Jon Pertwee).
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the Doctor first encountered the passive, pacific Thals of planet Skaro, back in the original Dalek serial (1963-64), he and his companions were obliged to bully the passivity and pacifism out of them, so they might join the struggle to overthrow the Daleks.
A decade later, during the tenth anniversary season, the Doctor re-encountered the Thals on the planet Spiridon. This time, they’d changed, having become gun-toting space travellers on the Daleks’ trail. The difference didn’t elude script editor Terrance Dicks – who, writing to returning Dalek creator Terry Nation on 1 August 1972, observed: “As I remember the original Thals tended to be mild and peace loving. They now seem to be much tougher and more military, which is good. But could we suggest that perhaps that [sic] this process, born of their fear of the Daleks, has gone a bit too far…”
As we’ll see, the Thals weren’t the only element familiar from Nation’s 1960s oeuvre.
He’d previously situated his Daleks amid alien jungles in the closing episodes of The Chase (1965), then the opening episodes of The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-66), plus its singleepisode prequel, Mission to the Unknown (1965). The invisible Spiridons conjured up distant memories of the unseeable Visians, inhabitants of the swampy planet Mira, who’d previously featured in the fifth and sixth episodes of Master Plan…
And so on. But might we discern a reason for all the déjà vu? Planet of the Daleks begins with the wounded Doctor, having learned that the Daleks have been plotting a galactic war as a prelude to invasion, sending a message to the Time Lords. So they dump him on Spiridon, at exactly the right moment to encounter the Thals’ struggling expedition. After all – if the Doctor helped turn the Thals into space marines, it’s apt that he should now be sent back to deal with the consequences of one of his own unlicensed interventions.
Saving the Thals as much as fighting the Daleks.
The Doctor (William Hartnell) talks to Thal couple Dyoni (Virginia Wetherell) and Alydon (John Lee) in the first Dalek serial (1963-64).
Daleks incinerate the Kembel jungle in The Daleks’ Master Plan: Day of Armageddon (1965).
Episode One Saturday 7 April 1973
Jo helps the Doctor – his temple burned by a shot from the Master’s gun – into the TARDIS. Dematerialising, he uses the telepathic circuits to send a message to the Time Lords…
00m 47s We open with a reprise of the closing moments of the final episode of Frontier in Space (1973). Jo (Katy Manning) is holding the Master’s blaster when she helps the Doctor (Jon Pertwee) into the TARDIS from the main area of the Ogron citadel – but it’s vanished in the next shot, when they stagger into the TARDIS control room.
The first episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan began with TARDIS traveller Steven (Peter Purves) laid out on a couch, bloodpoisoned after being wounded at the end of the previous story, The Myth Makers. When the TARDIS landed in a deadly alien jungle, the Doctor (William Hartnell) exited in search of help, leaving Trojan handmaiden Katarina (Adrienne Hill) to tend to the delirious Steven.
We’ve already described how Planet of the Daleks reprises elements from author Terry Nation’s 1960s serials. One might be forgiven, therefore, for thinking that Nation was replaying that first Master Plan instalment here, with the ailing Doctor in Steven’s place – stretched out on a modular bed, tended to by Jo. In fact, this element was inserted by script editor Terrance Dicks, after the production team had decided, months after Nation’s Planet scripts were delivered, to rework and reshoot the chaotic and unsatisfactory final moments of Frontier – which, as originally recorded on 31 October 1972, had concluded with the unwounded Doctor telling Jo not to worry about the Master, since they had more important things to do: “We’re going after the Darleks [sic; as scripted].”
03m 30s Dicks also came up with the device of the TARDIS log – blatantly made from the box for a compact cassette – onto which Jo records her observations (thereby avoiding Jo talking to herself, with the Doctor unconscious). Here, Jo remembers seeing the Doctor in a similarly cold and apparently dead condition once before – “and he recovered after a sudden rise in temperature.” He was found frozen near-solid after the opening of the Devil’s Hump, then revived by a literally diabolical heatwave, in the second episode of The Dæmons (1971).
When the TARDIS materialises, Jo hopes the Time Lords have brought them somewhere she can find some help for the Doctor. “Perhaps even to their own planet,” she added, in a line lost from the script.
The scanner shows an alien jungle outside; seeing a plant squirt something unpleasant over the screen, Jo – who was seen to have changed her clothes long before landing, at 02m 35s – dons raincoat and mittens before heading out. As written, though, this was why she only now changed out of her Frontier in Space gear – pulling a suitcase from a nearby locker, “from which she produces a change of clothing, which should include a warm long-sleeved jacket and gloves.”
06m 26s Stage directions described how “The plants as they move seem to give off a whispering sound that is quite sinister” – a noise that got louder as Jo moved to examine the ruined structure nearby. But the jungle grams heard suggest fauna, not flora – birds and monkeys, perhaps? We’ll not see either – but perhaps animal life inhabits the jungle canopy alone, since the floor is so deadly…
After removing her mittens to operate the log, Jo’s left hand is splashed by a jet of plant spray. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor – recovered, with the wound on his temple having disappeared – notes something odd when he crosses to the console: “The atmosphere outside is breathable and yet the automatic oxygen supply is on.” The reason why should have been obvious, had a subsequent model shot not been cut – 20” of footage that showed the TARDIS “now virtually covered with the growing sponge. Hardly any feature of it is discernable [sic] beneath the sponge. Indeed it has become a giant edition of the spitting sponges that now surround it.” The implication was that the TARDIS normally draws air from any breathable atmosphere outside, but now its vents (or whatever) have been blocked by the growing mass. (It’s unclear why this shot was cut, but plausibly it was judged to not marry well with the studio material.)
Jo (Katy Manning) examines the comatose Doctor.
As the Doctor speaks, the reflection of someone moving about on the studio floor can be seen in a strip of silvered material running up the side of the central column.