Chris Thompson, designer of the 1967 classic The Evil of the Daleks, helps DWM reconstruct the sets for its long-lost opening instalment.

Feature by SIMON GUERRIER

The Daleks, and their mighty Emperor, met their “final end” in civil war sequences filmed at Ealing Studios in May 1967.

Illustrations by GAVIN RYMILL

Designer Chris Thompson.

Gatwick Airport, 1966. Having frustrated the people-napping plans of the Chameleons, the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and his companion Jamie (Frazer Hines) are unable to prevent the TARDIS being taken away on the back of a lorry by persons unknown… So began the first episode of The Evil of the Daleks - the seven-part finale to the 1966-67 season, an epic adventure that saw the Doctor and Jamie swing between settings as varied as a groovy London coff ee bar called the Tricolour, a mysterious antique shop, a country house in Victorian England and ultimately Skaro, the planet of the Daleks.

Sadly, its second episode is the only one we can still see today. The remaining six number among the 97 early episodes missing from the BBC archive - but all of them live on in other forms. Off -air soundtracks, recorded at home by 1960s viewers, exist for every lost episode. Surviving scripts tell us what happened when characters weren’t speaking; many give camera positions and movements, too, so we can work out how particular scenes were framed. And thanks to John Cura, who made it his business to provide television professionals with a record of their work as transmitted, telesnaps (off -air photographs) exist for a great many lost instalments. Unusually, a second set of off -air photos for Episode 1 of The Evil of the Daleks also survives. The pictures were taken by the story’s designer, Chris Thompson.

From such sources we can begin to piece together that opening episode, as originally transmitted on Saturday 20 May 1967. According to the camera script, the “standard opening sequence” cut to an airfield during the day. “Shot 1: ESTABLISHING SHOT of Airfield” surely used (or reused) footage filmed at Gatwick Airport for the previous adventure, The Faceless Ones. Perhaps it was even footage used in the first episode of that story, which survives in the archive. If so, the opening shot of The Evil of the Daleks survives, too.

The next five shots were filmed at the BBC’s Outside Broadcast unit in Kendall Avenue, Ealing, which doubled for the hangars at Gatwick. Off -air photographs and some behind-the-scenes images of the location filming show the Doctor and Jamie in pursuit of the lorry-loaded TARDIS. The photographs are black and white - as was the episode - but we can add some colour. The Doctor’s shirt was pale blue and his braces red with gold animal shapes. Jamie’s kilt was in the same red and green tartan seen in colour photographs of other characters in his debut story, The Highlanders. Actor Frazer Hines remembers his polo-neck sweater as grey; costume designer Sandra Reid thinks it was light brown.