Death to the Daleks (TV story)

Synopsis
The TARDIS arrives on the planet Exxilon, where all electrical energy is drained off by an unknown force. The Doctor meets a Marine Space Corps expedition from Earth who tell him that a plague is sweeping the galaxy and that the antidote, parrinium, can be found in large quantities only on Exxilon. Their ship has been disabled by the energy drain, so they are unable to leave with the mineral.



Plot
The TARDIS has a power failure, stranding the Doctor and Sarah on a planet. All electrical power seems to be siphoned away on this planet. While Sarah is inside the TARDIS, the Doctor runs into a mission of humans who were also stranded when their ship lost power. They are searching for a chemical, parrinium, which is needed to save millions of lives from a space plague affecting the outer colonies. Sarah meanwhile has been captured by the planet's native race, the Exxilons, who intend to sacrifice her for approaching their sacred city. Another ship arrives, also losing power. It is the Daleks. The power drain has rendered their normal weapons inoperative. They claim to also be searching for parrinium because they also have worlds suffering from the same space plague. They form an uneasy alliance with the humans and the Doctor. They are all captured by the Exxilons, who now intend to sacrifice the Doctor along with Sarah, as he attacked their High Priest to rescue Sarah from the first attempted sacrifice.

Meanwhile, the Daleks back on their ship have outfitted themselves with primitive mechanical weapons (using something like bullets) which do indeed work despite the power drain. They seize control over the Exxilons and the humans, while the Doctor and Sarah escape down some tunnels. They run into a more friendly group of Exxilons, who explain that their race had long ago been very advanced. This changed when they built a fantastic city which became intelligent, grew able to care for itself, and so killed or drove out all those who had inhabited it. Meanwhile, the Daleks have enslaved the Exxilons to mine parrinium for them, using the humans to supervise their work.

While Sarah goes back to look after the human mission and remind them not to trust the Daleks, The Doctor and Bellal (one of the friendly Exxilons) go through a series of intelligence tests to enter the heart of the City. Two Daleks follow and do the same. The Doctor ultimately causes the City to suffer the equivalent of a nervous breakdown. He and Bellal escape while the pursuing Daleks fight two "antibodies" created by the City. Along with a bomb which the Daleks forced the humans to plant at the beacon on top of the City, the nervous breakdown causes it to be destroyed. Power is restored to everyone's ships. The Daleks prepare to take off, gloating that they will actually be able to use the parrinium they have gathered and the space plague to blackmail the space powers into acquiescing to their demands. They intend to fire a plague missile onto the planet of the Exxilons once in orbit, killing the Doctor, the humans there, and the Exxilons. However, one human has stowed away on their ship with a remaining bomb. He detonates it before the missile is fired, destroying the ship, the Daleks, and himself. It also turns out that Sarah and another human had earlier moved all the parrinium onto the Earth ship, leaving Daleks with bags of sand which were loaded onto theirs. The human mission will therefore be able to save the lives of the colonists suffering from the space plague.

Sarah meets and battles the Daleks for the first time in this story. The City destroyed, the Doctor sadly comments that the universe is down to 699 wonders.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Jon Pertwee
 * Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
 * Dan Galloway - Duncan Lamont
 * Richard Railton - John Abineri
 * Commander Stewart - Neil Seiler
 * Peter Hamilton - Julian Fox
 * Jill Tarrant - Joy Harrison
 * High Priest - Mostyn Evans
 * Bellal - Arnold Yarrow
 * Gotal - Roy Heymann
 * Dalek Voices - Michael Wisher
 * Dalek Operators - John Scott Martin, Murphy Grumbar, Cy Town

Crew

 * Assistant Floor Manager - Richard Leyland
 * Costumes - L Rowland Warne
 * Designer - Colin Green
 * Fight Arranger - Terry Walsh
 * Film Cameraman - Bill Matthews
 * Film Editor - Bob Rymer
 * Incidental Music - Carey Blyton
 * Make-Up - Magdalen Gaffney, Cynthia Goodwin
 * Masks - John Friedlander
 * Music - London Saxophone Quartet
 * Producer - Barry Letts
 * Production Assistant - Chris D'Oyly-John
 * Script Editor - Terrance Dicks
 * Special Sounds - Dick Mills
 * Studio Lighting - Derek Slee
 * Studio Sound - Richard Chubb
 * Theme Arrangement - Delia Derbyshire
 * Title Music - Ron Grainer
 * Visual Effects - Jim Ward

Story Notes

 * This story had the working titles of; The Exilons, The Exxilons
 * This story originally did not feature the Daleks, but they were included because of Barry Letts' and Terrance Dicks' desire to cash in on the Daleks' popularity.
 * This story marks the first time the Daleks' weapons do not function on screen. The Daleks are later seen to be able to modify their casings relatively quickly, replacing their energy weapons with slug-throwing rifles.
 * The Daleks in this story are destroyed in quite simple ways.
 * The Daleks target practice with miniature police boxes.
 * Many of the Dalek casings utilised for this story dated from the 1960s (due to the unsatisfactory quality of the casings produced for Planet of the Daleks).
 * The cliffhanger to Part Three - the Doctor and Bellal walking towards a patterned area on the floor, only for the Doctor to say "Stop - don't move!" - was not originally going to be the cliffhanger. The original cliffhanger was going to be at the scene where the Doctor is trying to deduce the answer to the logic test concerning symbols, when two Daleks appear. Specifically, the cliffhanger would have hinged on the zoom towards the Dalek's gun. This was changed, however, for timing reasons.
 * Episode 1 was at one point wiped from the BBC archives, but later a copy was found to restore the serial; this is the latest known episode of Doctor Who to be, for a time at least, considered lost.

Ratings

 * Part 1 - 8.1 million viewers
 * Part 2 - 9.5 million viewers
 * Part 3 - 10.5 million viewers
 * Part 4 - 9.5 million viewers

Myths
to be added

Filming Locations

 * Hanson's Aggregates Sand Pit, Puddletown Road, Gallows Hill, Dorset
 * BBC Television Centre (Studio TC4), Shepherd's Bush, London

Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors

 * What happened to the Exxilon in the TARDIS after Sarah knocks it out? There is no reason to assume it would have stayed in there once it regained consciousness.
 * A Dalek is killed by the freezing lake, but it apparently has no effect on humanoid tissue. The Dalek also fell off a cliff prior to hitting the lake.
 * How did the Daleks complete the puzzles in the city, which are mostly touch based, when touching is supposedly the one thing a Dalek can't do? Daleks do come with attachments just for this situations perhaps or got one of the Exxilons to do it for them
 * How does the Dalek voice synthesizer and flashing dome lights operate with the power drain in effect. The same psycho-kinetic power they use to move also?

Continuity

 * In NA: The Left-Handed Hummingbird an Exxilon craft is seen.
 * In DW: Pyramids of Mars Sarah compares the puzzles on Mars to the Exxilon city.
 * This is Sarah Jane's first encounter with the Daleks. She would face them again in Genesis of the Daleks and, decades later, in The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.
 * In this story it is established that Daleks move by telekinesis, presumably a recent development. In previous stories they relied on electricity (The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Power of the Daleks). That is how the Daleks can operate on Exillon. However, the fact that they cannot operate their energy weapons suggests that they are still reliant on external sources of energy. It is not known if this is still static electricity. The Daleks do adapt at times in their history to use other sources of energy, such as that from the Time Vortex (Dalek)

DVD and Video Releases
Death to the Daleks was released on VHS in 1987 in the omnibus format. It was later released in the episodic format.

Novelisation

 * Main article: Death to the Daleks (novelisation)


 * Novelised as Death to the Daleks in 1978 by Terrance Dicks.
 * The novelisation refers to the replacement Dalek weapons as "machine guns" (i.e., fully automatic slug-throwers), despite the on-screen weapons appearing to function as semi-automatics.