The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

Story Title: The Dalek Invasion Of Earth
Episode Count: 6 Series: 2 Story No: 2
Doctor: 1st Companions: Ian, Barbara & Susan
Date(s) Watched: Thursday 1st January 2009

Ah, now here’s a great story. My memories of watching this first time round was that it was too long & a bit dull, however on second viewing my opinion of this one flip-flopped completely, I think it’s one of the greats now & the best story so far.

The set & location work are superb, especially he use of the disused (and now completely demolished and built over) White City Central Line station was a great piece of thinking, especially as all the crew needed to do was turn up & shoot with virtually no set dressing required. The location of Kew Bridge was perfect & the scenes of Barbara, Jenny & Dortmun running through the desolate streets of London, along with the Daleks parading round them were excellently shot.

The cast are all on form here (even Susan) & in all honesty I couldn’t find a single fault with the story at all and thought it was an improvement over the rather slow & padded “The Daleks”. The music in this was fitting; the pace wasn’t too quick but was at the right speed to stop the story from becoming dull. The support cast complimented the main cast greatly as well with Dortmun ever vigilant in defeating the Daleks & Jenny being a person who had completely lost all sense of hope due to the torment of The Daleks.

The Daleks at this point are still menacing in this story & come across wonderfully evil. Even the two treacherous women in episode 5 play the part well. I also liked Slyther, with its unsettling call, even if it was a non descript blob.

Finally onto Susan, I’ll be honest that she wasn’t my favourite companion, in fact I found her tedious at times, although found some of the fan conceptions had exaggerated certain things somewhat, such as that she twisted her ankle all the time, yet this was only the second time (probably the first) that she had done so. However I still found the character a disappointment, the fact that she wines too much at the smallest little thing, plus the character never really develops past it’s basic foundations, something of which I don’t blame Carole Ann Ford for, it’s how the part was wrote and obviously one of the reasons why she left.

I have to say though that I found her ending quite sad & Hartnell’s speech quite moving, couple with the music it was rather fitting & was a great ending to a great story.

Overall Rating: 4.5/5 – Best story so far, and a great Dalek story, very much like a film production, top notch stuff