2.8: The Chase
- Doctor: William Hartnell
- Companions: Vicki, Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton
- Creators: Verity Lambert (Producer), Glyn Jones (Writer), Mervyn Pinfield (Director)
- Season 2
What's the rating?
Must See.
What's interesting about it?
Buckle in, as you are in for a ride.
For the first time the show breaks the alternating pattern of historical then science fiction. We go from The Space Museum to a Dalek story. So long to the venerable historical, at least for a few decades.
The Doctor has fixed the Time Visualizer he acquired from The Space Museum. Amusingly, when Ian is given a chance to view any point in history, he chooses an American moment: The Gettysburg address. As if to make up for this, the next moment chosen includes Shakespeare, approvably British... A remarkable amount of time is spent on this lark of viewing history, providing some levity to the often all-too-serious show.
The time travelers then spend time rollicking in the strange desert-like landscape. The outdoor filming is quite impressive, with a truly odd and intriguing view, including dual suns. This is the first time we've been presented with a believable and truly alien landscape.
We're fully half-way through the episode before anything specific to the plot begins to happen. It turns out the Daleks are rather annoyed at their last couple of encounters with The Doctor, and have hatched a multi-faceted plan to get pro-active about the problem. This results in a chase through space and time, with our time travelers barely staying ahead of the Daleks as they materialize in a variety of locations. The first time they jump into the TARDIS and actually take off it's a bit of a shock -- that's not supposed to happen until the end of a story, after all!
Terry Nation, the writer, is not known for creativity outside a narrow band. As one creative twist piles upon another, you have to wonder if he really wrote this. This story is intent on surprising the Doctor Who viewer who by now knows exactly how things are supposed to play out, while Terry Nation is famous for turning in the same Dalek story over and over again each year. One of the DVD extras implies that Nation only did an outline, and Dennis Spooner did the actual writing.
To be fair, Nation also wrote The Keys of Marinus, which also jumped around to numerous locations and mini-plots the way this story does, but while Marinus was unfocused and ludicrous, almost everything here flows in a satisfying manner.
Not everything works (especially the aliens in the first episode), but there's enough variety, surprise, and humor to the story to make it worthwhile and things generally get more interesting as the episodes proceed, climaxing in a rather well-done epic battle between Daleks and...well, you should find that out on your own.
All of the above make this Worth Watching, but the story moves to Must See because it's the last story for Ian and Barbara, who finally make their way home at the end. The anger displayed by The Doctor at their decision to leave was apparently an accurate reflection of William Hartnell's own feelings.
And so all the original companions are gone from the show, which means where we go from here is new territory...
What are others saying about it?
This one seems to split fans down the middle. Some hate it, some think it's pretty good. By classifying it as a Must See, I'm definitely on the fringe this time around.
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