Daleks - the retro baddies

Daleks Doing their Retro Nasty

As a kid, I was thrilled and frightened by the idea of Daleks – whenever Doctor Who was on I would be there, especially if it was the Daleks. During the Sixties I played with toy Daleks and at Christmas I got the Dalek annuals. I thought they were delightfully ghastly. Unfortunately, little kids grow up and other every day things rightly become more important.

By the late seventies, I was going out and about with mates and dating girls. I was no longer interested in the later Tom Baker stories or the Peter Davidson ones because there were other things on my mind.

Revelations of the Daleks with Colin Baker

Then I got married and had kids – settled down and put the television on one Saturday night with the elder of my sons who was four at the time. Doctor Who came on and it was Colin Baker. I told my son that I used to watch this when I was a little boy and said “the Daleks were my favourite baddies.” So with great interest and aplomb we settled down to be thrilled by the new Dalek story from the new Colin Baker sixth Doctor.

We enjoyed the story as it developed and I was talking all the way through it because my son was asking questions. I don’t think he found them particularly scary during the first episode because most of it was spent letting the watcher come to know the various characters and the plot. However when the second week came with the conclusion part of the story, all hell was let loose by the nasty Daleks – they did not disappoint. The nostalgic little kid in me bubbled to the surface as the retro baddies went on the rampage – they were exterminating people left right and centre with their heat rays, and my little boy thought it was scary and wonderful at the same time. Of course he did not get the darker side of the plot and I never told him of that. He was more interested in the visual aspect of the Daleks doing their bad thing with their ray guns and shouting exterminate, just the way they did when I was as a kid.

                                     Tasambeker (Jenny Tomasin) and Jobel (Clive Swift)

 Davros was is in it as the Great Healer needing funds from the funeral embalmers on a strange planet and at a place called Tranquil Repose – a gigantic funeral/cryogenic place where rich people of the galaxy went to be embalmed or frozen awaiting possible cure in the future. The head embalmer was an obnoxious and arrogant man with complete conviction of his vanity – a pantomime nasty that people love to dislike. His name was Jobel and he was played by Clive Swift of Keeping Up Appearance fame. Clive Swift played this man wonderfully and his distasteful character was admired by Tasambeker – a female student embalmer played by Jenny Tomasin of Upstairs Downstairs fame.

Tasambeker is hopelessly in love with egotistical Jobel, who in return is full of spiteful scorn towards the poor lady.

Down in the catacombs of the complex is Davros who is using the bodies for his own evil means, selecting the best of the embalmed crop to convert into Daleks after wicked experiments and selling the surplus as food to the rest of the galaxy – off course not letting them know what the food source really is.

A lady called Kara runs the complex of Tranquil Repose and she is played by Eleanor Bron. Her snide assistant and supreme crawler is an accountant called Vogal – a splendid wretch that again, is a person designed to be disliked. He is always sucking up to Lady Kara and the pair is a devious double act when talking to Davros over the visual intercom. Hugh Walters plays this character of Vogal splendidly. They have a thing going with Davros and his food processing plant, but are unaware that he is converting human remains into food. They are, however, worried by his constant demands for more money and are becoming increasingly alarmed by his Daleks that are ever growing in numbers. They decide to strike and remove Davros and take complete control of his food processing plant. For this they enlist a noble Knight called Orcini, played fabulously by William Gaunt. The Orcini character is heroic and honourable – his head is filled with the idea of fighting for a noble cause and the chance to take on Davros is fabulous to him, even though he and his squire Bostock don’t trust Kara and the slippery accountant Vogal.

Vogal (Hugh Walters) and Kara (Eleanor Bron)

Into all of this comes the Doctor and his assistant Perry. There are other characters too, but it all kicks off nicely when the Doctor is knocked out and taken into the catacombs. Perry is taken to see a cheesy DJ who plays songs to the embalmed, keeping them entertained – she is unaware of the Doctor’s plight at first.

Davros, meantime, gets wind of Kara and Vogal’s plan and sends Daleks to bring Kara back captive. When Vogal starts to protest and pathetically tries to chastise the two Daleks sent to collect her, he is zapped by their death ray. He gives a wretched scream and withers, while bathed in the negative aurora – doing it like a star struck Thespian – he is marvellous and when the energy glow vanishes, he lingers for a second to give the Lady Kara a pathetic and wretched look, the super crawler’s final act, before collapsing dead with his innards presumably turned to scrambled egg. Poor old Vogal – couldn’t have happened to a nicer geezer. Kara, like a spoilt brat, kneels down and with indifferent composure says something like. “How unfortunate – you know how hard it is to find good secretaries.”

                            DJ (Alexi Sayle) fights the Daleks with ultra sound rock and roll

 Well now its game on and the Daleks are dishing it out left right and centre all over Tranquil Repose. I don’t think I can remember a story where so many people got zapped by the Daleks, plus people were sorting out double crossers as well. Orcini kills Kara for double crossing him, Jobel is done in by Tasambeker for scorning her once too often and as he falls to the floor, his wig falls off in a final ignominy of his unexpected death throws. Poor Tasambeker runs off in tears only to be zapped by Daleks – the DJ played by Alexi Sayle gets zapped but takes two Daleks out with concentrated rock and roll sound waves – guards get exterminated, saboteurs too and then the imperial Daleks turn up and want to fight it out with the Emperor Daleks.

Bostock the squire and Orcini (William Guant)

Bostok, the squire, gets zapped, fighting alongside his noble master while attempting to over power their Dalek captures. Orcini, in turn, goes out blowing Daleks up with a small but powerful bomb – its all terrific fun and my most favourite Dalek story ever – Hoora!

All my sons became avid fans of the show, but we all like that particular story because it had the Daleks really doing the nasty with their ray guns…

Power of the Daleks

The only other story that I think had the Daleks going on such a rampage, was Power of the Daleks with Patrick Troughton, but sadly that story is no longer available to watch.