Wampa revealed

“Now we’re too late. Even if they left the doors wide open, we wouldn’t have enough strength to crawl through them.” – Ian Chesterton

Ep. 006: The Survivors
(Production B/Story #002: "The Daleks" - Part 2 of 7)
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And now for this almost quarterly installment of TARDIS Guy. (sheesh!)

The episode reprise doesn’t give us any new visual information regarding the attack on Barbara, so we still know nothing about these new aliens. Thus, the mystery is prolonged for another few minutes. See, George, sometimes we don’t need to see the Wampa creature to create suspense. Barbara’s scream is noticeably missing from this scene.

Ian, the Doctor and Susan stumble around, trying to find Barbara. As the boom shadow falls over Ian’s face, they detect a strange noise. They find its source behind the door of a well equipped laboratory. Ian questions what kind of minds (his sense of wonder again) are behind this technology. The Doctor shrugs it off, somewhat amorally. Susan finds a Geiger counter with the needle well past DANGER, (surprisingly) written in plain English. [1] They’ve been walking around in the fallout completely unprotected. The Doctor suggests they go back to the ship and leave immediately, confessing that there was nothing wrong with the fluid link – it was all a ruse to get the group to explore the city. Ian rightly berates him for his irresponsible action and refuses to return the undamaged fluid link until they locate Barbara.

They step out of the room to find themselves surrounded by strange alien machines!

This is the first full look we get of this planet’s inhabitants. We observe them contained in strange metal containers with eerie metallic voices to match. They seem all at once threatening and absurd. These aliens attempt to herd the time-travelers, but Ian tries to go the other way. One of the aliens paralyzes his legs with an energy weapon.

The Doctor and Susan are forced to carry him to the cell Barbara's already in. Ian’s surprised he’s paralyzed. [2] They swap stories about what happened. Barbara hypothetically suggests there are people inside the cylinders. Susan giggles at this idea, even though it must have been obvious to the audience in 1963. Barbara is informed that she and everyone else have radiation sickness. The Doctor has been “badly hit.”

Meanwhile, the alien machines monitor their new prisoners - oddly without listening to the conversation in progress. The machines hypothesize that their “Thal” prisoners have a new radiation drug that is currently failing them. To test this, the Doctor is brought into the harsh light of interrogation. The machines keep insisting that he is lying when he tells them the true story about how they came to be into custody (an oft-repeated plot device in the series). The machines know the Thals have been living unaided outside their city. [3] The Doctor denies he is a Thal, and suggests that drugs may have been left in that strange box outside the ship in the last episode.

The machines agree to let one of the prisoners retrieve it, using the remaining crew as hostages. Oddly, the Doctor manages to get them to open up about themselves and the Thals. The machines, now called Daleks for the first time, reveal that they can’t live outside the city. The Thals, who must be “disgustingly mutated,” apparently have some drug that allowed them to survive the neutronic war; so, enough talk - go get the drugs.

The Doctor wearily explains what happens next to the others, but soon passes out. When Ian’s legs still prove to be lame, the Daleks prove to be less chivalrous than he. They point out that one of the women could go. [4] It’s just as well. Susan reveals some elaborate reason Ian can’t use the TARDIS key that we never hear again. She leaves for the forest, despite her fear.

The Daleks discuss their devious plan, and how they’re monitoring Susan. They don’t intend to let the prisoners use these drugs once she returns with them. (Surprise! The first instance in a long history of Dalek treachery…) They only want enough of a sample to make their own version to ship from Canada.

Ian and Barbara discuss wearily how it was unfortunate to let Susan go out amongst the scary mutations. Ian says if he could walk, he would have gone – but now it’s too late to do anything but wait and hope the scary mutations have her back by midnight. Paralysis or not, they’re all too weak to escape.

Susan stumbles through the scary forest – aware that she’s being followed. The close-ups mixed amongst beauty passes of the (miniature?) trees do nothing to create the illusion of a dense jungle amidst a fierce lightning storm. She stops and screams, presumably at the shape following her. We don’t quite see who (or what) is following her, again – creating tension, George.

The Doctor seems worse. Even if Susan gets back – it might not be in time for him. Ian, at least, is beginning to walk.

The Daleks discuss that the Doctor will die soon. [5] Compassionless, they decide they can do nothing. They turn their eyestalks back to the “rangerscope,” which (conveniently for Susan) doesn’t extend past the jungle.

Susan continues running. She reaches the TARDIS interior and retrieves the drug canister. This is a great moment here. She opens the door again and reveals the foreboding jungle outside. We don’t see this often enough in later years. Being able to see the outside world from the inside of the TARDIS really makes the illusion of travel through time and space more real to me. Lightning strikes that dark exterior, and glows through the interior roundels. An eerie effect, never meant to be explained. [6] As an audience member I hesitate to go outside back into danger, just as Susan does. Of course, it’s the only way to save her grandfather and friends, but the moment’s indecision (at least for me) is captivating.

Next episode: The Escape

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1- Unlike The Impossible Planet, where the writing on the wall is too old for the TARDIS to translate in your head.

2- And so am I. I know I’m not looking at this from the perspective of a first time 60s viewer, but don’t the Daleks usually just kill people who disobey them? Their gunsticks must be getting rusty from so many years without people to subjugate...

3- The Dalek City. Or the house that Davros built? Maybe on the ruins of the Kaled bunker - seen much later in Genesis of the Daleks?

4- I guess if there’s one thing the Daleks aren’t, they’re not sexist. They’re firmly committed to betraying and exterminating every non-Dalek equally.

5- And at this early stage, how many civilizations, including Earth, would perish with him at the hands of – er, plungers of the Daleks? Oooh. Plungers of the Daleks. That’s not half bad title. Granted, not as good as Tea-Time of the Daleks. Which leads me to another point. If the Daleks are supposed to be the number one menace throughout universal history, shouldn’t the Doctor at least be familiar with them already? I mean, I know they haven’t developed stair drive yet… but….

6- After all, isn’t that wall supposed to shield the TARDIS crew from the dangers of space/time travel? You’d think it would be solid enough to be opaque. Who cares? Chalk it up to Time Lord technology, it’s still a cool image.