Death to the Daleks (TV story)

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For the Big Finish Productions audio drama of this same name, see "Death to the Daleks!".

Death to the Daleks was the third story of Season 11 of Doctor Who. It was notable for being the first time Sarah Jane Smith had been on a planet other than Earth, and the first time she had encountered the Daleks.

Synopsis

An energy drain makes uneasy allies of the Doctor, Sarah, a Marine Space Corps expedition, and a squadron of Daleks; all are trapped on the planet Exxilon with its hostile natives. The key to escape lies at the heart of a powerful and mysterious lost city, but only after a series of deadly traps.

Plot

The Doctor and Sarah are en route to Florana for a vacation when the TARDIS suffers a series of power failures. An unknown force somewhere on the nearby planet Exxilon is causing the energy drain, and they barely manage to land on the arid planet in order to find the source. The Doctor and Sarah are pursued by the primitive, xenophobic natives and separated. Sarah discovers an enormous city, pulsing with energy, but is captured by the Exxilons. They consider her presence near their sacred city to be an abomination, and prepare her for sacrifice.

The Doctor, meanwhile, encounters a Marine Space Corps expedition whose ship has also crashlanded due to the power drain. They are in search of the rare mineral Parrinium, found only on Exxilon, which is desperately needed to cure a galactic plague. Another ship lands nearby. The Marines initially mistake it for a rescue vessel, but a squad of Daleks emerge, guns at the ready.

A Dalek is destroyed by the Exxilons

The energy drain, fortunately, has disabled the Daleks' weaponry. They also are seeking Parrinium, as their own worlds are falling victim to the plague (so they say). The Doctor, the Marines, and the Daleks form an uneasy alliance to find the source of the energy so they can escape, but they are all captured by the Exxilons. The Doctor saves Sarah from sacrifice, but is recaptured and is himself sentenced to die. They are rescued by Bellal, a friendly Exxilon, who explains how their civilization had once been very technologically advanced. Thousands of years ago they built the enormous city, one of the 700 Wonders of the Universe, which became sentient and drove them out. The Doctor realizes that they must infiltrate the city to deactivate the energy drain.

The Daleks, meanwhile, replace their electronic weaponry with mechanical projectile weapons and soon seize control of the Exxilons, forcing them into slavery to mine the Parrinium for them. An enormous metallic snake-like creature occasionally emerges from the caves to pick off a stray Dalek.

The Doctor and Bellal enter the city and undergo a series of potentially deadly traps and tests with the Daleks in hot pursuit. They reach the center of the city where the Doctor interfaces with the city's 'brain,' causing the equivalent of a nervous breakdown. A Dalek bomb destroys the source of the energy drain, and the city begins to crumble.

The Daleks, having amassed enough Parrinium to hold the galaxy to ransom, leave in their spaceship and prepare a plague bomb to wipe out life on Exxilon. However, one of the Marines who had previously hid on board prior to launch sacrifices his life to destroy the Dalek ship with a bomb. Sarah and Jill Tarrant, the Marines' scientific advisor, had previously replaced the Daleks' Parrinium with bags of sand. The Marines await the arrival of a rescue ship to bring the much-needed plague cure to the afflicted planets. The Doctor bemoans the city's destruction, as it leaves the Universe with only 699 Wonders.

Cast

Crew

References

Daleks

  • The Daleks move through psychokinetic power (which presumably allows them to fire their weapons).
  • The Doctor describes the Daleks to Sarah as "only half robots...Inside each of those shells is a living, bubbling lump of hate."

Elements

  • It's also the cure for the space plague, which was caused by the Daleks' 'plague missiles'.

Medicine

Military

Races and species

  • The Doctor believes the Exxilons travelled to Earth and taught the Peruvian Incas how to build their temples.

Planets

  • The Doctor was intending to take Sarah to the planet Florana which has effervescent water.

TARDISes

  • The TARDIS has emergency storage cells in case of power failure. Without power, its doors need to be hand cranked.

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 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 DW: 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.
  • Clips from this story were used in part 5 of the 2001 documentary series "SF:UK".
  • The scene where the Doctor and Sarah Jane exit the TARDIS onto a wasteland and discover a petrified lifeform may be a homage to DW: The Daleks, when the Doctor's group first landed on Skaro and encountered a petrified creature.
  • Michael Wisher, who supplies the Dalek voices in this story, would later go on to portray Davros.
  • 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

Production errors

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.
  • Effervescent water - as described at the start of the first episode - would not give the illusion of additional buoyancy to a swimmer as the Doctor claims. For the bubbles to rise they would need to be less dense than water, and their presence would therefore reduce the overall density of the liquid. This would make Sarah Jane more likely to sink, not more likely to float.
  • When the root beneath the city destroys the Dalek in the far shots it has white speech globes and when zoomed in it has orange. The other Dalek in the tunnels has the default white lights.

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, despite not actually entering the city herself.
  • This is Sarah Jane's first encounter with the Daleks. She would face them again in DW: Genesis of the Daleks and, decades later, in DW: 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 (DW: The Daleks, DW: The Dalek Invasion of Earth, DW: 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 DW: Dalek, DW: Army of Ghosts
1987 release (BBCV 4073)

Timeline

Home video and audio releases

VHS releases

Death to the Daleks was released on VHS in 1987 in the omnibus format. It was later released in 1995 in the episodic format.

Novelisation and its audiobook

Death To The Daleks novel.jpg
Main article: Death to the Daleks (novelisation)

External links

Template:Season 11

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Dalek television stories
For the purposes of this list, a "Dalek story" is one in which one living, authentic Dalek plays a part within the confines of the story, outside of flashbacks to previous stories and cliffhangers that lead into the following story. For this reason, stories such as The Space Museum are not counted due to the Daleks' appearance being defined by their importance to following stories, while stories such as The Wheel in Space and The Waters of Mars are absent due to the Daleks' only contribution being references to past Dalek stories. Stories like The Wedding of River Song, Hell Bent, Once, Upon Time and The Vanquishers are also not included due to the Daleks' appearance being restricted to a single scene of no consequence to the plot of the story, while the TV movie is also absent due to the Daleks only being heard from off-screen.
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Because of the ubiquity of this race, no attempt will be made here to list every appearance in every medium. Instead, we focus on televised appearances here, and invite you to explore a complete list of appearances elsewhere.
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