Doctor Who: The Evil Of The Daleks

Contrary to popular belief, in each Doctor Who story that they appeared in, the Daleks’ trademark electronic voices sounded slightly different.

Yes, yes I know what a nerd the above sentence makes me.

I only mention this because Evil Of The Daleks is the one in which they sounded utterly petrifying.


Another David Whitaker script, and again some fantastic intelligence behind what our characters get up to.

These are the Daleks as they were when they first appeared on the show – calculating and manipulative. It really jars to see the characters thinking about things so much, straight after the daydream of The Faceless Ones.


Maxtible’s time-travel experiments sound so enthralling that he convinces you that no-one in Doctor Who land has ever travelled in time before.

Alas, again the bigger story just doesn’t make sense by the end though. The initial premise of Waterfield selling brand-new antiques in the present-day is abandoned, and it’s hard to figure-out what on Earth the time-corridor is doing in his house, or why the Daleks need it to lure the Doctor in. And if the Daleks can already travel in time, then what on Earth do they need the TARDIS for?


Still, there are just too many great elements in this story to dwell on the negative. The good Daleks, the Emperor Dalek, and all the sheer politics and manipulation that’s going-on with just about everybody, not least the Doctor as he willingly betrays Jamie.

This is one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time. It’s an epic, and a story in which the odds just keep on getting raised week-to-week. The final cataclysmic end is a satisfying conclusion (if you’ve forgotten the earlier episodes), and shows that Doctor Who really was going from strength to strength in those days.

Just over a year later, straight after repeating the story, the BBC had most of it destroyed.


A little more on that here.