Season 2 Episode 6: Day of Reckoning

Serial: The Dalek Invasion of Earth
Episode: 3 (Day of Reckoning)
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companions: Barbara, Ian, and Susan

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: Richard Martin
Producer: Verity Lambert
Original Air Date: 05/12/1964

‘LONDON: WHAT A DUMP.’ (and other stories)

In which Babs is a guerrilla badass, Ian is good at hiding, Susan has an identity crisis, the Doctor is the grandpatriarchy (and mostly unconscious), everyone rethinks their responsibilities, and there is more iconic location shooting than you can shake a stick at.

Oh that theme tune after all this time. I think I’m having an emotion.

So it’s been an age since the last cliffhanger, and SUFFERING ZARQUON the Doctor is about to be robotised! Will Tyler et al save him?

Well, we’re going to have to wait to find out, because back at Resistance HQ, Dortmun is playing travel chess with himself. I repeat: Dortmun is playing travel chess with himself, which means that when the apocalypse came, this guy saved his mini board games. Does he have pocket Scrabble, too? I jest, but ‘the world is ending and Dortmun is playing chess with himself’ is a pretty accurate representation of Dortmun’s character.

Back at the saucer, the rebels attack one of the Robomen (oh I think it’s Noah from The Ark In Space again…didn’t he die already?) and Tyler and some other guy carry the Doctor off the robotising table. The rebels are freeing prisoners, and it’s chaos.

Outside, David, Babs, and Susan are crouching like bosses, and David beckons a balaclava-wearing Jenny over. Because Jenny is oldschool. He tells her to take the ladyfolk back to HQ, while he tries to get to the saucer alone. Jenny, obviously, protests, because this is idiotic, and tries to rally the other women by telling them their friends are in there. Which Babs didn’t know, because Susan was keeping it from her. BAD SUSAN. Pausing only to confirm her Space Daughter’s very uncool behaviour, Babs decides she can be an idiot, too, and launches herself towards the saucer. And because she is a Bamf and because the Bae is in trouble, Babs has to physically fight Susan off in order to do…whatever she’s about to do. Because she has no plan. But it matters not, for apparently Ian’s ‘BARBARAAAAAAA!!!’ reflex is reciprocated, which means that their mutual homing instinct will keep them from all harm, and anyway she has a Science Grenade.

The rebels are fighting tooth and nail, and lobbing smoky bombs all over the shop, and the prisoners (including the Doctor) are fleeing the saucer. I think I said this about the last episode, but this must have been bedlam to film. And the way it’s cut does give you this sense of a fast enough to be exciting/slow enough to be grim guerrilla battle, what with Daleks firing and people dying and smoke everywhere and Science Stink Bombs going off. Then this happens:

You may see your Space Bae across a crowded room.

OH MY PRECIOUS DARLINGS. The delighted, derpy look Babs throws Ian’s way before bowling another excellent overarm #likeagirl is gorgeous. Ian flees back inside the saucer as a Dalek glides past, and the rebels scatter and retreat.

Back on the saucer, it’s established that most of the rebels have either been captured or killed, and the survivors are being hunted down and murdered. Grim times. Ian, fortunately, has survived this purge by the simple expedient of hiding under the floor. I bet Ian is excellent at sardines.

AND OH TRICKSY FALSE CAMERA SHOTS, we go back immediately to an apparently lifeless Babs lying on a slab while an unseen woman sobs in the background. IS SHE DEADED? No, just out for the count. Phew. And she’s being tended by the brusque but supportive Jenny. As soon as she can speak, she’s badgering Tyler, but Jenny tells her ‘not now’, and a grimly exhausted Tyler informs Dortmun that his bombs were fucking useless. MAYBE YOU SHOULD HAVE TESTED THEM, DORTMUN, YOU HUBRISTIC ASSHAT.

So all the rebels are probably dead, but Babs cares only about Ian and the Doctor, because of course. Tyler tells her they *nearly* got the old man out. Outraged Babs is outraged. Anyway, Tyler reckons they all need to get the hell out of London because they’ve attacked a Dalek saucer and revenge is surely a-brewing. Dortmun says they should stay and work on the bomb; Tyler points out he’ll only have ‘one man’ and ‘these two’ (thanks) to use it for him. Jenny agrees they need to scarper, but Babs worries what will happen if Susan comes back and doesn’t know where they are; Jenny says there are codes; Babs points out Susan doesn’t know them. Which leads me to ask where in fact Susan is and why Jenny (who was last with her) abandoned her in the fray. Bad parenting from everyone.

Tyler goes off to look for more survivors; Babs wants to go with him, but he tells her no because he wants to move about alone. Which is honest, to be fair. She reminds him to look for her fam, with increasing desperation.

Character development digression: this antsy, trigger-happy, hungry-for-action, would-do-anything-for-the-Space-Fam Babs we get to see in this serial makes so much sense when you think about it in terms of her character arc. The first season for Barbara was all about coming to terms with being a time traveller, and forging that post-Aztecs relationship with the Doctor. This season, we’ve not yet had a(n?) historical adventure, and of course the previous serial was one in which Babs (in the uncut, less stupid version of Planet of Giants, at least) had to come to terms with what it means to acknowledge something worth dying for in amongst the absurdity of being home, when home was made strange and dangerous. Now she’s back in London, but in a post-apolcalyptic, Dalek-filled future London, and it’s illuminating to see her juggling that capacity for action she discovered on Skaro the first time she donned a pair of Excellent Thal Trousers and that sense of being in the right place at the wrong time. Essentially she’s applying the Doctor’s ‘at least we can stop being carried away with the flood’ model of time travel from The Reign of Terror to her own future, but without that sense of overwhelming responsibility she gets when she’s in her own past. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen, so she can act, in a way, irresponsibly. Of course, Babs continues to have a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, but there are times when being freed from the context in which those morals make sense makes her think less before she acts, especially where non-human-looking aliens are concerned (see her willingness to murder the mind-controlling snail brains in a previous Terry Nation script because they looked horrible). Which culminates in her shooting poor old Sandy in the next serial, much to Vicki’s chagrin, at which point she has to dial it back.

Anyway, Jenny is apparently willing to leave one of the cowering, shell-shocked rebels still at the base behind, and Dortmun is going to move to the other London base (across one of the bridges!) so he can keep working on the bomb. Babs says they’ll go with him. Then this happens:

‘You needn’t stay if you don’t want to,’ she adds coolly. BURN. Jenny, cowed by Barbara’s (selective) moral compass (I notice she didn’t object to leaving the shell-shocked guy to be killed by the Daleks when they inevitably revenge-attack the rebel base) decides she will join the running-across-London party. Babs asks Dortmun whether she thinks her Space Fam will be there; he replies breezily in the affirmative.

I love how Dortmun and Barbara both have their own kind of monomania, and how Jenny fits into this. I said before how you could read Jenny as a kind of potential future Barbara, which is to say a woman who has lost her family to the Daleks and who has channelled her remaining energies into survival-orientated badassery. And we know Babs is more than capable of living the Dalek-smashing life, and being excellent at it, but at what cost to her moral identity? I think Jenny and Barbara end up responding to one another so well because there’s some mutual recognition there.

Back on the saucer, the Dalek Supreme is ordering the fire-bombing of London. Yikes. The saucer flies over the city like a wobbly milk bottle top (beaut) accompanied by ‘[w]hatever Special Effects think a flying saucer sounds like’ (thanks, Infotext!).

Ian, apparently sensing that he is alone, crawls out of the his hidey-hole in the floor and bumps into Craddock!Roboman, who instantly tries to robotise him. With the help of the prisoner RoboCraddock is escorting, Ian gets the helmet off him and he sparks out. Ian and his new chum, whose name is Larry, instantly hit it off (said chum is heading to the mines to look for his brother and has stowed away), and they throw RoboCraddock out of the rubbish chute. They go back to hiding in the floor. Also Ian is adorable at meeting new people.

Meanwhile, Susan and David are running down a corridor thingie and dive behind a shrub. It’s not a million miles away from the French & Saunders LOTR spoof where Frodo evades the Nazgul by hiding behind a large twig.

They are being chased by a Dalek, who gives up on them, but then rather horribly murders someone offscreen as David buries Susan’s head in his biceps. Then a beautiful scene happens:

SUSAN: If only we could go to the ship and get away from here.
DAVID: Well, I couldn't go anyway.
SUSAN: David, David, perhaps you could. I could ask Grandfather. I'm sure he'd let you come. We could go to a place that had never even heard of Daleks. 

DAVID: And what happens if there's something unpleasant in the new place? 

SUSAN: We'll move on somewhere. 

DAVID: No, Susan, that's not for me. 

SUSAN: Why not? 

DAVID: Look, things aren't made better by running away. 

SUSAN: Well, it's suicide to stay here. 

DAVID: This is my planet! I just can't run off and see what it's like on Venus! 

SUSAN: I never felt there was any time or place that I belonged to. I've never had any real identity.
DAVID: One day you will. There will come a time when you're forced to stop travelling, and you'll arrive somewhere.

Pausing only to chuckle immoderately at the fact that this is essentially that scene from The Sound of Music where Revered Mother tells Maria she can’t use the convent to run away from her problems and that she has to go back and face them (which I suppose makes the Tardis the convent), HURRAH FOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. (Also, Terry Nation I take my hat off to you for the incisive poetry of that last line—and you’ll arrive somewhere. Perfect analysis is perfect.) I still think she and David are wrong for each other in the long term, because it’s clear just how childish Susan still is from this exchange, and I still think it’s criminal that what happens to Susan is less a case of having ‘arrived somewhere’ than having been ‘forced to stop travelling’, but I love that we get to meet someone who is conscious of being invested in their time/place and who actually calls the Gallifreyans out on their ‘don’t get swept away with the flood’ attitude to life. (David may be patronising as hell, but it pains me to say he’s also right.) If Susan had then gone on for another couple of serials in which she could have dealt with being challenged like this and then had some proper barneys with her Grandfather, it would have been so much more satisfying. Susan is learning that home isn’t just about belonging and identity, it’s also about accepting responsibility. And it’s particularly galling that the Doctor, who makes the decision to ground Susan apparently for her own good, never learns that all-important lesson that every little Time Lord has to stop running one day.

Ermahgerd serxhual ternshern.

(Disclaimer: there is, as I have mentioned before, something beautiful in the Doctor’s ‘our lives are important’ philosophy, and I have waxed lyrical about it elsewhere, but there’s also the flip side of that philosophy which is what I’m dealing with above. And I am aware that we have just had that serial where, in its uncut and unstupid version, Babs and the Doctor decide to take a stand instead of running. In short, it’s nowhere near as simple a trajectory as I’m making out, but this is just one way of looking at it.)

Anyway, the sudden sexual tension that ensues is shattered by a noise, and Susan is back to being bossed about and told to hide as David bumps into a rebel called Baker…WHO IS DRAGGING THE DOCTOR ALONG! He’s groggy as hell, and Susan immediately begins cuddling him. Baker’s off to Cornwall alone because of reasons, and Susan says she has to stay in London. David gives Baker a hip flask (because booze will presumably help), and everyone wishes everyone else luck. Then Baker walks right into a Dalek patrol and is killed. Shit.

BUT ENOUGH OF THAT, FOR NOW IT IS TIME FOR BABS AND JENNY TO RUN ACROSS LONDON WITH A WHEELCHAIR WHILE DALEKS TRUNDLE ABOUT ALL OVER WESTMINSTER. THERE ARE NO WORDS FOR HOW AWESOME THIS ENTIRE SEQUENCE IS AND HOW MUCH I LOVE THE LOCATION SHOOTING IN THIS SERIAL SO HERE ARE SOME GIFS.

Also, enormous kudos to Jacqueline Hill and Ann Davies for doing all that sprinting at arse o’clock in the morning. Also, DRUMS.

So they arrive at the Transport Museum, and there are those fabulous ‘VETOED’ signs everywhere (seriously, find me a better post-apocalyptic London and I will be a monkey’s aunty) and Babs is quizzing Dortmun about various plot points. Basically, the bomb was meant to eat away the Dalekanium shells, but they’re not mining for Dalekanium, and nobody really know’s what they’re digging for, they just dig-dig-dig-a-dig-dig.

Jenny explains that the VETOED signs mean some of the resistance have moved off to the south coast, and that she doesn’t blame them, and that they were very lucky to get across London unseen.

Babs is making tea, because of course, and OH I retract everything I said about Babs being increasingly irresponsible because then this happens:

JENNY: We haven't got a chance in London, the way things are building up.
BARBARA: Well, what can we do? Where can we go? Anyway, what's the point in running away all the time? 

JENNY: I'm not running, I'm surviving, that's all.

And this is what I meant when I said you could also read Jenny as a pre-Barbara Doctor as well as being a post-apocalyptic Babs. And Barbara, like David (and Ian, actually) is very much a ‘fight the world you’re in’ sort of character this week.

And OH this scene just gets better and better. Babs wishes the Doctor were here, and so does Dortmun, because of Science, and it transpires she’s been asking herself ‘what would the Doctor do?’ and has come to the conclusion that he would 100% go straight to where the trouble is head for the mine. I know she’s wrong because he’s recovering from his brush with robotisation, but boy does she know him well. Then Jenny pipes up and reveals her ignorance of the Rules of Doctor Who by suggesting that the Doctor may not in fact be alive (and upsets Babs in the process):

Well, he sort of does, narratively speaking. Dortmun, in a rare moment of sensitivity, sends Jenny outside to keep watch, and tells Babs that she’s not callous really, she’s just dealing with fighting the Daleks in her own way. Which is what I love about Jenny: she’s flawed, and it’s not gendered.

Anyhoo, Dortmun wants Babs to find the Doctor and give him his notes. Something is afoot, because he wants Babs to keep hold of them for him. Babs says she’s not leaving him, and he says they should head for the mine, and that she should ‘round up’ Jenny. Charming.

Clearly Babs and Jenny are having a heart to heart out there, because Dortmun has time to pick up his sticks and wheel himself offscreen. Enter Babs and Jenny, who wonder where he’s gone, hope he wouldn’t be so stupid as to go outside, and notice he’s left his notes behind.

Oh and he is that stupid. He’s wheeled himself outdoors and is yelling for the Daleks who face him across the rubble. He gets up, staggers forwards, and is exterminated as he lobs the new improved bomb…which still doesn’t seem to have worked.

Jenny freaks out and tries to run to him, but Babs pulls her back (apparently Jacqueline Hill assured Ann Davies she could go for broke because she would properly restrain her—thank you, special features!) and they hide, badly, behind a milk float.

Enter a Dalek, who, in a rare moment of comic relief, attempts to interrogate a headless dummy, calling it ‘subcultural’. Ouch.

*poke*

But seriously, how does the Dalek not spot them?

Back in the ruins, Susan is helping the Doctor to walk again, and talks about the numbness wearing off, which is sort of funny but not funny-ha-ha because of the whole ‘Billy suffered temporary paralysis when an extra dropped him earlier in the filming’ incident.

Anyway, the Doctor attempts to reassert his authority over the situation, telling Susan he essentially gives zero fucks about what David says because he’s in charge and they should go back to the Tardis. Susan disagrees. Then this happens:

DOCTOR: Do you question my authority, child? 

SUSAN: No, Grandfather, it's not that at all. It's just that David says—

DOCTOR: You seem to place more reliance on that young man's word than mine, don't you?
SUSAN: Oh, Grandfather, it's not that. It's simply that he lives in this time. He understands the situation.

Urgh that Susan isn’t just sticking up for herself but rather substituting one man’s authority for another, but I do like that what seems to be bugging her most is the question of time, and respecting the authority of those who live in whatever happens to be the here and now. More conflict on this theme, please, and while we’re at it perhaps more of this in Doctor Who in general in order to combat the Doctor’s ongoing Gallifreyan Saviour complex (albeit one somewhat mitigated by Capaldi’s recent ‘I am an idiot’ epiphany).

But then something gorgeous happens: the Doctor listens to Susan. In a hilarious little buttering-up-the-grandfather-in-law scene, a breathless David arrives to inform them of Daleks being, well, everywhere, and asks the Doctor’s advice as ‘the senior member of the party’. I will never not appreciate how much William Hartnell relishes playing the Doctor when he’s being vain. The Doctor essentially tells David they should do exactly what Susan says David says they should do, but makes out like it’s his idea, and then makes a point of being faux gracious to David by saying it’s only a suggestion and David should think it out for himself. Susan’s face is a picture as she tells him she thinks that’s a very good idea, and humours him with a cuddle. Boy has she outgrown him. I live for this dynamic. Well done, everyone.

Meanwhile, Ian and his new chum Larry are having the chats underneath the floor tiles. Larry tells Ian his brother Phil reckons if they can find out what the Daleks are up to, they might be able to beat them, which Ian thinks makes sense. Larry’s brother also thinks the Daleks want the magnetic core of Earth. Which makes less sense.

Anyway, the Daleks have landed and are disembarking (WHEEEEEEE!) with the Robomen behind them, and Ian and Larry take the opportunity to get out of their hidey-hole. (Iffy camera shot is iffy.) Larry, who is the most cheery, adorable chappie ever, suggests they exit via the rubbish chute. Ian asks what’s out there; a gleeful Larry tells him he has no idea, and goes first. I love Larry.

Back in the outdoor ruiny bits, Susan reckons they ought to wait just five minutes more before moving, which is convenient, because some Robomen have just arrived…TO LAY A LARGE TICKING BOMB RIGHT BY THEM.

OH RUDDY CRIPES WILL THE GALLIFREYANS AND THEIR WOULD-BE NEW RECRUIT TO THE FAM BE EXPLODERATED? WHAT WILL BABS AND JENNY DO NOW? WILL IAN AND LARRY HAVE MADCAP ADVENTURES IN THE DALEK MINES? WILL THE SPACE FAM EVER BE REUNITED?

Summary (as applicable to this episode)

Does it pass the Bechdel test? With flying colours.

Is the gaze problematic? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) dressed 'for the Dads'? Nope.

Save the girl or save the world? Whose decision is it? N/A.

Does a woman fall over/twist her ankle (whilst running from peril)? Nope. And there's a lot of running.

Does a woman wander off alone for the sole dramatic purpose of getting into trouble so she can be rescued later? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion(s) captured? Nope.

Does the Doctor/a man companion/any other man have to rescue the woman companion(s) from peril? Nope, this week the men still need rescuing.

Is a woman placed under threat of actual bodily harm? Well, there is a lot of fighting and running and everyone being in peril, but there are no women being gratuitously menaced this week.

Does a woman have to deal with a sexual predator? Nope.

Is/are the woman companion's/s' first/only reaction(s) to peril gratuitous screaming? No.

Does a woman faint at the sight of peril/horror or generally lose consciousness (discounting normal sleep)? Nope.

Does a woman companion go into hysterics over something reasonably minor? No. Though Susan does have to bury her face in David's biceps when she hears an extra being murdered by Daleks. Which isn't minor, but still, face-burying.

Is a woman 'spared' the ordeal of having to do/witness something unpleasant by a man who makes a decision on her behalf/keeps her deliberately ignorant? YES. And Susan is complicit, which infuriates me. Why on Earth didn't they tell Barbara that Ian and the Doctor were at the heliport? What did they think she was going to do? Have a fit of the vapours and find herself incapable of bowling overarm? Also Dortmun.

Does a woman suffer in silence (to further the plot)? Nope.

Does a man automatically disbelieve or belittle something a woman (companion) says happened to her? No, but there's plenty of general ridiculing of Susan from the Doctor when she dares to spout the views of a man other than him.

Does a man talk over a woman or talk about a woman as though she isn't there? Dortmun talks over Jenny when she starts talking about how the Doctor could well be dead.

Does the woman companion have to be calmed/comforted by the Doctor/a man companion/a man? Yup. Susan.

Is a woman the first/only person to be (most gratuitously) menaced by the episode's antagonist(s)? Nope.

Is a man shamed into doing/not doing something because the alternative is a woman doing/not doing something? A little bit when Tyler pours cold water on Dortmun's continued bomb-making plans.

Does the woman companion come up with a plan? Not strictly speaking, no.

Does the woman companion do something stupid/banal/weird which inspires a man to be a Man with a Plan? No.

Does a woman come up with a theory and is it ridiculed by the Doctor/a man? Not exactly, as Susan is in fact coming up with David's theory, but it is still ridiculed by the Doctor. This is all in the service of making it look like Susan's ready to fly the nest, and the Doctor is clearly meant to be in the wrong, but still, it's there.

Does a woman call the Doctor out on his bullshit? Yes. Susan. But then she fluffs him up.

Does a woman get to be a badass? And how.

Is the young, strong, straight, white male lead the person most often in control of the situation? Nope. 

Is there past/future/alien sexism? Yup. David tells Jenny to take the women back to base while he goes to raid the saucer.

Does a 'present'-day character call anybody out on past/future/alien sexism? Jenny responds to all this nonsense by trying to rally Barbara and Susan by spilling the beans about who's imprisoned in the saucer.

Does an past/future/alien person have the hots for a woman companion and is it reciprocated? David and Susan have definite sexual tension.

Did a woman write/direct/produce this episode? No/No/Yes.

Verdict

God I love this episode. Those location shots. The Babs and Jenny Show. Guerrilla warfare. Character development chats. Ian, bless him, has very little to do and is mostly being cute making friends on flying saucers, and the Doctor is out for the count for a lot of the time, but Babs and Susan get a decent outing, and there's plenty of action to be had. I don't hate David quite as much this week, even though he has his moments of being a dick. His conversation with Susan in which she starts to rethink her Gallifreyan Saviour Complex is a highlight, even if it's just a thinly-veiled excuse to get them to make goo-goo eyes at each other. Next week I think may be the one with the truck, which is obviously one of my all-time favourite moments, so let's hope there's as much to chew over in the non-truck-related scenes as there was this week. Also, it's good to be back.