Doctor Who Retro Review: Serial 019—Mission to the Unknown
By T. Scott Edwards
Mission
to the Unknown, or Dalek Cutaway, is frankly a very brave
decision. It is the last work of Verity Lambert on the show as producer, and
sees her out in style. For the past 2 seasons, the cast and crew have had to
deal with recording an episode a week, week in, week out, for almost an entire
year at a time. Within those constraints, we have had the use of film inserts
and pre-recorded dialogue to cover for the absence of the principals during
certain episodes – most recently Hartnell's absence in The Time Meddler. Here, though, they strike on gold – why not send all of the principals off for a break,
and fill it with a teaser story leading into The Daleks' Master Plan, due to air in 5 weeks' time. It was also
written by Terry Nation as a pilot episode of sorts, as he was hoping to get
the Daleks their own mainstream TV show, sans Doctor, ideally over in the
United States. Since the last Dalek serial was The Chase, which made the nemesis of the Doctor look like a bunch
of dithering morons, it is nice to see them back on form in all of their
menacing glory...
Marc Cory is fantastic – and Edward De
Souza's performance is absolutely perfect. In the stead of the Doctor and his
companions, Cory is created as our hero, and he is a post-modern James Bond in
space – he's even "Licensed to Kill", for goodness sake! His calm
exterior when goading Lowery to work quicker is brilliant, and his cool and
collected response after shooting Garvey – "It was him or you" – is
superbly delivered with a dry and sardonic tone. His slap to calm Lowery down looks fantastic – he looks like a snake,
coiled tightly and ready to spring out again if need be.
As the pair return to the safety of the
ship for their chat about the truth of Cory's mission, there is a horrifying
moment where Garvey's hand twitches. As it flips over, we see thorns sprouting
from the back of his hand, and white fuzz growing there. Whist the Varga plants
are not the best looking creatures – they look a little too fluffy to seem
deadly – it is the very idea of them which is so utterly repellent. One prick
can kill a man, slowly and, it would seem, painfully, yet even once dead it is
not the end. The humanity is gradually eked out of you, driving you to become
homicidal, driven only by the desire to kill. The idea that all of these Varga
plants on Kembel were once people, but are now slowly-shuffling vegetation, is
a rather gruesome concept. Again, it is de Souza's delivery that really sells
the idea – his description of the transformation is enough to make you shudder,
and the name-dropping of the Daleks leads us into the next scene wonderfully...
13 minutes into the serial, we see our
first Daleks, and begin to learn something of their nefarious plans – a
collation of the emissaries from a number of galaxies. Following their
ludicrous sending-up in The Chase as
bumblers and coughers, it is fantastic to see them as mysterious enemies again,
and they progress nicely throughout the story.
An aspect of this particular story that
has dated slightly is the technology used by the rocket – at one point Lowery
says that the SOS machine works "just like an ordinary tape recorder".
My issue with this is that, bearing in mind the story is set some thousand
years after the failed Dalek Invasion of
Earth, which itself was at some point after the year 2164, surely the
technology would have advanced quite substantially by then? It seems a touch
lazy on Terry Nation's part, and the technical crew are just as bad for not
having created a more 'sci-fi' prop.
The arrival of a huge space ship, "from
the planet Gearon", signals the beginnings of the Dalek plan, and
signposts to Cory and Lowery that something huge is happening on this abandoned
rock of a planet. The Daleks arrive promptly at the rocket ship, with Lowery
and Cory narrowly avoiding being caught, and under Dalek fire their rocket
disintegrates. Again, with nothing visual to base it on, it's unclear how
effective this is – but it sounds magnificent, and the awe in Jeremy Young's
voice as he exclaims "it's just falling apart!" also helps to sell
this. Tragically, Lowery falls to the ground and is pricked by a Varga thorn,
sealing his fate – he is destined to become one of them.
The following scenes, involving the
alien delegates, is the principal reason that this serial is so impressive, and
such a shame that it is missing from the archive, as the makeup and costumes
are, from the telesnaps, incredible. Malpha, in particular, is incredibly
impressive. Looking like The Thing from the Fantastic 4, his face is a series
of criss-crossed fragments, and his voice is pervasive and unnerving. As the
only delegate named in this serial – although others are named in The Daleks' Master Plan, despite changes
in appearance, stature and actors even – he drives this meeting with the Black
Dalek, and Robert Cartland, returning already from his voice work for the Rills
in Galaxy 4 is as impressive as last
week.
One special mention, however, must go to
one of the delegates, and one whom certainly makes no return in the later
serial – part Christmas tree, part "Sorting Hat" from Harry Potter. Good
lord.
Scott Edwards is a teacher of English and Theatre Studies at Barnard Castle School in the North East of England, with a BAHons in English Literature and Film Studies. He is also a self-professed ‘ming-mong,' and in addition to timelordapprentice.blogspot.co.uk he also runs facebook.com/Classic.Doctor.Who. You can also follow him on Twitter: @TimelordTSE.
Labels: Doctor Who, Guest Blog, reviews, T. Scott Edwards
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