(Note: A Review Of All Six Episodes Of The Serial)
After meeting them on Skaro and then defeating them in 22nd-century Britain, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the First Doctor would face off against the Daleks again. After all, Britain was still in the grips of Dalekmania. So Terry Nation, this time under the eye of script editor Dennis Spooner, had them facing off once again, but this time across time and space in a grand chase. And in a serial called, what else, but The Chase.
It's a story that, on the surface, had all the right ingredients for success. There's the return of director Richard Martin, who'd worked on the first two Dalek serials so effectively, for example. There's the TARDIS crew, with Maureen O'Brien having settled into the role of Vikki alongside the First Doctor, Ian, and Barbara. And with a story set to take in the sights and sounds of the universe, engaging in a "flight through eternity," to quote one of its episode titles, once again pushing the constraints of what was possible in a 1960s BBC studio, what could go wrong?
Surprisingly, a fair amount. Namely, and this is something that likely seems down to Dennis Spooner, given previous serials like The Romans, its tone. The Chase is played far too often for laughs, from the first scene around the space-time visualizer with the TARDIS crew dancing to the Beatles to the various stops in Flight Through Eternity (including a cringe-inducing scene with an Alabama hillbilly at the top of the Empire State Building). When you can take a maritime mystery like the Mary Celeste and make it into something to laugh at, perhaps your story is on slightly shaky ground. Not that the ideas presented are necessarily terrible, having Doctor Who explaining the Mary Celeste is a genius idea, but doing so with a comedic edge undercuts them at every turn.
Just as bad, if not worse, it makes the Daleks themselves into figures for laughing at in places. Whether attacked by robot monsters in one episode or creating a laughably bad android double of the Doctor in another, they increasingly come across less as a threat than a minor nuisance tolerated to get to this week's cliffhanger. It's something that likely played well to a juvenile audience in 1965, something that the viewing numbers hanging around nine million will attest. Yet viewed after more than a half-century, it's enough to make a fan squirm in their seat.
Yet, The Chase has its moments which makes it worth seeing. The final episode, The Planet of Decision, is the best of the lot, played straight with a couple of exceptions. That last episode is likewise notable for introducing the robotic Mechanoids who've become recurring foes for the Daleks in spin-off media right up until the recent Daleks animated YouTube series as part of Time Lord Victorious. The big battle between them and the Daleks is a tad rough in places, again speaking to the limitations, but remains nicely realized as a piece of direction and editing. It also sees the introduction of Peter Purves as Steven Taylor, who will become a companion. Though more on him in the next serial.
Last but not least, it's also where the last of the original companions, Ian and Barbara, departed the series. Their departure is handled differently from Susan's exit a few serials before, with less build-up to it, though it has a certain logic given how the script lines things up. While there's a bittersweet quality to the scenes, what follows it in an epilogue of sorts makes for an utterly delightful closing sequence that is a joy to watch even today. Ian and Barbara leaving is also a turning point for the series itself, marking the end of an era within an era, the breaking-up of the original team.
The Chase, then, is a mixed-bag if ever there was one. A serial that encompasses so much that this era got both right and wrong. The ambition with the experimentation, always reaching but often not quite grasping. It's also an example of something fans of Classic Who have been doing for decades now. Namely, taking the rough with the smooth.
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