Doctor Who (TV Series) The Evil of the Daleks: Episode 1 (1967) User Reviews

The start of something big.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 7/10 · 26 October 2015]

London 1966, The Doctor and Jamie have left Ben and Polly, the TARDIS is carried off by a truck. A clue leads the pair to an Antique shop, run by Professor Waterfield. Waterfield specialises in Victorian items, each appears as new, the shop serves as a trap for the Doctor, The Daleks are the spider at the heart of the web.

I love how the episode is a direct continuation from The Faceless ones, I like the link, the even reference the events of the Faceless ones, it's not often that occurred. I like how it's just Jamie and The Doctor, it had felt at times like there were too many in the TARDIS.

It is a classic serial, but I have to say I think it takes a bit of time to get going, Part 1 is a little bit on the slow side. The opening episode is all about creating an atmosphere and introducing the characters, there's not a great deal happening. The appearance of the Dalek at the end was the start of huge things ahead.

Extermination

[A_Kind_Of_CineMagic · 10/10 · 28 August 2014]

Review for all 7 episodes:

Spoiler Alert: This 7-parter seemingly ends with the destruction of the Daleks and that is suitably dramatic. The fact that they eventually returned does not diminish the power of this story as they only reappear 5 series later. That is a long gap without the most famous enemy appearing in the show. The drama and impact in this story is impressive but so too is the story idea itself with the great concept of setting events in the past, present AND future. One aspect of the plot does not fully make sense: Why do they even need to test Jamie to "find the Dalek factor" and why is he seen as the only worthy candidate? It seems an unlikely plan but it there are not clear cut illogical things of a kind that annoys me. The whole story is thrilling and interesting.

Over the course of the story with its different elements a tremendous amount of absorbing entertainment is created. We have Earth in the past, Earth in the 1960s (present day of the time) and an alien planet in the future providing contrasting backgrounds to the action. There are also some fascinating characters such as Maxtible (Marius Goring), good acting especially by Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines with plenty of excitement and fun.

The quality of script writing from David Whitaker is as usual very high and nothing really lets this story down very much except the slightly questionable idea of gaining the 'human factor' from Jamie. Despite that minor 'imperfection' it is a great adventure and a great end to series 4 leading into the superb 5th series.

My Ratings: 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7 - 10/10, Episodes 3 & 6 - 9/10

Overall: 9.71/10

Season 4 was a momentous season but in my view falls somewhere in the middle compared to all the other seasons rather than near the top. It has five great stories but it also has one of the show's poorest stories and three stories which are OK but pretty flawed. Innes Lloyd and Gerry Davis running of the series brought some great stories but not consistent greatness.

Average Season 4 rating: 8.38/10

The Final End of the Daleks...

[wetmars · 10/10 · 11 November 2020]

The Daleks draft the Second Doctor into distilling the human factor. Once implanted, it will make the Dalek race invincible. Jamie's faith in the Doctor is stretched to the limit as the Doctor appears to be collaborating with the Daleks. The Doctor has a few tricks up his sleeve, but then again so might the Daleks.

Review of all seven episodes -

It might be the second greatest classic Dalek story ever. I love the concepts behind the Dizzy Daleks. They're what makes the story so much fun fun, so memorable, and great Dalek humor. Had me laughing there.

About the Dalek Emperor. He is the scariest Dalek ever. His tone is utterly terrifying you doesn't wish to mess with the great mighty Dalek Emperor.

The Final End scene is just the second cool scene in Dalek history, a 5-minute scene where we see Chaos erupting in the Dalek city. Thus beginning the Dalek Civil War between three Daleks who are Alpha, Beta, and Omega against all of the Dalek Empire, they won! I love those dizzy Daleks. Memorable scenes where they were taking the Doctor a ride and saying:

"Dizzy... Dizzy... Doctor!" etc.

Such a shame that this story has only six missing episodes and one surviving episode; I would love to see the astounding so-called Final End of the Daleks and many scenes.

The Evil of the Daleks had the coolest send-off of the Daleks. It felt that there was no chance of survival. The story was beautifully designed, very visual, had a cool down-chilling famous 1-minute Dalek theme that's called, and had a great concept of the menacing Dalek Emperor. Such an insanely good episode because this story was originally meant to be the Final End for the Daleks. But of course, the audiences freaked out there one Dalek casing was pulsing after the ultimate destruction of the Dalek Empire.

It was a good idea to set the Daleks in a Victorian timescale. Jamie did spectaculary in this story that leads me to choose him as the second-best companion of all-time in Doctor Who since he has the longest-running companion time shown. Marinus Goring was born to play as Maxtible. I don't know why he makes an excellent performance, god damn!

During the 1980s, Patrick Troughton also proposed remaking The Evil of the Daleks as a feature film. I wish that could have happened and see how the movie was, if only.

10/10!

Removing terror and strength from the Daleks.

[TARDIS_Tech_Support · 4/10 · 24 October 2023]

The first 4 1/2 episodes (over 90 minutes!) was a waste of time, and could have been laid out in 10-15 minutes instead. The casual racism against Turkish people didn't help matters either. They could have swapped out any baddies, maybe even last serial's Faceless Ones, and ended up with an equal or better serial than this. Most of the episodes are typical plot-stretched settings, going no where and doing nothing for 10-15 minutes at a time. It was a waste of time, and is equivalent of the low quality plot lines seen in the 13th Doctor's run.

The last 2 1/2 episodes are pretty great in spots, and I'd highly recommend just skipping to those episodes if you're going to give this serial a viewing.