The Daleks' Master Plan

The Daleks' Master Plan is the mostly missing fourth serial of the third season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which originally aired in twelve weekly parts from 13 November 1965 to 29 January 1966. This twelve-part serial is the longest with a single director and production code (The Trial of a Time Lord was longer but was made in three production blocks, with separate codes, and with four separate story lines each with their own authors and working titles).

This serial marks the final appearance of Adrienne Hill as companion Katarina, and the only appearance of Jean Marsh as Sara Kingdom. Katarina and Sara Kingdom both die during the serial, marking the first two companion deaths in the show. Episode 1, "The Nightmare Begins", marks the first appearance of Nicholas Courtney in Doctor Who, here playing space security agent Bret Vyon.

It was the second Doctor Who story never to be screened in Australia; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation judged the story to be unsuitable for children. Only three of the twelve episodes (two, five and ten) are held in the BBC archives; nine remain missing.

Plot
Some six months after the events of "Mission to the Unknown", the TARDIS arrives on the planet Kembel, and the First Doctor leaves the TARDIS to try to find medical aid for the wounded Steven, leaving him with the Trojan servant girl Katarina. Meanwhile, a Space Agent, Bret Vyon is also on the planet trying to find out what happened to Agent Marc Cory. The two parties cross paths and agree to work together, whereupon they discover that the Daleks have put together a grand alliance with various galactic powers to conquer humanity by use of a Time Destructor, a weapon with the potential to destroy all life on a planet by accelerating the flow of time. The traitorous Guardian of the Solar System, Mavic Chen, has provided the weapon's power core, made up of the rare element taranium. The Doctor infiltrates a meeting of the Daleks' alliance and steals the taranium core, before he, his companions, and Vyon escape by stealing Chen's ship, termed a Spar.

The Daleks force the Spar to crash-land on the nearby prison planet of Desperus, only for the pursuing Dalek ship to suffer an even worse crash, allowing the Doctor time to repair the Spar and take off again. As soon as they take off, however, they discover that they picked up a convict named Kirksen, who takes Katarina hostage. While they try to talk Kirksen down, Katarina activates the outer airlock door and ejects her and Kirksen into space, where they both die, leaving the shocked and saddened Doctor and Steven to contemplate whether her actions were deliberate.

After the Spar returns to Earth, the group makes contact with Vyon's old friend Daxtar, who unwittingly reveals that he is working with Chen. Vyon kills Daxtar, only to then be killed himself by his sister, fellow Space Agent Sara Kingdom. Kingdom unwittingly chases the Doctor and Steven into an experimental teleportation chamber, where they are transported to the distant planet of Mira. After the Doctor and Steven persuade her of Chen's treachery, she agrees to work with them, and helps them fend off an attack by the planet's savage, invisible natives, before the three steal a Dalek ship that has been sent to retrieve them. The Daleks force this ship to return to Kembel, but the Doctor and Steven manage to create a fake taranium core, which they dupe the Daleks into accepting before they and Sara flee in the TARDIS.

In an interlude from the main storyline, Doctor, Steven, and Sara land in a police station in Liverpool, and then a film set in silent-era Hollywood, leading to many comedic misunderstandings in both locations, before the Doctor breaks the fourth wall to wish viewers at home a Merry Christmas.

The TARDIS then lands on a volcanic planet, and is followed there by the Doctor's old enemy the Meddling Monk, who is out for revenge after the Doctor tried to strand him in Medieval England by sabotaging his TARDIS. The Monk damages the door lock of the Doctor's TARDIS, but the Doctor makes temporary repairs and manages to travel to Ancient Egypt; the Monk follows him there, as does Chen and a squadron of Daleks, who by now have deduced that the Doctor gave them a fake core. Chen and the Daleks force the Monk into working with them, and he gets the idea of taking Steven and Sara captive and using them as hostages. Without the time to create another fake core, the Doctor is forced to hand the real one over to Chen, though he at least manages to steal the directional circuit from the Monk's TARDIS, ensuring that the Monk cannot control its destination, and thereby can no longer pursue the Doctor.

Using the Monk's directional control (which is destroyed in the process), the Doctor is able to pilot the TARDIS back to Kembel, where Steven and Sara discover that the Daleks have deemed their fellow alliance leaders, including Chen, surplus to requirements and have imprisoned them. Steven and Sara free them so that they can ensure their races end their alliances with the Daleks, only to then be captured by Chen, who has been driven insane by the Daleks' betrayal and has deluded himself into believing that he is immortal and the leader of the Daleks. He marches Steven and Sara into the Dalek base and tries to give orders to the Daleks, who react by killing Chen. The Doctor takes advantage of the resulting commotion to steal and activate the Time Destructor itself, threatening to bring it to full power and destroy all life on Kembel if the Daleks do not let him and his companions go.

Steven is able to get back to the TARDIS before the Time Destructor reaches full power of its own accord, but the Doctor and Sara are not, and Sara is killed and aged into dust. Steven manages to help the Doctor back into the TARDIS, restoring them both to their proper ages, after which the Daleks arrive and, after trying and failing to destroy the Time Destructor, become the victims of their own weapon as it wipes out all life on the planet. Later, once the weapon has burned itself out, the Doctor and Steven emerge from the TARDIS, with Steven distraught at the senseless deaths of Bret, Katarina, and Sara, and the Doctor remarking on the "terrible waste" that has taken place.

Production

Script
According to the credits, the serial was written by Terry Nation (episodes 1–5 & 7) and Dennis Spooner (episodes 6 & 8–12), with the credit "From an idea by Terry Nation" on Spooner's episodes. Script editor Donald Tosh claimed in an interview that the work done by Nation on the serial amounted to less than 20 pages of work, and that he wrote most of Nation's episodes. However, Doctor Who historian David Brunt has disputed this, saying that Nation submitted over 30 pages of script for each of his episodes (apart from "The Feast of Steven") and that Tosh only polished the dialogue and/or cut scenes out for time or budget reasons.

Another controversy involves the title of the serial. Perhaps because of the multiple authors and/or typists, virtually every conceivable variant of the title The Daleks' Master Plan was used in contemporary documents, though this version is on a plurality of camera scripts. During production the story was referred to as Twelve Part Dalek Story on some documents.

The original intention was that the police station scenes of the Christmas episode would feature a crossover with the characters and location of the BBC's popular police drama Z-Cars. However, the Z-Cars production team vetoed the idea, although the Liverpool-area location of the police station survived in the transmitted episode. John Peel's novelisation of the serial references this plan by using the cast names of the Z-Cars actors for the police characters' names.

According to the liner notes for the CD release the fictional mineral taranium was originally called "vitaranium", but was shortened during production because of concerns about William Hartnell's ability to pronounce it. Also, it was felt that "vitaranium" sounded too much like "vitamin".

Christmas episode
Tosh and producer John Wiles later claimed that the scene where the Doctor and his companions celebrate Christmas was not originally in the script, and that either the scene was hastily written by director Douglas Camfield when the episode ran short or that Hartnell made an unscripted ad lib. However, it appears on Camfield's camera script, and it was common practice at the time for BBC shows to have a direct address to camera for a Christmas episode; editing would have allowed for the removal of the line if necessary.

Cast notes
Katarina, an inhabitant of ancient Troy, was conceived as a permanent companion and thus introduced at the end of the previous serial, The Myth Makers. However, the plans for the character were quickly re-evaluated by the writers and Wiles, who realised the writing challenges that came with such an unworldly character. As it was impractical to remove the character from upcoming scripts at short notice it was decided to write out Katarina by killing her early in The Daleks' Master Plan, making her the first companion in the series to die. Katarina's death was the first scene Adrienne Hill filmed for the series.

Jean Marsh had previously played Princess Joanna in The Crusade (and later played Morgaine in Battlefield). She had also been married to future Third Doctor actor Jon Pertwee. The character of Sara was created to fulfil the function of companion in Katarina's absence, with no intention for her to continue in the series beyond The Daleks' Master Plan.

Kevin Stoney returned as Tobias Vaughn, another villain working with an alien force – the Cybermen — against the Earth, in the Second Doctor serial The Invasion (1968). Additionally, Stoney also played Tyrum in the Fourth Doctor serial Revenge of the Cybermen (1975).

The lead actress of the film seen in "The Feast of Steven" was played by Sheila Dunn, who was Douglas Camfield's fiancée at the time the episode was in production. The two married just before the serial completed production. Camfield later cast her in a minor voice role in The Invasion and a major screen role in Inferno.

The alien delegates at the Daleks' conference on Kembel differ from those seen in "Mission to the Unknown", and as that episode is lost, there is some confusion over which is which. Those that reappear here had all been recast (see Ronald Rich), while some are new to Master Plan and some seen in "Mission" are missing – this only came to light when "Day of Armageddon" was returned to the BBC archives.

Reg Pritchard, who appears in "The Feast of Steven" as "Man in Mackintosh" had previously played Ben Daheer in The Crusade (1965), and the Doctor seemingly mistakes him for this character. Brian Cant later played Chairman Tensa in The Dominators (1968). Royston Tickner later played Robbins in The Sea Devils (1972).

Nicholas Courtney returned in the 1967 serial The Web of Fear as series regular Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and then went on to appear regularly as the Brigadier over the years until The Sarah Jane Adventures episode, Enemy of the Bane.

Missing episodes

 Episode is missing

Currently, only episodes 2, 5, and 10 are known as extant. All 12 episodes were recorded on and transmitted from videotape. Subsequently, BBC Enterprises had 16mm film telerecordings made for potential overseas sales. However, Episode 7 ("The Feast of Steven"), the Christmas episode, was excluded from this and the story offered for sale was an 11-part version. The original videotapes of Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 are listed among the first Doctor Who episodes ever ordered to be wiped, on 17 August 1967. At this point, "The Feast of Steven" became the first episode of Doctor Who to be seemingly lost forever. Episodes 3, 6, 10, 11 & 12 were wiped on 31 January 1969.

BBC Enterprises retained their film copies, although the story was never purchased by any overseas broadcasters, until at least 1972. A set of viewing prints was sent to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but the story was declined (as it was judged to be A (suitable for adults) on the basis of its overall storyline, rather than cuttable scenes) and the fate of these prints is unknown. At some point in the next four years, the BBC's film copies were junked.

A film copy of Episode 4 ("The Traitors") wound up in the BBC Film Library, although the reasons for this are unclear, as that library had no formal mandate to retain such material. In 1973, the episode was loaned to the Blue Peter production office for a feature on Doctor Who and never returned. Its ultimate fate remains unknown. By 1976, the entire story was considered to be lost. However, Episodes 5 ("Counter Plot") and 10 ("Escape Switch") were returned in 1983 from the basement of a Latter-day Saint church. The circumstances of how they got there remain unclear. Episode 2 ("Day of Armageddon") was returned to the BBC in early 2004 by Francis Watson, a former BBC engineer. Given that this is one of only two Hartnell stories that were never screened outside of the UK (the other being "Mission to the Unknown"), the recovery of the missing episodes from overseas sources remains unlikely.

Various clips from Episodes 1, 3, and 4 also survive:
 Episode 1 ("The Nightmare Begins") – In late 1991, a mute copy of the pre-filmed inserts for the story was discovered in a film can in the BBC archive. In 1998, these inserts were combined with the off-air soundtracks. A colourised version of this footage, made by Stuart Humphryes (AKA YouTube's Babelcolour) and James Russell was included as part of "The Dalek Tapes", a featurette on the Genesis of the Daleks DVD.
 Episode 3 ("Devil's Planet") – A clip of around 90 seconds was screened in a 1971 edition of Blue Peter (then co-presented by Peter Purves, who played the Doctor's companion Steven Taylor). Purves, in introducing the clip, erroneously identifies the serial by the title Devil's Planet, when it was only this individual episode.
 Episode 4 ("The Traitors") – A 1973 edition of Blue Peter featured another item on Doctor Who and included a clip of the scene leading up to Katarina's ejection from the airlock.
 In addition, prior to the recovery of the episode itself, the prefilmed inserts for Episode 2 ("Day of Armageddon"), including the raw soundtrack, were retained by the BBC Film Library and never junked. In 1991, the archive copy was discovered to be missing, but it was recovered in 1993. In 1998, these inserts were combined with the off-air soundtracks to reproduce the scenes as transmitted.

"The Feast of Steven" is the only episode to have existing home photographs, captured by Robert Jewell, who played Bing Crosby in the episode. The only surviving photographs that exist for the other missing episodes are production stills. Since there are so few of them for the individual episodes, clips and screenshots from the surviving episodes - mainly focusing on the Daleks - are often used in fan-made reconstructions.

On stage
The serial was adapted as a charity stage production in October 2007 by Interalia Theatre in Portsmouth, UK, as a finale to their highly successful run of previous Doctor Who stage shows. It was adapted and directed by Nick Scovell and produced by Rob Thrush. Scovell starred as the Doctor, as in the company's previous productions. Nicholas Briggs guest starred as the voice of the Daleks and also, briefly, as the Doctor following a regeneration scene at the play's end.

Commercial releases

In print

The Australian Doctor Who fanzine Zerinza had published a novelisation of the story in 1980, as issue #14/15/16 (thereafter reprinted a few times), but was not novelised by Target Books for almost ten more years, when it finally appeared in two volumes. The first, Mission to the Unknown, consisted of an adaptation of "Mission to the Unknown" and Episodes 1–6 of Master Plan. The second, The Mutation of Time, adapted Episodes 7–12. Both were written by John Peel at the request of Terry Nation and were published in September and October 1989, respectively.

Peel had intended to write the novelisation as a single, long book, but at the time Target Books had a page-limit maximum that required splitting the manuscript into two parts.

Peel made one major change to the televised storyline by placing a six-month gap between the first and second volumes; he later stated that this was to enable future writers to develop original storylines involving the character of Sara Kingdom. Other minor changes include a brief resolution to events in Ancient Egypt and forty-first century Earth.

In May 2010 unabridged readings of both volumes by Peter Purves and Jean Marsh, with Dalek voices supplied by Nicholas Briggs, were released by BBC Audiobooks. The titles were slightly modified to Daleks – Mission to the Unknown and Daleks – The Mutation of Time.

Home media
Episodes 5 and 10 were released on VHS on the tape Daleks – The Early Years in July 1992, which also included the silent pre-filmed inserts, which had been then-recently recovered (see above). In November 2004, all three surviving episodes were released on Region 2 DVD, in the three-disc Lost in Time box set, along with all extant clips from the story.

Soundtracks of all the episodes survive due to several fans recording the original transmissions. In 2001, the entire story (together with Mission to the Unknown) was released on CD with additional narration by Peter Purves, combining the best quality sections from various fan recordings and surviving master copies of the original music and sound effects. On 15 February 2019, in a new range called "Vinyl Who", the BBC released this story through Demon Music Group (again alongside Mission to the Unknown and with Peter Purves's narration) as a 7 x Heavyweight LP vinyl in both translucent blue and "Splatter Vinyl" editions. In January 2019, it was announced that another collection of high quality audio recordings, dubbed "The Randolph Tapes", had been discovered.

The music from this serial was released as part of Doctor Who: Devils' Planets – The Music of Tristram Cary in 2003.

References

External links

First Doctor serials
Dalek television stories
Doctor Who missing episodes
Doctor Who stories set on Earth
British Christmas television episodes
Television episodes written by Terry Nation
Doctor Who Christmas specials
Television episodes set in ancient Egypt
Television episodes set in the 1920s
Fiction set in the 3rd millennium BC
Fiction set in 1921
Fiction set in 1965
Fiction set in the 4th millennium