Episodes one and three of The Daleks’ Master Plan have recently been discovered and made their ways to iPlayer and YouTube, so I’ve been tasked with writing a review of the second episode, Day of Armageddon, bridging that gap. I know Day of Armageddon well, as I’ve seen it several times. It actually has one of my favourite things in the entire series in it.
We start off with the cliffhanger from The Nightmare Begins with the Daleks having found the TARDIS while the Doctor tries to make his way back. This sets the Daleks off looking for intruders in the jungle, which now include the Doctor, Bret Vyon, Steven Taylor, and Katarina. One of their solutions to the intruder problem is what they call “Project Inferno”. This has the Daleks put forth one of the more well-known clips from this story – the one where the Dalek plungers are replaced with basically flamethrowers, and they burn the entire jungle down. I actually loved seeing the Daleks do something more than just exterminate people and waggle their plungers around – a nice early example of that.
The other main part of this story is the big meeting with the Daleks, various planetary representatives, and Mavic Chen. I know Chen was introduced in episode one, but this was always my first taste of him due to The Nightmare Begins being missing until now. I love Kevin Stoney’s performance here: a mix of crazy, scary, and a real lust for power and control. He’s always been one of the reasons I’ve wanted more episodes recovered from Master Plan. Here, we get the full meeting of delegates. Chen does his big performance, having delivered a “Full Emm of Taranium”, an object that’s the main target of everyone, as it’s an essential element to the Daleks’ plan for the Time Destructor. I absolutely adore Stoney’s delivery of “A FULL EMM…” The way his voice flows over those words makes that moment an absolute highlight — even if the Emm itself looks like a can of Campbell’s soup with the label taken off and some bolts put on.
Given it’s 1965 BBC, I think they pulled off the look of the various delegates well. I’m not 100% sure what the point of all of them are to the plan actually… but it’s cool to see them just the same.
We also get some stellar direction by Douglas Camfield — his use of camera angles and close-ups definitely masks the production realities of the day (tiny sets, etc). With that comes some really good atmospheric sound by Tristam Cary, an underrated aspect of this era of Who.
Katarina is in this episode, but I can see why they didn’t keep her. It’s a shame as Adrienne Hill deserved better treatment than to be dumped that fast. Steven, of course, remains great — one of my favourite Hartnell-era companions.
It’s fun to see Nicholas Courtney here. With The Nightmare Begins now back in the archives, this is no longer his earliest available appearance in Doctor Who, but he’s still got some great moments here. I adore the scene where both the Doctor and Vyon tell each other, “will you please shut up?” It’s great stuff, well acted by Hartnell and Courtney.
Basically, this episode is a strategy set-up episode: most of the characters are positioning themselves, making plans and setting up events for episodes to come in the series. On its own, Day of Armageddon mostly holds up; there’s a lot of enjoy, but I’m super glad we now have the episodes on either side of this so you can get more of the story.
While I don’t think we’ll ever see The Feast of Steven again, I’d absolutely love to see Destruction of Time make its way back.
Day of Armageddon is available to watch now on BBC iPlayer. As are The Nightmare Begins and Devil’s Planet!
