Devil’s Planet, the third episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan, is a splendid, cracking adventure: great fun, full of excitement, and a ripping yarn. I am agog with admiration for Douglas Camfield and his team, who keeps the action moving with such pace and seriousness, and with such limited budget and resources at their disposal.
The Daleks of Devil’s Planet are splendid: after the squeaky voices of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and the bumbling Daleks of The Chase, here are impressive Daleks with proper voices and scheming malevolence – the best they have been on the small screen since their first story. Camfield moves the camera in amongst the Daleks, gliding with them at the Daleks’ pace, and making the viewer part of the action. Excellent camera work disguises the fact that there are only four Dalek props. The Dalek Supreme is excellent. I particularly appreciated its pause after Mavic Chen taunted the Daleks for their inefficiency at losing the Spar and the Taranium Core: for all that Dalek machines are inexpressive, we could feel the Supreme’s supressed rage in its silence after the taunt.
And the cast? All played it for real, with deadly seriousness and conviction, and sold it to us that this was the Dalek city, the Spar interior, the prison planet of Desperus. Nicholas Courtney was impressive as Bret, the square-jawed Sixties hero of 4000 AD (or whenever it was); Peter Purves (Steven Taylor) was as reliable and likeable as ever – another square-jawed Sixties hero. By jiminy, you would be happy to go into space with these chaps to protect you! William Hartnell was very good as the Doctor, toning down the twinkliness that had marred other stories of the period –tee hee, my boy, hmm! – by tuning his performance to the serious macho tone of Terry Nation’s grim universe. Hartnell clearly had some problems with his lines in Devil’s Planet as his arteriosclerosis sadly continued to take hold of him: there were a couple of fluffs, but he recovered from them well and the action never let up.
Although she was given very little to do in the third episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan, Adrienne Hill convincingly played a very likeable and gentle Katerina. Nation’s scripting of the companion, and indeed of the whole story, reminded us how very much of its time this Doctor Who episode was. As with so many other stories of the Sixties and Seventies, the only female character was the companion (or did I spot a female extra among the prisoners? I suppose the Daleks might be female): Adrienne’s role was almost exclusively limited to expressing her wonder and love for the Doctor (well, we can sympathise with that), before, inevitably, getting captured at knifepoint by Kirksen in the cliffhanger.
As Mavic Chen, Kevin Stoney stole the show in each of his scenes: a difficult thing to do when the viewers’ eyes are so much on the impressive and exciting Daleks. Stoney is, by turns, amused, assured, unruffled by the dangers, unimpressed by the Daleks’ power and by their boasting that they are the most technically advanced species in the universe. Mavic Chen is a James Bond villain in a Doctor Who setting. There has been criticism in some quarters of a Chinese character being played by a white actor (shades of The Talons of Weng-Chiang) but, aside from his surname, I didn’t think there was anything much to indicate that Chen is supposed to be Chinese: I took his extraordinary eyebrows and dark skin to suggest that he has alien blood in him somewhere.
The prison planet of Desperus is grim and convincing enough, although perhaps Nation tries to establish it too quickly for it to be completely comprehensible. I wasn’t entirely clear about the meaning of the prisoners’ struggle over the knife – he who possesses it becomes leader. Is this because the knife is a practical weapon? Against hundreds of other prisoners, it would hardly be effective. Or is the knife a symbol of authority, as Za’s ability to make fire makes him the leader of the Tribe of Gum? Terry Nation, who is sometimes seen as a bit of a hack, recycled the prison planet idea wholesale as Cygnus Alpha in the first season of Blake’s 7.
In a 1970s interview, Douglas Camfield said that The Daleks’ Master Plan was far too long and that it wasn’t much of a story. It’s fair to say that the plot of Devil’s Planet is thin, but the action rattles along at such a pace, the peril is so wonderfully real, and the actors throw themselves so fully into the spirit of the thing, that the viewer doesn’t actually care – or necessarily notice.
What a treat! Unseen for sixty years! What nostalgia! What fun! Inimitable, incomparable, extraordinary – my hero, Doctor Who!
Devil’s Planet, the third episode of The Daleks’ Master Plan, is available to watch on BBC iPlayer and YouTube right now!
