XXX1 - Death to the Daleks 1

Death to the Daleks has some similarities with both The Daleks and the virtual remake of The Daleks, Planet of the Daleks, but not enough to be annoying. Oh, there's the standard Terry Nation staples of The Doctor and companion finding themselves alone on a strange planet, getting separated, the companion finds the bad guys, The Doctor finds the good guys, and there's a surprise appearance of the Daleks at the end of Episode One.

There's also some more features of the TARDIS that are revealed for the first and last time - another feature often seen in Nation-written scripts. It's interesting to see the TARDIS depleted of its power, but it's quite handy for the Doc to have an oil lamp sitting in the console room when it happens. The hand crank to open the door is a relatively new feature, although something similar was previously seen in The Web Planet.

But that, thankfully, is where the similarities end. The result still isn't that impressive, though. The join between location shooting on film to brightly lit sets with grey studio floors is very jarring. The incidental music, as done by Carey Blyton and a saxophone quarter, is also quite grating, but not nearly as bad as Blyton's earlier score for Doctor Who and the Silurians. There's also some endless banter about space plagues over dinner. If John Abineri wasn't in this, I'm not sure my attention would have been held at all.