Doctor Who (1963–1989): Season 2, Episode 6 - Day of Reckoning - full transcript

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This episode was first broadcast
on 2 October 1964.

It was seen by 11.9 million people,
a drop of half a million on the previous week,

but still enough
to keep Doctor Who's toehold in the top ten.

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The Doctor on the operating table was one of
the serial's more controversial images in 1964,

though perhaps
the journalists who reported the row
may not have been watching very carefully.

At least, I didn't see any
''whip-wielding Daleks'' menacing the Doctor.

Terry Nation originally conceived the saucer
interior in terms of its impressive size:

''A complex of girders
and ramps, sloping and spiral.''

''Suspended between upright shafts
are instrument panels and television screens.''

The set was built on a rostrum
about three feet off the studio floor,



and was adjacent
with the ramp at the saucer entrance.

When you see the ramp in the next shot,
notice the repair job in the middle.

An unsupported structure, it had been broken
by marching Robomen in camera rehearsals.

Richard McNeff,
who plays the rebel Baker, was often cast
as burly policemen in the 1950s and '60s.

It was originally intended to show Baker
carrying the unconscious Doctor in his arms,

but during camera rehearsals,
McNeff came down too fast, pitched forward,
and dropped William Hartnell.

Hartnell landed on a camera's
steering circle and hurt his back.

A BBC nurse was summoned
from Television Centre.

Hartnell, who was 56,
was temporarily paralysed,

but he recovered enough
to complete the evening's recording,
with the carrying sequence amended.

He went for an X-ray the following Monday.
No bones had been broken,

but he had to spend several days in bed and was
unavailable for the following week's episode.

After this scene, there was a break
in recording to clear the smoke.

There were five ventilation ducts in the studio,
two on one wall and three on the wall opposite.



The studio air-conditioning was poor,

so recording was often
a sweaty business for all concerned.

See, in this scene the smoke has gone!

The Dalek Supreme is now painted fully black.

The ''striped'' casing you saw
in the reprise earlier in the episode

was the previous week's paint job,
played in from a film recording.

In the first draft, Dortmun is consumed
with guilty despair at the failure of the attack.

He knew the bomb wasn't ready, but, he says,

''I wanted to be the one man
who found the way to beat the Daleks.''

Dortmun is played by Alan Judd,
whose later television appearances included

Lord Peter Wimsey (1972),
The Pallisers (1974),
and the judge in Jury (1983).

Jacqueline Hill (1929-93), who plays Barbara,
got her first break as an actress

thanks to the legendary American actor-director
Sam Wanamaker, who cast her
in The Shrike (Garrick Theatre, 1953).

Her previous television roles
included the female lead in the BBC production
of Requiem for a Heavyweight (1957),

and an outstanding performance
as a serial killer's wife in Maigret (1962).

In the camera script,
London will only be destroyed if necessary.
A complete search has been ordered first.

In the first draft, the Daleks
send their ''War Fleet 9'' to destroy the city.

Meanwhile, the saucer
is to go to ''Earth Base One''.

Perhaps rather drastically, it flies
right up into space and back down again.

Terry Nation described
the sound of the saucer in flight as:

''Whatever Special Effects
think a flying saucer sounds like.''

A more complex fight was originally worked out.

Craddock gets Ian in a full nelson,
but Ian throws him over his shoulder;

Craddock jack-knifes
and puts a scissor lock on Ian's head;

Larry pulls the Roboman helmet off,
causing Craddock to have a fit;

and they then take him
to the operating table and anaesthetize him.

To indicate that the saucer is in flight,
there's a wind machine blowing
on the other side of the disposal chute.

You can just see the breeze catch Larry's jacket.

Carole Ann Ford had wanted
to get out of Doctor Who from quite early on.

She was disappointed in the role of Susan,

which had not proved quite as challenging
as she had at first been led to believe.

She had expected to be playing
a much more sophisticated character,

scientifically minded,
in telepathic contact with her grandfather,

and adept with martial arts like Honor
Blackman's Cathy Gale in The Avengers (1962-4).

She felt that the character was not developing
in any coherent way as the series went on,

and was further frustrated
by having to turn down some choice roles
during the period of her contract to Doctor Who.

Experience should have made Susan grow out
of her fear of alien monsters, she suggested,

and she also wanted to explore Susan's
sexuality by giving her a crush on Ian.

The production team rejected
her suggestions, but had similar concerns.

Susan was designed as a figure
with whom the young audience would identify,

but Carole Ann, who had been 21
when she was first cast in the role,

was physically too mature
to play a convincing teenager.

So it was decided to release Carole Ann
at the end of her contract, lose Susan,

and devise a new regular character
who would be a much younger girl.

This is why Susan grows up and falls in love
in 'The Dalek Invasion of Earth'.

In the summer of 1964, plans were laid
for the character developments
leading up to her exit,

and a BBC document dated 30 July
detailed the ''proposed elimination of Susan'':

''The enormity of the world catastrophe
has a marked effect on Susan's character.

''She grows more adult as she realises
that the individual is the society.

''She begins to find her place
in time and space.''

Initially, it was hoped to introduce
the new regular character in this serial,

but this had to be abandoned,
partly because the casting fell through.

The intention had been to engage
14-year-old actress Pamela Franklin,

whose film roles had included a haunted
Victorian child in The Innocents (1961),

and who later starred
in the BBC's juvenile thriller serial
Quick Before They Catch Us (1966).

Franklin's name was still
in the frame on 17 August,

less than a week before filming
was due to begin on this serial.

The role was then quickly rewritten and recast.
Can you guess which of the characters it was?

The other problem was reluctance on the part
of some members of the BBC's management

to make a firm decision
whether there would be any more episodes
of Doctor Who after the first year.

This was as late as mid-August 1964,
when this serial was in pre-production.

No more Doctor Who would have meant
no need for a new regular, end of story!

After this sequence, the camera script includes
a short scene cut from the finished episode.

Susan realises that the Daleks
have decided to kill everyone,
and David reasons that they must leave London.

But first they can call in
at Dortmun's second command post
at the Civic Transport Museum in Knightsbridge.

Then the Doctor describes his ''interesting''
experience at the hands of the Daleks:

''They paralysed my body
and will-power but not my conscious mind.''

This serial called for Doctor Who's first
large-scale use of location sequences.

Terry Nation originally proposed using footage
from the film Seven Days to Noon (1950)
to show the deserted London streets.

In the film, London is evacuated
after an atomic bomb threat.

But it was soon recognized that a great deal
of material would have to be specially shot:

''We must show
the total invasion of London,'' noted Nation.

Here the Daleks
have occupied Westminster Bridge,

but only with difficulty,
because it was an effort for the operators
to pedal up the rise of the bridge.

Unfamiliar with the new pedal-driven casings,
the operators were also anxious
about safe speeds,

so director Richard Martin
had trouble getting them to go fast enough.

There was trouble, too,
from the Metropolitan Police, after traffic
on the bridge had to stop for the Daleks.

Terry Nation proposed showing Daleks
in all the familiar locations
that were eventually used and several others.

One was, inevitably, ''Daleks gliding
around the forecourt at Television Centre''.

Others included ''Daleks emerging
from the underpass at Hyde Park'',

and weaving
''amongst the porchways of the Albert Hall'';

''Daleks near the round pond, and/or near
the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens'',

and ''gliding up the Mall towards Buck House''
(Buckingham Palace).

To get a suitably deserted effect, it was
decided to start filming early in the morning,

so the cast and crew began work
in Trafalgar Square at 6am on Sunday 23 August.

Even then, the square wasn't totally deserted.
Look in the background
and you'll see that the buses are still running,

and one of the crew's first tasks
was to move on the vagrants
who had slept rough in the square overnight.

The Dalek script, seen here,

was put on with white plimsoll blanco,
which designer Spencer Chapman
reckoned would be easily removed.

It had to be removed sooner than expected
when a policeman decided
he was defacing public property!

It was an exhausting morning for the actresses,
constantly pushing the wheelchair,

while the Dalek operators, sealed inside
the casings, had their own unique problem,

which they solved by relieving themselves
into a Trafalgar Square grating.

After the Daleks had frightened
a group of drunken partygoers
returning home via the square,

the unit moved on, in reverse story order,
to Whitehall, Westminster Bridge
and the Embankment.

By the time these shots were filmed
at the Albert Memorial, it was 10am.

London had begun to wake up.

Traffic and crowd control
were becoming a problem,

and the time was fast approaching
when the crew had agreed
with the police to vacate central London.

So after four hours' work, the crew moved on
to quieter locations in suburbia.

In the first draft, this is an ordinary bus
garage, housing a bus with flat tyres.

In the camera script, he says
that the problem is ''to find a way
to crack the outer casing the Daleks wear''.

In the camera script, he says,
''It certainly isn't oil or any metal we know.

''The Daleks have the pick
of a hundred planets for those things.''

It was, of course, Jenny
who replaced the younger character
planned as the new series regular.

She was a ''beautiful Anglo-Indian girl'' who
turns out to be Professor Dortmun's daughter.

She appears in the first draft,
and her name is Saida.

In the first draft,
Dortmun advises Barbara and Saida
to get out of London through the sewers.

Saida protests that this is impossible.
They won't be able to manage
his wheelchair in the tunnels.

Dortmun, however, is adamant that
he has nothing more to contribute to the defeat
of the invaders and can only be a burden.

Story editor David Whitaker used to joke
that the production team had been blackmailed
into bringing back the Daleks.

In fact, it had been anticipated
from early on that the Daleks might return.

After their first appearance,
the BBC received many letters
from children who wanted their own Daleks,

and two of the props were donated
to Dr Barnardo's children's homes.

However, the other two,
and other Dalek paraphernalia, were retained
for a possible future appearance in Doctor Who.

The ultimate source of the ''blackmail'' was the
New Zealand-born entrepreneur Walter Tuckwell,

who saw the Daleks' commercial potential
and wanted a concession
to license them to toy manufacturers.

He contacted BBC Enterprises, who in turn
wrote to the Doctor Who production office.

This was in February 1964, and coincided
with the earliest plans for this serial.

The Daleks invaded Earth's toyshops
in time for Christmas 1964.

Rich kids could exterminate grandad
in their Dalek dressing-up suits,
which sold for nearly ?9.

The books, badges and confectionery
were more modestly priced,

and when this serial was on air,
plans were afoot for many more Dalek products,
ranging from models to soap.

There was even
the inevitable Christmas novelty record,

I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas with a Dalek
by the Go-Gos.

It didn't make the Top 40!

William Hartnell and Carole Ann Ford
thought of the relationship
between the Doctor and Susan as a tactile one.

As grandfather and granddaughter,
they are close blood relatives,

and this means that they need have few
inhibitions about touching one another.

Fortunately, this was also true of both actors!

A little scripted dialogue was cut
from the following exchange
between the Doctor and David.

The Doctor realises that it will
be virtually impossible to get south
of the river (and so back to his ship),

and David estimates that there are
fewer Daleks on this side of London.

Studio recording for this episode
took place on 2 October 1964.

The next shot was recorded out of sequence,
at the end of the evening's recording.

This shot, too, was recorded
out of sequence and inserted during editing.

This was the sequence where, in camera
rehearsal, the Robomen broke the ramp
because they failed to break step.

The slaves are the same ones
who were rescued in the attack
on the saucer earlier in the episode.

In the first draft,
the episode ends as the Daleks
prepare to destroy London with ''inferno bombs''.

The city will be girdled
with a ring of fire, and the wind
will carry the flames into central London.

One of the bombs is carried by a single Dalek
and fixed to a wall near to Doctor Who's
hiding-place. It proves to be very heavy:

''The Daleks must be as strong as six men
to carry these around,'' says David.

The cliff-hanger comes when Doctor Who
realises it's a bomb, tells them to run,

then finds that his paralysis
still hasn't quite worn off.

He can't move his legs, and the needle ticks
inexorably down to the ignition point.

The non-speaking freedom fighters included:

Roy Curtis, Joe Hardesty, Roma Milne

Uncredited production contributors
to the serial included:

Roy Fry (Editor)

Eddy Walstead (Telerecording Editor)

John Lopes, Ann Smith,
Clive Doig (Vision Mixers)

Brian Hodgson (Special Sound)

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