019 - Mission To The Unknown

Broadcast:

9^th October 1965

Doctor:

(William Hartnell did not feature)

Companions:

(Vicki, Steven did not feature)

Adversary:

Daleks, Varga

Written by:

Terry Nation

Director:

Derek Martinus

Music:

Stock

Script Editor:

Donald Tosh

Producer:

Verity Lambert

Average Viewers:

8.3m (single episode)

Summary: A rocket ship is stranded on a dark and fearful planet as mutant plants and Daleks close in. There is a grand plot afoot.

In the 1960s, television was a very different thing from today. Although Doctor Who was popular, nobody was making great lists of the stories or counting the adventures. Once an episode was broadcast nobody expected to ever see it again. Sometimes an episode would end in a way that expected you to watch the next to see what happened and sometimes there would be a sense of closure and you'd watch next week because you liked the show and knew things would go off in a new direction. Doctor Who stories generally fed into each other and although you knew when a new adventure started, there was no over-all title, just individual episode names. This all leads to an awkward pimple in lists and data sheets that would be drawn up in later years as fans (and BBC staff) started talking about the various adventures, because Mission To The Unknown doesn't fit neatly anywhere. Technically, it isn't an isolated story by itself, but it is surrounded by two unrelated adventures. In production terms it could be referred to as Galaxy 4 episode 5 because it has the same crew and was part of the same block, but it is an unrelated story with a different writer. But since it doesn't feature the Doctor or either of his companions it could be left out of adventure lists entirely... but it is a prelude to a later story and could perhaps be referred to as The Daleks' Master Plan episode 1, or if you prefer to count that story as 12 consecutive episodes starting 5 weeks after this one perhaps this is episode 0!

But as I said at the start, none of those concerns existed in 1965 when it was first broadcast. All viewers were aware of was that last week's episode concluded an adventure and the travellers wondered what was happening on the planet that now appeared on the scanner screen... In the news this week, more tragic deaths as first 150 train passengers died in South Africa then 209 fishermen from seven boats died in a typhoon. The Moors Murders finally came to an end as Ian Brady was arrested for the murder of Edward Evans, though police were still unaware of the previous killings. In lighter news Post Office Tower opened and would appear in Doctor Who 8 months later. Ken Dodd was still at number one with "Tears" while cinemas had the likes of What's New Pussycat and the not-quite-a-Carry-On film The Big Job featuring Wanda Ventham who would appear in The Faceless Ones (1967), Image Of The Fendahl (1977), and Time And The Rani (1987).

But the kids were excitedly expecting a new Dalek adventure...

Interestingly, the reprise at the start of Mission To The Unknown doesn't include any of the TARDIS scene where the travellers gaze at the scanner screen. Instead it cuts straight to the jungle scene of a spaceman struggling and remembering "Must kill..." This reinforces the idea that this is a brand new adventure and viewers can expect the TARDIS to land and join in a few minutes later... but it never does. Thus the regulars don't appear at all and receive no credit (and therefore no fee) except William Hartnell who was contracted to receive a credit regardless of whether he appears or not (the recent Time Meddler episode, for example). Instead we are left to watch three members of a rocket ship marked UN Deep Space Force Group 1 as they try to fix their craft (the specifics of the problem are not elaborated on but apparently screwdriver and hammer are all that is needed!) The man we see first has been infected by a plant-creature and is shot before he can kill his crew-mates but the parasitic aspect of the infection causes his body to continue changing until he is able to infect them as well...

Ten minutes into the story, we see the first Dalek and there is something not right about them. The voices just don't feel right, either talking to fast or too slowly. There is a slight indication that commanding Daleks talk faster while the 'drones' receiving the orders are much slower but this is really the first time this has occurred and it doesn't really work. Curiously, the humans also have quite rapid speech in places which makes some of the exposition difficult to follow (especially in the low quality, muddy audio recording on the Loose Cannon reconstruction, though I found Ian Levine's animated version which was clearer) - the talk about the rescue beacon in particular, though it received further detail later in the episode where it was explained as if it were new technology... clearly exposition for the viewer but amusing to seen old 60s reel to reel tape recorder being used in such context.

There is little more to the story than that! There is a collection of delegates from six separate planets meeting with the Daleks and it is revealed that they are planning to take over or simply wipe out our galaxy (Terry Nation made very loose use of terms like solar system and galaxy making it unclear where everyone came from) starting with Earth - the script specifies that the Dalek Invasion Of Earth was about 1000 years ago and by now humans are aware of Skaro and that the Varga plants responsible for the infection were engineered by the Daleks and only grow natively on their home planet. Each of the six delegates look different but there is something cheap and thrown together about their appearance and they all have the same monosyllabic slow speech pattern. The set of the conference room looks under developed and sparse as well. Perhaps an unfair criticism but indicative of the bolt-on nature of the episode. However, the rocket and jungle sets look great and the Varga form looks quite reasonable from what can be seen.

I have read reviews that praise this episode and describe it as dark and thrilling but I really struggled to be interested. Again, this may be partly due to the telesnap reconstruction but the music didn't help either, being rather dull but orchestral and featuring a clichéd "dan-dan-da-da-daan!" suspense/reveal nature. It is difficult to praise a story that has less than 23 minutes to set up and conclude and thinking of it as just a single step to a much larger story makes it easier to consume and it really shouldn't be assessed in isolation, like any other episode it belongs with its brothers. Otherwise, I would have to assess individual episodes of all the other stories rather than just saying things like "episode three feels a bit flabby but the final part really comes to life and makes up for it" and scoring the whole story. This is the problem mentioned at the start. Mission To The Unknown doesn't sit neatly anywhere and will forever vex people like me who want it pigeon holed one way or another. It would fit far easier after The Myth Makers and simply be classed as part of The Daleks' Master Plan but on its own it scores a paltry 38%

To explain a little more about how we came to this mess, cast your mind back to the start of series two and Planet Of Giants, an adventure originally planned as the very first but deemed to difficult and impractical to achieve. The reworked story, improved confidence in the production team and greater studio facilities allowed it to be made a year later but the end result wasn't exciting or pacey enough for a series opener so it was cut down and compressed into just three episodes rather than four. This left the series one episode short though, and with no extra money to extend any of the later stories. The regular cast's contracts wouldn't have allowed them to work an extra week without incurring further costs either hence an entire episode without them. Presumably leaving it to the end of the production run would also have let Verity Lambert know exactly how much money should could scrape together from limiting spending on the likes of The Space Museum and Galaxy 4 and making it part of Nation's epic made for a relatively easy story and given the success of the Daleks provided enough to keep the viewers interested - otherwise there was nothing 'Doctor Who' about it! And that would have been a shack to viewers since the Radio Times listed the full complement of regulars with no mention of the fact that they wouldn't actually be seen... further shocks would follow as they returned next week in a completely separate story set in the past! The Dalek's master plan to conquer our galaxy would have to wait a month!