By Jessica Holmes

The title of this article says it all, really. This serial is… well, it’s really quite something, and I don’t mean that in a good way. So, to recap: the Daleks are chasing the TARDIS through time and space, taking them to exotic places like a desert world beset by monsters, a mysterious ghost ship, and… a New York tourism hot-spot. Let's see where they wind up next.

JOURNEY INTO TERROR

Well, here we go, I suppose. The TARDIS makes a landing in a dusty old mansion, and the Doctor drags Ian off to explore while the women make the much more sensible choice to stay near the TARDIS. The mansion is quite thoroughly spooky, infested with bats and goodness knows what else.

It doesn’t take long for things to take a creepy turn, as skeletons drop from the ceiling and ghosts rudely barge through people.

And then Frankenstein’s Monster shows up.

No, really.

The Doctor and Ian find a laboratory upstairs, and within, a familiar scene: the strange machinery, the lumpy shape under the tarp. And then the monster rises, giving the pair quite the fright.

Meanwhile, downstairs…

I cannot believe I’m typing this.

Downstairs, Barbara and Vicki meet Count Dracula.

He doesn’t do much other than introduce himself and then leave. In the time Barbara takes to see where he went, Vicki manages to disappear, and a woman appears on the balcony above to scream something unintelligible. Nope, I have no idea what her problem is.

Anyway.

Barbara leans into a moving wall because no haunted house is complete without a few secret passageways.

Upstairs, the men note that something feels strangely familiar about the house. Oh, like the numerous public domain characters running about the place?

I’ll bet you Walt Disney had something to do with this.

The Doctor comes up with a theory on this house being some sort of physical manifestation of the collective fears of humanity. I don’t know what the physical manifestation of existential dread would be, but perhaps that’s a bit too heavy for teatime telly.

If his theory is true, the Daleks shouldn’t be able to land here, seeing as it's all just a figment of the imagination.

And a couple of minutes after making his case, the Daleks land. So much for that, then.

Ian and the Doctor can't find the women downstairs, and beginning to worry they reluctantly venture back into the laboratory, where a Dalek politely asks Ian where the time travellers are.

Let’s just take a moment to process this. You mean to tell me that the Daleks have been chasing these humans across time and space for three and a half episodes, and don’t even know what they look like?

Ian and the Doctor scarper as Frankenstein’s Monster rises to do battle with the Dalek. Now, there’s a sentence I never imagined writing. Time to place your bets, folks. Who would win, the Monster or the Dalek?

You might be surprised.

The men make it back downstairs, where they manage to meet with the women again.  Where did they go and how did they get back? Pssh, who cares? It’s time for the Hammer Horror showdown.

A Dalek arrives on scene to accost the gang, but before it gets the chance to blast them to kingdom come, Count Dracula pops out. The group make a run for it while the Dalek is distracted, Vicki stopping to warn the Count of the grave danger he’s in. Bless.

However, she needn’t worry, as the Dalek’s blast does nothing at all to him. Well, I say she needn't worry, but that's not quite true. The Count's fine, but the Doctor's neglected to do a headcount and the TARDIS just left without her.

Then things really descend into madness.

As the Count repeatedly informs the Daleks ‘III AAAM COOOUNT DRAAACULA’, Frankenstein’s Monster tosses the plunger-toting menace about like dustbins, and the woman on the balcony incessantly screams gibberish. Amidst the chaos, Vicki sneaks aboard the Dalek capsule.

The Daleks, realising they’re beaten, beat a hasty machine into their own capsule. So, that wild fever dream is over. What was really going on, though?

The Doctor stands by his theory, but Ian thinks a simpler explantation is more likely. Sure enough, he’s right, though he'll never know it.

The cameraman lets us in on the secret by panning the camera down to the the ticket stand for ‘Frankenstein’s House Of Horrors’, $10 entry, which further signs indicate was the highlight of the "1996 Festival of Ghana." Well, it would have been if the event hadn’t been "cancelled by Peking."

I only have more questions now.

So, anyway, aboard the TARDIS the adults eventually realise they’ve left their ward behind. Mr Chesterton and Miss Wright, I am very disappointed in you. You’re meant to be the responsible ones.

Aboard the Dalek ship, they’re in hot pursuit, and about to deploy their secret weapon: a ‘perfect’ robot copy of the Doctor.

I will get to this in a moment.

Vicki attempts to contact the TARDIS to no avail. The rest of her team are feeling tremendously guilty as well they should. However, they apparently can’t go back for her for important time-travel reasons, but if they could capture the Dalek ship, they could get her in that.

Let’s just go with it.

On the Dalek ship, the roboDoctor is almost ready. Or perhaps I should call him Roboctor? Let’s have a look at him.

A perfect copy, the Daleks insist. Sure, apart from the face, the height, the build, the general bearing, and, well, everything about him. Hartnell voices him in a very dodgy dub. I don't know why he couldn't just play the doppleganger fully.

You know what? I’m going to call it Doctor What.

The final shot rolls in as Doctor What affirms his orders to infiltrate and destroy and this time… he is played by Hartnell. I despair. Why? I just do not understand. It’s so jarring.

Stick around, we’re not done yet.

THE DEATH OF DOCTOR WHO

It might well be if things carry on like this.

The TARDIS lands in a swamp populated by walking mushrooms that are scared of bright lights. That’s neat, I suppose.

There’s a trail of lights overhead, which the companions decide to follow, reasoning that this might be a decent place to fight the Daleks. The Daleks arrive soon after and decide they should kill anything that moves, because of course they do.

Vicki creeps out from hiding and flees into the swamp, promptly running into a walking mushroom. It doesn’t kill her because ‘killed by a giant mushroom’ is too embarrassing a fate to foist upon any character. The universe won't abide it.

The rest of the group find a cave at the end of the trail of lights, and in it they find a sort of glowing wand which they can use to ward off the mushrooms. It’s more of a glorified torch than a weapon, but that doesn’t stop Barbara waving it about and making adorable shooty sounds.

Ian’s been toting the Doctor's device around since they left the TARDIS, but the Doctor warns everybody that they can't use it in an enclosed space. Honestly I’m not convinced that it isn’t just a transistor radio. You could do some damage if you threw it hard enough at someone’s head, I suppose.

Vicki manages to fight off the giant mushroom because, well. It’s a mushroom. She finds the TARDIS, but it’s locked, and the mushroom is still following her. Maybe it just wants to be her friend? Consider the mushroom’s feelings, Vicki.

Having tried absolutely nothing to get out of her situation such as, I don’t know, running away and looking for the others, Vicki is all out of ideas. And as you do when you run out of ideas, she starts screaming her head off.

Though they’re probably miles away, the rest of the gang hear her, and the men run out to see what’s making that dreadful racket. With them gone, Doctor What slips into the cave.

The Doctor and Ian find Vicki unconscious with a mushroom standing over her. Now, this looks bad for the mushroom, but I have to reiterate that it’s a mushroom and probably can’t hurt anyone, unless Vicki tried eating it, I suppose. I bet she just fainted.

Doctor What continues to frustrate me as the episode keeps flipping between having him played by Hartnell and Hartnell's double. It’s just so visually confusing.

Doctor What tells Barbara that Ian’s dead, and she could try acting a little sadder if you ask me. He lures her out of the cave to look for his body, and the real Doctor and Ian come back to find her gone. While Ian goes to look for her, the Doctor stays to look after Vicki.

However, upon awakening to find the Doctor leaning over her, Vicki panics and hits him, thinking that he’s Doctor What. It’s then that Ian returns, and they work out what must have happened to Barbara.

Ian manages to have an appropriately horrified reaction to Barbara being in mortal danger, and runs out to look for her.

Hearing Ian calling out for her, Barbara is overjoyed to realise he’s alive, but her joy turns to horror as Doctor What attacks her. Luckily Ian’s soon on the scene and Doctor What beats a hasty retreat.

They return to the cave, but the gang seems to have acquired an extra Doctor.

One tries to attack the other, but Ian intervenes, to which this Doctor threatens him too. Well, that was a clever idea, wasn’t it? The very-obviously-not-Hartnell Doctor watches from the sidelines, urging Ian to destroy the ‘fake’ Doctor with a rock.

However, before Ian gets the chance (he didn’t even pause to think!), Barbara realises the deception and stops him.

Now comes the one point in the serial where there’s any point to using the double: a Doctor fight!

Ah, but which Doctor won? Now, that would have been fun to play with, but nothing comes of it, so I’ll chalk this up as a missed opportunity.

The Daleks find the TARDIS, but come under attack by a mushroom and decide to call it a night. Meanwhile, the companions get some rest. Their presence hasn’t gone unnoticed, however. As they sleep, a camera descends from the ceiling and observes them.

Upon awakening, the companions spot a city suspended high above the canopy. It’s a nice design, very organic, so a thumbs up from me to the art department.

However, they might pay more attention to the sights at ground level, as the Daleks have found their cave.

Ian comes up with the bright idea for the Doctor to pretend to be the robot, and as the group argues over whether that’s a good idea (and decides that it’s not), the Doctor, listening in the background, heads outside to give it a go. I’m proud of him. He’d never have taken a risk like that back when he first met the Daleks, now here he goes putting himself in danger to help his friends.

Still, the companions weren’t wrong when they decided it was a bad idea, as it only takes a Dalek about ten seconds to realise that the Doctor isn’t a robot, and the Doctor flees back into the cave as the Dalek shoots at him, shaken up but unharmed. Ah, well. It was worth a try.

He’s about to use his device as a last resort when the rear wall of the cave opens up to reveal a massive Christmas tree ornament. This thing is called a Mechanoid, and it sounds like a Dalek that’s lost its voice from all the screaming. With no better options, the gang decide to follow it.

There’s one good thing I can say about this point of the serial: one more episode and it’s over!

THE PLANET OF DECISION

The group follow the Mechanoid into a lift, and it’s just as awkward as any time one shares a lift (or ‘elevator’ for the Americans) with a perfect stranger, with the Mechanoid ignoring any and all attempts at small talk.

The Daleks are momentarily confused to find the cave empty, but soon realise that the group must have escaped through a wall somehow.

The lift arrives at its destination on the elevated walkway, and the group begin to make their way to the city. The Mechanoid meets another Mechanoid and they perform a strange gesture which could be a greeting, but could just be a result of them being too bulbous to move past one another.

The Mechanoid takes them to a building and ushers them inside, where they find a bed, some scaffolding, and a man by the name of Steven Taylor. You might find him a little familiar, as his actor, Peter Purves, appeared a few episodes ago as the man from Alabama at the top of the Empire State Building.

Honestly, Steven might be the one new character in this whole serial I don’t loathe. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I really rather like him. He’s a little odd, as anyone would be after two years of isolation, but he’s a nice bloke and good-humoured.

Steven explains that Earth decided to colonise this world about fifty years ago and sent the Mechanoids on ahead to get started on the building, but then humanity got itself involved in another war and all plans for colonisation fell by the wayside. Cool, but I have to ask how do the Mechanoids build anything? Look at them! They’re less dextrous than Daleks, and that’s saying something.

He’s been their prisoner since he crash-landed two years ago, and it looks like the companions are the new exhibits in the Mechanoids’ human zoo. Why are the Mechanoids keeping people like zoo animals? Honestly no idea.

The Daleks manage to get at the lift shaft and head in, despite reservations about the potential firepower of the Mechanoids. I think the Daleks might have been humbled a little by their string of misadventures.

It turns out that the scaffolding in the human pen leads up to the roof, which is unguarded. That’s all well and good, but it’s 1500 feet up. Bit of a big jump.

The Doctor finally thinks to mention that he has a functioning spaceship, giving Steven hope that they might finally escape. Ian finds a coil of cable, and while he unravels it, the Doctor reports to the girls the plan to climb down. They aren’t terribly keen, to say the least.

However, they don’t get chance to protest too much, as the Daleks arrive at the city for a showdown with the Mechanoids. Everyone rushes onto the roof and prepares to get going, as the Doctor primes his device, leaving a little something for the Daleks to remember him by.

They have to blindfold Vicki and tie the cable around her waist to get her down, but otherwise that part of the plan goes without a hitch as the Doctor’s device explodes and incapacitates exactly one Dalek. However, Steven realises he left his lucky stuffed panda mascot behind and rushes back into the burning building to look for it.

Oh, and the Daleks and Mechanoids fight. Being as awkward and unwieldy as the pair are, it’s about as thrilling as you’d expect. The Mechanoids do have flamethrowers though, which I suppose is neat. Honestly I’m rooting for the Daleks in this fight,  because I find the Mechanoids’ voices that annoying.

The companions make it down to the forest floor sans Steven, and moments later the city collapses in flames.

The group make it to the Dalek time capsule, and find it empty. They’ve won.

So, what do you do with a spare time-and-space-ship? You go home in it, that’s what.

Though it seems the programme forgot about it long ago, Ian and Barbara have been trying to get back home since they first came aboard the TARDIS, hindered by circumstance and the Doctor’s dodgy piloting skills. Here’s their chance to get home, and they’re going to take it.

I am deeply, deeply annoyed that this couldn’t have come at the end of a better serial.

At least Steven turns out to be alive after all.

The Doctor is apoplectic at the suggestion of the teachers piloting the Dalek ship home, citing the immense risks involved. And, well, I think he got rather used to having them around.

It gets quite heated as Ian complains that he’s tired of all this aimless drifting through space, which is basically the Doctor’s entire way of life. The Doctor insists he’s been trying to get them home all this time, seeing as he never wanted them aboard to begin with.

It’s only when Vicki intervenes and reassures the Doctor that she won’t leave him alone that he finally relents and shows the teachers how to work the machine.

The Doctor and Vicki leave them to it, the Doctor saying that it’s fifty-fifty whether they make it or not. The Dalek machine dematerialises. Did they make it?

Welcome to London, 1965. Newest arrivals: Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.

Ian sets the machine to self-destruct and then the pair run off into a photo montage in which they’re attacked by pigeons, make silly faces and just generally lark about London like a couple of drunken students. It’s sweet seeing them being so overjoyed to get back home, and when they eventually flop onto a bus seat and ask for the wrong fare, Ian has the perfect answer when the conductor asks him if he’s been living on the moon: “No, but you’re getting warm.”

The Doctor and Vicki survey them on the Space Telly, and though Vicki is thrilled to see they made it safely, the Doctor is thoroughly down in the dumps. Tearfully he admits that he shall miss Ian and Barbara, and I think my heart just broke a little bit.

Final Thoughts

I think we can all agree that that ending deserved a better serial than The Chase. Ian and Barbara deserved a better final story than The Chase. William Russell and Jacqueline Hill certainly deserved a better serial to end on.

I think I’ve gone on for long enough about this serial’s many failings: the meandering plot, the frequent slow moments, the way it renders the Daleks as more of a joke than a menace, and that’s without mentioning the Dracula in the room. Oh, and the humour's pretty weak, too.

So, that said, let’s give Ian and Barbara some love. I noted earlier that I don’t think the Doctor would have pulled his stunt with the Dalek had this situation come up back when he first met them. What changed his character for the better? Ian and Barbara. Back in The Daleks, they’d barely met him, yet they’d already stopped him from acting on his worst impulses in the previous serial, steering him away from homicide. From the start they’ve been the moral backbone of the show, supporting the Doctor as he developed one of his own. The character we see in this serial is almost an entirely different person from the selfish, grouchy man in the junkyard.

For much of the show’s run, I’ve seen Ian and Barbara as the only real adults in the group. While they were introduced to the show to give it an educational component, I think we can agree the scholarly side of that has fallen by the wayside. What didn’t, however, was the moral education they gave both the audience and the other characters. They constantly challenged the Doctor and the people they met to rise to a better standard. And although we can’t say for certain the impact they left on all the people they left behind, the result with the Doctor speaks for itself.

It would have been easy for Ian and Barbara to have become irritating and sanctimonious, but they managed to remain thoroughly likable throughout their travels. Part of that must surely go to the talent and charm of Russell and Hill, who I’m sure have long, successful careers ahead of them. They made a fantastic pair. Though I’m sad to see them both go, I must admit that it makes sense, as having one without the other wouldn’t be the same.

So, thank you, Ian and Barbara. Thank you William and Jacqueline. And thank you all for your continued interest in all things Doctor Who.

2 out of 5 stars

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By Jessica Holmes

Well, it had to happen eventually. It’s impossible for a writer to knock it out of the park every time, and Terry Nation has batted his first foul ball. I think that’s the metaphor, anyway. But yes, his streak is over, giving us a rather tiresome story, The Chase, that I now bear the burden of talking about for a couple thousand words.

Let’s get on with it, shall we?

THE EXECUTIONERS

I was very excited going into this serial, as of course the Dalek stories we’ve had so far have also brought with them some societal commentary, and I am a big fan of that sort of thing. A bit of running around and zapping things is fun, but if you can give me food for thought at the same time I’ll fall madly in love.

This is not one of those stories.

The first half of the first episode is more or less dedicated to watching the companions watching television IN SPACE. Remember the Time And Space Visualiser the Doctor picked up from the museum? Yes, he gets it fixed so they all gather round to watch historical events across time and space. Because surely that’s much more fun than just using your time machine to visit these places in person. They snoop on the court of Queen Elizabeth I, watch Abraham Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address, and at Vicki’s request, they tune in to Top Of The Pops to watch The Beatles. Don’t get me wrong, I like the lads from Liverpool, but this is just pure filler. It serves no purpose whatsoever and honestly it’s quite boring.

Didn't your mothers ever warn you not to sit so close to the telly?

So after all that, the plot finally starts to move, as the TARDIS lands on a desert planet, sand dunes stretching far as the eye can see. The Doctor and Barbara stay by the TARDIS to catch some sun, while Ian and Vicki go exploring. Vicki finds some strange, bad smelling substance on the ground, and she and Ian follow the trail, not knowing that there’s something alive in the sand.

Back at the TARDIS, Barbara hears an awful noise. No, it’s not the Doctor’s singing. The Time And Space Visualiser (gosh, that’s a mouthful, isn’t it? Let’s just call it a Space Telly) has picked up the Daleks in pursuit.

Cue a rather awkward scene in which the Dalek explain their plans for assassinating the TARDIS crew to one another, for nobody’s benefit but the audience. It’s a terribly clumsy way to deliver exposition, and the scene doesn’t get any better as we watch them silently file into their time capsule one by one. There are loads of them and I aged five years in the time it took.

So now that I’m pushing thirty and the Daleks have finally got into their time capsule, the Doctor and Barbara realise it’s time to get going, and fast. However, Ian and Vicki have wandered far away by now.

Vicki finds the end of the trail, and though at first glance nothing seems to be there, Ian finds some sort of ring in the sand, not unlike a door handle. After some deliberation over whether it’s a good idea to be pulling on things without knowing what they are, Ian goes ahead and tugs it, yanking the ring out of the ground, and opening up a hidden passageway.

There's a monster in the shot, honest.

Ever the responsible adult, Ian lets Vicki go in first, and they almost immediately run into a big ugly monster. I give it five minutes before Vicki gives it a name and tries to adopt it as a pet.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Barbara struggle through a sandstorm in a fruitless attempt to find the two, and once the storm has cleared, they realise to their horror that the landscape has changed entirely, and they can no longer find their way back to the TARDIS.

Worse, however, is the familiar shape rising from the sand…

Eh. It was a lot cooler when they had Daleks coming out of the Thames. So yes, that was a sequence of events. Calling it the beginning of a story feels a bit too generous. I call it a big load of nothing.

Let’s see where The Chase goes from here.

THE DEATH OF TIME

The music accompanying the episode titles in this serial is so ill-fitting it makes me cross. It’s just this weird jazzy sounding thing. I have no idea what tone it’s trying to set, but whatever it is it’s failing abysmally.

Spotting additional Daleks approaching over the dunes, the Doctor and Barbara flee, only to run into a bunch of humanoid fish people, because who else would you be expecting to find in a desert?

Ian and Vicki run away from the monster in the tunnels. I’m not sure it was really making much of an effort to get them.

The Daleks start murdering any local unfortunate enough to wander within shooting range, and identify the planet as Aridia (because it’s arid, get it?).

The Aridians, or fish people as I called them, seem to be a friendly sort (or at the very least not actively hostile), and they give the Doctor and Barbara the standard speech they get from just about every alien culture they come across. Or at least, that’s how it feels. You know the one, it’s about the world once being all lovely then something bad happened and now it’s rubbish so gee, it sure would be nice if someone were to drop in and help us right about now.

Also, they can’t act for toffee. You can’t argue that it’s some sort of artistic choice, like you could with the bee people who communicated through a mixture of weird sing-song voices and interpretive dance.

The Aridians are not like that. They are just plain bad. I’m talking drama-club-at-the-village-hall bad.

Through this haze of weird line delivery and overwrought emoting, the Aridians explain that this was once a watery world where they lived in cities beneath the sea, but the suns moved closer (oh, there are two suns) and the seas dried up, killing everything except the Aridians and the dreaded Mire Beasts.

The Aridians realise that Ian and Vicki must have found their way into one of the old airlocks leading to the city, which is very bad news as they’re about to blow up the tunnels to trap the Mire Beasts.

The group rushes to try to find them, but they’re too late. As a Mire Beast attacks Vicki, the charges go off, sending rubble crashing onto the Mire Beast, killing it stone dead, and knocking Ian unconscious. Vicki runs to look for help, as meanwhile the others arrive to the gates of the city. Though the Doctor is hesitant to involve the Aridians in his troubles with the Daleks, the friendly fish people assure him that they just want to help.

Daleks are keen detectorists.

Elsewhere, the Daleks find where the TARDIS is buried and continue to narrate their own actions. With this much padding, I have to ask if Nation originally wrote a three-or-four-episode serial and was asked by the BBC to stretch it out to six. It’s completely sucking all the tension out of the story.

In the city of the Aridians, the Doctor and Barbara get their first hot meal in a while, though Barbara is too anxious about the others to eat, and the Doctor notes that the food has an odd taste. Now, ordinarily I would take this as a hint that they’ve been given something horrific to eat and that the Aridians have some dark secret behind the friendly facade, but it appears to be a red herring, as nothing comes of it.

Still, I have to wonder what exactly the Aridians are eating if there’s no land suitable for farming and all the animals have died, and they said themselves that they can’t kill the Mire-Beasts, so they can’t be hunting them. So that just leaves…. Well, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

However, the Daleks learn that the Aridians are sheltering the Doctor, and issue an ultimatum: either they hand over the Doctor, or the Daleks will destroy the city. The Aridians have no choice but to hold the Doctor and Barbara as prisoners while they decide what to do.

Vicki manages to find her way back to the TARDIS, discovering that the Daleks have dug it out of the sand with the unwilling help of some Aridians, who they promptly murder once the work is finished. I’ve heard of bad bosses, but that takes the cake.

The Daleks start bombarding the TARDIS, but to their frustration the little wooden box is impervious to their weapons. Appearances, after all, can be deceiving.

The Aridians come to the decision that they have to hand the Doctor and Barbara over, even though I wouldn’t trust a Dalek as far as I could throw one.

Ian wakes up from his little nap (being unconscious for that long, that man needs his head checking out) and gets up to search for Vicki, who has just been snatched in the tunnels by an Aridian.

In the city, Barbara notices dust coming from a bricked-up doorway. It’s apparently blocking off a section of the city that was lost to the Mire Beasts. It’s rather shoddy work considering it’s meant to keep literal monsters at bay. The Aridians drag Vicki in, and she tells them what she saw. However, before they can discuss plans of escape any further, the Aridians come to collect them for the handover to the Daleks.

It’s at this point the Aridians’ shoddy brickwork comes back to bite them. A tentacle bursts through the wall, ensnaring Barbara. In the ensuing struggle, she manages to break free. The companions flee the scene, leaving the Aridians to their fate at the tentacles of the Mire Beast. See, this is why you check reviews before hiring your builder.

Hm, maybe it should have stayed in the shadows.

The Daleks issue the Aridians a further ultimatum upon learning of the companions’ escape. They have one hour to recapture them, or the Daleks will destroy the city. For a Dalek, that’s a surprising display of patience.

The Doctor, Barbara and Vicki run into Ian in the tunnels. Ian comes up with a plan to evade the Daleks and get back into the TARDIS. He asks for Barbara’s cardigan (nicely, this time) and the Doctor’s coat, and uses them to construct a simple pitfall trap.

While the women wait for their chance to make a break for it, the Doctor and Ian catch the attention of the Dalek on guard. The stupid thing blunders into the trap, and the companions make a break for it, their ship dematerialising as the Daleks open fire.

This is actually a decent and fun scene. I have to call attention to it, because those are so very rare in this serial.

Other than that, all I can really say about this episode is…nothing, really. Not particularly bad, not particularly good, mostly dull with a good bit or two. It garners a shrug and a ‘eh’. It exists.

FLIGHT THROUGH ETERNITY

The TARDIS flees through time and space, while the Daleks waste a lot of time talking about their plans to follow them at once rather than just doing it. It’s an absolute tension killer.

Inside the TARDIS, the companions’ celebration of their escape gets cut short when the Space Telly detects another time machine pursuing them again.

Also, there’s a really obvious cardboard cutout on the Dalek ship. Look, I don’t mind being creative to stay in budget, but if you’re going to use a cardboard cutout, stick it in the background of a shot.

The TARDIS needs to land for…some reason, and the Doctor plonks it in the land of stock footage. Gee, I wonder which city this is?

Oh, of course, it’s New Amsterdam.

Silly me.

To the people of the United States of America: I apologise for the travesty that is to follow. I’m talking about the accents. Oh, boy. The accents. They are absolutely atrocious.

Well, at least we’re now even for Mary Poppins.

There’s yet! More! Padding! As a tour guide shows a bunch of tourists the famous New York landmarks from the top of the Empire State Building, which is where the TARDIS has just materialised.

'Maybe if we ignore him long enough, he'll go away.'

Upon emerging from their ship, they meet a man from Alabama who embodies just about every stereotype about American southerners you can imagine. It’s honestly embarrassing. He’s a friendly enough chap though, telling Barbara that the current year is 1966. He's very curious about how they appeared seemingly from nowhere. The companions manage to brush him off and depart, but the Daleks arrive moments later, demanding to know where they went.

In the greatest display of patience I have ever seen, the Daleks don’t just shoot him for being annoying. He thinks this is all some Hollywood lark.

That's not a microphone, buddy.

Back in the TARDIS, the companions learn the Daleks are still hot on their heels. They need to find a way to fight back.

The next landing spot is a nineteenth-century sailing ship somewhere off the Azores, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Barbara can’t resist having a look around, leading her into trouble when an officer accosts her. Luckily for Barbara, Vicki soon comes to give the officer a good whack on the head. Hearing someone else coming, Barbara tells Vicki to hide. Vicki gives the newcomer a good whack, before realising it was just Ian. Poor Ian. It’s a wonder he has any functioning brain cells left.

The women manhandle a dazed Ian back onto the TARDIS, which vanishes as the officer wakes up. He informs the captain of what he found, and the captain rallies the crew to search the ship. However, it’s not long before the Daleks show up, terrifying the sailors so much that they leap overboard, which strikes me as a bit of a silly thing to do.

The Daleks search the now-abandoned ship, finding no sign of the TARDIS, and continue the chase. We then have a long, long series of shots of the abandoned ship. It's the Mary Celeste.

The TARDIS whizzes off into time and space, but they’re losing their lead on the Daleks. They’d better hope that the Doctor manages to finish his secret weapon before the Daleks catch up.

Final Thoughts

Here we are. That was the first half of The Chase. Suffice to say, I am underwhelmed. There’s no interesting philosophical or social angle. It’s not even an exciting prolonged chase sequence. There are far too many lulls in the action and too much obvious padding.

The Daleks feel completely ineffective. They spend too much time dithering to seem like an unstoppable force of death.

The Aridians were just rubbish. Although we haven’t seen any real conclusion of what happens to them, frankly I just don’t care.

Even as an adventure, a romp, this serial doesn’t work. Let’s compare it to The Keys Of Marinus, for example. Both serials involve the companions travelling in rapid succession from one place to another. However, The Chase is more of a whistle-stop tour than a real adventure. In The Keys Of Marinus, the companions had some sort of obstacle to overcome at each destination. After Aridia, they bounced from one location to the next. There’s no real reason for them to have got out of the TARDIS at all in New York or on the ship, other than to trot out a few new sets and some dodgy accents. Then they just get back in again and leave. That’s not an adventure, that’s tourism.

I do hope that the serial improves from here. However, past experience would indicate that a serial which starts poorly ends poorly. I wouldn’t hold my breath.

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