"The Dead Planet" - Season 1, Episode 5

Written by Terry Nation | Directed by Richard Martin and Christopher Barry | Produced by Verity Lambert | Original air date 12/21/63


We get our first taste of sci-fi besides the TARDIS when the group steps out to explore a petrified jungle, which is still, more than fifty years later, a really cool image. Ian suggests he and Barbara should keep an eye on the Doctor, since "he seems to have a knack for getting himself in trouble," which is basically the Doctor's Wikipedia entry up to this point, really. Barbara jokes that she thinks the Doctor is overdue for an injury, which is cute.


Meanwhile, the girl who lit a skull on fire and showed everyone how cool it looked last episode is now enthralled by a flower. Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with liking both things, it just seems weird. Barbara screams when she sees what turns out to be a dead metal creature (second time that Barbara has screamed at an animal corpse she's found). After the Doctor explains it's a metal creature and seems to say it may have hunted its prey using magnetism (?), Barbara sits down, frustrated, and says to Ian, "There's nothing here to rely on. Nothing," to which he responds with a smile, "There's me." Ian, you sly dog, you (I firmly believe Ian and Barbara become an item during their travels with the Doctor, which I'll talk more about during the first episode of the Romans, "The Slave Trader"). Barbara then goes on to read her own Wikipedia entry: "I'm a very unwilling adventurer." Terry Nation, as we'll see, does not do well with dialogue in Doctor Who, generally (he does write some good episodes, though, it must be said. His First Doctor work is more good than bad, he doesn't write for the Second Doctor at all, his Third Doctor work is unwatchable, for me, he peaks with his first Fourth Doctor script, then writes boring crap the last few times he writes for the series).


We get a shot of a gorgeously built model city, which I'm a big fan of. The glimpse of the city in the background when the group travels there later is intriguing, too. Ian and the Doctor continue to grapple for leadership of this little group when the Doctor says he'll explore the city alone, but Ian won't let him because he's the only one that can fly the ship. Susan gets scared again on their way back to the TARDIS when she feels someone try to grab her. The Doctor can't seem to comfort her, so he asks for Barbara's help, which is one of those scenes where the TARDIS crew starts to bond in some way, which I find nice (we'll see more of this between the Doctor and Barbara as the show continues, cementing Barbara as my favorite First Doctor companion, since Hartnell and Hill are very good in nearly every scene they're in together). The Doctor explains he's sometimes frustrated by the difference in age between he and Susan (he must get over it when travels later, though, since he'll be hanging out with teens and twenty-somethings for most of his travels as he ages by hundreds of years).


We then get a boring scene where the show explains how the travelers stay alive on the TARDIS - there's a food dispenser, and we're "treated" to a scene where the TARDIS crew eats bacon and eggs in the form of what look like little candy bars or something. This scene could have been reduced to a single line of dialogue, but Terry Nation was asked to write these episodes very quickly, and we've got six more to go after this one, so buck up for some boring stuff in a few of these episodes!


The Doctor seems to break his ship on purpose to convince everyone to accompany him to the city, and we get our first mention of the TARDISs mercury fluid links, which I guarantee you David Whitaker put in there (tip of the hat to Phil Sandifer's lovely TARDIS Eruditorum, which goes into great detail on Whitaker's quirks as a writer and argues he's the true first creative visionary for the show, which I agree with). Ian realizes the Doctor is up to something, yet he can't do anything about it as he doesn't know how the ship works, so they all agree to go explore the city at first light to try to find mercury to fix the fluid link.


After finding a container that has vials of random fluid in it - none of them mercury, it seems, to Ian's dismay, I'm sure - the TARDIS crew travels to the city (which still looks cool). Ian suggests they split up to explore, and I yearn for someone who is aware of television/movie tropes like Bill to mock him for it. Everyone wanders around, exploring for a bit (including one scene where Jacqueline Hill puts her hand over the camera lens, which must be the only time in Doctor Who where that happens - I like it). The episode ends with Barbara screaming while she's menaced by a plunger!


It's so strange, that's the first glimpse we have of a Dalek - a first person shot from its perspective where we don't actually see a full Dalek until the next episode. Knowing how important they become to the show (as I understand it, their popularity was what kept the show in production beyond the first few serials), it's quaint how they're introduced. It's good, don't get me wrong, just very strange seeing these creatures that are in some ways more famous than the main character of this show introduced with just a shot of their goofy plunger arm.


"Doctor Who" Puns so Far: 2 | Tomorrow: "The Survivors"