Doctor Who/Recap/S2/E02 The Dalek Invasion of Earth

We are the masters of Earth!

—A Dalek

The title of the story says it all really. After the runaway success of "The Daleks" in season one, the Green Blobs in Bonded Polycarbide Armour are back.

It's the future - some point after 2164 - and the story focuses not on the invasion itself (still a little beyond the budget and capability of 1964) but on a world ruled by the Daleks and their robotised slaves ("Robomen").

The Doctor and the others fall in with a group of resistance fighters led by wheelchair-bound Dortmun, and discover that the Daleks are digging a huge mine in Bedfordshire of all places. It turns out that they are planning to plant a bomb in the Earth's core which will hollow out the planet, so they can replace the core with an engine and pilot the planet around like a spaceship.

Ian rigs up a barrier in the mineshaft which detonates the bomb prematurely, conveniently destroying the Dalek mothership and most of the Daleks in the process, not to mention creating a new volcano in Bedfordshire. Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter, has meanwhile fallen in love with resistance fighter David Campbell and the Doctor leaves her behind to make a new life with him.

The Doctor : "One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs, and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Goodbye, my dear. Goodbye, Susan."

Watch it here.

It was adapted as Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., the sequel to Dr. Who and the Daleks.

Tropes

After the End: Most of the human race is dead, their cities are deserted and the survivors are more concered with just staying alive than fighting back.
Almost Kiss: Susan and David actually start, but the sudden appearance of The Doctor from off camera cuts it short.
Apocalypse How: Class 1
Black Market Produce: An old woman reports the main characters to the Daleks and is rewarded with food, including an orange. "I haven't tasted an orange in years..."
Bond Villain Stupidity: Instead of just Exterminating Barbara and Jenny, the Daleks leave them to die in an explosion. They live.
Characterization Marches On: While better than the last time we saw them, the Daleks seem to have a lot in common with the Cybermen this serial.
- The Daleks get overpowered by a mob of humans and robomen. Later Daleks would have just exterminated the lot easily.
Darker and Edgier: Much more so than previous serials.
Day of the Jackboot: Draws overtly from World War II occupation tropes with La Résistance and Les Collaborateurs.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin
Exty Years From Now: It's some point after 2164.
Fake Shemp: William Hartnell was injured during filming of the third part of the serial, and so suddenly passed out without explanation at the start of the fourth (something that tended to happen throughout the Hartnell era, whenever he was unable to appear for whatever reason), with body double Edmund Warwick playing the Doctor in this episode.
The Future Is Noir
Hand Wave: As the first (of very many) examples of attempting to explain how the Daleks can still be around despite being totally destroyed in their last appearance, the characters decide that this must be an earlier point in history, and they really were destroyed forever last time.
Heroic Sacrifice: A ton of them. If there is a character that's not The Doctor or a companion, there is a 1 in 2 chance they will die trying to protect someone. And most of the others die anyways.
Idiot Ball: The Doctor shows a rare case of it on the Dalek spaceship. After discovering that his cell contains exactly what they need to escape captivity he tries to escape. It turns out it was an intelligence test to find suitable slave labor.
Mayfly-December Romance: David and Susan.
Name's the Same: This serial's Jenny's not the Doctor's daughter, or a Silurian's assistant/lover, or the mother of the Family of Blood.
A Nazi by Any Other Name: While "The Daleks" had elements of Fantastic Racism, here the Dalek = Nazi parallel becomes overt.
Newspaper Dating: The TARDIS crew discover the is 2164 (or later) via a calander in an abandoned warehouse.
No Peripheral Vision: The Doctor avoids the Daleks by pressing himself up next to a door. It works.
- Slightly justified as later we get a Dalek POV shot that reveals the limitations of the eyestalk. It still doesn't excuse the Dalek who looks right at The Doctor. And you.
Obfuscating Stupidity: Wells uses this against the Daleks in his first scene.
Plot Hole: Once the show developed its back-story and mythology, the Doctor leaving behind Susan on Earth, even a future one, seems a bit strange considering she's doomed to outlive David and age much slower then everyone who knows her, and change appearance once she's close to dying......
- It's implied in Last of the Time Lords that a Time Lord can chose not to regenerate.
Sound-Only Death - As Susan and David crouch in a corner hiding from the Daleks we hear a man in the street begging a Dalek for his life before he gets killed.
Too Much Information: One sign which appears in shots it shouldn't appear in reads "It is forbidden to dump bodies into the river."

The Doctor: "Stupid place to put a poster. Right under a bridge where nobody can read it or see it."

Wham! Episode: This was the first time the TARDIS crew changed at all, with Susan leaving at the end of part six.
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