After taking a (actually not-so-) lazy day yesterday, this morning I hit the treadmill with renewed energy. I increased the speed by a bit, and increased the  time as well. I even added an extra sprint at the end. The payoff was to see my total weight change for the past week as being down 1 3/4 lbs, which is exactly in the healthy 1-2 lbs per week I am targeting. So that was nice. Also: the Daleks were defeated, and one lucky Thal got a little sugar.

Let's talk about that.

The Rescue

The Daleks ended with today's episode, and it was a fantastic ending. The literal cliffhanger was resolved by having the previously-cowardly Thal sacrifice himself in order to spare Ian. It was a noble end to an interesting character arc. Ian's group found their way out of the caverns and into the Dalek city, just as the main Thalian group entered through the front gate. Of course it all happened during a dramatic count down to the execution of the Daleks big plan to flood the atmosphere with radiation. After much fighting and a few more noble deaths, the Daleks were not just defeated but completely exterminated.

It is worth noting that they did so without ever once screaming "Exterminate!" Sure, the words "extermination" and "exterminated" came up, but never their actual signature line.

With the evil defeated and the much-needed fluid link recovered, our heroes were ready to move on. But not before Barbara impulsively gave a stirring goodbye kiss to the Thal she had been making eyes at for the last few episodes. Good on her!

You go, girl!

In a shocking turn of events, as soon as the TARDIS launched there was some kind of malfunction that threw everyone to the ground and leaving them (one would assume) on the Edge of Destruction.

Final Thoughts

Fun piece of trivia regarding the Daleks: the person originally hired to do the production design for this story, and thus to actually design the Daleks themselves, was Ridley Scott. If it hadn't been for a conflict in booking, the Daleks would have been designed by the same guy who brought us Alien. Ah, well. Ultimately the job went to Raymond Cusick, and the rest is history.

As for the Daleks themselves, although they certainly provided plenty of menace for the story at hand they definitely seemed extremely under-powered as compared to their future incarnations. And of course, there is the small matter of them all being killed off by the end of the story. What's the deal?

My favorite theory is that, this particular group was really a bunch of rejects. Sometime after the Kaled/Thal war, after giving live to his infernal creations, Davros took the true battle-ready versions off-planet to begin their quest for intergalactic extermination. The group seen in this episode were the weaklings, running around in salvaged Dalek tanks from an earlier design. Instead of being self-powered, these ones relied upon the static electricity provided by the city floors. Clearly Davros abandoned this early design due to its obvious limitations. Seriously, these were Daleks that could be defeated in hand-to-hand combat with agrarian pacifists. Davros would have hated the lot of them.

Still and all, The Daleks remains an excellent and quintessential entry in the Doctor Who mythos. It is a thoroughly enjoyable story entirely on its own merits, and without question it cemented Doctor Who as a true social phenomenon. Without this story, there would be no show today.

Tomorrow: The Edge of Destruction.

STATS:

Doctor(s): First
Companion(s): Ian Chesterton, Susan Foreman, Barbara Wright
Episode(s): The Rescue
Obvious Pratfalls: 3, all at once!
Steps Walked: 6,389 today, 41,019 total
Distance Walked: 2.84 miles today, 17.80 miles total
Weight: 305.56 lbs (five day moving average), net change -1.74 lbs