I dove into The Daleks' Master Plan this morning with some trepidation. As I have said before, "How can I miss you if you won't go away?" The good news is, this story is a vast improvement over the previous outing. The better news is, I completely forgot that this story marks the first appearance of Nicholas Courtney on the show. The director liked working with him so much that he asked him back the next year to appear in The Web of Fear, and the rest is history. So yeah, sure, he isn't the Brigadier yet, but that's just fine. His calm demeanor and stiff-upper-lippedness in the face of adversity shines through and raises the level of the story immensely.

Let's talk about that.

The Nightmare Begins / Day of Armageddon

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

Aside from Nick Courtney, what else to say about this story so far? These first two episodes, at least, take place on the same planet of Kembel that was featured in Mission to the Unknown a few weeks ago. For the bulk of the first episode Steven is sidelined, having been seriously injured during the Battle of Troy. Likewise, Katarina is left to play nursemaid and has very little to contribute. Instead, the story mostly involves Space Agent Bret Vyon (Nicholas Courtney) trying to evade the Daleks, the Doctor running about the forest trying to find help for Steven, and the setup of Mavic Chen, Guardian of the Solar System, to be a traitorous villain selling out the human race to the Daleks. So, lots of good drama there.

The second episode has another big meeting of the Evil League of Evil: Space Edition, and also has the Doctor masquerading as one of the villainous leaders in order to find out what is happening. Steven is miraculously healed by a couple of pills, Katarina keeps going on about how they are traveling through Limbo to their deaths, Bret heroically commandeers Mavic Chen's personal spacecraft, and the Doctor has managed to steal the final ingredient needed for the Dalek's super weapon, Not bad for a day's work.

On the upside, the writing and performances are far better than the previous Dalek story.

Largely thanks to this guy.

On the downside, this is around the point where William Hartnell's health issues and general combativeness on set really began to accelerate. I have a certain amount of sympathy for the man, it was surely a difficult situation, but I don't envy anyone who had to deal with him. Previously it had been more-or-less Maureen O'Brien's (Vicki's) job to talk him down, but with her departure from the show there was really nobody to fill that void. He spends a lot of his time either mumbling his lines or blowing them completely, and frequently devolves into that "hmm? hmmm?" vocal tick. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. At one point during the filming of this story there was actually a crew strike that grew out of a dispute between Hartnell and his dresser, and The Manchester Evening News reported that Hartnell was going to quit the show. Obviously that didn't happen, but the writing was on the wall. 

STATS:

Doctor(s): First
Companion(s): Steven Taylor, Katarina
Episode(s): The Nightmare Begins / Day of Armageddon
Brigadier(s): Zero, but hey look, it's Nicholas Courtney!
Steps Walked: 7,086 today, 319,371 total
Distance Walked:  3.36 miles today, 145.84 miles total
Weight: 292.02 lbs (five day moving average), net change -15.28 lbs