Doctor Who-Day Of The Daleks

                   Something changed about Doctor Who when Jon Pertwee took over the title role. The entire personality of the show changed,and it became quite a bit more popular. One of the things that defined this new and improved Doctor Who was not only that it was transmitted in color. But that the serials now emphasized it's sociopolitical themes a lot more strongly. Especially when the third doctor was confined to Earth working as the scientific adviser to UNIT HQ and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. Therefore Terry Nation had a lot to worth with on this episode,which would be the first Dalek story for the third doctor. Historically this would also be the first time us in the audience would be seeing the Daleks in color so there was a lot to be excited about.


                  There's a vital peace conference occurring in the United Nations to prevent a third world war,which would use nuclear weapons. The doctor,Jo Grant and UNIT are called in when Stiles,a key delegate begins talking of ghosts at the country house where the conference is to be held. After staying the night to investigate the Doctor and Jo find themselves the captive of a group of guerrilla soldiers possessing a rudimentary time travel device and weapons from two centuries in Earth future. In a botched escape from them and menacing alien henchmen called Ogorons,Jo Grant winds up in the 22'nd century and it isn't long before the Doctor is disposed to go located her.


                Upon arriving he discovers that in the future,humanity has been enslaved by the Daleks,forced to work as slave labor for them aside from a select group of privileged human collaborators. They at first insist the guerrilla army that captured them were a deviant subgroup,when it turns out they are freedom fighters attempting to save humanity from the Daleks rule. Upon escaping with Joe and the help of sympathetic humans they learn that the Daleks were able to invade Earth easily after a war that ensued following Stiles' apparently failed peace conference. Upon returning to the 20'th century to set things right,the Doctor learns it's the freedom fighters who have created a paradox;that there time frame was created by their own botched attempt to save the conference. Luckily the doctor managed to get everyone out of the building and the conference back on track.

                True seeing the Daleks in color,especially the vivid mustard gold one is quite spectacular. In this episode Terry Nation also gives the Daleks a more living and complex flavor as well. Obviously always compared obviously to Nazi Germany in their goals and manner,the Daleks in this story behave more like very conscious soldiers of a totalitarian regime than unfeeling and partly robotic villains. With the collaborator relationship between the humans and Daleks in the future, the link between the Daleks and it's origins in despotic human behavior is cemented. This story has a lot of excellent action-adventure sequences with the Doctors Judo abilities and the confrontations between UNIT soldiers and Ogoron troops. But more over the plot of the serial more heavily emphasizes that strong political flavor of third doctor era Doctor Who. And considering the heated events on the real world stage at this point it couldn't have been more appropriate.