Doctor Who — The Daleks (1963-1964, directed by Christopher Barry and Richard Martin)

Posted on October 1, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

It’s easy to forget that Doctor Who was originally meant to be an educational show for children.

When the BBC’s Head of Drama, Sydney Newman, first developed Doctor Who, he envisioned it as being a show in which an eccentric old man known as the Doctor and his granddaughter, Susan, would travel to past eras and meet actual historical figures and witness great events firsthand. Accompanying them would be two teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who would make sure the kids at home understood what they were watching. While Newman allowed that, in order to keep the kids watching, there would be occasional episodes that would focus more an adventure than learning, he also said that the show would not feature any “bug-eyed monsters.”

The first serial, An Unearthly Child, stayed true to Newman’s concept. After stumbling across the TARDIS while investigating the homelife of their newest pupil, Ian and Barbara found themselves traveling to pre-historic times with The Doctor and Susan. Susan was played by Carole Ann Ford while Ian and Barbara were played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill. Playing the role of the Doctor was veteran actor William Hartnell. Hartnell was 55 years old when he first played the Doctor but he looked and came across as being much older. He played the Doctor as being a crotchety old man, one who resented being saddled with two new companions and who could be quite rude to those he considered to be his inferior. This was early in the series so there was no talk of Time Lords or anything else that Doctor Who fans now take for granted. Susan even took credit for naming The TARDIS, the Doctor’s time machine that, on the outside, appeared to be a blue police call box.

An Unearthly Child introduced the UK to the Doctor. It got respectable ratings and reviews. Viewed today, it’s also pretty boring and it’s easy to see the limitations in Newman’s original concept. Hartnell plays the Doctor as being so ill-tempered that it was a surprise that he didn’t just jettison Ian and Barbara into space. (I used to watch Doctor Who on PBS with my father. The first episodes that we got were the Tom Baker years, followed by the Peter Davison and the Jon Pertwee episodes. It was only then that PBS started showing the Hartnell episodes. To go from Baker, Davison, and Pertwee to the grouchy Hartnell was indeed jarring.) If the show had continued in the style of An Unearthly Child, it probably would not have lasted for more than two series.

Fortunately, the second serial changed everything.

Written by Terry Nation and originally called The Mutants, the second serial introduced The Daleks, the shrill-voiced cyborgs whose cries of “Exterminate! Exterminate!” made them almost as popular as The Doctor himself. Squid-like creatures who lived in tank-like robotic shells and who spoke in electronic voices, the Daleks lived on the planet Skaro. Centuries of nuclear war against the Thals had left the Daleks mutated and trapped in their shells but they were still obsessed with exterminating all of the Thals and eventually conquering the universe. With their robotic exteriors, the Daleks were bulky and often moved awkwardly. (The recurring joke is that all the Doctor has to do to escape the Daleks is find a staircase.) But because the Daleks were so relentless and so determine to exterminate everyone who wasn’t a Dalek, they were still intimidating. Writer Terry Nation based the Daleks on the Nazis, a comparison that was undoubtedly easy for British audiences in 1963, less than 20 years after the end of World War II, to see.

A seven-episode serial, The Daleks premiered on December 21st, 1963 and ran through February 1st, 1964. While the serial was airing, word spread about The Daleks. The first episode was watched by six million viewers. The seventh and final episode was watched by ten million. Four million people were brought to the show by The Daleks. Sydney Newman may not have wanted bug-eyed monsters on Doctor Who but no one could argue with ratings like that. While the First and the Second Doctor would still have a few strictly historical adventures, The Daleks paved the way for the future of the series. The Daleks would return many times. The cavemen from An Unearthly Child were never seen again.

The Daleks opens with TARDIS materializing on the planet that will later be identified as Skaro. The Doctor and Susan want to explore. Ian and Barbara are upset because they want to go back to 1963. (Ian and Barbara always annoyed me but, of all the companions on the original series. they probably did have the most realistic reaction to being swept up in the Doctor’s adventures.) The Doctor flat-out lies about needing to get mercury to repair the TARDIS and uses it as an excuse to explore a nearby city. Soon, The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara are the prisoners of the Daleks while Susan meets the peaceful Thals in the forest. The Daleks and the Thals have been at war for centuries and it has destroyed their world. The Doctor tries to broker a peace, which just leads to the Daleks killing even more Thals. The Doctor can be excused because this was his first meeting with the Daleks. The Thals should have known better than to trust the people who specifically decided to become cyborgs because they didn’t want to ever have to stop fighting.

Seen today, The Daleks holds up fairly well. At seven episodes, it runs a bit long and, for those of us who grew up with Tom Baker and Peter Davison in the lead role, William Hartnell’s Doctor takes some getting used to. The nonstop bickering between The Doctor and Ian gets old quickly. The Thals are almost too naive to be believed.

But the Daleks themselves remain a brilliant creation and, even when seen in grainy, black-and-white, it is easy to understand why they became a phenomenon. Their relentless determination to destroy and exterminate make them intimidating but what really stands out about the Daleks is how forthright they are about what they want. It’s not just that the Daleks want to exterminate you. It’s that they’ll tell you that they want to exterminate you, as if it’s the most reasonable desire that any creature could have. (One reason why The Thals are so unsympathetic is that they keep falling for Dalek tricks, despite the Daleks being pretty honest about their hatred of the Thals.) From the minute that the Daleks make their first appearance, cornering Barbara in their city, they give Doctor Who a jolt of energy that it very much needed.

This serial ends with The Doctor convinced that the Daleks have been destroyed and will no longer be a threat. Of course, The Doctor had never been so wrong. The Daleks would return and Doctor Who would never be the same.

Back to School Part II #5: A Clockwork Orange (dir by Stanley Kubrick)

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

It may seem strange, at first, that I am including the 1971 best picture nominee, A Clockwork Orange, in a series of Back to School reviews. Certainly, Stanley Kubrick’s iconic adaptation of Anthony Burgess’s novel is not usually described as being a film about juvenile delinquency but that’s exactly what it is.

Many viewers tend to forget that Alex (played by Malcolm McDowell, who was nearly 30 at the time) and his three droogs are all meant to be teenagers. (Only Michael Tarn, who played Pete, was actually a teenager at the time the film was shot. Warren “Dim” Clarke and James “Georgie” Marcus were both in their late 20s.) There’s even a lengthy scene in which Alex is interrogated by a social worker, P.R. Deltoid (Aubrey Morris). Viewers are usually so surprised when Deltoid suddenly grabs Alex’s crotch that they forget that the whole reason Deltoid even came to the flat was to find out why Alex had been skipping school. (“Pain in my gulliver,” was Alex’s oft-quoted excuse.)

So, make no mistake about it. Among other things, A Clockwork Orange is a film about both the problem of juvenile delinquency and the continuing debate concerning what the authorities should do about it. Stylistic and philosophical differences aside, A Clockwork Orange comes from the same cinematic family tree that’s given us everything from Rebel Without A Cause to Bully to Spring Breakers.

Of course, that’s not all that A Clockwork Orange is about. It’s a Kubrick film, which means that there’s several different layers to work through and multiple interpretations for what we see on-screen. For those who may not be familiar with the film, it takes place in a recognizable but futuristic England. (One of my favorite theories is that A Clockwork Orange was about what was happening on Earth while David Bowman was becoming the starchild in 2001: A Space Odyssey.) It’s a violent world, one where there appears to be significantly fewer people around than in the past. The streets are deserted and bombed out. Occasionally, when Alex returns to his home, he passes a mural of idealized working men creating a new world. This rather banal work of Socialist realism has been defaced by obscene drawings and mocking graffiti.

Teenage Alex spends his nights hanging out with his friends (or, as he calls them, droogs), Pete, Georgie, and Dim. They drink at the Korova Milk Bar and wear obscenely oversized codpieces, signifying this society’s obsession with outsized masculinity. When they speak (and when Alex narrates the film), they do so in a rhyming slang called Nadsat. Under Alex’s sociopathic leadership, they spend their nights raping women, beating the homeless, and fighting with other gangs. When Alex is not with his droogs, he enjoys lying around the house and listening to Beethoven (or “Ludwig Van” as he calls him).

After being betrayed by his droogs (who have tired of Alex’s cockiness), Alex ends up imprisoned for murder. However, Alex is offered an early release if he’s willing to take part in the Ludovico Treatment. For two weeks, Alex is drugged and forced to watch violent and sexual films while the music of Beethoven plays in the background. As a result of the treatment, Alex grows physically ill at the thought of both violence and sex but he can also no longer listen to Beethoven. Arguably, as a result of being cursed of his anti-social tendencies, he has lost the only non-destructive thing that he enjoyed.

Over the objections of the prison chaplain (who argues that robbing Alex of his free will is not the same as rehabilitating him), Alex is sent back into the real world and he quickly discovers that he now has no place in it. His parents have rented his room out to a boarder who is now more of a son to them than Alex ever was. The streets are full of men who were previously tormented by Alex and who now wants revenge. In perhaps the film’s most brilliant moment, Alex discovers that his former droogs are now members of the police force. Though they may now be wearing uniforms, Dim and Georgie are still as destructive and dangerous as Alex once was. The difference is that Alex was caught and cured whereas Dim and Georgie discovered they could do just as much damage as authority figures as they did as juvenile delinquents.

In fact, the only people who now care about Alex are the political dissidents who hope to use Alex to discredit the government. However, the dissidents aren’t particularly worried about Alex’s well-being either. He’s just a prop to be used for their own ambitions. Even worse, for Alex, is the fact that one of the dissidents is Mr. Alexander (Patrick Magee), a writer who lost both his ability to walk and his wife to an earlier assault committed by Alex…

(Interestingly enough, Mr. Alexander’s boyguard is played by David Prowse, who later become the ultimate symbol of government oppression when he was cast as Darth Vader in Star Wars.)

A Clockwork Orange is a brilliant film but it’s one about which I have very mixed feelings. On the one hand, you can’t deny the power of the film’s imagery. How many times has just the opening shot — of McDowell staring at us while wearing one fake eyelash — been imitated on TV and in other movies? How much of the film’s dialogue — from “pain in my gulliver” to “the old in-out” — has lived on long past the movie? Regardless of how many times I’ve seen A Clockwork Orange, the film’s electronic score (from Wendy Carlos) never ceases to amaze me. Finally, it’s a film that argues that free will is so important that even a sociopath like Alex must be allowed to have it and that, as the chaplain argues, true goodness comes from within and cannot be manufactured or regulated by a government agency. (It’s also a film that suggests that the government would be just as quick to use the Ludovico Treatment not just on the evil Alexes on the world but on anyone who dared to dissent from the party line.) As I’m something of a “Freedom of Choice” absolutist, that’s a message to which I responded.

(At the same time, A Clockwork Orange does not argue that Alex’s actions should be free of consequences. If anything, the film’s message seems to be that things would have been better for literally everyone if the government had just left Alex in jail, as opposed to trying to “fix” what was wrong with him.)

And yet, I have mixed feelings about A Clockwork Orange. I guess my main issue is that the film doesn’t always play fair. Malcolm McDowell is allowed to give a charismatic and well-rounded performance as Alex but nearly everyone else in the film is directed and written as a one-dimensional caricature. Whereas Anthony Burgess’s novel emphasized the very real damage that Alex did to his victims, the film tends to surround Alex with comedic grotesqueries. By both making Alex the only fully developed character in the entire film and then casting the energetic and charismatic Malcolm McDowell in the role, the film seems, at times, to come dangerously close to letting Alex off the hook for his worst crimes. It also leaves the film open to the oft-repeated charge of glamorizing sex and violence. (According to Roger Lewis’s biography of the author, that was Anthony Burgess’s opinion of the film.) For the record, I don’t think A Clockwork Orange is an immoral film but I understand why some people disagree.

For that reason, A Clockwork Orange remains a controversial film. In fact, I’m somewhat surprised that this subversive and deliberately confrontational film was nominated for best picture. It was only the 2nd (and last) X-rated film to receive a best picture nomination. Though it lost to The French Connection, A Clockwork Orange continues to be a powerful and controversial film to this day. Perhaps the biggest indication of A Clockwork Orange‘s success is that it’s still being debated 45 years after it was first released.