Doctor Who, season 2 continued …

A great start to the 6-part The Chase and an immediate improvement on the previous story.

Beginning with a fun TARDIS sequence, enjoyable because we get to see the crew interacting without any jeopardy, the episode opens with the Doctor fixing the Time/Space Visualiser that he got from the Space Museum.  Vicki is just getting in everyone’s way, as Ian reads a book and Barbara is … making a dress.

Although there’s not much plot-related stuff going on here, there is a build up of tension as we (the audience) know that the Daleks are involved but the crew are blissfully unaware.  They land on Aridius and Vicki is quick to go off exploring, with Ian in tow.

The Doctor and Barbara stay by the TARDIS to sunbathe, with sufficient time for some humour (“not that awful noise, the other awful noise”) at which point they discover that the Daleks are on their trail.

The only downside is the opening music, which is a bit cheesy, and the filmed inserts having Maureen O’Brien’s stand-in with Vicki’s old hairstyle.

A suitable three-way cliffhanger with Ian/Vicki trapped underground with a menacing creature, The Doctor/Barbara having lost the TARDIS, and a Dalek rising up from the sand, end the episode with promise of a good episode to come.

The only real question is – were the previous two adventures really enough to warrant the Daleks building a time machine to go after them?  In the first, they were defeated largely by the Thals (and there’s some suggestion that this happened in the far future anyway, so these Daleks are probably unaware of it), and in the second they were defeated largely by the humans.  The Doctor and companions didn’t really have that big an impact on defeating the Daleks’ plans.  But, that’s only a small thing.

Next time … The Death of Time