#love that image. they fuckin zoomin

[relative-dimension]

“Day of Reckoning”

Season 2, episode 6 - 5th December 1964

[id: Susan and Jenny run down the centre of an empty road, pushing Dortnum in his wheelchair ahead of them. /end id]

As the midpoint to this serial, I really like this structure. Often when the plot of a long serial revolves around the Tardis team being split up and then finding each other at the very end of the final episode, it seems a tad unlikely, but here all of their individual motivations make sense, as well as the idea they each know that’s where the others would go.

Entertainment: 3/5, it works as the middle portion of a longer story, but the best bits are yet to come.

Production: 4/5, the location shooting for this story is the first to involve the main cast, and really fucking good. Richard Martin really makes the most of the opportunity, and the sequence of Barbara and Jenny moving through London with Dortmun in particular is great.

Pacing: 3/5

Character Writing & Use: 4/5, the groups that the core cast splits off into work really well here. Ian gets to have the most direct interactions with the Daleks’ systems, Barbara gets to be with Jenny and Dortmun, and Susan and Dr Who have their characters pushed by the story. Of course, this does mean that their time individually is limited, and Susan’s inexplicable romance with David is bizarre, but it works really well for the most part, certainly much better than when this is attempted in other stories.

Depth: 4/5, the idea of Daleks in London, the bombed-out buildings, the general destruction of the Earth and of England in particular is really where all the ideas of Daleks as Nazis comes from, in my opinion. This was less than twenty years after the end of the war, and for writers who grew up in the Blitz, the idea of an invasion of England would have called back to that in particular. In isolation, it’s not a direct allegory for anything really, but the idea of “extermination” (something first seen in something approximating its modern usage in the final episode of this serial), this invasion of England, and the "dislike for the unlike” briefly mentioned in their first story, all add together to form the beginnings of that idea.

Not Ageing Horribly: 4/5

Overall Score - 21/30