Doctor Who: Planet of the Daleks

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Planet of the Daleks is the fourth serial of Doctor Who Season 10, originally broadcast in six episodes from 7 April to 12 May 1973. It was written by Terry Nation and directed by David Maloney. It stars Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor and Katy Manning as Jo Grant.

Picking up from a wounded escape, the TARDIS brings the Doctor and Jo to the jungle world Spiridon, where the Daleks are testing invisibility and preparing a hidden army. Joined by a small band of Thals, the Doctor uses patience and clever tricks to outwit patrols, survive deadly plants and freezing caves, and uncover a vast Dalek force in suspended storage.

With Jo showing courage and care while the Doctor balances hope with hard choices, the adventure builds to a risky plan to stop a future invasion before it begins. It revisits several elements from earlier Dalek stories, including invisible aliens, jungle planets, and massive Dalek armies, while also updating the Daleks’ role in Doctor Who lore.

Episode 1

The TARDIS lurches out of the vortex and lands in a steaming purple jungle. The Doctor, still weak from his last encounter, collapses on the floor; Jo records a brief log, pockets supplies, and slips outside to find help. The night air is cold as ice, the plants sweat heat, and ballooning pods burst to spray choking spores that cling like velvet.

In the distance, something glides with a harsh, metallic rasp. Jo stumbles onto a sleek scout craft and hears hushed voices: Thals from Skaro, here on a covert mission. She hides, learns their names (Taron, Vaber, Codal) and that their enemy is nearby. An invisible figure brushes past her with the soft scrape of fur: a native Spiridon, unseen unless dust or spores outline him. Back at the TARDIS, the Doctor rouses and staggers into the jungle, only to be found by the Thals and carried to shelter.

A Dalek patrol grinds through the trees, sensors clicking, guided by invisible attendants. The Thals whisper their purpose: the Daleks have a base on Spiridon and are experimenting with invisibility. Jo, feverish from the spores, is helped by a gentle Spiridon called Wester, who knows where the antidote lies: inside the Dalek complex. The Doctor opens his eyes and hears a name he dreads.

Episode 2

By dawn the jungle sings with insects and distant machinery. The Thals brief the Doctor: the Daleks are building something enormous; reconnaissance teams have not returned. He insists on facts and volunteers to scout the base with Codal, the quiet thinker of the group. They slip through glassy reeds and see it: a domed complex, guarded by Daleks and served by invisible Spiridons whose footprints mark the mud.

Jo, guided by Wester, threads service gullies toward a laboratory where an anti-toxin is stored. She watches, horrified, as Daleks test a sealed canister on captured animals; a bacterial weapon swirls inside, meant to kill any intruder not adapted to Spiridon. She steals a vial and escapes as alarms bark. The Doctor and Codal are caught and flung into a cell where the walls hum with refrigeration; curious, the Doctor notes the cold.

He teases Codal’s ingenuity into life, turning scraps into a grapnel and timing the guard’s approach by the click of its iris. Outside, Rebec, a fierce Thal who has followed against orders, reaches Taron’s camp with grim news: the enemy presence is far larger than anyone guessed. In a corridor below, the Doctor unbolts a panel and feels a draft like winter. Something vast is sleeping in ice.

Episode 3

Jo recovers with the stolen antidote and hears Wester’s truth: his people were enslaved by promises and fear; some now resist. He means to help. At the base, the Doctor and Codal stage an escape (distraction, a snared plunger, a dash into a maintenance bay) and wedge themselves inside an empty Dalek casing to ride past patrols.

Through grille-slits the Doctor sees a cavern of glittering pipes and a control board marked with chilling economy: REFRIGERATION – ARMY STORAGE. He and Codal sabotage a relay, then retreat, hearts pounding. In the jungle, Rebec reaches Taron; strategy hardens; Vaber agitates for direct action. They split: charges to be placed, a diversion to be made. Vaber’s impatience blows the plan; he’s captured and shot trying to destroy a power pack. Jo and Wester slip into a side lab and find the bacterial bomb prepped for deployment against “aliens.”

When a guard turns, Wester seals himself in the chamber and opens the canister, absorbing the pathogen to neutralise it. He dies quietly, saving strangers. Sirens spiral; Daleks sweep the trees; purple fungus blooms where their guns scorch trunks. The Doctor rejoins the Thals, face set. He’s seen the numbers in that ice and knows the scale: an army sleeping under their feet.

Episode 4

A storm of ice-laden wind skates over the canopy. The Doctor leads Taron, Rebec, and Codal up a cliff to a ventilation shaft, counts pulses in the fans, and dives—a breathless crawl into the cold heart of the base. Below, rows upon rows of Daleks stand in suspended animation, ranks vanishing into frosted gloom. Ten thousand.

The Thals go still, confronted by a war no sabotage can win. The Doctor’s voice is very small: fight the base, not the army: break the refrigeration, bring the planet to bear. Jo and Latep, a young Thal scout, shadow patrols through phosphorescent marsh and slip a beacon onto a supply sled. In the control chamber, a gold command Dalek orders preparations to awaken the army. The Doctor rewires a governor to overstrain the coolant and triggers a controlled failure; white fog bellows, and Daleks glide to seal the breach.

The team escapes by inches. Back in the jungle, Taron wants to attack at once; the Doctor counsels patience and points to distant glittering peaks. Spiridon has ice volcanoes, rivers of frozen death that sometimes burst and flow. If they can lure an eruption at the right moment, the army can be entombed. Rebec nods. They will use the world itself.

Episode 5

Pieces move fast. Jo and Latep sabotage a patrol, snatch explosives, and race for a ridge above the cavern. The Doctor sketches the geometry: charges here and here to crack a seam, then a second line to steer the flow. Codal calculates timings; Rebec readies fuses with steady hands. In the base, Daleks activate thaw cycles; the command core warms; a first rank twitches.

A black-domed Supreme Dalek arrives to take command, voice a serrated knife, demanding acceleration. Outside, Thal sentries fall; Daleks advance with Spiridons flanking, breath frosting in the air. The Doctor is cornered, bluffs with a dead man’s switch, and buys a minute. In the lab wing, a replacement bacterial bomb is armed; Jo’s face goes hard: Wester’s sacrifice must mean something. She sets a fire trap; the canister detonates within its own containment, killing only the room.

On the ridge, Vaber’s earlier failure echoes as Taron hesitates. The Doctor reminds him of reason over rage. They plant the last charge and sprint. Daleks crest the slope; a shot catches Codal; he waves them on. The first avalanche cracks like thunder. Ice begins to move, slow and unstoppable, a gleaming tide. In the cavern below, alarms rise into a single, mechanical scream.

Episode 6

Everything drops to seconds. The Doctor slams the detonator and the ridge shears; a white river pours into the cavern, sweeping gantries away, swallowing ranks of awakening Daleks. The refrigeration plant collapses under the shock; control panels spit sparks; the Supreme Dalek orders retreat and is carried backward by the surge.

The Doctor, Jo, and the remaining Thals run for daylight as the base implodes, snow and steam boiling out of ventilation towers. On the plain, reinforcements arrive too late and wheel away. The jungle goes suddenly quiet but for distant cracking ice. In the aftermath, Latep, awkward and earnest, offers Jo a jewelled flower and a place beside him on the Thals’ homeward voyage; she squeezes his hand and says her path lies with the Doctor.

Taron shoulders command with a new gravity. The Doctor warns him softly not to glorify what they did today; heroes can become the thing they fight if they love victory too much. Rebec promises remembrance without worship. The Thals lift off, bound for Skaro’s star with hard-won wisdom. The Supreme Dalek, scorched and implacable, signals for pursuit in another time. In the TARDIS, Jo rests her head on her arms; the Doctor sets coordinates and listens to ice settle over an army that will not march.

Themes

As the second half of the Season 10 space epic, Planet of the Daleks trades the political chess of Frontier in Space for a straight-ahead jungle war: and delivers. It isn’t as philosophically weighty as Genesis of the Daleks or as tightly wound as Day of the Daleks, but its atmosphere, momentum, and the return of the Thals give it a classic Terry Nation scope.

Invisible Spiridons, an ice volcano, and a buried Dalek army create big, pulpy images; measured against its peers, it lands solidly in upper-mid-tier Pertwee: less intricate, more adventurous, and undeniably fun.

Link-wise, it hands off directly from Frontier in Space, closes out the Ogron–Dalek conspiracy, and points ahead to later Dalek tales: Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, and, much further on, Remembrance of the Daleks. Its Thal camaraderie echoes back to The Daleks and contrasts with Earth’s grim resistance in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

For the Doctor and Jo, the ordeal tightens their bond before the ground-level reckoning of The Green Death, where the Metebelis III promise (teased since Carnival of Monsters)finally pays off and begins a thread that culminates in Planet of the Spiders. By freezing an army and walking away, Planet of the Daleks reminds us that victories here are temporary: and the long war continues.

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This is a chapter from Craig Hill’s book “Doctor Who – The Third Doctor”, chronicling every episode featuring the Third Doctor. It is available on Amazon.

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