The Chase

Information

Writer: Terry Nation
Director: Richard Martin
Douglas Camfield (uncredited)
Script Editor: Dennis Spooner
Producer: Verity Lambert, Mervyn Pinfield (associate producer)
Executive Producer(s): None

Originally Broadcast: 22nd May - 26th June 1965
Episodes: 6
Duration: 25 mins each episode
Production Code: R
Series: 2
Story Number: 16
Enemy: The Daleks, The Mechanoids
Setting: Aridius, Empire State Building, New York City; 1966, Marie Celeste, Atlantic Ocean; 19th century, House of Horrors, Festival of Ghana; 1996, Mechanus; 23rd century, London; 1965

Synopsis

The travellers are forced to flee in the TARDIS when they learn from the Time/Space Visualiser taken from the Moroks' museum that a group of Daleks equipped with their own time machine are on their trail with orders to exterminate them.
The chase begins on the desert planet Aridius and takes in a number of stopping-off points including the observation gallery of New York's Empire State Building, the 19th Century sailing ship Mary Celeste (the Daleks' appearance causing all the crew and passengers to jump overboard) and a spooky haunted house which, although the Doctor and his friends do not realise it, is actually a futuristic fun-fair attraction.
Eventually both time machines arrive on the jungle planet Mechanus, where the Daleks try to infiltrate and kill the Doctor's party using a robot double of him. The travellers are taken prisoner by the Mechanoids - a group of robots sent some fifty years earlier to prepare landing sites for human colonists who, in the event, never arrived - and meet Steven Taylor, a stranded astronaut who has been the Mechanoids' captive for the past two years.
The Daleks and the Mechanoids engage in a fierce battle which ultimately results in their mutual destruction, and the Doctor's party seize this opportunity to escape. The Doctor reluctantly helps Ian and Barbara to use the Daleks' time machine to return home.

Cast

The Doctor - William Hartnell

Ian Chesterton - William Russell

Barbara Wright - Jacqueline Hill

Vicki - Maureen O'Brien

Steven Taylor - Peter Purves

Abraham Lincoln - Robert Marsden

Francis Bacon - Roger Hammond

Queen Elizabeth I - Vivienne Bennett

William Shakespeare - Hugh Walters

Television Announcer - Richard Coe

Dalek - David Graham

Dalek - Peter Hawkins

Dalek - Robert Jewell

Dalek - Kevin Manser

Dalek - John Scott Martin

Mire Beast - Jack Pitt

Malsan - Ian Thompson

Rynian - Hywel Bennett

Prondyn - Al Raymond

Guide - Arne Gordon

Morton Dill - Peter Purves

Albert C. Richardson - Dennis Chinnery

Captain Benjamin Briggs - David Blake Kelly

Bosun - Patrick Carter

Willoughby - Douglas Ditta

Cabin Steward - Jack Pitt

Frankenstein's Monster - John Maxim

Count Dracula - Malcolm Rogers

Grey Lady - Roslyn De Winter

Robot Dr Who - Edmund Warwick

Mechanoid voice - David Graham

Mechanoids - Murphy Grumbar, John Scott Martin, Jack Pitt

Fungoid - Jack Pitt, Ken Tyllson

Story Notes

• All episodes exist as 16mm telerecordings.
  
• Negative film prints were recovered for all episodes in 1978.
  
• This story went under the working title The Pursuers.
  
• The story was commissioned at late notice when another of Terry Nation's stories fell through. It is believed that the slot was originally to be filled by his planned historical The Red Fort.
  
• The scenes in episode 6 with Ian and Barbara celebrating their return to London was made as part of the production bloc for The Time Meddler and the Director for these is consequently Douglas Camfield.
  
• This is one of the few Dalek stories to incorporate humour and is the only story to attempt comical performances from the Daleks. Examples includes a stammering Dalek who cannot do simple mental arithmetic (in the first two episodes); Daleks nodding their eyestalks to confirm a plan (in the fifth episode); and showing a trait for deviating from the subject at hand (during their deliberations in the first episode).
  
• Morton Dill, the young man from Alabama whom the travellers meet at the top of the Empire State Building, was played by Peter Purves, who would appear in the last episode as Steven Taylor.
  
• The story also features The Beatles in a film clip. Ironically, considering the number of lost Doctor Who episodes, the Beatles performance from which this clip was taken now only survives in this story.
  
• The Beatles were originally planned to appear as old men performing in the 21st Century but this proposal was vetoed by their manager Brian Epstein. Had this gone through, of course, it would have become an anachronism given the fates that would befall both John Lennon and George Harrison before they got to be "old men".
  
• This story includes the joke that, in the future, contemporary pop musicians such as The Beatles would be considered classical music. This joke was repeated in the series 40 years later in The End of the World.
  
• Although Ian displayed knowledge of modern musical groups in An Unearthly Child, this does not seem to extend to his ability to dance, as demonstrated during the "Ticket to Ride" sequence.
  
• The Daleks are particularly poetic in this story: Dalek - "Advance and attack! Attack and destroy! Destroy and rejoice!"
  
• This is the final television story featuring Ian and Barbara.
  
• This is the first appearance of Steven Taylor. Actor Peter Purves became the only actor to play two completely different roles (without the use of heavy makeup or prosthetics) in the same story. He also became the first actor to appear in a guest-starring capacity before being offered a regular role.
  
• The Chase was earmarked to form the basis for a third "Dr. Who" film starring Peter Cushing, to follow Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD, but the film was never made.
  
• Episode 5 carries the title "The Death of Doctor Who"; this is one of only two occasions in which the technically incorrect name "Doctor Who" is used in an on-screen title (the other occasion being the seven episode of Doctor Who and the Silurians in 1970).
  

Preceded by: The Space Museum - Followed by: The Time Meddler