Day 8: The Ambush

And so, in this episode the Doctor and his companions escape the Dalek city in a quite tense series of events. Again, it's nice to see these characters getting along after their continuous bickering over the past couple of episodes. Also, the Daleks exterminate the Thal leader, further making us think that these Daleks really are a nasty piece of work, exterminating a simple pacifist. There is also an interesting moral dilemna that's raised here on the nature of pacifism that we'll look at tomorrow in further detail.

Perhaps most importantly as we look at the development of the series, at the end of the episode the characters are all ready to leave the Thals to their fate. There's no scene where Ian or Barbara insist that they must help these people, instead they raise the issue with each other, and then decide that it's not for them to meddle in the affairs of others and get ready to leave. It's interesting when we consider what the Doctor will become in the future, someone who will help others and make others better, not someone who gets himself out of trouble and then gets ready to leave some people who are quite clearly going to be horribly exterminated to their own devices. We expect Ian or Barbara to stick up dor the Thals as well, but they can't quite see that sometimes you need to interfere, to provide the spark that will help others.