Irradiate!

[cullsoft]

With the new series now finished, I decided that after experiencing a season of fast-paced single episode action, I was up for something far more relaxed and chilled... so went right to the other end of the spectrum by digging out An Unearthly Child.

I've thus been starting my way through the Hartnell series, and have just finished The Daleks... and something I hadn't really paid any notice to before sprung to my attention.

In the story, one of the main elements of the Daleks is that they need radiation to survive, thus explaining/"justifying" their need to set off a neutron bomb and wipe out all non-Dalek life. However, this aspect of them is something I don't recall ever being brought up again, and seems to be completely ignored as they happily stroll around through non-radioactive environments in so many of their other stories. IIRC it's not even brought up in Genesis, where you'd think Davros or someone working on the Daleks would have mentioned it. One would think that the way the Daleks seemed to react without the radiation in The Daleks would make it a powerful and exploitable vulnerability...

So is it something that's explained away? Is it something that actually is brought up in another story? Or is it just swept under the rug and forgotten?

[WhiteCrow]

Supposedly Daleks became more mobile once they put Sky dishes on their backs. Maybe it microwaves the inside of the casing!

[Jason Thompson]

It's also an aspect that doesn't even make sense within the confines of the story. The Daleks themselves said they retreated into the city to be protected from the neutron radiation. They keep talking about the outside environment as deadly. If the city is flooded with radiation after all (as the Geiger counter inside seems to suggest) then they are clearly quite happily surviving there, and have done for five centuries, so why do they want the anti-radiation drug when they clearly don't need it?

[Larry]

and where did all that food they were going to give the Thals come from when they cleary don't need it to eat..

[Si Hunt]

On a similar note, I watched "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" this week and Captain Jack's origins seem to have been completely dumped after his opening adventure. In this story, he's an ex-Time Agent who is on a quest to pay them back for erasing two years of his memory. He has a ship, and presumably has time travelled to Earth in the 1940's. Why is this never mentioned again or explored?

Si.

[Larry]

well if we're going to turn this into a thread where things are mentioned once then seemingly forgotten about what about the TARDIS front door lock . Susan said in The Daleks, it had 20 odd holes with only one being the correct hole to open the door yet I can't recall it ever being mentioned again.

[Si Hunt]

To return to the original question, I guess creatures do evolve and isn't the implication that DIOE is set a long time after "The Daleks"? It seems likely the Daleks evolved out of their need for radiation. Or, more than likely since we later discover them to be genetically engineered, they genetically removed this requirement from their DNA when they developed an interest in venturing outside their city.

Si.

[Logo Polish]

well if we're going to turn this into a thread where things are mentioned once then seemingly forgotten about what about the TARDIS front door lock . Susan said in The Daleks, it had 20 odd holes with only one being the correct hole to open the door yet I can't recall it ever being mentioned again.

That system's replaced in The Daleks' Master Plan, when the lock gets damaged and the Doctor repairs it by putting in the simpler one that's been used since.

As regards the radiation in The Daleks, isn't it that they decide they must have become dependent on it after all, when the drugs not only don't work but kill them?

[cullsoft]

As regards the radiation in The Daleks, isn't it that they decide they must have become dependent on it after all, when the drugs not only don't work but kill them?

That's what I thought. It seemed that the Daleks had spent all this time trying to find a way of living without the radiation, but upon finding that they couldn't live without it decided they might as well irradiate the whole planet so they could move out.

Jason - as I see it, it's for the means of conquest and expansion. Whilst the Daleks have been "happily" living in their city for so long, they're trapped there without it... something that I doubt they'd sit back and continue doing if they couldn't do something about it. The intervention of The Doctor and his companions meant that the Daleks finally had a chance to get hold of the drug in the hope that it would grant them access beyond their city... but didn't work. Though it does bring up the question of why they spent so long waiting for the drug instead of resorting to nuking the rest of Skaro earlier.

[Stuart Wallis]

Remember the Doctor mentions that Skaro is still highly radioactive in Destiny Of The Daleks*, and he even finds a Dalek mutant sitting around on the planet's urface, so it is mentioned in passing, though quickly forgotten about even in that story.



*-Though not, funnily in Evil Of The Daleks.

[Pip Madeley]

On a similar note, I watched "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" this week and Captain Jack's origins seem to have been completely dumped after his opening adventure. In this story, he's an ex-Time Agent who is on a quest to pay them back for erasing two years of his memory. He has a ship, and presumably has time travelled to Earth in the 1940's. Why is this never mentioned again or explored?

Si.

That's actually a bloody good point.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Well I'm sure it has been mentioned and explored again. He got sidetracked into travelling with the Doctor, but only for a short while before getting left behind and stranded in the future. He somehow travels back in time (to the 19th century if I recall) and hangs around, working for Torchwood, but ostensibly waiting for the Doctor (because he has a time machine presumably), he eventually catches the Doctor again (who is actually trying to avoid him), but gets embroiled in the plot of the Master to destroy the world. By this time, in his own life, well over a century has passed since he was abandoned in the future at the end of The Parting of the Ways, much longer than he would probably have expected to live anyway, and certainly long enough for his priorities to change, especially as he has found a home and a purpose with Torchwood Cardiff.

The missing memories are brought up in Torchwood Series 2 where the strange memory-altering bloke called Adam (if I recall) re-awakens some memories, and then spitefully takes them back again, so it's clearly still an issue for Jack. And more of his background as a time agent (although not much) is also revealed when Spike appears a couple of times to snog him and try to kill him.

So... given that he was 30ish when we first meet him for a few stories, but then see nothing of the character for until he's 130+, it's reasonable for his priorities to have changed. Plus both those points have been adressed, albeit only slightly, in Torchwood since.

[Rob McCow]

The Daleks in the first story want the anti-radiation drug so that they can leave their protective casings - then they wouldn't need static electricity and they could explore outside the city.

Static electricity seems to disappear as their mode of power after Evil of The Daleks. Do the Daleks we see in Journey's End need static? Is the reality bomb powered by it? Who knows?