Television shows need to find themselves pretty quickly. They need to nail down a style and they need to attract an audience in mere weeks, or network executives will pull the plug. That's probably as true today as it was in 1964, when Doctor Who's second-ever serial, The Daleks, introduced us to fascist saltshakers that would quickly becomes as iconic as the TARDIS itself. The audience reaction was incredibly positive; over the course of the serial, the viewing figures increased from 6.9 million (a figure any network would kill for today) to 10.4. (This despite the fact that the serial itself rapidly declined in quality from about episode four on.)
Despite the fact that the Daleks were destroyed at the end, the higher-ups quickly demanded a rematch, and once it was clear that the show would be renewed for a second season, a rematch was duly arranged. The apparent destruction of the Daleks at the end of their eponymous serial was brilliantly handwaved away; this is a show about time-travel after all, and if the invasion of Earth took place in 2164, the adventure on Skaro could very well have taken place in, say 3000. Problem solved.
So it was decided to have the Daleks invade Earth. Which meant, coincidentally, that this was the first time the Doctor actually got to save Earth, as opposed to saving some other planet, or having an adventure on Earth while trying desperately not to interfere in the timeline. (A note on that; it's always okay for the Doctor to stop alien invasions, and everyone assumes he's in it for the greater morality of it all. Yet he'll insist that you can't re-write history, not one line; what does he think he's doing all throughout the UNIT era? Especially whenever the Silurians get involved?)
It was also the first time they really got to go outside. The production team did a considerable amount of location work (of course, it blends a bit better if you can't tell the difference between film and videotape), and the Daleks were outfitted with what were basically tricycles under their "skirts" to enable them to zip around tossing each other Nazi salutes.
The setup is fantastic; Earth is largely deserted when the Doctor and company arrive, but they quickly run into the Daleks and the last, desperate resistance, led by a Churchillian figure (because this was less than 20 years after WWII, remember, and yeah, this is so very much about the Blitz). Things look remarkably bleak; the title is misleading. The invasion has already happened, and the bad guys have won. With the exception of Churchill's stand-in, nobody really thinks they'll actually throw off the shackles and free the world. And to be fair, they really don't have a chance except that the Daleks manage to have an even worse time trying to occupy enemy territory than the US has had in the last decade.
See, the Doctor and company eventually make their way out of occupied London and into occupied Bedfordshire, where there's now a massive mining complex. As I've alluded to elsewhere, when I've complained about "The Almost People" being delayed because of Memorial Day, I'm not from Britain, but I am given to understand that Bedfordshire is not the sort of place from which a sane man would try to dig a hole to the center of the Earth.
But that's okay because the Dalek plan is in no way sane; see, they want to rip out Earth's magnetic core, dump an engine in there, and steer it around the Universe like a gigantic warship. A... well, there's no point being coy about it, they want a ready-made Death Star. No, you read that correctly, and yes, that is the plot. The serial holds together pretty well until then, but after that it's a bit hard to take seriously.
Well, that plot is defeated, not by the dead hand of Isaac Newton, but rather by Ian jumping into the bomb cart himself while Barbara mimics a Dalek voice. And in case you're wondering why the Doctor doesn't do anything overly clever, well, this really isn't his show yet, and it won't be until Ian and Barbara leave. At this point, he's a glorified cabbie. People who compare Doctor Who to Star Trek often miss out on this point; Doctor Who would be a lot more like Star Trek if Uhura and Scotty were Trek's main characters for its first two seasons.
And in case you're wondering about Susan, well, she's getting hitched. Susan was the Doctor's granddaughter, created because Sydney Newman wanted a kid for the kids in the audience to identify with, and made the doctor's granddaughter because he thought that otherwise there would be some unfortunate implications about a 650-year-old* man tooling around the Universe with a teenager. Apparently nobody voiced those concerns when the show was revived in 2005.
*A note on the Doctor's age; in Tomb of the Cybermen, the (Second) Doctor claims to be 450, and unless I'm wrong, this is the first time his age is stated onscreen. I've given you the 650 figure for this, a serial that aired three years earlier, because 650 was the number on the original character sheet when the series was being concieved, and there's no evidence to suggest that anyone at the time thought his age was anything else.
Anyway, Susan's role on the show quickly devolved into "scream and get into trouble," and so Carole Ann Ford was only too happy not to renew her contract, and thus became the first regular to leave the show. She was duly written out, and while her exit (she's locked out of the TARDIS by the Doctor, who apparently wants her to settle down and have kids with a guy she's just met) isn't the most graceful, it's still a lot better than what a number of later companions got. Ian and Barbara finally got home after two years, and that felt like an event, but by and large, companion departures have been rather crap. Vicki, Jo and Leela (and maybe Peri) got "romantic" exits in the mold of Susan; Steven and Dodo got dumped; Ben and Polly got left behind because the plot (and budget) demanded it; Victoria got stranded in a completely different era; Zoe and Jamie got mind-wiped; Liz was unceremoniously dropped between seasons, as was Romana 1; Romana 2, K-9, Nyssa and Mel randomly decided to stick behind to help the natives du jour; Sarah and Tegan quit; Turlough actually got a whole serial that was all about him; and Katarina, Sara Kingdom, Adric (and maybe Peri) got killed. So, really, aside from Susan, Ian and Barbara, the only companion who actually got a dignified exit was... Turlough??? Woof.
In the past I've given "good setup, terrible resolution" stories a 7 out of 10. I can't do that here, and I'm trying not to do that anymore. You shouldn't make things so bleak if you can't actually come up with a good way of fixing it. So The Dalek Invasion of Earth gets a 4. The Daleks are back, in their big crowd-pleasing stunt, but they, well, wobble; they're frankly not nearly as threatening here as they were in their impressionist city on Skaro. Juggling the plot between four separate characters all off doing their own things might work on an hour-long show, but in 25-minute installments it really doesn't advance the plot enough for each character each week. I do like the "conquered Earth" setting, and I do wish that there had been more of that in the show - Day of the Daleks, while not stellar, was at least entertaining. But as it is, it's not enough.
Nevertheless, consider this: a science-fiction story set in the aftermath of a war that mankind lost, with a soundtrack composed almost entirely of drumming. One wonders if Ron Moore was taking notes...
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