The Executioners opens with the Doctor repairing the Time-Space Visualiser, and Vicki being pretty useless. For those who play "Spot William Hartnell swearing on screen", the Doctor tells Vicki at one point that she can "-uck off for a start". It's interesting to see that the production team are keen on playing up Vicki's origins and intelligence, which can be seen when she breezily tells the Doctor that she could have repaired the TSV herself, thereby saving him much time and frustration! Having checked out the wonders of the TSV (seeing Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare and The Beatles along the way) the TARDIS materialises, and we get treated to a shot from the console's POV of the Doctor operating the controls.

While Ian and Vicki explore Aridius (which sees some excellent location filming on Camber Sands; it really does look like an alien world and designers Raymond Cusick and John Wood have complemented well with the design for the studio sets on Aridius), the Doctor and Barbara sunbake and tune into Dalek TV - and the TARDIS crew are the main focus! While Vicki and Ian get caught by a Mire Beast, the Doctor and Barbara get caught up in a sand storm, as did a Dalek... The Chase gets off to a good start, with the set up for the story conveyed in an interesting fashion, but it's not until the end of the episode that the story actually gets going. Dudley Simpson's incidental music ranges from the quite memorable, such as the piece used when the TARDIS travels through the vortex, to the bizzare, such as the music used each time a Mire Beast appears - DOING!

The Doctor and Barbara meet up with native Aridians and learn of their planet's history at the start of The Death of Time; you've got to love Terry Nation's names for planets - a former aquatic world named Aridius! The Aridians have an interesting costume and make up design, and their underground city looks good; but they come across as rather one note characters, weak in the face of adversity; this can be seen in how they deal with the Mire Beast threat and the Daleks - in both cases they literally give in to the threat.

A Mire Beast attack allows the Doctor, Barbara and Vicki to escape and meet up with Ian, which comes up with a crafty plan in order to get a Dalek guard away from the TARDIS; and they get back into the TARDIS and leave Aridius as the Daleks once more make a futile attempt to destroy the TARDIS. The Daleks are quite well characterised, if a bit repetative in speech.

Flight Through Eternity opens with the TARDIS crew celebrating victory over the Daleks, until the Doctor's nifty Time-Path Indicator begins bleeping. For someone who wants the Daleks taken seriously, Terry Nation ironically provides the first non-serious usage with a 'dumb' Dalek. The sequence on the Empire State Building is quite silly and stupid - even the set design is quite poor in comparison to the standard that's been set in previous episodes. The only notable thing is Peter Purves as a stupid American tourist, a rather good performance of a quite annoying and pointless character. The next landing point, on the Marie Celeste is an improvement in set design and scripting, although thare are still a few poor elements, such as the sailor lusting after Barbara.

The Doctor tells the others that they are running out of time at the start of Journey into Terror, the Daleks will soon catch up with them as their head start gets wittled away each time the TARDIS lands. What a place they have landed in - a well designed haunted house, and it's a pity that its inhabitants aren't all up to scratch - Frankenstein's Monster is good, as is the grey lady, but the Dracula is woefully miscast, with Malcolm Rogers not quite managing to create the aura of charm and sophistication that is usually expected of a Dracula. The Doctor theorises that they have landed inside the human mind, but the Daleks confirm that they have landed on Earth, again.

In the rush to leave the haunted house, Vicki gets left behind, but she manages to hitch a ride in the Dalek's time machine. There she witnesses the Dalek's latest scheme - a copy of the Doctor designed to "infiltrate and kill"... With the TARDIS landing on Earth three times in a row, I can't help but wonder if Terry Nation was running out of ideas in the middle two episodes of The Chase after having come up with the settings for the other four episodes. It's also interesting to note that the Daleks believe that the Doctor is human.

The bizzarely titled The Death of Doctor Who sees the Doctor, Ian and Barbara facing the hostile plant life of Mechanus, then managing to find a cave. The Daleks too find Mechanus a bit of a struggle. The robot manages to 'infiltrate' while Ian and the Doctor go exploring (and find Vicki), but its attempts to 'kill' fail. William Hartnell does well playing his double, subtly altering his performance when his is the robot, Edmund Warwick gives a fairly good performance in scenes requiring two Doctors to be shown at once, but in some places it is very obvious that a double has been used.

After seeing a maganificient city above the forest canopy, and an attempt to deceive the Daleks fail, the TARDIS crew meet the mysterious builders of the city, who invites them to come up into the city... The Mechanoid design is quite different to the Daleks, it's more geometric and larger; their voices sound more electronically created.

The Planet of Decision opens with the Daleks quickly working out what has happened to the TARDIS crew, the TARDIS crew see the city, with the impressive model work really giving a sense of scale about the size of the city and the set design working well to show the city as clean and efficiently designed and maintained. In the city the TARDIS crew meet Steven Taylor and his panda mascot - it seems the planet was to be the site of a colony, with the Mechanoid's work forgotten due to a war. Unless they can crack the code, they will be treated as specimens and not colonists.

As the Daleks invade the Mechanoid city (and trigger a device made by the Doctor), the TARDIS crew escape by climbing down cabling, while Steven heads back to save us panda from the burning city. The sequences showing the Dalek/Mechanoid battle are well shot and cut together, with Dudley Simpson's incidental music complementing the action. The city is destroyed, and it appears Steven died in the collapse. Barbara and Ian leave for Earth, 1965 in the empty Dalek time machine, but not before one last fight with the Doctor; and the Doctor and Vicki using the TSV to watch their first moments back home...

The Chase is a very varied story - the first two episodes are quite good, the middle episodes fairly poor, and the last two episodes pick up in quality once more. Director Richard Martin maintains the high standard he set with The Dalek Invasion of Earth, with excellent location sequences and well shot battle sequences. As Ian and Barbara's last story, The Chase gives them plenty to do within the story, such as Barbara seeing the Daleks on the TSV, and Ian setting the trap on Aridius to get rid of a Dalek. The major problem is that aspects of The Chase are underdeveloped by the script; such as the sequence on the Empire State Building and the characterisation of the Aridians. An improvement on The Keys of Marinus in some ways, but Terry Nation still hasn't got the hang of a multiple setting story.

6.9/10

Next time: The TARDIS crew face a meddling Monk...