Death to the Daleks

Doctor Who vs. His oldest and deadliest enemy.

Doctor Who (Jon Pertwee) is forced into not one but three desperate races against time.  One, an unexplained power loss has stranded the Doctor’s spaceship TARDIS on a sinister planet called Exxilon.  Two, he must help an expedition from Earth find a rare mineral that can cure a space plague that threatens all human life in the galaxy.   Three, he must save his colleague Sarah, who has been captured by the savage Exxilons, from becoming a human sacrifice.  To locate the source of the power drain, help the Earth expedition and save Sarah, the Doctor plots to uncover the secrets of the ancient Exxilon City.  But his plans are threatened by new arrivals on the planet-The Doctor’s oldest and deadliest enemies-the Daleks!

• **Omnibus Format**  Unfortunately, this story was originally released in an edited "movie" (or Omnibus) format.  This means that individual episodes have been cut and pasted together into one viewing.  The BBC released Doctor Who videos like this until the early 90's.  Since then they have gone back and issued "re-releases" of virtually all of their omnibus versions.   Unfortunately, the U.S. (i.e. CBS/Fox at first, and then later Warner Home Video) hasn't been eager to follow suite, as they have only done two re-releases "The Brain of Morbius" back in 1997 and  "Terror of the Zygons" in 2000.  Additionally, many stories first released in the late 80's and early 90's are seeing re-release on DVD.  Unedited titles such as "Spearhead from Space," "The Ark in Space" and "Robots of Death" are all available now in their unedited formats.

• The U.K. re-released "Death to the Daleks" in its unedited episodic format in 1995, although (oddly) the U.K. re-release ended up with a small clip edited out.  Somewhere in episode 2 Sarah Jane asks the Doctor who he's trying to fool.  The next line that Pertwee delivers was, for some strange reason, left out of the U.K. re-release.  The line is "Myself, chiefly."

• Watch for the appearance of John Abineri (playing the part of Railton).  He is a regular to Doctor Who.  He appeared as General Carrington in "The Ambassadors of Death" and as the Swampy leader Ranquin in the Tom Baker story "The Power of Kroll."

• As was the case with "Day of the Daleks," owing to the fact that it was released over 10 years ago and the fact that it is a Dalek story gives it a running chance of being an DVD release in the next few years (well, one can hope anyway).  If that were to occur, then it would be the first time this story would be available in the U.S. in its unedited format.