'How long d'you think we've been going down?'

Er, since about five minutes into episode one, Larry.

Actually this isn’t a half bad episode - some nice character moments, the Doctor actually doing more than lying around unconscious in the bushes and a pretty decent cliff-hanger. We’re still in three distinct groups of protagonists, but at least there are finally signs of things coming together.

Let’s start first with the resolution to that ‘cliff-hanger’ - rather optimistic of Ian to fear that the Slyther can actually jump, as there’s more chance of Pete Doherty (Slitheen look-alike, anyone?) going a whole day without making an absolute tit of himself. D’you notice how Larry also says ‘The Slyther, Ian’ which sounds a bit like ‘Slitheen’. I think there’s a pattern emerging here…

Back with Susan and David, and it seems someone’s finally remembered that the Doctor’s slumped somewhere and gone to wake the waking ally (where did Nation get these episode titles from..?) There follows an unusually extreme - though somewhat in character (see ‘An Unearthly Child’) - piece of brutality from Hartnell, as he delightedly clubs down a Roboman; with the rejoinder that he ‘only takes lives when his own is threatened’ hardly providing a case for such actions. I mean poor old Colin Baker got suspended for eighteen months for less!

Meanwhile Jenny - looking increasingly like a midget Ice Warrior in her misguided balaclava - and Barbara have reached the home of two women for whom the prospect of tinned food is the equivalent of manna from heaven. These two - who even the credits deem of so little importance that they’re monikered ‘The Women in the Wood’ - are obviously a bad sort, as one sneaks away to inform the Daleks of their new houseguests in order to get more provisions. And in one of this episode’s many socially gritty moments, the young woman-in-the-woods’ reaction to sugar is almost like a junkie snorting a line of cocaine (like Kate Moss, perhaps - there’s definitely a pattern emerging here…)

As for Ian and Larry, well despite the fact that Larry’s the only person I know who bangs his knee and doesn’t swear, then they get arguably the episode’s best scene. Confronting the Roboman who used to be Larry’s brother, one can’t help but be reminded of the similar scene from ‘Pyramids of Mars’ when the two Scarman brothers face off and Lawrence urges his brother to remember his former humanity. It’s a powerful scene, spoilt only slightly by Phil’s Robo-helmet coming off rather too easily during the struggle. And if they’re all neutralised so easily, it begs the question as to why more haven’t already tried it.

But powerful as that is, it comes nowhere close to the hot and steamy scene where David attempts full-on foreplay with Susan using only a wet fish. Yes, you heard that right - first he dangles it on front of her face, and then they struggle, ending up in a clinch which James Bond and Pussy Galore would be envious of. Christ, snogging in Doctor Who, with nary a time vortex or opened eye of harmony in sight. This is surely about as racy as 60s Who ever got, and it’s just a good thing that Hartnell arrives to swiftly dampen the young lovers’ ardour. I mean, what with the Daleks constantly going on about ‘penetration’, this episode is rapidly becoming thinly-veiled pornography.

But you can’t help but be drawn back to some of the episode’s - and the story’s - many failings. As a script, it doesn’t even begin to pass muster (how does only the Earth have a magnetic core; what does the Daleks ‘controlling living energy’ mean, anyhow; and why does the Roboman patrol leader sound like Michael Palin’s ‘It’s…’ character from the start of Monty Python?) All these questions - and probably more - we don’t really need answering…

And despite the nagging thought of just how long it’s taking the Daleks to dig to the Earth’s core using only human slaves and wicker baskets, that’s still an above par cliff-hanger; as Ian (understandably for once) mistakes the Daleks’ capsule for a safe place to hide, only to be trapped and poised over a precarious drop. How will he get out in time for tomorrow and the final, exciting episode?