Why do people rate this story so highly? Its reputation can only be so high because of Received Wisdom.

It's crap. I hate to say this, but it's crap.

Mrs Chuff and I listened to the soundtrack on a long car journey, recently. It did not make the car journey fly past any quicker.

Whole episodes are taken up with the Doctor and Kemel wandering through corridors avoiding Terry Nation style traps that seem like a Scooby Doo idea (large blades fall from the ceiling, etc). Kemel himself is more or less identical to Toberman in Tomb of the Cybermen (mute ethnic giant who suffers a heroic death at the last minute).

The story meanders. Jamie and Kemel's trek to find Victoria feels like padding. Some of the running around on Skaro seems like padding. Some of the scenes with various brainwashed people in the Victorian house seem like padding. Characters come and go, and are introduced just to be forgotten about.

It's much, much better in the early scenes with the mystery of the antique shop, and Swinging London coffee bar sequences.

I've always felt that the seven parters are long enough to be able to fit in several stories and justify their length: Marco Polo changes location constantly. Inferno moves to parallel Earth. This just gets bogged down with people arguing. The Daleks argue with Maxtible. Maxtible argues with Waterfield. Waterfield argues with the Doctor. The Doctor argues with Jamie. Ruth drifts in asking "where is my father?", then argues with Arthur. Arthur argues with the Doctor. On and on it goes, filling out its episodes with blather ...

I don't have the recent DWM poll to hand, but I know Evil finished in the top 20. Quite a few people will have seen the surviving episode two (which doesn't make a lot of sense on its own: why would it, as the second episode of a seven part story?), and a handful will have heard the CD, but the majority of people will be jusging it on its reputation. That's a reputation given by people who saw it in 1967 and haven't seen it since.

We did the same journey again recently, and listened to The Savages and The Macra Terror. Voters aged under 18 put The Savages in their bottom 10 stories, even though none will have seen it, and barely a handful heard the soundtrack. Savages and Macra are both excellent. Far better than The Evil of the Daleks, which just seems to be "all mouth and trousers".

Blame Tomb for this one - Evil Of The Daleks was first

leave off! i know some of it is slow (i should know, cause ive listened to the soundtrack as well), but it is one of the most original dalek stories of yore. no out and out invasions or any of that crap!

the suspense for me came in the form of the humanised daleks later on, the will they/ wont they be caught moments, and the daleks duping the doctor into helping them, only to reveal they want to do the opposite, and give humanity the dalek factor instead!

oh, and dalek revolution! that was brilliant!

the best moment, though, was the end of episode 1 -- with the (robber, wasnt it??? been a long time since i heard it ) anyway, him, being caught be the dalek -- and roy skelton's debut! "WHO ARE YOU? ANSWER!"

over all, the story is original, and despite its failings, i would say that, if it still existed in its original form, it would have been a cracking good serial.

From what I remember, this was a story that should never have suffered the wiping that it did. There were worse stories that have survived.

The biggest travesty of Patrick Troughton's tenure is some strong stories got wiped.

I'd take recovered episodes of the 'Space Pirates', 'The Macra Terror' and give up my copies of 'The Mind Robber' and 'The Seeds Of Death' and exchange them for complete stories of 'Evil Of...' and 'Power of the Daleks', 'Invasion' with its missing episodes in place of animated recons for a start.

Mrs Chuff and I opted for Savages and Macra instead of power of the Daleks, as we couldn't face another raved-about Dalek story. There is a sense of epicness about bits of Evil, but it just DRAGS ...

I love The Seeds of Death. Enormous fun.

People would have seen it since 1967, it was repeated in 1968. And what's Terry Nation got to do with it?

A lot of the missing stories have a reputation for being classics and this can be very disappointing when they are recovered.

I remember all the hype that surrounded Tomb and how it was the lost classic when it was recovered. Yeah it's good but i'm not sure the reputation is justified.

However I would say that listening to the audio for a TV programme is not really a good way to judge the actual programme but I appreciate that unless the full story is recovered then it's all we have.

I remember Evil as being quite a good story and it is one of the ones I would like to see recovered.

Sorry: forgot about the 1968 repeat.

The Terry Nation reference: TN's scripts drag for me. They involve characters in long treks across mountains, with sharp blades dropping from the air, pools of acid to navigate, man-eating foliage, etc. Scooby-Doo stuff. TN's ideas are brilliant, but his execution of them falls into padding and cliche. (Survivors, Blake's Seven and Daleks are at the best when written by other people, using TN's outstanding inspiration).

I read the book of Evil, earlier in the year, and thought it was very ordinary. Agreed, the soundtrack is not the best way to judge a story, but there's no real alternative. I've never seen any of thoise reconstruction thingies and don't anything about them really.

The soundtrack CDs are full of surprises. The Celestial Toymaker was rubbish, and I'd expected it to be brilliant. It might be sinister and creepy onscreen, but I have no way of knowing that. The one surviving episode would suggest oitherwise, though. The Macra Terror was nice and creepy, with plenty of sinister propaganda and brainwashing. The Savages was just lovely! A really interesting, unusual, exciting story. Galaxy Four reminded me of The Rescue: small scale and simple. Very much appreciated for that. Evil of the Daleks? "Spectacular" but empty.

I remember the hoohah when Tomb was recovered. After the Received Wisdom said it was the best thing ever, it turned out to be "pretty good". Watched it again recently, and it's "pretty good". Not as good as The Seeds of Death, I feel.

Maybe Evil would be brilliant if we could see the whole thing, but the soundtrack and novel suggest it's too longwinded.

It must be one of the only Doctor Who stories that actually has its own website:

http://www.evilofthedaleks.co.uk/

I quite like this one. That said maybe some of those stories that attain "classic" status do so more because of their time of showing.

I have no doubt that were forums such as this in existence back in 1967 we would all be falling over each other to acclaim it the greatest televisiual piece in history.

In the greater programme mythology it is crucial and remember that at the time it was supposed to be the final time Daleks ever appeared in the programme

Reading the DM telesnap special at the moment: Evil of the Daleks is again proved to be terribly, terribly dull. Everything I said in my initial post (FIVE YEARS AGO!!!) is still relevant.

Ruth, Mollie, Terrall and Toby are all totally redundant characters just there to pad the story out. Jamie and Kemel searching for Victoria is awfully dull and longwinded. The story goes on and on and on and bloody on: most of the Victorian stuff could easily be snipped out.

At its core, Evil of the Daleks has some good ideas - the Dalek / human factor, the misguided Victorian inventors / the whole Dalek civil war aspect.
But its so badly drawn out, with, as chuff says, far too many pointless characters who add precisely nothing to plot wittering on for episode after episode about stuff that no-one's interested in.
And the 'science' is beyond potty. All that guff about mirrors and static creating Time Travel is utterly loopy; even for 1960s Doctor Who this is really silly.

But Troughton, as always, is on fine form. Fraser Hines does his best and the guest cast are generally well portrayed even if some of them don't have anything worthwhile to do. And why couldn't we have had Mollie as the new companion instead the terminally wet Victoria?

I suspect that, as with many B&W stories, this would have been more impressive watched week after week, rather than listening to an audio or telesnap concoction in the larger chunks that we frequently do these days. But even over a period of 7 weeks the 1967 audience must have spotted some of the most obvious padding ever seen in Who.
The Big Finale - well they might have got away with it if the viewers were generous and squinted a bit and suspended a lot of their disbelief - but the model work, from the snaps, clips and documentary footage that exists, doesn't look terribly convincing, even by 1967 standards.

Having said all that, it'd be wonderful if EotD were to ever magically return to the archives!

Yeah typical fans slag off the story when all they have to go by is a audio soundtrack.

I slagged it off for the soundtrack five years ago. I'm now slagging it off for the telesnaps. I could also slag it off for the paperback.

Together, telesnaps and soundtrack are all that we have. Together, in this case, they are very dull. If this forum only allowed discussion of episodes we have seen, there would be just under 100 episodes verboten. The recent DWM survey comments on The Savages being a forgotten story, as did its previous survey several years ago. I am familiar with The Savages on CD, and I love it. (as mentioned below, five years ago). I have never seen The Savages, indeed nobody has seen it since 1966. But evidence would suggest it is great.

I am a big fan of the soundtrack CDs and I reckon they give a good feel for a story. I felt that Enemy of the World was pretty good on CD, and now it's on DVD I can see that it's pretty good. I felt that Web of Fear was very good on CD, and the DVD bears that out. Galaxy Four always seems like a perfectly decent, under-rated story when I hear it on CD, and the recovered episode is perfectly decent and under-rated.

Evil of the Daleks is just dull.

Chuff, me and you agree on many things and we share a mutual admiration for The Savages which very few people share on here.

However, as I think we've discussed before, I totally disagree with you on Evil Of The Daleks which I think along with Power Of The Daleks is two of the finest Dalek stories there has ever been.

I enjoy all the different location settings from Gatwick airport, through to Waterfield's shop, Maxtible's House and ultimately Skaro. What other show can do so many varied settings in one story?

I love all the historical stuff, especially as at this point, stories set in the past were against the norm. I also love the varied characters and the last episode is typical Doctor Who where you think The Doctor has been converted with the Dalek factor but he hasn't and the 'final' Dalek battle is a good one, judging by the telesnaps and audio.

I do agree that the story is too long, it does sag around episodes 4 and 5, and maybe should have been shorter, and I also agree Terrall, who's motivation often puzzles me, is a wasted and redundant character.

Overall all, I love the story to bits but hey, as I've often said, everyone to their own.

I thought that bit about the doctor being "converted" was obvious worked out how they will resolve it immediately when I first listened to it.

I've just found this one:

http://www.androzani.com/caves.shtml

It's not exactly a tribute site to COA, but it is called androzani.