It is nauseating to me to think of how Susan's departure would have been handled in Russell T. Davies' era of Doctor Who. It is nauseating not because "Doctor Who" would have arrived at the the inevitable cliché sweeping, melancholy strings would play at a shockingly high volume in the background as the Doctor and Susan cried for twenty minutes in a stunningly obvious attempt at manipulating the audience crap that Hollywood churns out, but because it is proof that modern drama REQUIRES such nonsense to be popular. Look at Susan's departure here, Hartnell, in what is possibly the best acting I have ever seen him do, gives a quiet, melancholy speech to Susan from inside the TARDIS, having already made the painful disconnect. What a stunning, brilliant scene. Unquestionably one of the finest and most memorable examples of drama in the programme's history.
"Journey's End", the final episode of the 30th full season of Doctor Who, has aired only little more than a week prior to me writing this review of the episode and it definitely has a lot in common with this story, right down to Daleks piloting Earth in some manner. "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" however, while featuring some shoddy effects and sets certainly incomparable to "Journey's End", is much, much better than that story. There is actual humanity here. The performances, with one or two bad scenes forgiven, are wonderful, human, vulnerable performances, not weepy 'run while Murray Gold chases you' rubbish. This is, again, not a criticism of modern Who necessarily, but of what has happened to television drama recently.
"The Dalek Invasion of Earth" would have been a perfect four-parter. Of course, any era of Who prior to Hinchcliffe/Holmes and Baker is going to try to squeeze 'epic' out of EVERYTHING, so we end up with a six-parter instead with one episode (episode four) being completely disposable, mediocre, and useless, and even the very good episodes suffer a bit, keeping them from the sort of greatness the final episode of the serial achieves. As every other fan who has discussed this story will tell you, it is surprisingly dark, absolutely brutal in places. The hopelessness, fear, and dread is captured excellently and feels genuinely frightening at times, and had the Daleks not been so... rubbish when it came to the voices and even to an extent the design, the story would have been absolutely unbelievably SCARY. As it stands it is still a very good story but one has to admit the voices take you out of the story ("Day of the Daleks" has worse Dalek voices, but they aren't really the focus of that story to the extent they are here). "The Chase", a much sillier story, could have done with silly Dalek voices, but bizarrely that story has much improved Daleks.
There is some shoddy direction but the sheer excellence of the acting and music, together with the inconsistent but overall effective script, make "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" an excellent story, and naturally an important one in "Doctor Who" history, but not quite the epic it could have been. I'm not sure it needed to be an epic, it almost feels like a Hinchcliffe horror story at times.
Episode 1: 8/10, Episode 2: 8/10, Episode 3: 8/10, Episode 4: 6/10, Episode 5: 8/10, Episode 6: 9/10.
Average: 7.83/10