YMMV / Doctor Who S3 E4 "The Daleks' Master Plan"

• Angst? What Angst?: The first ever companion deaths in the series are encountered- that of Sara Kingdom and Katarina. Is the Doctor depressed about this? Broken, that after taking up Barbara and Ian so long ago to travel in space and time, that a human died in his helpless hands? No. He shakes his head, says goodbye, and moves on. Sara Kingdom also appears to get over the fact that she killed her own brother very quickly. Averted by Steven, however, who is clearly distraught at Katarina, Bret and Sara's deaths despite only knowing them briefly, and calls out the Doctor on his reaction.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: "The Feast of Steven" has our heroes picked up by police on Christmas, getting split up on a Roaring Twenties movie set, and finally breaking the fourth wall. It should perhaps be noted that there was a good reason for this. The episode was broadcast on Christmas Day and the production team worried people might not bother tuning in to watch. By making the episode irrelevant to the plot of the complete serial as a whole, they didn't have to worry about people tuning back in the week after and not having a clue what was going on. The BLAM aspect is further emphasized when one realizes that the character of Sara Kingdom, featured in the silly goings-on in the episode, killed her own brother only a couple of weeks earlier and is supposed to be working through the guilt related to this.
• Bizarro Episode: "The Feast of Steven". Our heroes have a chase through Hollywood in the 1920s, get arrested by police in the 1960s, and end up Breaking the Fourth Wall.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Sara Kingdom, often regarded as one of the best companions that never were.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The Doctor is unfamiliar with cricket. Four incarnations later...
• Padding: This serial required lots of it to fill the requisite twelve episodes.
  • Episode Seven ("The Feast of Steven") was very deliberately intended as this. Since it was scheduled to be broadcast on Christmas Day, when it was assumed that many viewers would not be tuning in, the episode was deliberately written to not advance the plot at all, so viewers who missed it could come back the following week and not be lost.
  • Going further, the three episode "Meddling Monk" arc in Episodes 8-10 is also largely irrelevant to the overall plot. It has been pointed out many times that it would be incredibly easy to cut Episodes 7-10 out of the story by simply having the Doctor give back the real taranium core instead of a fake one in Episode 6, which would leave the plot in exactly the same place as it ended up being at the end of Episode 10, when the Doctor finally does give back the real core. This would trim the story down to an eight-parter in a stroke.
• Signature Scene: Ironically, the most famous scene in this epic Dalek story does not involve the Daleks at all and comes from the episode that has no relation to the rest of the serial. It is, of course, the Doctor turning directly to camera to wish the viewers a Happy Christmas at the end of "The Feast of Steven".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Sara Kingdom, a badass space mercenary who killed her own brother in pursuit of her goals, then began questioning everything she'd ever learned when the Doctor's philosophy began to get to her. If Big Finish Doctor Who is to be believed, she even travelled with the Doctor in the TARDIS for several months in a Time Skip between episodes. She gets killed off in a slightly Stupid Sacrifice at the end of the story. The production team actually were open to the idea of keeping her as an ongoing character, but Jean Marsh didn't want to commit to the series full-time.
• Tough Act to Follow: Many fans think that despite being a twelve-parter, it's the most ambitious as it shows how ruthless the Daleks are as they want to destroy life forms that aren't like them outside of their home planet. While "The Power of the Daleks" and "The Evil of the Daleks" are still beloved by fans, the stories during Jon Pertwee's run don't really match up to what happened in the 1960s and it won't be until Davros shows up in "Genesis of the Daleks".
• Unexpected Character: The Meddling Monk turning up in Episode Eight comes out of the blue; a comic, ineffective previous villain returning in dark serious Dalek story. Especially since the show had never had a returning guest character up to this point.
• Values Dissonance: The Doctor makes a rather racist comment as a punchline to a comedy sequence that would absolutely never be allowed on the screen today:
  This place is a madhouse, it's all full of Arabs! Come on, let's go.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Daleks marching through the jungle with flamethrower torches in are utterly beautiful.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: At the time, Doctor Who was considered a series for kids. As such, the decision to kill off not one but two ongoing characters - one of whom earlier in the story is shown murdering her own brother - in an extremely complex (for its day) storyline that was three times longer than the average story, made this one of the more controversial stories of the Classic Era, an experiment that would never again be repeated, and it would be 16 years before another companion was killed off. The story ending with a planet-destroying weapon ageing the Doctor's (temporary) companion into a decomposed pile of dust also didn't do much to placate the Moral Guardians.

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