Doctor Who: Summary: The Escape (1963)

“The Escape” picks up with the Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara still imprisoned by the Daleks in their city on Skaro and suffering from radiation sickness. The Daleks give them anti-radiation drugs to keep them alive, but only so they can be used as bait. The Daleks plan to trick the Thals, the peaceful, humanoid race also living on Skaro into entering the city by offering them food grown from crops that will secretly deliver a lethal dose of radiation. The Doctor’s group realizes the Daleks intend to wipe out the Thals, so they need to escape both to save themselves and to warn the Thals about the trap.

Ian comes up with a plan to exploit the Daleks’ dependence on static electricity from the city floors. The crew creates a cloak that insulates Ian from the floor, letting him disable a Dalek by ambushing it from behind. They jam the mutant’s eyestalk with mud, forcing the Dalek to open its casing. Ian then climbs inside the empty Dalek shell to bluff their way past the guards. The episode ends on a cliffhanger as the crew, with Ian disguised as a Dalek, begins their tense attempt to break out of the city and stop the Daleks’ plan to massacre the Thals.