Remembrance of the Daleks

I am at loss to explain what the Doctor is doing here.

This is held up as one of the best stories of Doctor Who. It’s quite good, especially if you can ignore McCulloch’s dreadful music and the appalling title which means absolutely nothing, but it also left me feeling a bit unhappy about a few things. McCoy, in my mind, still seems to be going through the motions and the way he deliberately rolls his ‘r’s and over-pronounces some words to be honest is a bit much and I really feel he’s not in character, but at least he’s a far cry from ‘Time and the Rani’ where he seemed desperate to be funny.

Dursely McLinden as Mike Smith

The Daleks are back, and following on from ‘Revelation of the Daleks’, we have two factions, one headed by Davros now going by the guise of the Emperor Dalek, and the other headed by the Black Dalek controlling a young girl. Why? Because why not I guess. There’s great pace and energy through the four episodes, penned by first-time Who writer Ben Aaronovitch. Pamela Salem (Toos in ‘Robots of Death’) is just one of many quality actors recruited for this tale with deliberate nods to the past and very much a UNIT feel. We also have Michael Sheard returning to who as the Headmaster.

The Doctor with Gilmore and Rachel Jensen (Pamela Salem)

We see Daleks rising up stairs for the first time, a space shuttle actually land on Earth without any CSO, and the biggest explosion in Who-history. I think if you don’t delve too deep below the surface this is an almost perfect Doctor Who. However, it’s not.

The character of the Doctor, for starters, is too dark. To intentionally programme the Hand of Omega, which he calls a ‘stellar manipulator’ (oh Pu-lease!) to destroy Skaro’s sun, taking Skaro and other planets along with it, that is not something the Doctor would do in my book.

Maybe the Thals have died out, I don’t know, but still it’s very harsh to destroy a world. The Omega device appears to go forwards in time, but it’s all a bit confusing really. Cartmel and McCoy made a decision to make the Doctor darker, suggesting he had something to do with the days of Rassilon and Omega too. It flies in the face of who the Doctor has been up until now. Not to mention McCoy is not very convincing as a ‘dark character’, in my opinion. Mind you, I prefer it to his clowning around.

Inside a Dalek. Ewwww!

I really liked the use of nods to the past. In ‘Attack of the Cybermen’ the nods to the past were convoluted and confusing, yet important to the plot. Here, Totter’s Lane, the Coal Hill School, mentions of Zygons and Yeti, and even what appears to be Doctor Who about to be aired on BBC One, are incidental to the plot so the casual viewer might not know they were even there, and if they did and didn’t get them, it didn’t matter. For the fan though, they were nice touches.

The Black Dalek, Radcliffe and 'the girl'.

Ace makes a good impression, very different companion even if she is a bit much at times. The series is the better for her introduction. This story feels a lot more like Doctor Who than any of the previous season which is an interesting choice. We seemed to be going in a different direction in Season24, but season 25 sees more of a traditional feel in its opening instalment.

Where there's Daleks, there's always Davros it seems.

This feels like just about the most expensive Doctor Who story to date. A Dalek shuttle which is actual sizes that was lowered by a crane, some pretty awesome explosions, a high proportion of the story shot on OB. It’s only let down by one or two things, such as the music (especially) and the use of a lightning ball as the ‘time manipulator’. And the idea that the Doctor set a trap for the Daleks prior to November 1963 even though in ‘The Daleks’ he had never met them before.

But Doctor Who tales aren’t supposed to make perfect sense right? And we get some awesome scenes of Daleks exploding and the organic matter that is inside. Oh another returning face – Peter Halliday as the blind priest, I wonder if the casting was deliberately nodding to the past. Moving the coffin with the Hand of Omega though, that seems unnecessary and perhaps was just an idea for a scene that Aaronovitch wanted included.

Andrew Morgan makes a much better fist of this tale too which is good for him. I do wonder about its status as an absolute classic though, maybe fans are just agog at the explosions and so many Daleks in London. Great story though.

7.5/10

Destiny of the Daleks

New Season, new Romana.

Terry Nation is back with his final contribution to Doctor Who in ‘Destiny of the Daleks’, a rather dull story that opens up the 17^th season where the 16^th had finished in some ways – dull. In other ways, changes were afoot. Mary Tamm sadly decided to leave the show, and so they decided Romana would regenerate. She ends up regenerating into Lalla Ward in one of the all-time strangest scenes in Doctor Who where Romana keeps presenting new ‘bodies’ to the Doctor. (no, no they were all fully clothed! Goodness me).

Romana II weeps and cries when interrogated. 

Lalla Ward would go on, I am told, to make the role her own but her Romana is very hard to like in this story. In ‘The Armageddon Factor’, Romana is tortured by the Shadow and stands brave and resolute throughout. Here she suffers the same fate but thanks to the Daleks, and she cries and screams like she does for much of the first half of this story. There are some better moments in the last half, the scenes where she plays rock-paper-scissors with the Doctor is a little reminded that she is a Time Lord, but I think that new script-editor Douglas Adams needed to work these scripts over a lot more than he did.

Tom Baker and David Gooderson as Davros.

David Gooderson has apparently copped a bit of flak for his portrayal of Davros. Michael Wisher was fantastic in ‘Genesis of the Daleks’, and now it’s Davros the Daleks have come to find to help fight the Movellans, another robot-race who are locked in a war with the Daleks. Davros is, after hundreds of years if not thousands is still alive somehow. Not only that, he’s been waiting for someone to find him in the same position he was shot covered in cobwebs. Ridiculous much? I don’t mind the portrayal of Davros here though, he is quieter, calculating and still sinister without the crazy over the top rants. Let’s be honest – over the top rants are the realm of atypical villains for the most part.

Quarry anyone?

The Daleks are willing to do whatever he says. They can’t believe the Doctor would sacrifice himself to kill Davros, then Davros asks them to sacrifice themselves to destroy the Movellan  space ship. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. As usual though some good ideas behind the Nation plot – two battle computers that can’t out-think each other. The characters are all thin at best though, with the exception of Davros who wasn’t new. The Movellans are all robots, Daleks are Daleks and the slaves the Daleks are using to clear away down to Davros (he loves shots of people lifting rocks it seems) have a sort of leader (Tyssan played by Tim Barlow) who is completely functional in the story.

Rock-Paper-Scissors explains all!

Then mix in Ken Grieve’s rather uninspired paceless direction, add a complete lack of soundtrack (Dudley Simpson is credited but there’s hardly a bar of music, especially in the final episode) and it’s a hard story to enjoy on any level. There seriously hasn’t been as little incidental music since ‘The Sontaran Experiment’, and that was a two-parter! The Director usually would tell the composer where he wanted music, and the composer would go away and sort it out. So I have no idea why the story is so under-scored, unless that’s just the way Ken Grieve liked it. Personally I think it could have done with a lot more music, especially to heighten the last episode and add a degree of excitement which was completely lacking.

The more I write the more I realise how little I liked about this one. Better stop now and give a score.

2/10

The Android Invasion

The Doctor is tied to a big...um....

‘The Android Invasion’ stands with ‘The Keys of Marinus’ as one of only two non-Dalek stories written by Terry Nation. A good thing too, the man was full of ideas and the Daleks, by now, had really gotten old and needed a break. Instead Nation delivers a scripts about a plot to take over the Earth by stealth, replacing people slowly by androids, and then infecting the population with a virus.

Well. That’s Nation all over, isn’t it? His first episode sees the Doctor and Sarah seemingly arrive back on Earth, but is that where they are? They explore for much of the episode, peeling the apple if you like to slowly discover that they cannot possibly be on Earth. Devisham is the town, a lovely little village near a space centre.

UNIT are bizarrely in control of the space centre, but as Nicholas Courtney was not available no Brig. But Harry (Ian Marter) and Benton (John Levene) do appear for their final appearances, firstly as dopple-ganging androids, then in episode four on the real Earth as themselves. And androids too. Sadly they are given very little to do, and this would be their last appearance in the show. Not a great way for them to go out, today Philip Hinchcliffe regrets that but he didn’t realise this would be the last story involving UNIT (although UNIT does appear in ‘The Seeds of Doom’, no regulars appear in that story at all).

Anyways, the first episode is perhaps the best. Nation’s penchant for eerie atmosphere is at the fore here. Not so long after this story I think he would create ‘Survivors’, a wonderful TV series involved a plague that wipes out nearly the entire Earth population (there it is again) where just about every episode was very very eerie indeed!

Stygron and the Doctor

As a story it’s ok. Some nice moments. Hinchcliffe on the DVD bemoans the Kraals, with their big masks and fumbling wide fingers. He postulates they should have been more nimble to create the technology of an advanced society. Maybe he is right but I didn’t mind them, I thought the masks were pretty good all considered. They did lend themselves to being portrayed by the actor inside as grumpy old men though. And we only saw two of them.

It was competently directed by former producer Barry Letts, although it’s not very pacey at any point and the final episode, mostly thanks to the script, again fails to really cap off the build up, as in ‘Pyramids of Mars’ and indeed many Doctor Who stories. Terrance Dicks always said that episode three was the hardest episode to write, but I think for sure it’s episode four because you have to tie it all together nicely and give the viewers a big, satisfying ending. Not easy to do!

Milton Johns as Guy Crayford.

The cast was fine.... Milton Johns as Guy Crayford, the astronaut captured by the Kraals who was fooled into thinking that he only had one eye, when under his eye patch he apparently NEVER took off even to shower was a second perfectly good one. He plays the gullibility perfectly but perhaps the character was written as too gullible to be possibly believable.

Tom Baker and Liz Sladen are great as usual, and carry a LOT of the story, with very few big characters over the four episodes. Mainly it’s just the Doctor, Sarah, Crayford and Martin Friend as Styggron, the Kraal scientist behind the whole crazy scheme. Harry, Benton, Chadaki (another Kraal, one of only two to speak) and Colonel Farady in episode four only formed the support but had very little to do. Tom battled through a sickness he caught when he decided to do a stunt requiring him to be submerged in a big pond, making his lines husky but still doing a great job. A solid if unremarkable story.

6.5/10

Mission to the Unknown

Hello folks! The Professor is here with another review. Sorry first up, I have skipped a story! I heard that there is a new reconstruction out on DVD of ‘Galaxy Four’ and I thought I’d wait to get a copy of that, which I expect later this week. I considered time hopping forward to a point after it was released. Then someone suggested I could see all the episodes first shown if I jumped back to the 1960s and wouldn’t have to watch a single recon at all. I told that person that that would be breaking the laws of time somewhat, he said it wouldn’t and a long bar fight ensued. Luckily afterwards I popped back to the bar before the guy entered and hid a staser in a cupboard so it all worked out in the end.

‘Mission to the Unknown’. A single episode ‘story’ which doesn’t feature the Doctor, Stephen or Vicki. That was a surprise! I discovered on the tube of you that there are two animations available for this episode, and I watched them both. So I think I got the gist of the story. Not that it’s a complete story. I am presently two episodes into ‘The Daleks Masterplan’, of which ‘Mission to the Unknown’ is a prequel.

It’s a wonderfully atmospheric episode set on the planet Kembel where the Daleks are at work planning something – a big meeting of new allies from across the galaxies. A small group of humans have arrived on Kembel. One is on the tail of the Daleks – Marc Corey (Edward De Souza). They face the Varga plants which leave a thorn in the skin if you’re not careful, turning people in psychopathic killers!  The perfect cover for the Daleks.

It’s a nice little episode, but in no way a complete story, just a prelude to what is to come. It’s well done though, and I was impressed by the look and feel of the thing. You almost don’t miss the main characters. Almost! I look forward to seeing where this is all heading when I get to watch all twelve episodes of ‘The Daleks Masterplan’!

7/10