The Time of the Doctor

And so we bid goodnight and goodbye to Matt Smith as the curtain also comes down on 2013. ‘Time of the Doctor’ finishes my marathon too, begun back in February and I have to say, if you ever want to get to a point where you are partially ‘over’ your favourite TV, for a short while at least, then try watching 800 episodes of it in one year. In fact, try it in 11 months. That’s something like three episodes a day on average. So yeah.

The Oswald Christmas

‘Time of the Doctor’, like Moffatt in general, is dividing the Doctor Who ‘community’ with a very clear between those that think it (and he) is brilliant, and those who loathe it all. There are very few in the middle there. ‘Time of the Doctor’ for me is full of fantastic stuff, with equally as much stuff that made my eyes roll like some cantankerous old man who thinks only the Lambert era had anything of value yet watched the following 48 years of the show complaining all the way. And I really don’t want to be that guy. Honestly.

Clara and 'Handles' - the Cyberhead.

So. I really loved the last fifteen minutes, and I adored the way that this Doctor, now the 13^th as David Tennant regenerated into David Tennant officially according to the extrapolation in this episode using up a regeneration and counting John Hurt’s Doctor, died of old age. This consisted of two makeup jobs on Matt Smith, one to age him a bit which was very unconvincing, and

Orla Brady as the curious Tasha Kem.

another for right at the end which was superb, and very Hartnell-esque. Matt Smith deserves kudos for his portrayal as much older as well.

The way that he was given a new life cycle, to use the regeneration energy to destroy the Dalek fleet, also, was much better than I feared it was going to be. Something given to save his life through the crack on the wall because Gallifrey was on the other side of it and without the Doctor they will be stuck there forever. So it made sense.

Inside the Papal Mainframe.

Clara’s father, as he is now, was seen for the first time with little impact as was her grandmother and presumably father’s girlfriend. They were treated as mostly irrelevant. The Christmas stuff didn’t work so well, and you’d think the episode would have been much darker had it not gone out on the 25^th of December. So I guess we have to make allowances but really, a town called ‘Christmas’. What I wanted to see was it play out over a longer period of time, for the Doctor’s relationship with this town to develop as a little love affair.

Karen Gillan makes a fleeting appearance.

There was a lot of attempts at humour that for me simply fell flat I am afraid. The Doctor being naked essentially for the sake of it, wearing holographic clothes which Clara’s family couldn’t see. Just to show that after all this time, and Matt Smith’s Doctor is supposed to have lived for many hundred years, he still doesn’t get social skills to the point of utter stupidity. I don’t buy it for one second but I also for one second do not blame Matt Smith for it either.

There’s so much I could analyse and

A Hartnell-esque farewell to Matt Smith's Doctor.

say why I didn’t like it, but at least the big questions on my mind were answered, if pretty much in an expedited paragraph of dialogue somewhere in the middle. The Silence and its purpose, Madame Kovarian, the exploding TARDIS. Bit odd to wrap up stuff that hadn’t been mentioned for two series, but hey, that’s the way the Moff rolls.

The change from Doctor to the other was lightning quick and we get to see Peter Capaldi in a very impressive 15 seconds as the Doctor. More traditional? Looks that way. Hopefully a better bunch of eccentricities than we’ve seen from Matt. I liked his Doctor for the most part, but at times he went too far for me. C’est La Vie. I am more excited by the new than upset by the leaving!

5.5/10

Day of the Doctor

So. I watched this on Sunday morning Japan time November 24th. I watched ‘The Five-ish Doctors’ with Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the thing downloaded, which I enjoyed immensely. It was very funny and a great nod to the past. And then it was time. 50 years in the making – ‘The Day of the Doctor’. It had, sadly, already been spoiled to ribbons. We already knew who John Hurt was ‘ the War Doctor’ – thanks to a brilliant prequel featuring Paul McGann. We already knew that David Tennant and

Tom Baker makes an appearance,.

Billie Piper were returning, so was the Time War, and so was Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. And the Zygons. I wish some of those elements had been kept secret. BUT the worst leak that I had read just by accident was that Tom Baker was making an appearance. And I tried not get spoiled for this one, I really really did.

So with the absence of surprises, I delved into this 76-minute special. I watched it twice on Sunday. The first time left me feeling incredibly flat. Disappointed. Not angry or resentful I should add, I just didn’t connect to the thing. I didn’t enjoy it I guess. I didn’t think it was in anyway bad, but I didn’t like what Steven Moffat had done, the choices he had made along the journey. Which I thought was fine, everyone has different opinions, different expectations and you can’t please everyone, and this time I was one person who it hadn’t hit accord with and such is life.

John Hurt as the Doctor.

I watched it later, in the evening again. And I got more out of it. I didn’t completely change my mind, but I got more out of it. I smiled more. I enjoyed it more. So let’s look closely at what we got.

We got the Time War. I will start with the biggest negative of all perhaps, and that’s the way the Time War was depicted. It’s supposed to a war in TIME, as far as I understood. BUT instead it was merely Daleks and Time Lords shooting at each other. A lot. The argument could be made that it wasn’t waged through time but FOR CONTROL of time, but we had been told before it was the former. The look of what we got was very good, very epic. But I felt letdown as how the Time War had been envisaged.

Billie Piper.

We got the War Doctor. And really this is what the story was all about, and with that I have a big issue. John Hurt plays the Doctor the once. He’s a special guest-star in this episode and he’s centre-stage. To me that was not right. In the broader sense it is about the 10^th and 11^th Doctor who have tried to forget the Time War, and this incarnation of the Doctor. The story is about the Doctor’s self forgiveness. Until they decide to change history. The most powerful and best point of the special is when ten and eleven (now eleven and twelve) stand side by side with the War Doctor to end the time war with this amazing sentient weapon – another aspect I liked. The weapon is played by Billie Piper. More on her later.

But the idea of changing the past, it’s something that’s crept in frequently it seems of late. Just change history. It harks back to ‘The Waters of Mars’ when the 10^th (11^th) Doctor declares he is so powerful history is his to command. And then he realises he’s gone too far. So what is this? And yet history is and isn’t changed. Gallifrey is saved, hidden somewhere, giving the Doctor a quest to find it. It’s beyond timey-wimey now. The Doctor will still say the same person and believe he destroyed Gallifrey and the Daleks, until he reaches the point in his time stream with Matt Smith. Ok. But what about ‘The End of Time’? Did that happen? How does it all fit in? It’s not worth thinking about because nothing will ever make sense again. I liked the Time War idea. I think perhaps we didn’t need to see it. Ever. As much as many fans have been screaming for it. In one foul swoop Moffat has changed the Time War and added another Doctor into mythology.

Which also begs the question – why not use McGann as the War Doctor? I can’t believe people watched the show JUST to see John Hurt, and at least that would be a nod to the older fans in some way. Was Moffat determined that none of the existing Doctors should be shown to do something so bad as destroy Gallifrey? I think it would have worked better with McGann personally, and it wouldn’t have changed what people accepted and Who-history. A perhaps better argument against McGann appearing as the Doctor in ‘Day of the Doctor’ could be that if one was included (as the Doctor) it would be unfair on Davison, McCoy and Colin Baker.

David Tennant and Billie Piper. Great! They weren’t teamed together which was a blessing. Billie was really good as the weapon, creepy and all. David Tennant was somewhat understated, which was nice actually. Moffat decided to give the three Doctors a fair bit of screen time together, unlike previous attempts at multi-Doctor stories, and that really paid dividends. I’m not really sure about the stuff with Elizabeth the first. David Tennant really is the romance Doctor. And now married to Elizabeth the first!

John Hurts’ mocking of Tennant and Smith has made a lot of Who-fans smile, myself included. That was played beautifully. We had the 13 Doctors working together with a great sound-alike of William Hartnell and an ever-so-brief appearance by Peter Capaldi (which I was expecting sadly) as the TARDISes are used to save Gallifrey. We had some wonderfully clever uses of time, having all that time from Hurt’s Doctor through to Smith’s to calculate how to save Gallifrey. Except – Hurt’s and Tennant’s Doctors were supposed to forget everything! Ooops! But what’s a good episode without massive plot holes?

I didn’t like Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and the eagerness to blow up London. The Zygon sub-plot was almost irrelevant and they left the Zygons negotiating with Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and forgot about it. Well, unless we see more of it in the future of course. But it didn’t bother me. Nice touches here and the – the use of the Coal Hill School, where Clara now teaches, and I Chesterton as the ‘Chairman of the Governors’ too, lovely touch.

And then we had Tom Baker in the final scene (not as the Doctor), and he was simply magical. There’s not much more I can say about that scene. Doctor Who is going to change from this story, you can be sure about that. The exact direction is known only to Mr Moffatt, but I think it will include Gallifrey. A search for Gallifrey. That could be the focus of Series 8.

The plotting of the special disappointed me, but there was still a lot to like. Some wonderful moments. The Doctor – the Doctors were the focus, not the Daleks or the Zygons, and surely that’s something they got right. I’m a grumpy old man and not everything floated my boat. But that’s the way it goes sometimes. I’m not going to shout with indignation over the parts I didn’t like, or act like ‘HOW DARE HE’ in regards to Mr Moffatt. He’s a fan too, and presumably he wrote what he would have liked to have seen. Which is the only way he could about it. Doctor Who is 50 years old. I love the show. I do not love every single story. Probably though, every single story has a moment, an idea, something I liked. And this, despite the plotting, had plenty.

6.5/10

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe & Asylum of the Daleks

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

Bill Baily guest stars, albeit briefly.

Awesome spaceship at the start, it's downhill from there.

You know, Christmas specials. They are kinda Christmassy, right? And sometimes, not much else. This story was very average in my opinion. In fact, after a brilliant opening with the Doctor jumping off a space ship and some humorous back and forths between the Doctor and Madge Arwell,(played by Claire Skinner who does do a fantastic job) it teeters out into some sort of Christmas kids’s film. ‘A Christmas Carol’ was heading that way, but was still solid and I liked it. This time I have to admit to be very bored.

The highlight is Bill Bailey’s guest appearance. Pity it was so short and he did so little. It was Narnia-inspired and that’s pretty much what we got. Maybe for the youngest viewers it hit accord. But even the mention of ‘Androzani Major’ didn’t gain my interest. Crawling through boxes to get to other worlds because basically the Doctor is a magician. and yes, sure sometimes he is. And

the ending where they have saved the father, well that was rather emotional and well played. But the rest is an hour of kids and boredom. Sorry. Fail.

2/10

Asylum of the Daleks

Jenna Louise Coleman in a surprise appearance.

That's a lot of Daleks!

The seventh (new) series of Doctor Who begins with a major BANG! with ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, an

action-packed, Dalek-packed adventure which sees the Doctor, Amy and Rory sent down to a planet where the Daleks keep all the crazy Daleks in an asylum underground. It is also where nanobots are programmed to reconfigure people into ‘sort-of’ Daleks – where little eyestalks appear in their foreheads.

It’s very enjoyable and lots of fun, and also features Jenna Louise

A Dalek shaped building on Skaro.

Coleman as Oswin Oswald, trapped as a Dalek, the future companion of the Doctor in the biggest surprise that Moffat has manufactured yet, and kept spoiler-free somehow which was a major coup. Jenna is fantastic as Oswin, snappy, funny and looks to have the makings of a great companion, whilst Rory and Amy start the story by signing divorce papers as Amy is in the middle of a fashion shoot, which is frankly odd. Of course, love saves the day and

Wasn't so sure about this special effect.

they are back together by the end. And that works nicely, but the stuff at the start, it just doesn’t seem like Amy and Rory at all and when I saw it I thought it must be either a dream sequence or an alternative world to be honest.

Nevertheless. The story is really wonderful, exciting, and features a hell of a lot of Daleks. It’s a pity that most of the classic Daleks, especially the Special Weapons Dalek, don’t do anything. But Series 7 – or Series 7A is off to a cracking start and it looks very expensive. Which is always nice.

8.5/10

The Stolen Earth, Journey's End & The Next Doctor

The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End

By now I know what to expect with the series finales. They are big, very very big. A little reminiscent, and generally plotwise a massive disappointment. So, keeping that in mind you can’t be disappointed with The Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, because they merely ran true to form. In fact, they were the pinnacle of overblown, over the top stories laced with awful plotting and a very drawn out ending.

Although there are a few specials to go, you could be forgiven for seeing this one as Russel T Davies’ and David Tennant’s swansong. We even got a regeneration of sorts! What really got me was how unsatisfying the resolution was. Which is RTD’s forte it seems, building up on a huge scale and then not really having anywhere to go except a big reset button or exploring the realms of incredulity.

So. We have planets throughout the universe disappearing, and at the start of the story the Earth becomes one of them. Why the TARDIS would not be taken with the Earth is anyone’s guess, it had landed there and so being left in the empty space when the Earth is stolen made no rightly sense to me.

Not only do we have a Dalek army, a Dalek supreme, but Dalek Sek and Davros are back too. Julian Bleach’s Davros is wonderful, perfect casting as the mad creator of the Daleks, and he looks fantastic, true to the original, so a big thumbs up for that. All the important characters are back for the finale – the characters that have made the first four years of the new series. Rose, Mickey, Rose’s Mum (grooooooan), Martha, Captain Jack, Sarah Jane (always wonderful to see her) and Harriet Jones, former Prime Minister. They all come up with ingenious ways to destroy the Earth so the Daleks can’t have it, but it all comes to naught in the end.

Because this series is about Donna. And she’s been saying she’s no-one, so it must be her who saves the day. So here’s the thing that killed the story for me. Donna-Doctor. Doctor-Donna. Whichever it was. As the TARDIS is seconds away from destruction, Donna touches the Doctor’s hand in a jar (this is the hand he lost in ‘The Christmas Invasion’ by the way) and creates a new Doctor, combined with Donna. So yes, we have two David Tennants! Then Donna herself inherits the Doctor’s mind, combined with hers, and presses a few buttons and stops everything.

Let’s look past the fact that pressing buttons is a very weak way to resolve the situation, and consider then that it is NOT Donna that saves the day, but the Doctor-Donna. It’s nothing inherit in Donna perse, but the combination of minds which allows her to be the heroine. For me, that defeated the purpose of having her being the key to it all. BIG TIME.

That for me was the single biggest issue with this epic story which looks great although it’s full of many other crappy elements like the Oster-Haagen key, and the end of the first part where the Doctor starts to regenerate and then doesn’t cause he didn’t want to. Then we have the ending with Rose. Rose is sent back to the alternate Earth and given the new version of the Doctor, who is incidentally human. I’m sorry, but AS IF. Let’s also look past the age difference and oh so much that’s wrong with the idea of a relationship between the two, he’s a friggin’ facsimile. It’s dreadful, awful, shite.

The ending doth drag too, and all we really needed to see was what happened to Donna, who has her memory of the Doctor wiped because otherwise it will kill her. And this is really sad. And again unsatisfying for this viewer. In fact, I may have preferred her to actually die. Dalek Caan is continually saying one of the companions is going to die, and then no-one does.

So, in short, grand on scale, vision and design, short on plot and satisfaction. In short, the antithesis of every series finale RTD has given us.

3/10

The Next Doctor

And we’re back with another Christmas special, starring David Morrissey as Jackson Lake, who thinks he’s the Doctor with his faithful companion Rosita (played by the brilliant Velile Tshabalala) facing off against Miss Hartigan (Dervla Kirwan) who is equally brilliant. In fact, the these actors make the show wonderful, seriously wonderful.

The first three quarters of the episode is just a great romp, with some clever twists. I love the idea of the Doctor thinking that Jackson must simply be a future incarnation, and then he has a sonic screwdriver which is just… a screwdriver! Brilliant! And the TARDIS is a hot air balloon! Wonderful stuff! Then we have the Cybermen, and their ‘Cybershades’ very strange creatures with cyber-faces but a sort of shaggy black carpet as the costume. Ok, they look pretty crappy.

The show is full of wonderful moments and reveals, it’s truly magical in places, sad in others. Highly entertaining. It was the best Christmas special of all.

Until… the Cyberking. Oh gawd. What were they thinking? A huge Cyberman walking around London destroying everything with like a control deck and Miss Hartigan at the controls. She appears to be an early feminist too, but the script doesn’t treat her well which I didn’t like and seems almost anti-feminist in the way it portrays her. It looks a bit rubbish this CyberKing, but in concept it’s even worse. It’s a kind of lame concept which may have been used because RTD couldn’t think of anything else when faced with the question – ‘What are the Cybermen up to?’.

The story is the first to be shot in HD, and it looks magnificent. The improvement in picture quality is massive. I enjoyed that aspect and the performances of the guest cast. And the first three quarters is pretty awesome. Hard to get past the CyberKing though…

6/10

Fear Her, Army of Ghosts & Doomsday

Fear Her

Ooooooh a box aren't we clever?

Another episode which gets a lot of stick from the fans, ‘Fear Her’ was written by Matthew Graham. Whilst I agree it really doesn’t work, I have to say I liked the idea behind it – a tiny creature lost from the rest of its kind. It’s different. However, the setting is London a few years in the (then) future, on the opening day of the 2012 London Olympics.

Here comes the big bad!

It’s not set some time interesting basically. It could be set in a special time in the past, or in the far future, or even the present day which makes a threat feel more real, but there’s no real reason to set a story six years in the future. The world is basically the same, they’ve arrived on a suburban street but not with any established characters, so we don’t see into Rose’s future, it simply appears to be a gimmick connected to the Olympic games.

It’s not a comedy, in fact it deals with some very dark themes – child abuse, and I’m not sure Doctor Who is the appropriate show to be bringing up these issues on. I refer to Chloe’s (Abisola Agbaje) father, who is dead, but brought to life by Chloe because everything she draws is brought to life. In fact I had a similar story where pictures were brought to life by a very curious demon, named Dean. It wasn’t nearly as dark as this story.

The Doctor lights the Olympic flame. Makes sense to me.

Then we have the Tennant and Piper double act on song with their massive egos barely being contained on widescreen. This culminates with the Doctor lighting the Olympic flame in the stadium and feeling damned pleased about it himself. The Doctor has always had a big ego, but the way David Tennant has expressed it in the series has been a big issue for me. Rose does nothing to tone it down, in fact she is always encouraging him.

So basically, I liked the central concept. A small lifeform empathising with Chloe, and joining with her. I didn’t like the way the Doctor (and to a lesser extent Rose) pushed his way through the story telling people what to do. The setting was uninspiring and the material does fill the 45 minutes well.

3/10

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday

Rose and her Mum. 

The series finale sees the return of the Cybermen, of Mickey, of Pete Tyler and the Daleks. Yes, Doctor Who fans can go ‘squeeee!’ because finally their wt dreams have come true – the Daleks fighting the Cybermen. Who will win? Well, as it turns out the Daleks are basically invincible and the Cybermen are not. So in the end it’s really like the Daleks fighting humans. Which in the end is disappointing.

They're back!

I liked elements, I disliked elements, I don’t know if it was better or worse than the previous finale. There’s less of a build to this one, besides a throw-away line in ‘The Satan Pit’ where Rose is told she is going to die soon. Naturally this is a play on words, the episode starts with Piper’s short monologue about this being the story of how she died, except it isn’t. Which in some ways is a disappointment, not because I wanted her to die, but that’s where you think the story is going and the

And so are they!

way they get out of it – she ends up in a different dimension – is really a ‘cheat’ in my book.

We start with the Doctor and Rose arriving on modern day earth with Jackie Tyler telling them that Rose’s Grandfather appears as a ghost to her and they discover that ghosts are regularly appearing everywhere nowadays. Again, I hate to harp on about this, but Davies makes Jackie out to be a complete moron. And then he plays on that! The Doctor is then making jokes about her intelligence and her age. When she comes face to face with Pete Tyler (Shaun Dingwell) from the other dimension, she keeps asking about how rich he is. It’s truly awful. She’s written as a dumb, old blonde. And it becomes really hard to believe Pete is in love with her. She could have been written as a strong single mother, but she never has been. Anyways, enough about her.

See ya round like a rissole!

The Cybermen have seeped through from the other dimension via the void because of the Daleks ‘void-ship’. There are four Daleks inside, the ‘cult of Skaro’. Inside the ship they have the ‘Genesis Arc’. An interesting title, a Time Lord ‘device’, it is in fact a prison full of millions of Daleks. Groan. Why call it the Genesis Ark? It makes no sense. It has nothing to do with beginnings at all. Just a cool-sounding title.

So we are treated to Daleks massacring Cybermen in the great battle which for this reason is disappointing. I would have expected to win, but if it was going to be so easy why bother showing it. Then Davies gives the Daleks a bunch of cheesy lines ‘This isn’t war, this is pest control.’ for example.

And it's goodbye to Rose as well. 

Finally, the Doctor has to close the gap to the void and send all the Daleks and Cybermen into it. All except Rose head to the alternate Earth, Rose stays with the Doctor. But in an act of heroism, she has to pull the lever back to the central position to keep the door open, and is rescused by Pete Tyle (no idea how) at the final millisecond and has to live the rest of her life in another dimension.

The Doctor makes one last – projected – visit to see her and we get a final scene full of tears. It’s sad and dramatic, and a little bit overdone. It’s not too bad and after the ride of the previous two series, we had to expect something along these lines.

The story works on most levels, but it’s not brilliant either. I felt it didn’t look as impressive as I expected it to.

6/10

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

Resurrection of the Daleks

Davros is back - Terry Molloy.

‘Resurrection of the Daleks’ is a rollicking, fast paced, stylish piece of Doctor Who. I am very torn after seeing it because for me it was both good and bad at the same time. Let’s start with Mathew Robinson who directed it then, because he did a mighty fine job and my hat is raised to him. On a Doctor Who budget he really made something that if shot on film in widescreen almost looked as if the production values were good enough for a movie.

The script, by Eric Saward, though, has massive holes in it and is very derivative to be honest. It’s not that it’s not well paced, plotted or that the characters are poor, in fact I think the character writing is excellent in this one, but the ideas are just a bit convoluted and pointless? I’m trying to find the right word but that’s all I’ve got right now – never good when you’re criticising writing.

Rodney Bewes guest stars.

So we have a time corridor from the Daleks’ space ship to Earth, 1983. Okay. Why? That seems pointless – the Dalek time ship is hundreds of years in the future. They are holding canisters of a virus that has been destroying them in an abandoned warehouse in London. But wait there is a point to this all, the Daleks are planning to trap the Doctor with the Time Corridor in said warehouse. Well that’s all a bit too much for me.

They have also taken to duplicating humans left right and centre, but employ an apparently non-duplicated human to run them (Lytton). Ok.

Why again? It’s a secret plot to duplicate the Doctor and his companions and send them to Gallifrey to defeat the Time Lords of course. Yet at the same time the main strand of the plot involves rescuing Davros from his cryogenic prison in space, so that he can stop a Movellan virus which has caused the Daleks to lose the fight with these enemies. So basically, exactly the same reason as in ‘Destiny of Daleks’, more or less.

Davros has a little thing he uses to inject people and Daleks with and they become his servants. Hmmmm that’s another wobbly plot device right there. As you can see the plot, at least in my eyes, is very weak. However, the story is enjoyable and exciting despite those issues.

The direction is noticeably snappier than usual, it’s very well cast with Maurice Colbourne from Gangsters as Lytton, Rodney Bewes as Stien, and the recasting of Davros this time to be played by Terry Molloy who really pushes the shouting and craziness. It’s strong performance, but I can’t help but feel that somewhere between this performance and the understated performance of David Gooderson would have been the way to go with Davros. Still, when you play a megalomaniac, you shouldn’t really hold back should you?

The Doctor can't quite kill Davros.

The sets and locations are perfect. The space prison is suitably dark and simple, it looks like it could easily be deconstructed and reconstructed to make different rooms. We see the Doctor’s past lives and companions as the Daleks take a print of his mind too which is good. The Doctor and his companions are at times quite secondary to the story, which I know a lot of people don’t like but I think it works well. Perhaps Peter Davison’s best performance thus far, a great moment when he could kill Davros, doesn’t, gets distracted, the door closes and he doesn’t get another opportunity. Would he have? We see Davros contracting the virus right at the end, but somehow I don’t think that will do him in.

Goodbye Tegan

Mark Strickson as Turlough gets a decent amount of action too, and although still a bit cowardly, he has one of his best stories to date. Which leaves Tegan. Sadly this is Janet Fielding’s last story, but I’m sure she was happy to leave. Even in her final story, she doesn’t get to do much and then just decides she’s had enough at the end, which to be honest doesn’t seem THAT out of the blue, but as it was her last story it would have been nice if it was a story where Tegan took a good chunk of the plot, like Adric and Nyssa before her. I like Tegan, but as is almost always the case with the companions, she was woefully under-utilised and that’s sad because Janet Fielding is an enormously talented actress. Brave heart Tegan, I will miss you!

So it’s a mixed bag this story, and a tough one to give a mark too. I’ve shaved off half a mark for the poor use of Tegan.

6.5/10