Day 314 – November 10th 2021
Resurrection of the Daleks Part Two
Resurrection of the Daleks – Part Two
I feel a bit stupid saying it, but I’ve really struggled to keep track of exactly what’s going on in this story, and in this episode especially. There’s about five different plots all battling for space at any one time, and some are far more interesting to me than others. So, I think it’s;
- The Daleks are losing in their war to the Movellans because the latter invented a virus which exclusively targets the former. That’s fine, but then how and why have some canisters of that virus ended up on Earth? The Daleks are able to guard these canisters using the bomb squad (who they hilariously suggest won’t draw any attention to the warehouse) because…
- The Daleks are duplicating people. It’s suggested that all of their human agents in this story are duplicates (apart from Lytton, I’m guessing, as he’ll be back), and in the closing moments it’s revealed that these duplicates have already been placed in key strategic positions around the Earth in 1984. I’m not sure why they’ve targeted that year, given that the Daleks are off in the future somewhere. Earth isn’t the only place they plan to send duplicates though, because…
- They’re also sending a duplicate of Doctor Who and his companions (who he’d be incongruous without) to Gallifrey, with express instructions to assassinate the High Council. If Genesis of the Daleks was the opening shots of the Time War, then this is absolutely a retaliation. It’s also, for me, the most interesting plot line, but it’s only really brought up in a handful of scenes. We rely more on the virus story, to which end…
- The Daleks have stormed the Prison Ship to free Davros, as he’s the only one who can engineer an antidote to the virus. I get that. I understand that. What I don’t understand is how much rope the Supreme Dalek is giving Davros. As Lytton says, they’ve opted to ‘dance to his every whim’. And all the while…
- Davros knew the Daleks would come back for him, so he’s prepared a plan (in secret and while cryogenically frozen) to take back control, by starting off a new faction of Daleks who’re more loyal to him. It’s an idea which will carry through the next two Dalek stories, and they’ll realise that the two factions of Daleks need different colour schemes because it’s impossible to tell them apart during the final battle here.
I think this one could have stood to cut out at least one of the storylines, and to focus more on a single specific aspect. As much as I like the idea of sending a duplicate to Gallifrey, I think I’d go with the virus. Have the time corridor be a way they’ve tried to get rid of the canisters from their ship (it just happens to end in London 1984), and make the focus their trying to get Davros to help them. Heck, you can even keep Davros trying to work against them as you go (although I feel like you need him to actively defeat the Supreme Dalek at the end before succumbing to the virus himself). I think cutting out all the stuff about the duplicates would help to slim the story down and give it all a greater focus.
The biggest casualty of the duplicates plot line would be the loss of this season’s clip montage, which this time around gives us a whistle-stop tour of Doctor Who history, featuring clips of all four previous Doctor Whos and all their companions. Except Leela, who’s missing. There’s a fan theory that this is a deliberate omission on the part of Doctor Who, so that it’ll raise alarm bells when he reaches Gallifrey and doesn’t recognise her. I think a lot of fan theories end up being over-complicated nonsense… but this one’s brilliant. That’s going right in my head canon. And it is nice to see all the old faces again; it scratches my itch for wanting more of them to rock up as illusions in The Five Doctors.
The biggest problem all these storylines causes here is that there almost no room for Tegan or Turlough to do anything, and that’s especially noticeable after how active they were in Frontios. Tegan spends most of the first episode (and a chunk of this one) out of action with a cut on her head, and even when she does get to join in with the story again it never feels like she’s given much to do. Turlough does a lot of wandering around on the Dalek ship, vaguely commenting on things and letting the guest cast get their hands dirty.
It’s especially unforgivable when this is Tegan’s final story, and given that she makes the snap decision to leave at the end of it. Don’t get me wrong, I really like her departure. It feels unique in the world of Doctor Who for her to simply admit that she’s had enough and wants out, and I love the way she runs back at the end as though she’s changed her mind. Fielding plays it beautifully, but I never get the sense that anything in this particular story has effected her enough to make the decision to go. She spent most of it in bed, after all! Had she been right in the thick of the action, fighting alongside the troopers as in Earthshock, I think I’d go along with it more.
Tegan as a character has been a really interesting one. I was disappointed during Season Nineteen (and even early Season Twenty) by the fact that I wasn’t warming to her at all. I remembered her being a companion I really liked, so it surprised me to feel as ambivalent as I did. I can’t pinpoint the moment that changed, but it feels gutting that she’s left now. She’s so much a part of Davison’s era that her leaving really feels like the beginning of the end. I’m going to miss her massively.
While the companions don’t get a lot to do in this one, the same can’t be said for Doctor Who himself. The problem is that, for probably the first time, Davison feels a little like he’s going through the motions. Even when he’s firing a gun at the Dalek mutant in Part One, I never really get much sense of emotion from him. He’s just sort of doing what the script says and not a lot more. That changes at points in this episode – the moment when he realises that his duplicate will be sent to Gallifrey is the first flash of genuine emotion we’ve seen from him all story – but overall it’s a disappointing show from a usually very solid actor.
5/10
We’ve a couple more guest characters entering the TARDIS in this one, with both Stein and Mercer being added to the list.
