Day 333 — November 29th 2021
Revelation of the Daleks Part Two
Revelation of the Daleks — Part Two
I think one of the things that’s putting me off this one is that it’s not really a Dalek story; it’s a Davros story. And even then, it’s Davros taking part in a story which doesn’t especially feel tailored to him. Yes, he’s using Tranquil Repose as a base from which to build a new Dalek army, but the main part of the story seems to be using the bodies of the people frozen there to sell as food to a famine-sticken region of space. There’s something truly gruesome in that idea, but it’s the kind of story I can imagine Sil being in, not the creator of the Daleks! People often talk about one of Davros’ lines in this as being a particular highlight, but I think it’s the kind of gag which would sound so much better coming from the mouth of a little slug;
Doctor Who: ‘Did you bother to tell anyone they might be eating their
own relatives?’
Davros: ‘Certainly not! That would have created what I believe is termed consumer resistance.’
My other problem is that it’s not particularly a story for Doctor Who, either. If you remove him and Peri from the narrative I don’t think an awful lot happens. Davros is defeated because the original Daleks show up to arrest him, and they were called in by the staff at Tranquil Repose. Orcini fails in hims mission to kill Davros but ends up making a last-ditch attempt to finish the job, which I imagine he’d have striven for no matter what else was going on. So our heroes spent the first half of the story walking to the action, only to stand around and do very little when they finally arrived.
It’s made worse by the fact that I’ve still not got a great deal of interest in the guest characters for this story, and I don’t think it matters because as is becoming the norm these days the majority of them are killed off pointlessly before the episode is through. Take Jobel and Tasambeker. When I think of the characters in this story they come quite high up on the list of prominent guest stars, but they don’t actually get an awful lot to do. I suppose the point is to show the way that Davros corrupts everything on this world — turning love into hatred, but when they both died in quick succession of each other I found myself sort of shrugging and wondering if I was supposed to really care.
I’m afraid that for the second story running I’ve not got an awful lot to say for this final episode, save to give it a 3/10. Doing so means that Season Twenty-Two has sadly become my lowest-rated season of the entire marathon, averaging just 4.38/10 across the thirteen episodes. I was hoping to champion the Colin Baker era in this marathon but I’ve found it largely quite rubbish so far, sadly. I even toyed with the idea of doing a ‘lost’ story between this season and the next, but have come to the conclusion that I’d rather move on as swiftly as possible. I’ll be dipping into Slipback tomorrow, but then it’s straight on into the longest Doctor Who story of them all…
