Day 349 — December 15th 2021
Remembrance of the Daleks Parts One and Two
Remembrance of the Daleks — Part One
Bloody hell, that’s a turn up for the books! From the lowest possible score on the last episode to the highest on this one. This is absolutely and immediately a 10/10. There’s a confidence and swagger to the production of this story which I feel the show has been missing for a long time. The last time we had a 10/10 was Season Twenty-One, but I’m not sure even there the show was as self assured as it is here.
I can imagine a world in which this ends up being just as bad as Attack of the Cybermen, and on paper they’re very similar stories. The return of an iconic foe in a story which takes in the junkyard on Totters’ Lane and serves as a sequel to a couple of earlier stories. In that story I criticised the use of those elements, but here they seem to click into place.
It helps that there’s a level of competency to this production which has been lacking for some time. I spent a lot of time in the Davison and Colin Baker years complaining that you don’t get a proper ‘reveal’ for the monsters in a story, but there’s no worry on that front in this one. They build up the reveal of the Dalek brilliantly — even having it kill a couple of soldiers from off-screen with a snazzy new extermination effect which superimposes a skeleton as the laser hits the man — and when it finally does appear it trundles out of thick smoke… on fire! How brilliant is that?! It gets in a couple more kills before it’s taken out by some impressive explosions. I can’t remember the last time a Dalek story gave us a scene quite as exciting as this one.
And the story doesn’t stop there! It continues to do some interesting new things with the Daleks. People often cite this as the first time we see the Daleks flying, although that actually happens in Revelation of the Daleks. There’s a reason people think of it happening here, though; because they make a real song and dance of it and it’s a properly thrilling sequence. The way Doctor Who screams for Ace to get up the stairs away from the Dalek, only to watch in horror as it begins to elevate after him… that’s brilliant. It’s even more exciting than when they play a similar story beat in Dalek, because here it feels like a moment that’s been earned from years of the old jokes. We’re a long way from Destiny of the Daleks, where Doctor Who jokes openly in the script about the fact they can’t follow him up a shaft.
We’re also spending a lot of time out on location here, which feels so refreshing after the awful design work on Dragonfire. There’s something about shooting out on location which makes all the difference, and especially when it’s in proper locations like London streets. The sets are brilliant, too, to the point that I honestly can’t tell if some of the school scenes are location or studio, and I don’t want to spoil the illusion by checking. I suspect I know the answer, but the fact that it’s even a debate is brilliant. Sure there’s occasional points where you can see anachronistic cars and buildings in the background of some location shots but they do nothing to spoil the effect because it looks so good. I wonder if that’s partly why I’m less bothered by the return to the junkyard here? It looks like a much nicer location than the last one they used.
Something else which feels like it’s come on leaps and bounds since Attack of the Cybermen is the relationship between Doctor Who and companion. I thought Mel worked really well — both with Colin and Sylvester — but there’s something about the pairing with Ace here which just feels so right. When I first saw this story I didn’t realise it was only Ace’s second adventure. This feels like a pairing which has been travelling together for a while, and are totally comfortable in each other’s presence. They’re every bit as good as Troughton and Hines or Tom and Lis Sladen. I especially like the moment in which Ace gets quizzed in the window of the school, overlooking the playground;
Doctor Who: ‘Come and look at this. What do you make of that?’
Ace: ‘It’s a playground.’
Doctor Who: ‘The burn marks. See them?’
Ace: ‘A landing pattern for some kind of spacecraft, isn’t it?’
Doctor Who: ‘Very good.’
Ace: ‘But this is Earth, 1963. Well, someone would have noticed. I’d have
heard about it.’
Doctor Who: ‘Do you remember the Zygon gambit with the Loch Ness Monster? Or the Yetis in the Underground?’
Ace: ‘The what?’
Doctor Who: ‘Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched by only its ingenuity when trying to destroy itself.’
It’s another few continuity references chucked in for good measure… but my god they work well, don’t they? I wonder if it’s because there’s a point to them, and they’re particularly nicely written? That final line from Doctor Who is brilliant, and there’s plenty of other great dialogue throughout the episode.
This one feels like the natural end point from all the great character work they were doing in Season Twenty-Four, and Ace is the recipient of all that. I love the moment she tips out the money in the cafe only to realise she doesn’t have a clue how pre-decimal currency works. It’s a tiny moment, and a really simple character beat, but I just can’t imagine the likes of Peri or Tegan having a scene like that.
The only other time in this marathon that the show has gone from a 1/10 to a 10/10 in the space of two episodes is the transition from The Space Pirates Episode Six to The War Games Episode One. Here’s hoping it’s a sign of some brilliant stuff to come.
Remembrance of the Daleks — Part Two
Cor, there I am banging on about how I can’t imagine many of the other 1980s companions getting a moment like Ace’s confusion with the money then this episode goes and raises the bar a bit — can you imagine any of the other companions this decade getting to be as active and exciting as Ace is in this episode? Not content with sitting tight at the boarding house and doing as she’s told she heads back to Coal hill and gets into a scrap with a bunch of Daleks, taking one of them out with her super-charged baseball bat! I love the moment she jumps through the window — there’s shades of Leela in there, just when it felt like the days of companions getting stuck in like that were a distant memory. This is the brilliant version of Ace I know and love, and it feels a million miles away from the character we had in Dragonfire. Sophie Aldred’s performance is massively improved here, too, as a result of being given some decent material and the whole production being far less CBBC.
Also putting in their best performance yet with this episode is Sylvester McCoy. As with Delta and the Bannermen last season, he’s at his strongest when playing the smaller more subtle material, and the scene in the cafe is a perfect example of that;
Cafe Employee: ‘Sugar?’
Doctor Who: ‘Ah. A decision. Would it make any difference?’
Cafe Employee: ‘It would make your tea sweet.’
Doctor Who: ‘Yes, but beyond the confines of my tastebuds, would it make
any difference?’
Cafe Employee: ‘Not really.’
Doctor Who: ‘But… What if I could control people’s tastebuds? What if I decided that no one would take sugar? That’d make a difference to those who sell the sugar and those that cut the cane.’
Cafe Employee: ‘My father, he was a cane cutter.’
Doctor Who: ‘Exactly. Now, if no one had used sugar, your father wouldn’t have been a cane cutter.’
Cafe Employee: ‘If this sugar thing had never started, my great-grandfather wouldn’t have been kidnapped, chained up, and sold in Kingston in the first place. I’d be a African.’
Doctor Who: ‘See? Every great decision creates ripples, like a huge boulder dropped in a lake. The ripples merge, rebound off the banks in unforeseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain
the consequences.’
Cafe Employee: ‘Life’s like that. Best thing is just to get on with it.’
It’s not only the thoughtful moments that work for him in this one, though. When he’s at the Counter Measures HQ and commanding Gilmore on what’s needed to fight off the Daleks it’s the most commanding this incarnation has ever been. There’s a steely determination and grimness to the performance which is exactly what I think was missing from the confrontation in Delta. I wonder is McCoy watched that back on broadcast and decided to approach the material in a different way going forward? All things considered, I don’t think Doctor Who as a character has been this sure of himself since the middle Tom Baker years. I certainly can’t imagine Davison taking charge like this, and even Colin — who could certainly do bombast — doesn’t feel like he’d fit in here. It’s one of those situations where a decent script makes everyone raise their game, and this is probably the single best episode to show people who say McCoy’s not very good in the role, because it’s one of the best episodes for the character, and played to perfection.
8/10
