Doctor Who/Recap/S25/E01 Remembrance of the Daleks



"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies."

- --The Doctor

The Doctor and Ace arrive at Coal Hill School, perhaps a month after the First Doctor and company left. It doesn't take long before they're mixed up in trouble of the Dalek kind—two separate Dalek factions, the Renegades (Grey) and Imperials (White), respectively opposed and loyal to Davros (as seen in "Revelation of the Daleks"), wage war on each other for possession of the Hand of Omega, a Time Lord superweapon. And unfortunately for both groups, the Doctor has laid a trap for them; he just has to make the right conditions to spring it and ensure that Group Captain Gilmore and his men don't get diced in the crossfire.

Despite being aired in the show's 25th anniversary year and featuring many links to Doctor Who's very first serial, "An Unearthly Child", this is not the official 25th anniversary special. That was "Silver Nemesis", the first episode of which aired on the actual anniversary.

Tropes
"Dalek: . Ace: Who are you calling "small?!" [Batter Up]"
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Used by the Doctor to mock Davros: "Crush the lesser races! Conquer the galaxy! Unimaginable power! Unlimited rice pudding! Et cetera! Et cetera!"
 * Asshole Victim: Mike and Radcliffe. Mike, when confronted by Ace about his racism, doesn't even understand why she's furious.
 * Deliberate Values Dissonance on that one. His racism was pretty much acceptable public opinion (or at least not far off) at the time.
 * Attack Its Weak Point: The Doctor mentions that the Daleks are weakest in the eyepiece. So that's where Ace shoots one of them. With a rocket launcher.
 * Batter Up: Giving us the original Moment of Awesome.


 * Bavarian Fire Drill: The Doctor just waltzes in to Rachel's van and starts asking a lot of technical questions, and at first she doesn't bat an eye. It takes her about a minute to start cottoning on and asking just who he is.
 * Berserk Button: See Batter Up, above.
 * BFG: The Special Weapons Dalek.
 * Briar Patching: How the Doctor makes the Daleks lose hardest of all.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: You know the quote under the picture at the top? Said by the 7th Doctor to the audience at the end of part three.
 * The Chessmaster: The Seventh Doctor gets manipulative. Wow.
 * Civil War
 * Cold Open: A zoom out on Earth, with the Dalek mothership entering shot above the camera.
 * Continuity Nod: Mostly with sets such as the Foreman junkyard and Ian's classroom at the Coal Hill School (which still has the book on the French Revolution that Barbara gave Susan in it).
 * Creepy Child
 * Darker and Edgier: Of a sort; from this story on, the Seventh Doctor begins to be presented as a darker, more brooding and manipulative character than the amiable prat-falling metaphor-mixing bumbler of the previous season.
 * Death Is Cheap
 * Did You Actually Believe? I would let you have The Hand of Omega?
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Fantastic Racism of the Daleks is directly compared with the more prosaic unpleasantness of Nazi sympathiser Radcliffe and his organisation.
 * Earthshattering Kaboom: Actually, Skaro-Shattering, but it's the same idea.
 * Elite Mooks: Special Weapons Dalek (Pictured)
 * Enemy Civil War
 * Enfant Terrible
 * Evil Is Hammy: Davros has completely lost his shit in this one.
 * Exact Words: In their confrontation, the Doctor tells Davros not to use the Hand of Omega, that it's something that's not to be trifled with, and that he's making a grave mistake in doing so—all of which is true, but he doesn't mention why.
 * Fantastic Racism: The Daleks are in the story, so that's a given. But here we see for the first time just how fanatical they can get: they declared all out civil war just because the Imperial Daleks are a tiny bit different genetically. This is an Ironic Echo to the all-too-real racism present in 1963.
 * Fish Out of Temporal Water
 * Five Rounds Rapid: Played straight early on then subverted when the military gets better weapons.
 * Guile Hero: This episode is the first real showing of the Seventh Doctor's manipulative side.
 * Go for the Eye: Ace + rocket launcher + this trope = Epic Win
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: The guy in the cafe is Geoffrey the butler.
 * Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Imperial Daleks of course.
 * I Never Said It Was Poison: The mole gives himself away by asking the Doctor an honestly-curious question about the Daleks that reveals he already knows something about them that the Doctor never told him.
 * Ironic Nickname: Group Captain "Chunky" Gillmore, who's 6'4" and looks like he weighs about 110 pounds.
 * Ironic Nursery Tune: ...five six, seven eight, it's a Doctor at the gate...
 * I Shall Taunt You
 * Karmic Death:
 * Ratcliffe
 * Mike.
 * Last of His Kind
 * Light Is Not Good: The Imperial Daleks have rather neat-looking white-and-gold colorings this time.
 * Giving us literal White Supremacist Daleks. Just another example of Cartmel-era Who's political subtlety...
 * Logic Bomb
 * Missing Backblast: Averted.
 * The Mole
 * My Card
 * Mythology Gag: The telly is cut off before it can announce the new show that is premiering that's called Doc-.
 * No Swastikas: Ratcliffe and his groupies are hinted to be a miniature Hitler youth, though they could just as easily represent the National Front or some other nativist movement.
 * Non-Indicative Name: The Hand Of Omega.
 * Nothing Even Remotely Human Could've Survived That: But that's the point! It isn't even rrremotely human!
 * Not That Kind of Doctor: "Is he all right?" "No idea--I'm a physicist."
 * Off-the-Shelf FX: The Time Controller
 * Oh Crap: The Doctor's expression when, having escaped from a Dalek up a flight of stairs, he hears it powering up its antigravs.
 * Pin-Pulling Teeth: In a possible allusion to this trope, the Doctor pops the cap off one of Ace's nitro-nine cannisters with his teeth.
 * Politically-Correct History: Averted, for one of the few times in the history of Doctor Who. Most noticeably with Ace discovering a "no coloureds allowed" sign. Mike Smith also makes reference to "keeping Britain pure".
 * Not only that, but the black cafe worker who serves the Doctor notes that the existence of sugar is the reason why his grandfather was kidnapped from Africa to become a slave, and his family subsequently became English.
 * Powered by a Forsaken Child: Literally.
 * The Remnant
 * Samus Is a Girl: The Renegade Dalek Battle Computer.
 * Schmuck Bait: Launching something into the sun to increase its power? What did you think would happen, Davros?
 * Shock and Awe: The DBC's power.
 * Shut UP, Hannibal
 * Skip of Innocence: The little girl skips around town . She's not exactly "innocent", though.
 * Smug Snake: Radcliffe spends most of the story strutting around acting like a little tinpot general. When the Renegade Daleks get the Hand of Omega and no longer need his services, however, it quickly becomes apparent that he's completely out of his depth.
 * Somebody Set Up Us the Bomb
 * Talking the Monster to Death: The Doctor tells the last of the Renegade Daleks that it's got no kin left at all since its home world was blown up. It refuses to believe him at first but, unable to contact anyone, is brought to so much despair that it disintegrates itself.
 * Tele Frag: The Doctor manages to make this happen to a Dalek on itself, by fiddling with the machine so that half of the Dalek materializes where the other half would be.
 * There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Abomination Special Weapons Dalek. When the white Daleks can't gain the upper hand, they wheel out this thing. No plunger, no egg whisk, no eyestalk—just a single massive cannon. When it opens up on the grey Daleks, there's nothing left except little patches of smouldering ash.
 * This Cannot Be!
 * Those Wacky Nazis: Ratcliffe holds that Britain "fought for the wrong court" in the last war, and aims to correct that mistake.
 * Took a Level In Badass: The Daleks, who had been suffering from Villain Decay since Destiny of the Daleks, finally decided to kick ass and take names. However, greater badassery is yet to come...
 * Villainous Breakdown: Davros and the last Renegade Dalek.
 * Weaksauce Weakness: Finally, all the "Daleks vs. stairs" jokes are obviated by showing Daleks levitating on screen.
 * Xanatos Gambit / Xanatos Speed Chess: The first episode to properly show off the Seventh Doctor's manipulative side. Unforseen events do crop up, but they doesn't really seem to slow him down any.
 * The X of Y
 * X-Ray Sparks: the Dalek extermination effect used in this story was so cool and memorable that it was revived almost twenty years later, despite only appearing this once.
 * Your Other Left
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Renegade Daleks do this to Radcliffe's organisation, and are about to do it to Radcliffe and Mike when the Imperial Daleks attack.