Doctor Who/Recap/S22/E06 Revelation of the Daleks
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The Doctor: But did you bother to tell anyone that they might be eating their own relatives? |
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As you can tell from the title, it's Dalek time! And since it's a tale from the 1980s, this also means it's Davros Time as well. Let's see how things end up this time...[1]
The TARDIS lands this week on the rather snow-covered planet of Necros, literally a graveyard planet for the universe, to pay respect to the late agronomist Arthur Stengos. While the Doctor[2] and Peri bumble around outside for the vast majority of the episode, we are introduced to a plethora of characters running the main offices of Necros - a place called Tranquil Repose. Here, the dead are buried and the near-dead are placed into suspended animation... and entertained by a radio DJ who randomly dresses up as musicians in the eras between the 1950s and 1980s.
The Doctor and Peri continue to meander through the snow, and Peri finds some neat-looking flowers that the Doctor compares to a soybean... and then the Doctor is savagely attacked by a completely random mutant, who he defeats in seconds. As it turns out, the radio DJ is watching them in a life-and-death struggle and broadcasts to the citizens of Tranquil Repose. In fact, for some reason, white Daleks are trundling around the resort for the dead, serving the severed head of Davros! So, of course, Davros takes this pretty well and demands that... people deal with the intruders who just invaded the lower catacombs of the building. Wait, who?
And then those intruders, Natasha and Grigory, come across the remains of the Natasha's father, Arthur Stengos, who has been rebuilt into a Dalek, with a clear casing for once. The intruders then blow up the Dalek. This explains where those white Daleks who are apparently loyal to Davros come from. Natasha had suspected something strange when Arthur requested to have himself placed in suspended animation.
In any case, the mutant tells the Doctor and Peri about this guy known as 'the Great Healer,' who apparently made him this way. Then he dies. So now the Doctor and Peri are going to go see this Great Healer and talk to him... if they can actually find the place. They do find a lovely statuary, filled with memorial statues for every person who's been laid to rest there... including the Doctor? As the Doctor nears the statue, it topples over, falling onto the Doc-WOOOOOOOOOSH!
Well, as it turns out, the Doctor was not crushed by the falling stack of polystyrene. Go figure. Finally breaking into the building known as Tranquil Repose, Peri and the Doctor quickly find themselves stuck in the middle of about 5 running plot threads - involving not just Davros, but also the mercenary Orcini,[3] a group of grey Daleks, the fact that Davros is making Soylent Green and a romantic subplot that ends with an asshole being killed by the woman who pined for him. Needless to say, the Doctor and poor Peri are quickly captured and are still royally confused while Davros exposits about how awesome he is. Luckily, Peri escapes and stumbles across the DJ, who is currently fighting off Daleks with a gun that fires compressed rock and roll. And then the DJ dies.
So, the Doctor and Orcini escape from Davros - blowing off Davros' hand in the process. Peri meets up with the pair, but not before Orcini decides to stay behind and blow up the entire Soylent Green factory and Dalek-making facilities instead. The remaining surviving orderlies of Tranquil Repose wind up escaping the resulting explosion, Davros is captured by the traditional gray Daleks who then take him off to a trial where he will most certainly be exterminated, and the Doctor suggests that the people make Soylent Green out of those flowers that Peri found earlier rather than people. Sure, it ruins the joke, but what the hell: the Doctor's in a shockingly good mood.
Peri's not, though. She whines that this wasn't exactly a restful location to be, and objects to a few ideas from the Doctor. So, the Doctor smiles at Peri and offers to take her to-WOOOOOOOOOSH!
We never really got to find out where the Doctor was going to take Peri, actually, as their very next adventure was into an 18-month long break that nearly cancelled the series before the fans (and production team) had a royal fuss over the whole ordeal. When the show returned, the Doctor and Peri were instead sped off somewhere else somewhere else entirely.[4] In fact, the show going on hiatus scrapped the Season 23 that was then being prepped! Some of the lost stories were put into storage by their writers, while others, not more than sketches or ideas, were completely lost. However, four of the lost stories were turned into novelisations courtesy of Target Books (The Nightmare Fair, Mission to Magnus, The Hollows Of Time and The Ultimate Evil). Big Finish have managed to find a number of proposals that were considered for the lost 1986 season (and some for the 1985 season), and have adapted them as audio adventures. They are being released beginning with "The Nightmare Fair", released in late 2009. The Doctor was actually going to say Blackpool, until a last-minute edit covered it up since Season 23 was cancelled.
Oh, and this was also the final serial in the 45-minute episode format of the classic Doctor Who series. This format wouldn't return to the series until the reboot in 2005, with the first episode.
Tropes
- Anti-Hero: Pretty much everyone who isn't a villain.
- Type I: Grigory, Peri
- Type II: Bostok, The D.J, The Doctor
- Type III: Orcini
- Type IV: Natasha, Takis, Tasambeker
- Type V: Jobel, Lilt
- Big Damn Villains: The Doctor is saved from Davros...by the Daleks arriving to seize Davros.
- Bloodier and Gorier: This is one of the bloodiest serials of the Sixth Doctor's era, which says a lot.
- Brainwashed
- Body Horror: The Daleks made from Human remains
- Also gets a memorable and very disturbing cross with Crowning Moment of Funny in Davros' "consumer resistance" line
- Canon Immigrant: The Glass Dalek
- Crapsack World: Necros is a not-very-nice place populated mostly by not-very-nice people. It kind of says something that Davros—as in, 'creator of the Daleks' Davros—isn't even the most unlikeable person there.
- The Corpse Stops Here: Hey, it's a giant graveyard planet.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Jobel and Kara are graphically stabbed.
- Genre Savvy: Davros has upgraded himself to shoot lightning bolts and even has a clone to divert assasination attempts. As his last appearence climaxed with the Doctor holding him at gunpoint he's clearly learned to take precautions.
- Handicapped Badass: Orcini
- And Davros who gets to shoot LIGHTNING BOLTS from his hands.
- Homage: This is Eric Saward doing his absolute best to pastiche Robert Holmes, who he by this time practically hero-worshipped. Also has a great deal in common with Blakes Seven, in general tone and in particular in terms of Kara being a blatant Servalan-Expy.
- Human Resources
- Kick the Dog: And in this episode of "Dysfunctional Doctor/Companion relationships", he settles for calling her fat and ignorant. Clearly he was in a good mood. Why does she stay with him again? And let's not even get into some of the other relationships in this episode...
- Kill'Em All: To be expected whenever the Daleks are involved.
- Noble Demon: Orcini is a ex-member of an order of knights kicked out for nebulous reasons who, although he now ekes out a living as a ruthless mercenary, tries his hardest to keep living up to his old order's ideals of nobility and honour. It sets him up not only over most of the characters in the story but many of the similar 'hardened mercenary' characters who appeared quite a lot throughout Saward-era Doctor Who.
- Pet the Dog: The Doctor gets a touching moment where he nurses a dying mutant early in the first part.
- He's also the only one other than Peri who seems to care about that poor DJ
- The Power of Rock
- Recycled in Space: Rock'n'roll!
- Supporting Protagonist: The Doctor. He basically wanders around the snowfields of Necros for an episode, wanders around some caves, has a confrontation with Davros and then stands around while everyone else sorts out the plot. You kind of get the feeling that Eric Saward preferred writing about everyone else but him.
- Took a Level in Badass: Davros finally regains a good chunk of the menace and cunning he had in "Genesis of the Daleks".
- Villainous Breakdown: As Davros is taken away for trial on Skaro:
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Davros: I created you! I am your master!! |
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- What Could Have Been: The original last line? "I'm taking you to Blackpool!" Because the next story The Nightmare Fair took place in Blackpool. The series was cancelled, so the edit was made to cover up the last word.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Evelyn Waugh's novella The Loved One.
- The X of Y
- ↑ Spoiler: The Doctor Wins. Again.
- ↑ ...wearing a blue overcoat, which looks quite neat and not eye-killing bad. It's also apparently the local colour of mourning, if only because nowhere in the universe would think his usual technicolour nightmare suitable for that purpose
- ↑ Think Don Quixote
- ↑ The next script, called "The Nightmare Fair" was actually going to be in Blackpool, a British seaside resort town, where the Celestial Toymaker made a return.