Watching Classic Who: Destiny of the Daleks / Remembrance of the Daleks - Reaction Post
I had a very Dalek/Davros intense weekend, watching both Destiny of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks in addition to The Stolen Earth. I got the DVD of "Destiny" a few weeks ago but hadn't got around to watching it, but this weekend seemed an apt time, and then I happened to see the library's copy of "Remembrance" when I was looking for another title that was out, so I decided to go the whole hog and have a Dalek-shaped weekend!
Destiny of the Daleks
This is Romana II's introductory story, and I found it a little disappointing. The opening scene in the TARDIS seems somewhat at odds with the subsequent tone of the story with Romana's off-camera regeneration wasting several minutes. I didn't find it very amusing, despite the Doctor and Romana bickering about appearance vs character, and a brief conversation between the pair who were in different rooms and consequently both repeatedly misheard each other. However, the Doctor's "Oh look, rocks!" line once they step out of the TARDIS is rather amusing.
Skaro looked like a depressing, war-torn wasteland in The Genesis of the Daleks, but here it's a rather scenic grassy place with ruined old buildings and the occasional gravel pit. There are a few brief references to high radiation levels in the first two parts, but after Romana's (literally) heart-stopping performance in the second part, this is completely forgotten about and neither she nor the Doctor bother to take any more radiation pills.
Davros' return isn't terribly impressive - and he sounds far too human, which completely distracted me every time he spoke! Also, turning the Daleks into a race of robots who are slaves to logic seems - well, illogical. The Daleks worked well as a race of cunning, ruthless, logical machines, and as a group of paranoid, xenophobic sociopaths who are motivated by a fierce hatred for any species other than themselves. Making them mindless slaves makes them far less interesting.
Remembrance of the Daleks
This story I enjoyed far more. In this story the Seventh Doctor deliberately lands the TARDIS on Earth in 1963 with a very specific agenda: to use the Hand of Omega (which had followed him from Gallifrey when he stole his TARDIS way back in his first incarnation, and which he subsequently left behind in a funeral parlour when he suddenly left Earth during the events of An Unearthly Child) to destroy the Daleks. For the first time, he deliberately seeks out his mortal enemies and actively plans their destruction, luring them into a trap. This is the story which sees the Seventh Doctor becoming darker and more manipulative than before - and it's exciting!
There was a creepy girl (who was very creepy) who turned out to be a tool of one of the two Dalek factions who were hunting for the Hand of Omega; there were George Sewell (playing Ratcliffe) and Michael Sheard (playing the Headmaster of Coal Hill School) being menacing but used by the Daleks; there was Seven saying "You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies", commenting to Ace "Your species has the most amazing capacity for self-deception, matched only by its ingeuity when trying to destroy itself", and engaging in a taunting exchange with Davros, who says:
"Does it worry you, Doctor, that with it, I will transform Skaro's sun into a source of UNIMAGINABLE POWER? And with that power at my disposal, the Daleks shall SWEEP AWAY GALLIFREY AND ITS IMPOTENT QUORUM OF TIME LORDS! THE DALEKS SHALL BECOME LORDS OF TIME! WE SHALL BECOME ALL - "
And the Doctor interrupting with: -POWERFUL! CRUSH THE LESSER RACES! CONQUER THE GALAXY! UNIMAGINABLE POWER! UNLIMITED RICE PUDDING! ETCETERA! ETCETERA!"
("Unlimited rice pudding" has to be one of the (if not the) funniest lines in the whole story.)
Then there's the reaction of the undertaker to the floating casket that holds the Hand of Omega (he faints); the meta-reference to Doctor Who (a continuity announcer is interrupted in the midst of introducing the show); Ace's amazing Baseball Bat of Doom (enhanced by the power of the Hand of Omega) which she uses to destroy some Daleks.
I thought the Dalek Emperor looked silly, but the Special Weapons Dalek was pretty cool, although some of the grey Daleks looked distinctly (and ridiculously) wobbly.
All in all, I liked this story rather a lot, and considerably more than "Destiny" (the best bit of that story was the introduction of Romana II into the TARDIS).