“It’s stopped being fun, Doctor.”
The TARDIS gets caught in a time corridor connecting a spaceship far in the future and an empty warehouse in London in the present day. It turns out the Daleks are responsible: they’ve lost their war with the Movellans (which was in stalemate in their last appearance, the Tom Baker story Destiny of the Daleks) after the Movellans invented a biological weapon, a virus that infects only Daleks. Now reduced to isolated pockets of survivors that don’t dare reunite for fear of contagion, the Daleks have actually been forced to rely on what seem to be human mercenaries to fight for them— although they later turn out to be cloned duplicates created by the Daleks themselves. They’re using the warehouse on Earth to store canisters of the virus where an accidental release won’t endanger any Daleks, while a Dalek ship heads for the prison where Davros has been in cryogenic suspension since the end of Destiny. They hope their creator will be able to engineer a cure to the Movellan virus.
Resurrection of the Daleks is a complicated story with multiple overlapping plot threads: In the present-day warehouse, we have a bomb disposal squad of British soldiers who first help the Doctor fight off a Dalek but then are captured and replaced with duplicates who hold Tegan and another woman prisoner. On the ship, we have survivors of the prison crew trying to hold off the Daleks, then to kill Davros before the Daleks reach him, then to self-destruct the ship before the Daleks can get away. Turlough accidentally slips through the time corridor and varies between helping the prison ship crew and just looking out for his own skin (because he’s Turlough, and not at all interested in the hero thing). The Doctor joins up with an escaped prisoner of the Daleks and takes the TARDIS along the corridor to the ship, where the Daleks capture him and plan to replace him with a duplicate that will go to Gallifrey and assassinate the High Council of the Time Lords. After escaping them the Doctor reluctantly decides he must finally kill Davros himself, and has a crisis of conscience over whether he can really bring himself to pull the trigger. A prisoner who is secretly one of the Dalek duplicates finds the memories of his “original” resurfacing and has to decide which side he’s really on. Meanwhile the Daleks are already scheming to betray Davros (again) as soon as he solves their problem for them, while Davros himself is using some sort of mind-control toxin to get a group of both Daleks and duplicates on his side, before he releases the virus himself to destroy the original Daleks for betraying him before.
Confused yet? It’s actually not all that hard to follow the story while watching it, despite the many threads. The real problem is that the overcrowded plot doesn’t leave time to give each plot the attention it needs. Any one of them could have been more dramatic/adventurous/suspenseful given time to develop. The script would have benefited greatly from a bit of simplification allowing more time for fewer subplots. That said, it’s not too confusing to actually watch and the multiple plotlines prevent the story from dragging. And each story thread works well enough— as I said, their biggest flaw is not being given enough time due to the overcrowding, which sometimes causes key events to happen too suddenly or too easily.
Strangely, despite the overcrowded script, the biggest flaw is that the episode looks static on screen. It’s hard to say why, because certainly a lot of things are happening. They just aren’t moving things— it’s mostly noticeable in the fight/action scenes where things sort of happen in isolation while characters just stand around waiting for their turn to react, but in general while watching I get a feeling of scenes not flowing one to another but instead just being lined up in a row. I think it has more to do with the direction/staging than the writing, but it’s hard to put a finger on it (at least not without knowing more about film-making than I do).
That said, I like the episode. It’s an improvement over Destiny of the Daleks, and I like that the Daleks themselves aren’t acting as mere foot soldiers for Davros (except the two he gains control of, but there’s a reason for that). They get overshadowed by Davros in the story, but not because they’re just mindlessly following his orders: they’ve still got their own schemes going on, and in many ways seem more like the Daleks of the early years than we’ve seen in a very long time.
Details
- This story was originally intended to be the grand finale of the look-back-to-the-past season 20 (as I mentioned a few posts back when talking about the end of that season). Besides the return of the Daleks, it also includes a scene where the Daleks read the Doctor’s memory and a screen shows a complete rundown of all past companions and Doctors which was very obviously intended for that celebratory purpose. Strikes at the BBC caused season 20 to be cut short and this story to get postponed.
- The story is written by script editor Eric Saward, which explains why the Doctor picks up a gun not just once, but twice (he only uses it once). The Doctor used a gun in Saward’s Earthshock as well. Saward very much wanted Dr Who to have a darker & scarier tone like the earlier Hinchcliffe/Holmes golden age (which I agree it needs in this period) but he also wanted the Doctor to be a ray-gun-toting sci-fi action hero (which shows he didn’t really get who the Doctor is). Part of Saward’s desire to move the Doctor in this direction can be explained by the fact that American import Buck Rogers in the 25th Century was killing Dr Who in the ratings at this time, proving there’s no accounting for taste.
- Tegan Jovanka, the Fifth Doctor’s most loyal companion (and one of the very few to stay with the Doctor for almost 3 full seasons of the show), departs at the end of this story. Her reason for leaving is given by the quote up at the top of the page. By this point Tegan had seen equal or worse carnage— in Warriors of the Deep, for instance, where no one but the TARDIS crew ends up alive— but it’s fitting for the series’ mythology to present the Daleks as the worst thing she’s seen. Her decision to go is given dramatic weight by the fact that the story lets her witness a series of particularly shocking deaths at the hands of various Dalek duplicates, culminating in the woman she’s befriended for most of the story.
- The Doctor’s reaction to Tegan’s departure is as much a part of the scene as her decision. With few exceptions he’s generally been fine when a companion has decided they want to stay behind (though it’s different on those few occasions when they’ve been forced to leave against their will) but he can’t stand the idea of Tegan leaving because she’s been traumatized. He tries to accept what she says but as she turns to leave he can’t stop himself from going after her and calling “Don’t go, not like this!” She answers, “I must, I’m sorry,” and literally flees from the room sobbing— only to take a peek back after the TARDIS dematerializes, to whisper “‘Brave heart, Tegan.’ Doctor, I will miss you.”
- Also left on present-day Earth is the leader of the Dalek duplicates/mercenaries, Commander Lytton, and two of his henchmen, all disguised as uniformed policemen. It appears that, like another duplicate earlier in the story, he’s broken free of Dalek control, but it remains to be seen what he might do next.
- Originally scripted, shot and edited as a standard 4-part serial, a scheduling issue at the BBC caused Resurrection of the Daleks to be broadcast as 2 45-minute episodes instead, with episodes 1-2 and 3-4 cut together. The DVD release includes both versions of the story. If you’re watching it all in one sitting, the only difference between the two is the extra sets of opening/closing credits, but as originally broadcast this created a different feel for the story, as Dr Who had been shown in 22.5 minute episodes from the very beginning. In hindsight, the BBC may have been experimenting from on high with Dr Who’s format, as starting in season 22 they would change the show to 45 minute episodes. More on that when we get to the next season.
Next Week:
“Planet of Fire,” 4 episodes.
