The Doctor Who Real Time Marathon: Revelation Of The Daleks

Revelation Of The Daleks: Part One (23/03/25)

There was a hell of a lot going on this week but it was actually incredibly good. The episode is written by Script Editor Eric Saward who seems to be channelling Robert Holmes' approach with Davison's last story, or maybe that's down to it having the same Director.

We're on the planet Nekros where the Doctor's old friend, Professor Arthur Stengos, has been interred at Tranquil Repose, a repository where the terminally ill are kept in suspended animation until a cure can be found for whatever ails them. The episode itself dealt with setting up the mystery of what's going on there and fleshing out the large supporting cast. This meant that the Doctor and Peri spent the entire episode travelling to Tranquil Repose and only encountered one other person (who Peri promptly killed!), but it was all done on wonderfully snowy location. The fact that they spent the entire episode in each other's company also did wonders for their relationship. Yes, there was some bickering early on and a very odd bit of padding concerning Peri crushing the Doctor's fob watch as they climbed over a wall, but on the whole they came across as far more approachable and likeable together than they have for most of this season!

Their arrival was quickly followed by the Doctor being attacked by a mutant - a Human who has been experimented on by 'The Great Healer'. Peri beat him off with a very large stick and, presumably due to his body being ravaged by the experimentation, this killed him. Slowly, so that he could give the Doctor a bit of backstory and set up the mystery for them to investigate.

The Great Healer, incidentally, is Davros, who now seems to be nothing but a head in a jar, and who is apparently using the bodies of those interred at Tranquil Repose as the basis of a new breed of Dalek. Unable to have her father's body returned, Arthur Stengos' daughter, Natasha, has broken in with her doctor friend, Grigory, to retrieve it, only to discover the body is missing from its casket and his head has been transformed into a new Dalek mutant housed in a rather cool glass Dalek casing. Amongst his Dalek ranting, he begged her to kill him and she complied, but then she and Grigory were caught and tortured by two mortuary attendants, Takis and Lilt, who had been sent to apprehend the 'Bodysnatchers'.

This entire story seems to be built around double acts, actually! Elsewhere, we have Eleanor Bron as Corporate Head Kara and her secretary, Vogel, who runs a company which manufactures protein for distribution to planets where food is scarce. The Great Healer provides the source of the protein (I wonder what that could be?) and takes much of the profit to fund his experiments. As such, she's employed Orcini, an assassin played by the brilliant William Gaunt, and his squire Bostock to go to Tranquil Repose and kill Davros. Orcini is more than happy to do this as killing Davros would be a noble cause and he's a Knight of the Order of Oberon (something like the Knights Templar, I assume). The scenes with Kara and Orcini are some of the best here. Not only are they quite darkly funny, but I think it helps greatly that they feature such incredibly good actors. It's a complete contrast to the last story! We also have Chief Embalmer Jobel and his fawning underling, Tasambeker, portrayed by Clive Swift and Jenny Tomasin. It would appear that there actually are people in Tranquil Repose who have died as we first met these two (and Takis and Lilt) as they prepared the President's wife for a state funeral and looks both very dead (in a death mask) and is described as having started to froth ("And we all know what that means!"). 

All these pairs, actually, consist of fairly unlikeable people, some more so than others, who are nonetheless incredibly interesting. And all of this is being watched by none other than Alexei Sayle as a DJ whose job, it seems, is to play 20th Century pop music and provide a running commentary to the interred. Who, it would seem, aren't even there. It's an interesting set up which highlights the fact that Davros escaped his prison somehow at the end of Resurrection Of The Daleks (presumably he made it to Styles' escape pod and managed to keep at least his head after contracting the Movellan virus) and is in hiding at Tranquil Repose, yet everyone on Nekros that we meet seems to know he's there and accept that Tranquil Repose is crawling with Daleks!

Speaking of which, having accessed the grounds, Peri saw a Dalek but didn't seem to recognise it - a bit odd since she mentioned last week that the Doctor had told her all about his last encounter with them. I guess they didn't feature in the same photo album that featured Jo Grant's holiday snaps!

In contrast to almost every episode preceding it this series, this was incredibly well designed with some very good location work, and incredibly well cast. It's almost as if Mr Saward wanted only the best for the season finale he scripted himself! After his work on The Caves Of Androzani it's no surprise that they brought back Graham Harper for a gritty, darkly humorous Dalek story. He's handling it very well, even if there have been very few Daleks on show. That in itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, either. I do feel that the Doctor's arch nemeses work better when less is more. After a very uninspiring season, it seems that the show has finally found its feet again. I only hope the next episode is just as good!

Revelation Of The Daleks: Part Two (30/03/25)

That was incredibly good! It's just a shame that the rest of the season didn't even compare. There was some very dark humour in this week's episode and a fair amount of violence, far more than in previous stories this series (which is saying something!) but much of it implied such as the torture of Natasha and Grigory, but at least this story held the right tone and showed it for what it is - ie fairly unpleasant. In fact it all ended in a bit of a bloodbath with the majority of the supporting characters dead. Nevertheless, this was unlike the last Dalek story which similarly had a high body count, in that the narrative flowed very well and the pacing, acting and directing was spot on.

Out of her blue snow gear, Peri was once again dressed in something flattering, very similar to what she wore in Timelash, and while the Doctor arranged an interview with The Great Healer, Peri went off to meet the DJ. Their scenes together were some of the best this episode and Alexei Sayle is a great actor who made the DJ arguably the only likeable character in the story. His banter with Peri, his choice to help warn the President not to land at Tranquil Repose using his own transmitter, and the way he fended off the Daleks with a gun firing concentrated soundwaves (although where he got this from and why he had it was never explained) was pretty cool, so it was quite sad when he was exterminated.

Orcini and Bostock figured out Kara hadn't been entirely honest about her assassination plan. The transmitter she gave them was actually a "Great Big Bomb" which would detonate when Orcini input the code for the 'signal' blowing up himself, Davros and the visiting President. This, somehow, would give her control over the food distribution of the whole galaxy. However, Orcini destroyed a sentry Dalek on the way to Tranquil Repose alerting Davros to the fact that an assassin was on the way and he twigged that they'd been sent by Kara. She was brought before him by a Dalek patrol (who killed Vogel - Eleanor Bron was brilliant in this scene delivering her line "How inconvenient. Good secretaries are so hard to find." perfectly.) and she ended up getting shanked by Orcini for her treachery. There was some interesting character stuff with Jobel and Tasambeker (both of whom also ended up dead) and some visual humour when Jobel was murdered by Tasambeker for betraying Davros and generally being a repulsive man-whore  who treated her like shit, where he fell to the floor and his toupee fell off.

The Doctor was immediately caught by Takis and Davros' Daleks as soon as he left Peri, and he was locked up with Natasha and Grigory but soon freed by Orcini on his way to find Davros as a distraction and, while Natasha and Grigory ended up killed trying to destroy the Dalek incubators, the Doctor ended up in Davros' laboratory with Orcini, Bostick and Peri. There was a weird bit of Deja Vu from Timelash where, after Orcini and Bostock assassinated Davros, the Head In A Box was revealed to be a decoy clone of some kind. Everything came to a head when it turned out that Takis had alerted the Daleks on Skaro of Davros' presence in Tranquil Repose and they turned up and carted him off for trial. That was actually an amusing little development out of left field that came in just after Bostock was killed shooting Davros' hand off. As the Daleks led Davros away, the Doctor held out his hand for Davros to shake.

That just left a last minute mad dash to escape while Orcini detonated the bomb, destroying the Daleks Davros had created but not managing to kill Davros himself. Then the Doctor suggested Takis and the rest of the surviving Tranquil Repose staff cultivate the flower (weed plant) he and Peri had looked at in Part One in order to provide the galaxy with protein now that Kara wasn't feeding them their relatives, and it all ended on a cliffhanger of the Doctor promising to take Peri somewhere fun.

Graham Harper did an excellent job with the Direction, frequently having cast address the camera - not in theatrical asides as in The Caves Of Androzani, but as the surveillance cameras of Tranquil Repose. His style of directing is very dynamic with closeups, switches in perspective from characters in the foreground to events in the background, and some very nice location work. The conclusion to last week's cliffhanger was weak, but that was down to the writing rather than anything else. It's a huge shame that this story was so impressive because it all feels like too little too late. The series has been cancelled/put on hiatus with no indication of if or when the nest series will arrive. I can't say I'm surprised as this season has been an utter mess. It's been a huge contrast to Season 21 which felt measured and interesting. I don't know what they thought they were doing, but Colin and Nicola have been very poorly served. It took a long time for the new Doctor to settle, with far too many instances harking back to the instability of his debut story. It was only with the last two serials that I felt I could sit back and think 'Actually, this Doctor's pretty good' without the risk of some poorly scripted outburst.

Peri was even more poorly served, given almost nothing to do but ask questions, complain, need rescuing and scream! I think, as well, that Colin was hobbled by the fact that we were constantly being reminded of the past. Vengeance On Varos was the only story entirely devoid of references to the show's history. We started off with a Cyberman sequel to half a dozen other stories, the Master was back for no reason in The Mark Of The Rani, we had Pat and Frazer back, plus the Sontarans in the middle of the season, the Third Doctor and Jo shown in Timelash and a Dalek return for the finale. It all felt a bit much, and I'd really have liked to have had more of the new Doctor developing on his own terms rather than constantly being compared to his predecessors. When Davison started he had the Master at either end of his first season and a handful of fresh adversaries before the shock return of the Cybermen in the penultimate serial. Likewise, the majority of Tom Baker's time on the show saw him face off with entirely new villains and monsters. This season just felt like the overkill of Season 20 but without the anniversary to justify it. I'm not entirely sure having 45 minute episodes helped, either. I know that's the norm with American Sci Fi, but they tend to be single episode adventures. Here we have what feels like the same format as previous seasons but with it being transmitted two episodes at a time. It all just feels a bit too much.

I hope the BBC decide to make another series because, based on what we've seen so far, I don't think Colin Baker has been given the opportunity to show us how good he can really be. Maybe if they bring in a new Producer and Script Editor to oversee things it'll improve. After all, this is JNT's fifth season and Eric Saward's fourth. Bring in new blood! It's always worked before!