Remembrance of the Daleks Part Four

The one where the Daleks do battle on the streets of '60s London...

We've had three episodes of thrills and spills, people and things running, shooting and exploding every few minutes. It's been the most action-packed story I think Doctor Who has ever managed. But part 4 does not disappoint, not by a long chalk. Just when you think the production team can't possibly stretch Doctor Who's meagre budget any further, the Daleks wage all-out war on the streets of East London, the Renegades fending off the attacking Imperials.

It's stupendous, explosive stuff. The Imperial Daleks clash with the Renegades on the corner of Wootton Street (actually in Southwark, not Shoreditch) beneath a bridge, and are faced with what they describe as "heavy resistance". This is despite the fact there are four Imperial Daleks to the Renegades' two, but the Renegades do seem to have the keener aims, knocking seven bells out of the bling Daleks. The Imperials retreat like intergalactic wusses, but they have a trick up their plungers in the form of the Special Weapons Dalek.

This behemoth is a masterpiece of design, an oily, grungy abomination with an entire cannon instead of a gun-stick. He may have no eyes, but he can certainly see his targets and proceeds to blow them to smithereens, leaving very little evidence of his enemies! The Special Weapons Dalek is a triumph, and I wonder why every Dalek isn't armed this well, or why they don't take him out on assault missions more often. He is 100% effective and 1,000% awesome!

The scene where the Imperials blast their way through the gates of Ratcliffe's yard is stunning, even by 2022 standards. I mean, there is nothing left of that gate, and the Imperials emerge through the smoke like fearsome marauders, blasting the Renegade Daleks and stealing away the Hand of Omega. In the melee, Ratcliffe tries to steal the Time Controller, but is zapped to death by the creepy girl and her lightning fingers. However, Mike escapes with the device...

Meanwhile, the Doctor tries his hand at "a little bit of piracy" by leading an aerial attack on the Dalek shuttle, sliding along a line by his brolly handle and breaking in through an unguarded service hatch. Only the Doctor really needs to make this journey, but for some reason Ace, Gilmore, Alison and Rachel follow him (which we don't see). The Doctor short-circuits the moany sentry Dalek, admires Skaro on the scanner, then leaves, making me wonder why he bothered at all. He does say he's rigged the communications relay to the shuttle control system, meaning they can monitor Dalek activity via the transmat, but it seems an awful lot of bother.

In the cellar, the Doctor knocks up a Heath Robinson type device using an old television set and a vintage accordion camera to communicate with the Dalek mothership. His call message is classic: "This is the Doctor: President-Elect of the High Council of the Time Lords*, keeper of the legacy of Rassilon**, defender of the laws of time, protector of Gallifrey. I call upon you to surrender the Hand of Omega and return to your customary time and place." The Doctor is giving the Imperial Daleks one final chance of redemption, to give up the fight, turn tail and run. They do not take it.

Once the Emperor Dalek sees that the Doctor's in the house, all bets are off. The Emperor's voice becomes less modulated and more recognisable, the light screen disappears and suddenly it's not Roy Tromelly any more - it's Terry Molloy. DAVROS! So he is in this story after all, hiding in plain sight inside a giant golf ball. It's the final twist in a story jam-packed with surprises, and although it has been refreshing to have a Dalek story with the Daleks as the main threat, having Davros lead the Imperial faction makes sense. He is the creator of the Daleks, and sees himself as their saviour and leader. The best way to avoid their tendency to exterminate the unlike is to look more like them, so he's hiding inside a Dalek shell.

Davros is looking less and less humanoid with each appearance, and here he's just a head poking out of a jumble of wires and circuits. After losing his one hand in Revelation of the Daleks, now he doesn't even seem to have arms. "I see you've discarded the last vestige of your human form," observes the Doctor. "Still no improvement."

Molloy makes for such a good Davros: he'll always be secondary to the great Michael Wisher, but he gives Davros a wonderfully unhinged quality, typified here by Davros's gleeful giggle, and his readiness to descend into an outraged rant when the Doctor taunts him. He reveals his plan to use the Hand of Omega to turn Skaro's sun into "a source of unimaginable power", and then use that power to "sweep away Gallifrey and its impotent quorum of Time Lords!" Davros and his Imperial Daleks want to become lords of time, in a move that would surely lead to some kind of Time War...?

The Doctor goads and taunts Davros mercilessly, working him up into a frenzy to push him into activating the Hand of Omega. But this is the wily Seventh Doctor - not the affable Fifth or blustering Sixth - and his pawns are already in place ready for the final chess move. "Activate the Omega device!" Davros instructs, sealing the fate of his creations and their home world. The Omega device spins through space and time like a furious Tinkerbell, but instead of doing Davros's bidding, it turns Skaro's sun supernova, destroying Skaro in the aftermath.

This is a phenomenally merciless thing for the Doctor to do. OK, he gave them "one last chance", but wantonly destroying an entire planet, committing double genocide in the process (remember the Thals?), is far beyond the lengths to which we're used to our hero going. As the Omega device returns to Gallifrey, the feedback from the supernova heads for the Dalek mothership, the gravity of which is demonstrated by a very panicked Dalek reporting: "Omega device returning!" He does sound scared.

Davros pleads for the Doctor's mercy, begging that he have pity on him ("I have pity for you"), but when none is forthcoming, he scarpers, snapping back into his clamshell casing and making a fast exit in his escape pod. Everyone thinks he gets blown up in the mothership, but you can just make out the escape pod tumbling to freedom before the ship explodes. Davros lives to fight another day...

I'm not sure how I feel about the Doctor being this calculating and merciless. I don't blame him so much for destroying the Daleks - the universe will be a safer place without them - but wiping out the innocent Thals is quite something else. The Doctor shows no regret in doing what he's done, and fears no reprisals. He is the Time Lord Victorious. Does he need someone to stop him?

Ace misses out on all this because she's trying to find Mike at the B&B. Mike's character development has been surprisingly dark, going from your typical handsome soldier in part 1 to a self-confessed traitorous racist in part 4. He may not have known about the Daleks, but he did side with fascist Ratcliffe and his cause. "I thought it was the right thing," he tells Ace. "Mr Ratcliffe had such great plans. Ace, I never really wanted to hurt anybody. It's just, you have to protect your own, keep the outsiders out just that your own people can have a fair chance." What a horrible, despicable, right-wing toad Sergeant Michael Smith turns out to be.

On the face of it, his death at the fiery fingers of the creepy little girl seems tragic. Was Mike an innocent swept up in the moment, or did he know precisely what he was doing, seeing as he had those racist beliefs? The force of the girl's lightning fingers sends Mike smashing into the staircase, which shatters under the blow. It's a shockingly violent end for a man who has until this point been a sympathetic hero figure. No longer does Doctor Who paint its good guys and bad guys in broad strokes. Now we have goodies who have bad ideas (Mike), and baddies who can't help themselves (creepy girl). This is a more mature Doctor Who, and the programme is much better for it.

Quickies:

• The Black Dalek ordering Ratcliffe and Mike to "Kneeeeeeeeeeel!" is truly magnificent.
• I like Ace's explanation for the two Dalek factions, which writer Ben Aaronovitch cleverly juxtaposes with Mike and Ratcliffe's fascist leanings. "Renegade Daleks are blobs. Imperial Daleks are bionic blobs with bits added. You can tell that Daleks are into racial purity. So one lot of Daleks reckon the other lot of blobs are too different. They're mutants. Not pure in their blobbiness... They hate each other's chromosomes. War to the death."
• Notice how the Doctor seems to cure Corporal Embery's concussion with a flick of his ear lobe? The sign of a magic touch perhaps, also suggested in Battlefield and Survival.

After everything, there's still the Black Dalek to deal with, and the Doctor faces up to it armed only with his wits. No weapons, just a brolly and a glib tongue. He basically talks the Black Dalek to death, convincing it of its impotence, that there is no longer a reason for it to go on. Its Dalek comrades are gone, its mission has failed, its creator is dead and its home world is destroyed. There is nothing left for it, only to self-destruct. As the Black Dalek spins out of control and ultimately hits self-destruct, we see the creepy girl lose control too, turning and spinning in tandem with the Dalek. The two seem connected in some way, even though the girl was linked to the battle computer.

With the Dalek dead, the enslaved girl is released from her torment, and collapses into Ace's arms. Will she remember what happened, the evil she did? Or will she be freed of her memories, and allowed to play hopscotch at Coal Hill in innocent bliss? Well, Doctor Who's omnipresent spin-off fiction can answer this. The creepy schoolgirl was actually called Judith Winters, and in a short story printed in Doctor Who Magazine in 1992, Ace revisited Judith in the year 1988 to find she never recovered mentally from the incident, and remained a broken woman living in a mental institution. Novel The Suns of Caresh mentions that Judith was still in the asylum in 1999 - 36 years after the events of Remembrance of the Daleks.

The final scene is a super-sombre affair, ending with a funeral. As with Paradise Towers, this new era of Doctor Who takes time to acknowledge the human losses incurred in the battle, and we see Mike's mother accompanied to church by Group Captain Gilmore, Professor Rachel Jensen and Alison Williams, among others. The Doctor stops he and Ace joining the ceremony. Maybe he believes it's not their place, but the fact is, despite Mike turning out to be such a rotter, his death is felt by others. His death is shown to mean something, to have an effect. That's just like real life, and we can all relate to it. Gone are the days when countless guest characters could be mown down in a heartbeat and nobody give a fig. Did they do good, as Ace asks? The Doctor does not know for sure. Time will tell, it usually does...

Remembrance of the Daleks is a magnificent tour de force for the production team. Led by a fearless and talented director in Andrew Morgan, the well-cast company and creatives fire on all cylinders to present an explosive, action-packed period thriller that celebrates 25 years of Doctor Who in tremendous style. Could the guest cast benefit from a bit more characterisation? Absolutely, but Gilmore, Rachel and Alison seem much more real than, say, Queen Katryca, Sorasta (who?) or Lobos (no really, who??). Would Doctor Who's classic era ever be this impressive again? I tend to think not, despite the highs to come.

* He's not President-Elect at all, as he declined the chance to stand for election in The Trial of a Time Lord. ** What is this and why is the Doctor it?

First broadcast: October 26th, 1988

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: The Special Weapons Dalek.
The Bad: It would be churlish to find fault with this episode.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★ (story average: 10 out of 10 - my highest rated story to date!)

Ace says "Professor": 24 - she doesn't say the word once this entire episode! As is customary, when Ace is being serious, or is scared, she uses "Doctor" instead.

NEXT TIME: The Happiness Patrol...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site.

Remembrance of the Daleks is available on BBC DVD. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Who-Remembrance-Daleks-Special/dp/B002ATVD9Q