Remembrance of the Daleks Part One

The one where the Doctor returns to Totter's Lane, 1963...

When Doctor Who began back in that dark November of 1963, I wonder how many of those involved in making it thought it would still be going 25 years later? The year 1988 would have felt like the far-flung future, a place that only existed in comics and Saturday morning serials. And boy, how the series had changed since William Hartnell first emerged from the gloom in that junkyard, his scarf wrapped around him and his karakul hat perched atop his white-haired head.

For Doctor Who's silver anniversary, the production team decided to go back to where it all began, back to London, 1963. Back to 76 Totter's Lane and Coal Hill School. How exciting!

The episode opens with a rather ominous pre-credits sequence (the second in two years) which shows a giant alien spaceship hovering menacingly over the Earth, as we hear snippets of audio from the year 1963: speeches by doomed American President John F Kennedy, French President Charles de Gaulle, doomed civil rights activist Martin Luther King, and, randomly, the Duke of Edinburgh (they wanted to use audio of the Queen, but she wouldn't let them). And then the opening titles explode onto screen, and you know already that something special's on its way.

And this is special. Somehow, between wrapping on Dragonfire in August 1987 and starting production on Remembrance of the Daleks in April 1988, Doctor Who stepped up several gears. New script editor Andrew Cartmel was taking the programme seriously, honouring and respecting its past while trying to build a better future. Straight away, this feels better, less hokey and cheap. As much as I enjoy the camp excesses of Season 24, it's not what Doctor Who should be all the time, and thankfully Cartmel recognised this.

We open with a shot of the Coal Hill School sign (beyond exciting, after all these years!) and I notice that in the bottom right-hand corner it says the headmaster is "H Parsons" (but only ever billed as Headmaster). We see a bunch of children filing their way into school, before the Doctor and Ace emerge from a side alley, the latter armed with a wildly idiosyncratic ghetto blaster. I'm surprised the Doctor allowed her to bring it with her, knowing it to be 1963, but it instantly tells us something about Ace as a character. Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred seem immediately comfortable with each other, demonstrating the sort of chemistry you cannot create. These two were destined to work together, as Doctor and companion, and I'm so glad the stars were aligned to make that happen.

I like how the Doctor trusts Ace to go off on her own. He'd have trusted Mel, because she was more mature. Ace is only 16, adrift in this decade, but he's happy for her to wander off to the cafe (he knows there is one). The cafe set is nicely dressed by production designer Martin Collins with a price list, a huge bowl of sugar cubes on the counter, and a jukebox playing the music of the 60s. Everything feels authentic, and is being treated with the respect it needs. Ace orders four bacon sandwiches and a cup of coffee (she's either very hungry or she's met a gang of navvies in the street), and meets handsome hunk Mike Smith. I think it's clear what's on Ace's mind by the way she looks Mike up and down longingly! And who can blame her?

Meanwhile, the Doctor is investigating a van parked outside the school, climbing up onto its roof and measuring its rotating aerial with his brolly and handkerchief. Talk about eccentric. But throughout, it's clear the Doctor is aware something's going on, or is expecting to find something unusual, particularly when he samples the burn marks on the playground at Coal Hill. There's also a creepy little girl hanging about, reciting a playground rhyme: "Five, six, seven, eight, there's a Doctor at the gate..." Spooky! But why isn't she in class?

The Doctor leaps into the van and meets Professor Rachel Jensen, who's been picking up a rhythmically pulsed magnetic fluctuations (presumably from the school). I love how the Doctor gets involved straightaway, simply presuming he can do that by sheer force of will (this attitude is summed up perfectly in Silver Nemesis when he gate-crashes Windsor Castle saying: "Act as if you own the place. Always works!"). Rachel gets news that there's been an incident at "the secondary source, Totter's Lane" (how exciting!) and Mike (who's trying to teach Ace about pre-decimal coinage) hops aboard the van, with the Doctor and his friend along for the ride.

The Totter's Lane junkyard is a great location, and although it looks nothing like the one in An Unearthly Child, neither did the one in Attack of the Cybermen (actually, the Remembrance Totter's yard looks more like the Attack one, so there is an element of continuity!). It's a pity the production designers spelt I M Foreman's name wrong on the gate, but only a real fan would notice or care about this. Yes, it's irksome for fans (because if you're going to do it, do it right) but the thought was there.

The junkyard is teeming with military personnel, led by Group Captain Gilmore, played with the stiffest of upper lips by Simon Williams (perfect casting). Somewhere in the junkyard, an assassin is hiding out, after having killed a soldier called Matthews with what the Doctor identifies as a projected energy weapon (a death ray!). McCoy is wonderfully enigmatic in these scenes, light years away from the light-hearted clowning of Season 24, reflecting the fact the Doctor knows much more than he's letting on (the way he purrs "I've been here before" gives me goosebumps).

As ever with Dalek stories, it would have been better had the story title not given the game away, because the identity of the junkyard assassin is kept tantalisingly back until halfway through the episode when a grey Dalek trundles out of its lean-to hideout and starts zapping at all and sundry. Before its reveal though, we get a couple of stunning point-of-view shots of the Dalek eyeing up its target, and the effect of the soldier being blasted by the Dalek ray - his skeleton shown in splendid x-ray - is wonderful. There are so many visual effect victories in this episode that it's hard to believe this is the same programme with the same pitiful budget as before.

The explosions are mightily impressive, especially when the soldiers fire rifle-grenades at the shed, forcing the Dalek into the open. It's reveal is a little undermined by the slight wobble the prop has as it emerges, but our fears are soon allayed when it starts firing back, bullets sparking off its armoured casing. The Daleks haven't been presented this well, or looked this good, since... well, probably ever!

I like the concept of one Dalek being formidable enough on its own, recalling that wonderful line in The Daleks' Master Plan: "One Dalek is capable of destroying all!" The Doctor warns Gilmore that nothing the military possesses will be effective against it. "What am I dealing with, little green men?" goads the Group Captain, to which the Doctor replies: "No, little green blobs in bonded poly-carbite armour." I also think it's great that this Dalek doesn't speak. It just silently kills. The audience is waiting for that iconic "Exterminate!" moment, but we'll have to wait a little longer for that...

In the end, the Doctor decides to take things into his own hands and asks Ace for the nitro-9 that she's not carrying (wonderful interplay!). He blows the Dalek up, leaving the obliterated remains for Gilmore's scientific crew to clear up. The shot of Rachel and Alison picking through the dead Dalek's organic innards is nice and icky. The production values in this episode alone tower over anything the series has done for years.

The Doctor "borrows" Mike's van and he and Ace return to the school. Along the way he gives Ace a crash course in Dalek history, which might be for the benefit of the audience too if the dialogue wasn't so hurried. I like the mysterious seat swap in the tunnel though, adding a pinch of magic to this Doctor's ever-developing persona. But why is the junkyard Dalek "the wrong Dalek", according to the Doctor? Curiouser and curiouser...

At the school, the Doctor and Ace meet Mr Parsons, who thinks they're enquiring about the school caretaker vacancy (a job the Twelfth Doctor would take up in 2014). It's amusing that the Doctor thinks he can just roll up and ask to look around the school. Watching from the security-heavy perspective of 2022, it's astounding that anybody would think this possible, but 1963 was a simpler/ less enlightened time I suppose (as was 1988!). Casting the wonderful Michael Sheard as the headmaster was a stroke of genius because he was best known at the time for playing the despotic deputy headteacher Mr Bronson in CBBC school soap Grange Hill.

Our heroes explore the school, dropping in on the science lab which is supposed to be the very same classroom Susan, Ian and Barbara are seen in back in An Unearthly Child. There's a nice touch when Ace picks up a book about the French Revolution - something we saw Susan do in the first episode - and although it's not the same book, who cares? It's just a nice little nod. This scene also sheds more light on why the Doctor seems to know more than he's telling when he admits the Daleks are following him. He's come back to Coal Hill in 1963 for a reason, as the last time he was there (well, not the last time, as that was Attack of the Cybermen) he left something behind. Something very dangerous called the Hand of Omega (ooh, Omega - exciting! He seems to feature in all the big anniversary years: 1973, 1983 and 1988).

Giving the Doctor a secrecy is a clever way to develop this 25-year-old character without unravelling established fact (are you listening, Mr Chibnall?). If you make out the Doctor knows more than he's saying, that he has secrets to keep and a history unseen, you're adding to his persona, allowing the character to be fleshed out without giving too much away. The Doctor should be an enigma - the clue is in the name of the show - but there's nothing to say we can't learn snippets about him here and there. This Seventh Doctor is a wily devil, we've already seen that in Paradise Towers for instance, but it's rather exciting to learn he's been up to something off-screen, linking right back to the very first episode. Will he bump into his first incarnation somewhere along the way?

Down in the cellar (a good place to put things) the Doctor and Ace discover a Dalek transmat, the source of the fluctuations picked up by Rachel in the van. Excitingly, a Dalek begins to manifest on the transmat dais, and you can see the entire innards of a living Dalek creature inside the armoured shell before the Doctor destroys it. It looks like one of those wonderful cross-section pictures from the old Dalek annuals, and is a triumph of computer graphics.

"The Daleks usually leave an operator on station in case of any malfunctions," says the Doctor absently. "And that would be another Dalek?" Ace realises, to the Doctor's sudden horror.

A white and gold Dalek - the same livery as the ones accompanying Davros in Revelation of the Daleks - glides into view, and at last that heart-stopping voice grates: "Stay where you are! Do not move!" The Doctor and Ace make for the stairs, but Ace is is knocked unconscious by an unexpectedly violent Mr Parsons, who promptly bolts the cellar door shut so the Doctor can't escape. We then get one of the - perhaps even the - most exciting, exhilarating and breath-taking cliffhangers in Doctor Who history when the Dalek follows the Doctor up the stairs! After 25 years of having the piss taken out of them because they couldn't go upstairs, the myth is well and truly busted in a swathe of wonderful direction, stunning computer effects, and that marvellous Dalek POV shot as it closes in on the terrified Doctor, screaming "You are the Doctor! You are the enemy of the Daleks! You will be exterminated! Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Absolutely flippin' amazing! When was the last time Doctor Who was this solid and confident, this exciting and well-made? Remembrance of the Daleks marks a sea change in the way Doctor Who was being made as it approached its most twilit of years. It was so lucky to get Andrew Cartmel, who saw the potential in it as a format, and refused to treat it as "a kids' show". Suddenly Doctor Who felt adult again, but still accessible to children. Kids must have found that cliffhanger so exciting (and scary?). I know I did, watching as a wide-eyed 12-year-old. I divide my Doctor Who fandom into BR and AR - 'Before Remembrance', when I remember watching things like Terror of the Vervoids and being unmoved by it, and 'After Remembrance', when I became obsessed with this wonderful, magical, imaginative, fun, exciting, crazy, inspiring show.

For the rest of my life. This is where it all began for me.

First broadcast: October 5th, 1988

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: It's so hard to pick one moment, but it's got to be that cliffhanger!
The Bad: This word does not apply to this episode.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★ (my first 10 since The Caves of Androzani!)

Ace says "Professor": 17 - and this time there's a proper Professor in the form of Rachel (mentions not counted here).

NEXT TIME: Part Two...

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

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