Monday, May 09, 2022

Remembrance of the Daleks Part Three


The one where the Imperial Daleks land a shuttle in the school playground...

In traditional melodramatic fashion, the Doctor arrives in the nick of time to rescue Ace from the Dalek death squad, using his Sixth Doctor glitter gun to disorientate them (but he doesn't talk to them sternly). The resulting explosions are suitably impressive, something we've got accustomed to with this "big budget" story.

In any normal Doctor Who story, that would be the action highlight of the episode, but this is Remembrance of the Daleks, a story that does not let the viewer rest for a moment. Before you can say "Dalek mutant", the Doctor is grabbed round the throat by a hideous black claw from within the Dalek casing, giving Alison her one and only reason for existence when she rescues him with Ace's baseball bat. That done, Alison goes back into her box.

This is all within the first three minutes of the episode. We've seen Dalek mutants, or bits of them, many times through the years, but this one seems different, a mutation further on. The Renegade Dalek in the junkyard is described by Rachel as amoeboid, whereas this Imperial one has mechanical prostheses grafted onto its skin. The Daleks are evolving, perhaps cybernetically...

The Doctor then tells Ace off for leaving her tape deck in the school, warning her that its anachronistic nature could have led to the invention of the microchip 20 years too early, damaging the timeline. Well, whose fault's that Doctor? Who's the one that let her wander around 1963 with a ghetto blaster in the first place? It's all well and good handing her some pounds, shillings and pence in a posh pouch to spend at the cafe, but what about the technologically anachronistic tape deck on her shoulder?

I adore - adore - the scene introducing the Imperial Dalek mothership, directed with such grace by Andrew Morgan, who scans his camera wide across Martin Collins' huge planetarium-like set, revealing it in all its epic glory. It's relatively minimal, but Collins has added buttresses round the circumference to give scale and height, and there are screens dotted about with weird Dalek writing on, plus a central scanner screen controlled from the heart of the set by one Dalek. There's a mystery about this mothership, a simmering danger. I think it's wonderful.

And as more Daleks begin to populate it, it just gets better, as they exit lifts to the side, and then, when you think things can't possibly get any more thrilling, they announce: "Emperor on the bridge!" What?! And then this huge, spherical Dalek glides into view, clearly inspired by the Dalek Emperor seen in the TV Century 21 magazine of the 1960s. The prop's not quite as impressive as it could be: the comic version had a central eyestalk, replaced here by a jerky light screen, and the original had a splendid gold livery, while this guy looks like a giant golf ball. But the very presence of an Emperor Dalek is yet another exciting element in a story that's packed to the gills with them. This one may look very different to the one we saw in The Evil of the Daleks, but at least he can move!

Sadly, he can also talk, and the vocal performance by Roy Tromelly is woefully inadequate, making the Emperor sound like a very angry, and slightly muffled, bumblebee. I want it to sound awesome and booming when an Emperor Dalek speaks, not like a constipated Donald Duck.

In an effort to hide the Hand of Omega from the Daleks, the Doctor had the casket buried in part 2, but the burial was being observed by the Renegade Daleks' spy - hunky Mike Smith - so fascist Ratcliffe and his workmen know exactly where to go and get it. The reopening of the grave - which the Doctor has marked very conveniently with a gravestone inscribed with the Omega symbol - is watched carefully by the creepy little girl who's been hanging around since part 1, and it's only upon this viewing of the story that I wondered how she can be in two places at once. One minute she's skipping about the streets of Shoreditch, the next she's sitting in Ratcliffe's lock-up tethered to the Dalek battle computer.

I'm sorry, what?! The reveal that it's not Davros sitting in Ratcliffe's office at all, but the creepy schoolgirl, is a stonking twist, and a very cleverly planned one by writer Ben Aaronovitch. Since part 1 it's been an assumption that the bloke in the chair facing the wall spouting on about conquest is Davros, and although it's been mildly suspicious that we've not seen in his face, we've been comfortable with that. But it's not him at all, it's the creepy little girl - so how can she be sat there and stalking the streets at the same time? She can't be a projection because she's a physical form that people interact with. And my foreknowledge of part 4 tells me that the real, original, innocent little girl is still there, inside the possessed form, so how can there be two of them?

This episode - this story - is a cavalcade of revelations and excitements. When Ratcliffe gets the Hand of Omega back to the yard, the Renegade Daleks break out to defend it, led by a beautiful Black Dalek straight out of every fan's dreams. The Black Dalek prop really does look gorgeous, and threatening, and I love the way it speaks in different tones to Ratcliffe and the little girl - grating and forceful to Ratcliffe, gentler and friendlier to the girl.

The Doctor and Ace decide to infiltrate the Renegade Dalek base, where the Doctor quietly makes sure the Hand of Omega knows what it's got to do. The Doctor has a plan, a very devious plan it seems, despite the fact he's got more Daleks on his hands than anticipated. His explanation of the Dalek battle computer is wonderfully concise, telling Ace that because the Daleks are constricted by logic, they enslave a young human mind to a battle computer to capitalise on their ingenuity and imagination, in order to get the upper hand (plunger?). Straightaway I think about the poor, enslaved Dalek Controller in Bad Wolf, another young human female who seems to have been wired up all her life ("Can't see. I'm blind. So blind. All my life, blind. All I can see is numbers..."). As the Doctor says, it's obscene.

The Doctor disables the Renegades' electrostatic globe Time Controller (well actually, you can hear someone switching it off at the socket) and leaves a marvellously cheeky calling card consisting of a black seal topped with a gold question mark ('cos he's Dr Who, y'see) surrounded by various weird symbols and letters, presumably Gallifreyan. Bits of it look like they're spelling out "Doctor", but the rest? Who knows? Maybe we've known the Doctor's real name for the last 35 years, hidden in plain sight!

The Doctor and Ace's flight through the streets - which really are, for once, crawling with Daleks - is exciting, even if they do resort to one of those pathetic 'stifled sneeze' moments I so detest (see also: Delta and the Bannermen and Silver Nemesis). The Daleks are a bit wobbly on their castors, but still look impressive in their battle grey and black livery, and as for their assault on the school: WOW! It's brief, but effective, as the Daleks line up to fire on the bunkered soldiers, who pretty much all end up dead. It's yet another action-packed, explosive set-piece.

Now that the Renegades have the Hand of Omega, the Imperial Daleks know where to go and get it, and send an assault shuttle down to fetch it. Nobody expects the Daleks to land a shuttle in the school playground in broad daylight - not the Doctor, and certainly not the viewers - but that is what they do, and the episode ends with a magnificent shot of a full-scale space shuttle dropping in on Coal Hill. It looks simply stunning - way beyond the budget of a little old sci-fi show like Doctor Who - but director Andrew Morgan does it, and magnificently. The story goes that the budget wouldn't quite stretch to landing the shuttle and blowing in the school windows as well as a mobile Dalek platform gliding along the streets of Shoreditch (as in the original script), so the latter idea was dumped. I'm so glad they kept the shuttle landing in.

The shuttle's arrival is so noticeable that I have to wonder how they landed it the first time, when they presumably set up the transmat in the school cellar. The burn marks on the playground show the shuttle's been there before, but why did nobody notice it come and go?

Some thoughts:
  • I love the scenes set in the cafe, with the Doctor looking deep in thought, and Rachel giving Gilmore a right ear-bending when he dares to say she's not giving enough advice. Pamela Salem makes Rachel rightfully indignant, giving Gilmore a tongue-lashing because she couldn't possibly advise on a situation outside the realm of human experience. But she could give it a go, to be fair, because her presence (and Alison's) is rather pointless unless she at least tries.
  • Also, Harry's back at work. I thought his wife was giving birth to twins the previous night? Nobody's asked him about it, and he doesn't look like he's just become a proud father.
  • There's a reference to Bernard and British Rocket Group (which has its own problems), a cheeky nod by Aaronovitch to that other seminal BBC sci-fi hero, Professor Bernard Quatermass. Making Quatermass part of the Doctor Who universe might get messy though, seeing as he was once played by Marshal Tavannes...
  • The scene where the Doctor fills Ace in on Time Lord history is lovely, and adds a bit more mystery to our hero's background by implying he may have been present at the dawn of Time Lord society. This is expanded upon in Aaronovitch's novelisation in the form of the enigmatic "Other", a third character accompanying Rassilon and Omega. Later interpretations might rethink the identity of the Other as the Doctor's "mother" Tecteun, but let's not go there now...
  • As much as I like Keff McCulloch's score for this story, it can get a bit too bombastic sometimes, as if he's producing the latest New Order album (I'm convinced much of his work around this time was directly influenced by that band).
  • I also like how the Doctor tells Ace that now he's got the military out of the way, it's time for them to go Dalek-hunting ("a terminal pastime", you'll note!). Later, when they're on the run, Mike asks where they've been, to which the Doctor replies: "Dalek-hunting. Now it's the other way around!"
  • When it all comes out that Mike's been in league with the Renegade Daleks - albeit unknowingly - Sophie Aldred gives a great little performance showing Ace's disgust. It's sad, because she liked Mike (and Mike liked her, even though she's only 16!), but if anybody dares to betray her Professor, they're dead to her. Gilmore lets Mike off remarkably lightly considering he's been aiding and abetting Ratcliffe and his associates.
Usually a part 3 sags a little as the writer waits for the story to reach its finale, but Aaronovitch has so many tricks up his sleeve - including a very clever director - that this doesn't happen with Remembrance. It's full-on action and excitement almost from the beginning, and with the arrival of the Imperial Daleks in force in the cliffhanger, that doesn't look like letting up!

First broadcast: October 19th, 1988

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: That awesome cliffhanger (this story has three really good cliffhangers).
The Bad: The Emperor Dalek's stupid voice.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★★★


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