Remembrance of the Daleks

Four episodes
Aired between 5th October 1988 and 26th October 1988

Written by Ben Aaronovitch
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Andrew Morgan

Synopsis

The Doctor takes Ace to London 1963 and specifically Coal Hill School, the very school where his Granddaughter Susan attended and Ian and Barbara worked.

He is being rather mysterious about their business there when he finds a strange van spying on the school - it turns out that it's a secret part of the Military Countermeasures Unit. They are tracking what sounds like a hostile alien in a junk yard.  That junk yard is none other than Totters Lane (see An Unearthly Child). The alien turns out to be a Dalek.

The military officer in command - Group Captain "chunky" Gilmore doesn't listen to the Doctor.

His people start getting killed until the Doctor takes matters into his own hands and blows up the Dalek with some of Ace's Nitro-9.

Once it's dealt with, he goes with Ace back to the school where he finds evidence of the Daleks mucking about. He explains that there's two different factions of Daleks, trying to get their hands on an artefact he planted the last time he was here. He wants the "right" faction to get hold of it as it's a sort of trap.

In the basement of the school, they find an Imperial Dalek transmat which the Doctor disables, but the Dalek engineer is around to try and start it up after it's killed the Doctor. Ace runs out of the basement but the schools Headmaster turns out to be a Dalek agent. He knocks Ace out and blocks the doorway, trapping the Doctor. He in turn can do nothing but watch as the Dalek begins levitating up the stairs.

Ace recovers just in time to incapacitate the headmaster and free the Doctor.

Meanwhile, the gutted wreck of the Renegade Dalek in the junkyard is taken away by a group of men led by Mr Ratcliffe. It turns out he is a former fascist and is now a renegade Dalek agent. He talks to a mysterious Dalek figure in his headquarters who is working the Dalek battle computer. Together they make plans to secure this artefact - the Hand of Omega.

The Doctor and Ace meet back up with the Countermeasures gang. The Doctor goes off and leaves Ace at the boarding house whilst he recovers the Hand of Omega. It looks like a coffin shaped box and is left at an undertakers. After using it's energy to charge Ace's baseball bat, he summons it to follow him and he buries it (with the help of a blind priest) in a cemetery.  Little does the Doctor know that he is being spied on by double agent - Mike Smith - a guy Ace is becoming fond of.

Mike smith tells Ratcliffe and the Renegade Daleks that he's found the Hand of Omega and they ultimately get it.

Meanwhile, Ace goes back with the Doctor and the countermeasures bunch to the school. She retrieves her boom box which she left accidentally but comes up against an Imperial Dalek and is forced to batter it with her energised bat.

She legs but is cornered by some more Imperial Daleks. She tries to load a rocket launcher she acquired but doesn't have time. Thankfully, the Doctor scrambles the Daleks mechanics with a radio wave gun he rigged up based on a previous encounter (see Planet of the Daleks).

They go back up to the school classrooms but see that a Dalek shuttle has landed.

Elsewhere, the Renegade Daleks retrieve the Hand of Omega. They have a street battle with the Imperial Daleks and are ultimately defeated after a big Special Weapons Dalek turns up.

Back at the school, the Doctor zip lines down onto the shuttle and disables its defences (and the Dalek Pilot). They go and find the renegade Dalek base and figure out that the mysterious controller is actually a school girl, taken over by the Daleks and plugged into their battle computer for her ingenuity and human instinct.  Thankfully the girl is away so they disable the Daleks Time Controller and leave.

With the Daleks closing in, the Doctor and Ace return to the school and warn the Countermeasures lot. They catch Smith out in a lie and Gilmore detains him.  Not for long though. He eventually escapes to the Dalek base and sees that the base is being attacked by Imperial Daleks. He and Ratcliffe steal the reactivated time controller, but are chased by the Dalek girl. She kills Ratcliffe and goes to find Smith.

The Imperial Daleks finally victorious, take the Hand of Omega back to their shuttle and from there, to the Mothership waiting in Orbit.

The Doctor with the help of the countermeasures team, gets in touch with the mothership and is confronted by the Emperor Dalek - A.K.A. Davros himself.

It turns out Davros is intending to use the Hand of Omega to convert Skaro's sun into a source of limitless power, therefore putting themselves on equal footing with the Time Lords.

The Doctor taunts Davros into unleashing the Hand against Earth, but to Davros' surprise, it instead flies to Skaro and causes a supernova, destroying the planet.  It then flies back and hits the mothership before returning to Galifrey - a course it seems that the Doctor had all programmed into it.

Davros manages to escape in an escape pod just before the mothership is annihilated).

Ace finds and follows Smith. She confronts him, but the Dalek girl turns up. She kills Smith and is about to finish off Ace.

As this is happening, the Doctor seeks and finds the Supreme Dalek - the last of the Renegade faction. He convinces it that all its soldiers are dead and it's failed. In response it commits suicide, disabling the Dalek girl as she is about to kill Ace.

At Smith's funeral, Ace and the Doctor make their exit. She asks him if what the Doctor did in terms of manipulating the Daleks into destroying their own world was ultimately good. He says that time will eventually tell, as it always does.

Trivia

• This story has been confirmed to be the first act in what is known as the Time War. It sparks a fatal feud between the Time Lords and the Daleks that will come back to haunt the Doctor's ninth incarnation onwards (see Rose). 

• Many cite this story as the first to dispel the myth that the Daleks cannot get up stairs. Keen eyed, sharp minded Doctor Who fans however will remember that the very first instance of this was Davros himself levitating in Revelation of the Daleks.

• This story is the first one to have the visible "skeleton effect" when a Dalek energy weapon hits its victim. This will become the standard effect for all Dalek weapons from this point on

• As a bit of an inside joke, Aaronovitch hinted that Bernard Quatermass would be in this universe and would have helped out if he was available. It also heavily suggests that the TV in the boarding house is about to show the very first episode of Doctor Who

• The original battering of the Dalek and blowing up with a rocket launcher was supposed to have been done by the Doctor, but Sylvester pointed out the Doctor's hatred of weapons, and so suggested Ace do it instead.

• It's sad to say, but this is the final time that we see series stalwart Michael Sheard appear n the show (boo hoo). He's had a few good roles, but ultimately was also well known as an imperial officer in Empire Strikes Back, of course the wig-wearing deputy headteacher in Grange Hill, and ultimately Adolf Hitler in The Last Crusade.

• The battle of the Daleks took an unexpected turn when the Special Weapons Dalek turned up. It was a routine scene to be shot, but the special effects guys built a bigger charge for its shot and ended up drawing attention of just about every police and fire service officer in London after the explosion went off (it was still around the time of IRA bombings)

The Review

Remembrance of the Daleks is very much a mixed bag. On one hand, it carries with it a deeper narrative and promise of a darker plot that the Doctor is up to, it shows lots of nostalgia (good and bad) both to an England of the past as well as the shows history, has cool Dalek action scenes, and has the return of Davros in it.  On the other, it has stupid effects (more of the Dalek transmat and the time controller being a static electricity ball), a few bits of clunky acting including Ace getting kneed in the groin, and is a bit daft when it comes to the Hand of Omega stuff.

On balance, the good outweighs the bad, but it does leave a jarring feeling inside when you try and consider why exactly the Hand of Omega would supercharge a baseball bat (and why the Doctor would want to), as well as why Davros is crying when the Hand of Omega causes Skaro's sun to go supernova when if he used it how he wanted, that would have been the result anyway!

If you watch this mainly for the rock 'em sock 'em Dalek action and people vaulting over school desks or flying into corrugated metal sheets, then this is an amazing effort, just try to ignore the gaps in logic and the wobbly trundling outdoor Daleks and you'll have a great time.

Rating

8 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

6 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• An Unearthly Child

• Evil of the Daleks

• Revelation of the Daleks

• Silver Nemesis

Dragonfire

Three Episodes
Aired between 23rd November 1987 and 7th December 1987

Written by Ian Briggs
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Chris Clough

Synopsis

On the dark side of an ice planet called Svartos, there is a supermarket called Ice World. It is run by a megalomaniac called Kane. Not everyone knows this, but supposedly, there is a myth of a dragon in the caves underneath Ice World, and the Doctor takes Mel to the planet in the hopes of finding it.

They start in the cafe adjacent to the supermarket, and find their old friend, Sabalom Glitz, being harassed by the waitress, a young human girl called Ace. 

The Doctor and Mel make their acquaintances, and it's not long before Kane's henchmen soon turn up, led by officer Belazs. She tells them that Sabalom Glitz owes Kane 100 crowns for trying to pass off rotten fruit to her employer.

She suggests he repays back the 102 crowns he gained from selling his own crew into slavery to Kane, but Glitz reluctantly admits that he lost it at cards.  Belazs gives him 24 hours to come up with the money. If he doesn't, his ship, the Nosferatu will be destroyed.

It just so happens that Glitz has acquired a treasure map in that same game of cards, and it's believed to lead to the treasure guarded by the dragon.  He agrees to go with the Doctor to find it, but he refuses to let Ace and Mel go with them. 

Little does Glitz know that Kane made sure he lost the 102 crowns at cards, and he made sure he got the map as Kane doesn't want to risk his own neck personally. The map has been tagged with a tracking device and Glitz will inadvertently lead Kane to the treasure.

Once left  alone, the restless and obnoxious Ace ends up getting fired for pouring milkshake on a customers head. She takes Mel to her quarters and explains that she's actually human from 20th century Earth. She has a passion for making explosives, and was messing around in the school lab one evening when she was whisked away in a time storm and ended up on Ice World. She still has a passion for explosives and shows Mel her home made Nitro 9 - "like Nitro Glycerine but with more wallop".

Ace shuts down really quick when Mel asks about her parents, but she does admit that her real name is Dorothy.

Ace takes the cans of explosive and uses them to help the guards break through an iced up doorway to get to the Nosferatu. Belazs is called and arrests them, taking them to Kane.

It turns out that Kane has supernatural powers and can generate extreme cold from his hands.  In turn, he must keep himself cold and periodically goes in a chamber to keep his temperature down.  When he speaks to the girls, he offers Ace a golden crown - a regular occurrence to the people he has in his employment.

It's cold from his touch and would burn the shape of it into the skin of whoever touched it.  Ace refuses to take the crown and threatens them with some Nitro 9, allowing her and Mel to escape.

Meanwhile, in the ice caverns, the Doctor and Glitz are going around in circles.  The Doctor (for some reason) loses Glitz and decides to climb over a railing and dangles himself into an abyss, realising that his grip isn't as strong as it could be and he begins to slip down his umbrella.

Lucky for him, Glitz finds him and rescues him. He tells the Doctor that he'd rather take his ship away from Kane and then he will help the Doctor find his treasure. The Doctor agrees.

Kane has ordered the Nosferatu destroyed, but Belazs secretly countermands the order, as she intends to take the ship for herself. She finds the Doctor and Glitz on board the ship, but is convinced to let them both go. 

She then turns one of the other soldiers against Kane and they try to turn up the heat in his chamber, killing him. This fails and he ultimately kills them both, but not before the heat melts a statue of a woman called Xana he had specially made.

Once recovered, Kane sends his cryogenic frozen slaves (who lose their memory and become like zombies for a time) after the Doctor and the gang.

Ace and Mel continue to run, and come up against the Dragon, which looks more like an alien that shoots laser beams from it's eyes.

They run away from it and eventually meet the Doctor and Glitz.

The Doctor communicates with the dragon and convinces it to be friendly to them. It kills the cryo-zombies as they come after them though.

The dragon takes the group to its lair, and plays them a pre-recorded hologram of a recording. This recording spells out that Kane is from Proamon and is part of a criminal gang with Xana.  He was taken here as a prison. The supermarket is pretty much a ship, and the Dragon is his jailer.

The fabled gold of the dragon is actually a crystal in it's head and it's a sort of key that will allow Kane to start the supermarket space ship and allow him to leave the planet.

Thanks to the bug on the map, Kane thinks he's won his freedom.

He sends his soldiers to get the crystal and orders the rest to attack everyone in the supermarket, driving them onto the Nosferatu. The only one's to escape this are a young girl called Stella and her mother.  Once on the ship and it's launched into space, Kane blows it up with everyone onboard.

A couple of Kane's soldiers manage to kill the dragon and remove it's head, but when they discover the crystal, they're killed from it's energy discharge, leaving the Doctor to pick it up.

Kane captures Ace and does a deal with the Doctor: her life for the crystal. The Doctor has no choice and Kane activates the ship. 

He takes off and tries to set a course for Proamon, but discovers that he's been imprisoned for so long, the planet has been wiped out. In despair, he opens the blast shields and kills himself.

With Kane dead, Glitz claims the large Ice world ship and renames it Nosferatu II.  He agrees to give Ace a lift back to Perivale (her home town) on Earth.

As the Doctor prepares the TARDIS for departure, Mel announces that she is going to stay with Glitz instead to keep him out of trouble, but suggests that Ace doesn't really want to go home.

The Doctor tells Ace the good news, and promises to take her back to Perivale via the scenic route.

As they depart, Stella is re-united with her mother, but watches the TARDIS de-materialise, an act which makes her giggle.

Trivia

• A lot of the character names were taken from film theory with famous people in the industry becoming character names. There's also more than a little reference to the movie "Aliens" in this story, as well as the white uniformed soldiers giving a nod to Stormtroopers

• Ace was named Dorothy as a reference to the  Wizard of Oz, given that she was whisked off in a storm to a distant and alien land.

• In the original script, Ace was actually to have slept with Glitz before the TARDIS arrived. Yuk!  Thankfully, this bit of background never made it to the screen. It was however referred to in a New Adventures novel.

• The script had someone of similar character to Glitz hunting the treasure. When John Nathan-Turner discovered this, he encouraged the return of Glitz instead.

• The eponymous cliffhanger seems pointless on screen, but the corridor he was on was supposed to have been a dead end, leaving the Doctor no choice but to go down

• Amazingly, the melting head scene didn't attract much in the way of complaints. One opinion is because people didn't really watch it as much.

The Review

Although Bonnie Langford's background is in theatre and having a reputation for being an obnoxious child star, her character, Mel began life as a much needed breath of fresh air.  This story is a harsh treatment for her then, a fact that detracts from the overall feel of it, because she goes in such a ludicrous, nonsense way.

In fact, truth be told, there are only two reasons to watch this story at all.  First. to see Ace come on the scene. Second, to watch Kane's head melt.  That's it.  The story is simple and very poorly executed to the point where it doesn't matter about the hunt. The sets are awful, and the concept of it all pretty bonkers (I mean, how bored must Kane have been to waste his time making an evil supermarket instead of hunting the dragonfire?).  And speaking of supermarkets it also doesn't make sense because like Dracula, he could have taken his coffin onboard any ship that arrived (the Nosferatu shall we say) and then left that way. 

The ONLY redeeming feature of this otherwise terrible story is the introduction of Ace. In stark contrast to Mel, we have a character with some back story, who is a bit edgy and like nothing we've seen yet from a companion.  For this reason only, it deserves a watch, but will unlikely be brought out again for a long time.

Rating

4 out of 10

Re-watchability Factor

4 out of 10 

Watch this if you liked...

• The Brain of Morbius

• The Pirate Planet (The Key to Time Part 2)

• Terminus

• Aliens

Delta and the Bannermen

Three Episodes
Aired between 2nd November 1987 and 16th November 1987

Written by Malcolm Kohll
Produced by John Nathan-Turner
Directed by Chris Clough

Synopsis

On a distant planet, a group of mercenaries known as the Bannermen rage war on the last of an alien race known as the Chimerons (pronounced Shimmerons).

Delta, the last surviving female Chimeron and the last surviving Chimeron male make a break for the Bannermen's ship, finding Gavrok, The leader of the Bannermen, waiting for them. Gavrok kills the male Chimeron, but is injured and falls from the ship before he can kill Delta.  Cradling her partner, Delta is given a metalic orb to keep safe. The male dies and Delta takes off, leaving the planet.

Meanwhile, the Doctor and Mel have a rare stroke of luck, when a brief visit to Toll Port G715 results in the Tollmaster telling them they are the ten billionth customers and have won a trip on a fabulous 50's tour to Disneyland on Earth in 1959, courtesy of Nostalgia Tours. 

Their companions will be a group of Navarino's - a species of alien that are effectively purple blobs.  They pass through a transformation arch and are "converted" into humans, wearing 1950's period clothing.

The Tollmaster tells them they will be travelling on a flying bus, but the Doctor suggests that he'll follow along in the TARDIS whilst Mel can ride the bus.  Just before it takes off, Delta crash-lands at the port and rushes onto the bus. The Tollmaster mistakes her for a Navarino who is a late arrival.

On Earth, 1959, two American Agents (Hawk and Weismueller) are in Wales, instructed to track the new satellite they're launching. This Satellite effectively hits the Nostalgia Tours bus, knocking it off course.

Thanks to the Doctor, he uses the TARDIS to help them land safely.

The tour soon discover they've been forced down, not in Disneyland, but in "Shangri-La" a holiday camp in Wales. The camp leader, Burton, mistakes the group as another party and invites them all to stay.  The driver looks at the damage and thanks to the Doctor, has a crystal part that needs to be "re-grown" which will take 24hrs.

 During this repair, the Doctor meets Billy - a local mechanic, and his biker friend, Ray (a girl who obviously is an unrequited love).

Mel meanwhile is billited with Delta and soon discovers that she's not a normal tour participant. She sees the strange orb and has a gun pulled on her in fear when the dinner gong sounds. 

At dinner, Billy sits with Delta and they immediately begin to strike a rapport, much to the dislike of Ray.

After dinner, they are all invited to a dance, where Billy is a performer.

Billy dedicates a song to Delta and Ray gets upset, running off into a laundry room to cry.  The Doctor goes after her to comfort her, but they run into one of the Navarino's who an informer and mercenary himself. 

They catch him calling Gavrok to tell him Delta is in Wales. The mercenary spots the Doctor and Ray and prepares to shoot them, but Gavrok, having the information from the mercenary decides to eliminate him with a beam of energy.

Delta goes back to the room meanwhile and Mel sees the strange orb open and a reptile baby emerges.  Billy, looking for Delta, arrives at the room and finds out she is an alien (and takes it all in his stride).

Together, Delta, Billy and the new Chimeron baby go off on his motorbike whilst Mel is asleep.

The Doctor and Ray, knocked out by the blast that killed the Mercenary, regain consciousness and find Mel, explaining that the Bannermen are on their way and that the Navarino's need to leave the holiday camp asap. They go to see Burton, being very frank about what's coming, but he doesn't believe them.

It takes the Doctor showing Burton the inside of the TARDIS for him to finally be convinced and start an evacuation of the holiday camp.  With that in hand, the Doctor and Ray go off to find Billy and Delta.

Out in the countryside, Delta shows Billy that the child grows very fast.

Being a young girl already, the Chimeron child starts to emit a high pitch sound. Delta says it's a song, and a defence mechanism. Delta says that what the Bannermen are doing is illegal and if she can get a case to the brood planet, they will be punished.

The Doctor and Ray eventually find Delta and Billy, warning them what's to come.

The Bannermen arrive, witnessed by Weismuller and Hawk and a quickly take the pair hostage.

Back at the camp, the bus is repaired and ready to set off. Mel tells the driver that she will stay behind and wait for the Doctor. The Driver reluctantly agrees and sets off, only to be destroyed by Gavrok and his Bannermen. Mel, taken prisoner, bluffs that Delta was on the bus.

That is quickly discovered to be a lie as the Doctor and the rest arrive back at the camp and are spotted. Gavrok instructs his men to keep Mel as bait as Delta and the others escape.

The Doctor, Ray, Billy, Delta and the Chimeron child are on the run. Guided by Delta's ability to communicate with bees, they arrive at a beekeeper's house. He is called Goronwy and allows them to stay. The Doctor tells them all to wait there whilst he goes to try and talk Gavrok into leaving Delta alone.

He does Parley with Gavrok, who lets Mel and Burton go, but as they get on the bike, the Bannermen take aim. 

They don't fire, but the one's guarding Weismueller and Hawk see the bike go past and they shoot a tracking device onto the bike.

Once back at Goronwy's, they make plans.  Delta feeds the child Royal Jelly from the Chimeron source. She claims that the child will grow again, soon. When nobody's looking, Billy eats some of the jelly. The guards arrive to attack Delta, but the child has grown and emits a high frequency sound that hurts the guards and blows out the windows. Delta shoots one of the guards and the other escapes, leaving them time to depart themselves.

Gavrok and the rest of the Bannermen go to the tracker, but find that the Doctor has found it and placed it on a goat instead.  The surviving guard finds them and takes them to Goronwy's house but it's discovered that they have left.

The Doctor and co meanwhile, make it back to the holiday camp, finding that the TARDIS has been booby trapped.  The Bannermen arrive before they can disable it, and the Doctor is forced to improvise. He rigs a speaker onto the roof of the camp building and the Chimeron child emits the high frequency sound again, scrambling the Bannermen's brains. Gavrok, near the TARDIS when this happens, walks into his own booby trap and is destroyed.

The rest of the Bannermen are tied up by the Americans.

Because Billy has eaten the Jelly, he has turned into a Chimeron male. With Delta and the Child, he agrees to take the Bannermen ship and take the prisoners with them back to the brood world to face trial.

With them departed, the Doctor and Mel say their goodbyes and leave.

Trivia

• This story and Dragonfire were filmed together as the original series was meant to end on a six part story. They used the same crew but different sets, obviously.

• This is the first story to feature the Seventh Doctor's question mark umbrella, it would stay with the Doctor for the rest of his tenure.

• The mercenary who nearly kills the Doctor is one of the Flying Pickets, a band that to this day have annual fame when their song "only you" is played on most Christmas song playlists around the UK

• Bonnie Langford had decided to leave by this point, and the writers were asked to put in potential characters to go along in the TARDIS. Ray was one of those potential characters, as was Ace in the next story. Ultimately, it was decided to go with Ace.

• Sophie Aldred originally auditioned for the role of Ray, but was cast as Ace because she stood out from the rest

• There was an idea suggested for a sequel, when Gavrok's brother turned up, but it never came to anything

• It's the last time in the series that the soldier helmets used in Earthshock are seen.

The Review

Delta and the Bannermen is one of the few stories in this era that is stand alone. Whilst that could be something to celebrate, it sort of suffers from having bonkers and frankly, improbable concepts as story hooks.  Trying to move away from the old style of continuity so put in place by Ian Levine, the new crew play fast and loose with the story. Whilst on one hand it is a breath of fresh air, and does make it "fun", introducing more expanded universe links, this story feels more at home in the pages of a comic book than it does on screen.  The flying bus, the purple aliens and the less we say about Ken Dodd, the better. 

Thing is, as fun as it is, it does feel disappointing that they've gone too far the other way. It's blase the way that the space bus is there and offers commercially available time travel, along with the ability for purple aliens to shape change without too much effort.  The effect on the universe having this kind of technology could be staggering. I mean, what if Delta simply went through that transformation arch?  What if a Sontaran or other ill meaning race did?  The potential for messing up the timeline is immense to the point where I find it hard to believe that the Time Lords would be letting this happen. They didn't in the Two Doctors.

Overall the story is "Blah". It's novel for the way in which it handles aliens, but everyone in it acts goofy, and a lot of the scenes are pointless.  Definitely one to miss if you have better options.


Rating

4 out of 10

Re-Watchability Factor

3 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Leisure Hive 

• Remembrance of the Daleks 

• The Idiot Lantern (Doctor Who, Series 2)

• Smith and Jones (Doctor Who, Series 3)