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...
- Silver Nemesis
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