Remembrance of
the Daleks
5TH OCTOBER 1988 - 26TH
OCTOBER 1988
(4 EPISODES)
It feels like I’ve spent this last
month living in 1988; at least so far as my telly
viewing goes. I’d just finished wistfully working my way through the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
25th Anniversary box
set when the special edition DVD release of
Remembrance of the Daleks
landed on my doormat.
Of course,
this isn’t a new release as such. Back in 2001, Remembrance was one of
the first Doctor Who serials be released in this format, albeit in a fairly
basic form and with one or two tiny (but nonetheless significant) edits
made to the main feature. Six years later, the serial was re-released as
part of The Davros Collection in the same form as it is presented
here – as a lavish two-disc special edition.
This
release presents Remembrance of the Daleks exactly as it aired,
without any contractual cuts or death rays gone awry. Such things were
doubtless of little concern to most that purchased the DVD in 2001, but when
you spent your formative years endlessly re-watching the serial on an old,
chewed-up VHS tape, then the
fact that it isn’t the Beatles’ version of
“Do You Want to Know a
Secret?” playing in Harry’s café
really jumps out at you. The Restoration Team have
also included an optional 5.1 surround sound mix here that
wasn’t present on the 2001 release, which again only serves to
enhance one’s viewing pleasure.
The serial
itself is probably still my favourite today. Part of me can’t help but think that my reverence for
this four-parter is coloured by the fact that its first episode was the
first episode of Doctor Who that I can
clearly remember seeing, one cold winter’s night back in 1988. I was
enthralled from start to finish, and remember thinking to myself as
that Dalek hovered up the staircase and my parents told
me that it was “end of Part 1” that I couldn’t possibly wait all the
way through the adverts to find out what happened next. Imagine my
disappointment when it eventually dawned on me that the show was
being broadcast on BBC1, and I that I’d have to wait considerably
longer for the story to continue than a few minutes! I mean, how can you
get better cliffhangers than those found at the ends of this story’s first
two episodes? They are simply the best.
Above: My first Doctor Who cliffhanger!
Rose-tinted
glasses aside, Remembrance of the Daleks is still just as brilliant
in 2009 as it was in 1988. I was astonished to learn from the DVD that Ben
Aaronovitch was just 25 years old when he wrote this script, as it is one
of the most complex plots that I’ve ever seen in the series; so many
different threads, all inexorably linked.
On the
surface, we have a private little war between two antagonistic Dalek
factions being waged on Earth. The white ‘Imperial’ faction is loyal
to their so-called Emperor Dalek, Davros, and are bred from non-Kaled life
forms – the fruit of Davros’s experiments on Necros in Revelation of
the Daleks, no doubt. The so-called ‘Renegades’ are in fact the
grey Daleks that appeared throughout the classic series, and are
loyal to the Black Dalek and, I assume, the ‘true’ Emperor Dalek.
Confused? Well the plot thickens...
“Humans...”
The Daleks’
racism is then paralleled in the human ‘Association’, superbly represented in
the story by Ratcliffe (George Sewell) and Sergeant Mike Smith (Dursley
McLinden). And better still, this intolerance is even mirrored to a lesser
degree within the Doctor himself. Whilst the Doctor isn’t a racist –
humans are probably his favourite species, in fact - in this story his
contempt for both Daleks and Humans alike is patent throughout. I love the
way in which memorable characters such as the inglorious Group Captain
‘Chunky’ Gilmore (Simon Williams) and Professor Rachel Jones (Pamela
Salem) are able to evoke such polarised responses from the Doctor – one
minute he’s berating them, the next lauding them to the hilt.
Remembrance of
the Daleks
is also a watershed for the Doctor, not just in this
incarnation but on the whole. Before this story he had always been a
wanderer in space and time, never knowing where he would end up next; half
of the time not even in control of his own TARDIS. The Doctor would
merrily saunter into trouble, sort it all out, and then fly off again, to not-even-Doctor
Who knows where. But in a explicit departure from previous stories, here
the Doctor deliberately lands the TARDIS on Earth in 1963 with a very
specific agenda. He intends to use the Hand of Omega (which followed him
from Gallifrey when he stole his TARDIS back in his first incarnation,
and which he subsequently left behind when he
left Earth during the events of An Unearthly Child) to
destroy the Daleks. The Doctor proactively seeks out his
mortal enemies and actively plans their destruction – for once, the Doctor
lures the Daleks into a trap!
“Oh Davros. I am far more than just another Time Lord.”
Part of Andrew
Cartmel’s agenda as
script editor
was to try and darken the character of
the Doctor and bring back a sense of
mystery to the role. And after a shaky start
in Season 24, Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor
comes into his own in this story. This
story sees the first hints dropped that the Doctor may be more than just
another Time Lord - when he explains to Ace about what the Hand of Omega
is, he even slips and says “and didn’t we have trouble with the
prototype,” implying that he was one of the pioneers of the remote stellar
manipulator back in Gallifrey’s Old Time.
Moreover,
amongst the deleted scenes on the DVD can be found an extended version of
the Doctor’s showdown with Davros in which the Doctor claims “I am far
more than just another Time Lord.” It’s a brilliant line, and in
watching the deleted scenes there are also a few others that would have
helped heighten this sense of intrigue, yet they ended up inexplicably on
the cutting room floor. Perhaps the production team didn’t want to give
too much away at once – I know that’s the main reason that Marc Platt’s
script for Lungbarrow was shelved in favour of Ghost Light
the following season. Of course, Virgin’s New Adventures (and Lungbarrow in particular) would later verify all of
these little implications, but that’s another story altogether.
As the first
serial in the series twenty-fifth season, it seemed fitting that
Remembrance of the Daleks should begin in the same location as the
very first episode of Doctor Who did - the old junkyard on Totter’s
Lane - and chronologically almost immediately afterwards. IM Forman
(sic) and The French Revolution aside, this story contains another
less obvious nod to the series’ first episode in the form of the
‘unearthly child’ enslaved to the Renegade Daleks’ Battle Computer, which
we are led to believe is Davros until the big reveal in the final episode.
This little girl lends the story a very unnerving quality, and is
responsible for probably the most disturbing scene in the whole story when
she kills Mike in cold blood.
“…this isn’t your past. You’ve not been born yet.”
Turning to the
Doctor’s new companion,
to say that this is Sophie Aldred’s first proper outing
as Ace she is absolutely fantastic; it’s as if the
Doctor and Ace have been travelling together for years. Right from the
word go, Ace feels like a character that is really going to grow - in this
one story, for instance, she falls for Mike (who turns out to be not only
a member of Ratcliffe’s Association, but also an unwitting
Dalek agent!) and is hurt very badly. She also works well
as the explosively violent foil to the pacifist Doctor much in the same way
that Leela or even the Brigadier did – Ace has no qualms about blowing up
a Dalek with a bazooka… which brings me to my next point. The ‘pacifist’
Doctor.
The
Doctor has always been a pacifist, but I’ve lost count of the times that
he could not find “another way” to solve a crisis and therefore had to resort to
violence. His slaughter of the Earth Reptiles in Warriors of the Deep
and his killing of Shockeye in The Two Doctors stick in my mind
particularly, but there are doubtless far better more examples. I don’t have any problem
with this as the Doctor is not perfect, nor is he supposed to be. But
here, on top of blowing up a Dalek with Nitro-9, at the end of this serial
the Doctor does the unthinkable; he effectively destroys an
entire planet with the Hand of Omega. This feels different to his previous
violent actions because this time his actions are pre-meditated. He might
not have pulled the trigger himself, but the important thing is that he
programmed the Hand of Omega to destroy Skaro sun. He used the Hand of
Omega as bait for the Daleks, and then he let them destroyed themselves with it.
“…even they, ruthless though they are would think twice
before making such a radical amendment to the timeline…”
The fourth
Doctor asked, “do I have the right?” when he was offered the chance to
wipe out the Daleks forever. The seventh Doctor has apparently decided that
he does. And whilst we may not all agree with his apparently newfound
proactive principles in this story, it certainly revamps our interest in
the Time Lord and his motivations and even makes us just that little bit
wary of him.
Like it or
not, this story is the turning point for the Doctor. He will do what must
be done. He will plan things centuries ahead in order to thwart evil, the beauty of Cartmel’s characterisation being that in taking this vigilante attitude
the Doctor is always walking the narrow line between good and evil
himself; a true master stroke by the classic series’ final script editor.
Above: Former Big Finish Supremo Gary Russell in the
Davros Connections DVD documentary
Turning to the
bonus material on offer, I immediately found myself drawn to the
forty-three minute Davros Connections documentary; without a doubt
the most opulent special feature that I have come across to date on any
Doctor Who DVD. I take it this is why The Davros Collection
originally retailed at £99.99!
The
documentary examines Davros’s history chronically, right from the childhood depicted in Big Finish’s I, Davros mini-series all the
way up to his descent into utter insanity in the eighth Doctor audio Terror Firma. Those such as Eric Saward, Joseph Lidster
and Gary Hopkins who have written for the Lord and Creator of the Daleks each have
fascinating contributions to make, as do both of the surviving actors responsible
for bringing the character to life in the classic series, David Gooderson and Terry Molloy. I
particularly enjoyed the final sequence in the programme which sees the
contributors speculate about what might have happened to Davros
after
Terror Firma. They were all well wide of the mark, as it happens (this
feature was made well before The Stolen Earth went before the
cameras), but Lidster’s idea about Davros ultimately becoming just a
normal Dalek drone really piqued my interest. That would certainly be a
fitting end….
Above: Davros, gloriously animated by Daniel Reed and Rob Semenoff for
Davros Connections
It’s wonderful
to see the Big Finish audio dramas woven between the television stories
here too; to see them being recognised as being an official part of
the series’ mythology. I think what really makes Davros Connections
so extraordinary though is the animation of Daniel Reed and Rob Semenoff. Obviously just listening to audio clips (even Big Finish audio
clips) on a television documentary wouldn’t have been very dynamic, and so
I was delighted to see pivotal scenes from numerous Davros audio dramas
brought to life through some stunning CG animation. The birth of the first
Dalek (from I, Davros: Guilt) is particularly well done.
The next most
sizeable feature is the half-hour Back to School documentary
which focuses on the making of Remembrance of the Daleks itself
and, rather fittingly, is bookended with Grange Hill-inspired
titles. Given my love affair with this serial, the chance to go behind the
scenes of its creation is a real joy; I was particularly enthralled
by Aaronovitch’s anecdotes concerning the making of his first television
script.
Above: Sylvester McCoy and company go
Back to School for the special edition DVD
Remembrances
is also exclusive to the special edition release. This fifteen-minute
stroll down fanwank lane identifies
many of the continuity references and
subtexts found in the
script, and then wallows in them
shamelessly. Particularly for those
like myself who appreciate the odd
wink and nod, this little featurette will
come as a real treat - metafictional gags and
all.
The rump of
the bonus material was featured in the 2001 release and
includes an enchanting commentary track featuring McCoy and Aldred; a
comprehensive selection of extended and deleted scenes; some remarkable
multi-angle shots; an isolated score; as well as a collection of continuities
and trailers. The photo gallery has been reworked and extended for this
release though - it is now full-screen and set to apposite music.
My only
complaint about this special edition release is the absence of a ‘special edition’ of the serial itself. When the Season 26 four-parters
were released on DVD, extended movie compilations (including all of their
respective deleted and extended scenes) were included on the discs. And
given that Davros Connections only uses up a fraction of the second
disc of this release, there was certainly room for a movie version of
Remembrance of the Daleks here. I suppose that I’ll just have to wait
another four years, when no doubt a 25th Anniversary Edition release will
hit the shelves including an extended movie version…
Still, I’m
sated for now. The bonus material on offer here is of a superlatively high
standard, and the quality of Remembrance of the Daleks itself is beyond compare. I really sympathise with McCoy when he says that
when the series was cancelled they had the feeling they were just on the
verge of
“hitting
pay dirt,” “striking gold”
or
whatever, because with stories like this one, they already
had.
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