REVIEW: Doctor Who, Season 25 Serial One 'Remembrance Of The Daleks'
REVIEW: Doctor Who, Season 25 Serial One 'Remembrance Of The Daleks'
Originally published in 2016, here are my thoughts on Doctor Who's opening serial for Season 25, 'Revolution of the Daleks'.
Doctor Who's anniversaries are often known for bringing together multiple incarnations of the Doctor, but its 25th anniversary season did something noticeably different. Instead of bringing back past Doctors to interact with the current one (Played by Sylvester McCoy), producer John Nathan Turner opted to go in another direction: celebrating the Doctor's most famous enemies, the Daleks and the Cybermen, in two separate stories. The Cybermen's story 'Silver Nemesis' was regarded as the show's official twenty-fifth anniversary special, but before that there was 'Remembrance of the Daleks': the story which many Whovians consider to be the real twenty fifth anniversary Special.
In Remembrance of the Daleks, the Doctor returns to 1960s London with Ace (Sophie Aldred), where two opposing Dalek factions are at war with one another and searching for the Hand of Omega: a device created by Stellar Engineer Omega to turn stars into supernovas as fuel for Gallifreyan time travel. Davros (Terry Molloy) and the Daleks want it to improve their ability to time travel. The Doctor plans on giving it to them...but why? It's a thrilling narrative full of excitement and suspense, as things really do feel deadly serious when the Daleks themselves turn on each other. These are creatures so obsessed with purity that they will fight among themselves about the very notion, and they don't care who gets in their way. Dealing with Daleks on their own is bad enough, but when you add in warring factions it really does get ten times worse.
The way Remembrance of the Daleks celebrates Doctor Who's longevity is remarkable. It does something that the recent film Jurassic World did very well: slots in nostalgic nods and references into the story without it distracting from the main narrative. The majority of the plot takes place at Coal Hill School (the same school that the Doctor's granddaughter Susan Foreman was at back in 1963). You get to see IM Foreman's scrapyard and the book about the French Revolution Susan borrowed from Barbara in 'An Unearthly Child'. There is even a scene where Ace walks out of a room just as the BBC continuity announcer on the television announces the start of a brand new sci-fi series called 'Doc...'. This is the reason why many consider Remembrance of the Daleks to be the show's 25th anniversary Special: it feels so much like it was made with the anniversary in mind that it's hard to believe Silver Nemesis was the one they actually considered to be the Special.
And the nods to the very first serial An Unearthly Child don't stop there. The story even features a mysterious child of its own. A character so mysterious she doesn't even have a name: she's simply called 'The Girl' (Played by Jasmine Breaks) in the end credits. The Girl is a deliberate echo of Susan Foreman: only this time, instead of being the Doctor's granddaughter she is the Dalek's 'battle computer'. Jasmine Breaks plays her brilliantly; she gives a certain menace to her performance that is surprisingly creepy for a young girl. It's also a nice idea for a story twenty five years later to take inspiration from the serial that started it all; the Girl never feels like a copy of Susan but a different mysterious child, even as a deliberate call-back to the character of Susan.
There's something I mentioned in my Agent Carter review (NB: This will be uploaded to the site after the Agents Of SHIELD reviews of Seasons 4 to 7 are online) that really applies here and that's the use of music to create the era. The music in this serial featured in the cafe scenes is nicely authentic towards the sixties' era and it feels like the Seventh Doctor and Ace are actually in the 60s rather than the 80s reality of the time it was filmed. There's never any doubt that this story takes place shortly after the First Doctor and Susan leave IM Foreman's junkyard and you can tell real research has been put into the era by sound man Scott Talbott. It's a terrific sound mix and works well for a story with call-backs to the 60s era of the show.
It's not only the special effects that look to the show's future either. The narrative also looks forward when it needs to. Writer Ben Aaronovitch is a genius at juggling the forwards and backwards look of the serial and crafts one of the show's all-time best cliffhangers: the moment when a Dalek levitates up the stairs. This is a moment so iconic that it is replicated in the 2005 episode 'Dalek', when the Dalek follows Rose and Adam up some stairs at billionaire collector Henry van Statten's museum. Yet rather unfairly, it is forgotten. People tend to think of Robert Shearman as the first person to do it, when actually it came from the mind of Ben Aaronovitch. I imagine it must have been a surprise for the audience of 1988, without the knowledge that Daleks could climb stairs: it is a chilling moment and one of the highlights of this serial.
Remembrance of the Daleks is notable to the Whovian fanbase for introducing the Counter Measures team, consisting of Captain Gilmore (Simon Williams), Rachel Jensen (Pamela Salem) and Allison Williams (Karen Gledhill). It is not surprising that these characters got their own Big Finish spinoff as they feel like the sixties' equivalent of UNIT. Captain Gilmore in particular feels like a nice alternative to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, played with the same level of charm and authority by Simon Williams. You could believe had the classic series run of Doctor Who had continued that the Seventh Doctor and Captain Gilmore would have developed a similar friendship to that of the Doctor and the Brigadier. Karen Gledhill and Pamela Salem are good in their roles too but don't quite shine as much as Simon Williams in the role of Gilmore. What's great about Pamela Salem's character Rachel Jensen is she is a fun callback to the third Doctor's time with UNIT. Just like the Doctor, she is a scientific advisor to a military organisation and it is always great to see how a different character deals with the job when the Doctor's around with considerably more knowledge. Allison Williams doesn't really do a great deal although I imagine her character is expanded upon in the Big Finish releases.
Overall, Remembrance of the Daleks is an amazing celebration of twenty five years of Doctor Who. It didn't need more than one Doctor to celebrate the longevity of the show; instead it does something that the more recent Jurassic World also did to great success, with nostalgic nods and references to the history of the franchise. Yet despite the references, it still manages to look forward through the outstanding special effects and chilling cliffhanger where the Dalek glides up the stairs. The 60s sound mix convincingly recreates the era and the Counter Measures team are a fun sixties version of UNIT. This serial has made me tempted to try out Big Finish's Counter Measures audios at some point and I am sure it will do the same to anybody who decides to give this Doctor Who serial a go. And you should give it a watch for sure: you don't need prior knowledge of Doctor Who to enjoy it. It's an excellent story in its own right and I would highly recommend it to anyone with even the most passing interest in sci-fi.
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What are your thoughts on Revolution Of The Daleks? Let me know in the comments section.
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