An Hour of Who a Day: 11/27/14

November 27: Revelation of the Daleks Part Two

Jobel with Peri and the Doctor. (Revelation of the Daleks Part Two)
©BBC

So the point of the fake statue (complete with fake blood inside) was apparently entirely for the entertainment of Davros -- note the way he was laughing hysterically in part one as the Doctor was about to discover the statue. Oh sure, there's some guff about using it as a lure, but given that Stengos's interment at Tranquil Repose was enough of a lure, it's hard to see why Davros bothered. And why did he want the Doctor, the person who keeps ruining his plans, to come to Necros in the first place?

Of course, even though the Doctor and Peri are now involved in the events going on at Tranquil Repose, they still have little influence over them. Orcini is already making his way through the complex at the behest of Eleanor Bron's character, while Takis and Lilt have already called for the other Daleks (the grey ones) to come get Davros, who has already manipulated Tasambeker into killing Jobel. About the only thing that the Doctor and Peri do is get the DJ involved (and incidentally, here's another clear instance of Nicola Bryant getting the American accent slightly wrong -- Americans stress the "D", not the "J") -- although it looks like Davros was going to kill him anyway, so at least the DJ got to take out a couple Daleks before he went.

Now, it is a Saward script, so a lot of people do ultimately die on-screen, but at least this time most of them feel like they die for decent reasons rather than just because of cannon fodder. Kara (Eleanor Bron's character) is killed by Orcini for betraying him, while Jobel is murdered by Tasambeker partly because Davros has been goading her on and partly because Jobel so thoroughly rejects her. "Do you honestly think I could possibly be interested in you?" he tells her. "I have the pick of the women! I would rather run away with my mother than own a fawning little creep like you." It's one of the most dramatic scenes in the piece, entirely there to give a sense of how Davros has been ruining lives while installed as the Great Healer. (And I love the way Jobel's toupee falls off as he dies.) Really, the only person whose death feels somewhat gratuitous is the DJ's, and that's only because of the way he steps out from behind his rock and roll gun to check his handiwork, even though there's a Dalek pushing its way in.

It's definitely a better script that Saward's last couple, and it's amply aided by Graeme Harper's direction -- which isn't quite as strikingly wonderful as The Caves of Androzani, but is nevertheless quite good. Not everyone dies at the end (notably, Takis and Lilt survive, along with a number of extras), and there are a number of black comedic moments (the toupee falling off, the Doctor offering a handshake to Davros's shot-off hand) that work rather better than anything in The Two Doctors. Not only that, but satisfyingly, Orcini gets to die a noble death -- something that's been denied most of the characters in Saward's scripts. In many ways Revelation of the Daleks looks like Saward aping Robert Holmes, but if this is the result then that's not a bad thing.

And so that's the end of season 22. It's been a bit of a rough ride this time around -- the accusations of increasing violence certainly didn't help (although I do think they're somewhat exaggerated -- again, this is likely a reaction to increased concern over "video nasties"), and those tuning in to The Two Doctors Part Three (easily one of the most casually violent episodes this season) probably went away with the wrong impression.¹⁴² Making the sixth Doctor a deliberately unlikeable person was a risky move, and I'm not convinced it paid off -- the most successful stories in terms of the Doctor have been the ones that have shown his moral, more compassionate side, with bits of alienness thrown in. The bright spot in this is that the production team seems to have realized this, and they've settled down on that alien nature while still maintaining the core of the character. They haven't been the best set of stories (and the hit-to-miss ratio is worryingly lower than it's been in a very long time), but you do get the sense by the end of season 22 that the people making Doctor Who have worked out what they're going for, and if the ratings and appreciation figures are any indication, the audience is willing to go along for the ride.

Of course, Revelation of the Daleks ends on a freeze-frame ("All right, I'll take you to—") -- the original ending word "Blackpool", which was meant to be a lead-in for season 23's opener The Nightmare Fair by former Who producer Graham Williams, has been excised, as it's become clear that whatever plans John Nathan-Turner and Eric Saward had for season 23, they'll have to be scuppered in response to a series of new directives from above. The knock-on effects of this will be felt all through next season...

¹⁴² If they did go away, that is -- the ratings have been steadily improving from their low point of 6.0 million for The Two Doctors Part Two back up to a very respectable 7.7 million for Revelation of the Daleks Part Two.