September 12: Destiny of the Daleks Episodes Three & Four

It's a bit unfortunate how much things go down in episode three, and most of the issues can be blamed on Davros.  David Gooderson doesn't have the same intensity as Michael Wisher did, and the result is that he frequently sounds, well, bored.  And any time he's not required to deliver dialogue he just sits there -- it could be a mannequin in the chair for all the interactivity he displayes; he doesn't rant, he doesn't rave, and he doesn't object when the Doctor wheels him around the ruined Kaled base.  Maybe Gooderson doesn't have much experience with mask work and it's affecting his performance, but nevertheless it's a problem.  And it doesn't help that when Davros has to move under his own power (as opposed to being pushed around), Gooderson is shuffling so furiously that his upper body wobbles back and forth alarmingly.

This might not be as huge an issue if the episode wasn't devoted to the rematch between the Doctor and Davros, but the result is that this epic showdown feels small and inconsequential.  It culminates in the Doctor's decision to destroy Davros (only thwarted because some Daleks remove the explosive from Davros's chair before the bomb goes off), but because the preceding scenes were so limp this isn't the shocking choice that it should have been; it's just an incident along the way.  Oh, and then there's something about the Movellans (as the Doctor somehow learns the silver-haired humanoids are called) turning evil and placing an unconscious Romana inside a glass cylinder with a huge bomb.

The Doctor and Romana stage an argument for the Movellans.
(Destiny of the Daleks Episode Four) ©BBC

Episode four is a little better -- David Gooderson is better when he's giving orders to Daleks than when verbally fencing with the Doctor -- but there are some unsatisfying moments nevertheless.  The motivation behind the Movellans turning "evil" (they actually just want to hold on to the Doctor at all costs) makes sense (sort of), but it happens so suddenly that it's still jarring.  Everyone (even the Doctor) seems to believe that the Daleks are now completely inorganic for some reason (is this the "destiny" referred to in the title?).  And rock paper scissors is used to illustrate the logical impasse that the Daleks and the Movellans find themselves in, even though there's no logical reason for the Daleks and the Movellans to be picking the same moves (unless the idea is that the Daleks and Movellans think identically, but that's not really made clear at all).¹⁰⁹

Of course, there are some nice moments to make up for this: making the Movellans androids in the first place is an interesting move, and to his credit Terry Nation does follow through with this idea a bit (the logical impasse, the power packs).  The Daleks advancing toward the Movellan spaceship, all loaded down with explosives, is a distinctive scene, and Ken Grieve does a good job with the direction -- their eventual detonations are impressive as well.  And the prisoners' raid on the Movellan ship is also well directed.

But it's not enough to save Destiny of the Daleks.  There's definitely some promise here, and Terry Nation (in his final script for the series) provides some interesting ideas, rather than just rehashing old scripts.  Making the Daleks purely robotic may be a daft move, but it shows that he's at least thought about things somewhat.  But the two central problems (Davros, and the fact that there's not quite enough incident to fill up the four episodes satisfactorily) hang over the production, and a scene like the Doctor confronting Davros after all these years -- which should have been iconic, and looks like (for Nation, at least) the crux of the whole story -- fades into the background.  Not even Ken Grieve's direction (which tries to stay engaged with the action) can save things, and the non-serious material at the top and tail of the story don't help at all.  If they'd had Michael Wisher back as Davros, or if they'd done this a couple years earlier, they might have pulled it off.  But as it is, Destiny of the Daleks ends up being a story that just fades into the background, with nothing to sustain it -- which, given this is a return for the Daleks after four years, is frankly inexcusable.







¹⁰⁹ One "error" that isn't, though: About Time wonders how the Dalek that's wearing the Doctor's hat explodes in episode four, but it seems they didn't notice the explosive that the Doctor grabbed and planted on the Dalek right before.