September 14: "Revolution of the Daleks" / "The Genuine Article"

And now we're back to Doctor Who's primary ongoing storyline, with the New Year's 2021 special "Revolution of the Daleks".  There was initially some question as to whether this episode would go out on time or whether it would be another production delayed by COVID, but they had in fact filmed most of it as part of series 12, which meant it could be finished up and released as planned.

It starts by explicitly pitching itself as a sequel to the last New Year's special, "Resolution", by asking one basic-but-potentially overlooked question that we were left with last time: what happened to the Dalek shell that was left behind in GCHQ?  Here we see that was due to be sent into storage but was intercepted on the way by nefarious forces determined to exploit its potential.  Well, I say "nefarious", but in fact it's Jack Robertson, the American businessman from "Arachnids in the UK", who's decided to repurpose the shell (with some clandestine assistance from members of the government) and mass-produce it for use as security drones, complete with a presentation of a role-play protest that looks (presumably unintentionally, given the filming timeline) an awful lot like a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, with people wearing masks and squaring up against a line of riot police.  It's actually a touch jarring, not so much because it's Doctor Who reflecting the times but because that doesn't happen in later scenes the way you might expect (no one at customs is masked up, for instance).  It lends the protest scene a certain frisson that the rest of the episode is lacking.

And while Robertson is building his security drones, Ryan, Graham, and Yaz are still waiting for the Doctor to turn up, after the events of "The Timeless Children".  It's been ten months since they've returned to Earth in a TARDIS from Gallifrey, and while it seems as though Ryan and Graham have started to face up to the possibility that the Doctor isn't coming back ("The Doc, you know, she went to do something she knew might kill her," Ryan tells Yaz; "we've just got to assume she didn't make it"), Yaz is still determined to try to help the Doctor, spending lots of time inside their TARDIS trying to figure out to how use it to rescue her.  But there's a more immediate issue: footage of Robertson with his Dalek copies have leaked out online, and so Ryan and Graham are determined to do what the Doctor would do and stop Robertson.  The publicity material leading up to the premiere of "Revolution of the Daleks" made it seem as if a large part of it would involve the Doctor's friends stepping up to stop the Daleks without her help, so it's honestly a bit of shame that they don't really follow through on that promise.  I would have liked a lot more of the TARDIS fam trying to stop Robertson before the Doctor shows up, but that's not what we get: the three companions confront Robertson, who has no idea what the word "Dalek" means, and while they're planning what to do next the Doctor arrives.  It's a bit disappointing, in part because there's something more interesting about the companions having to step up and try to do what the Doctor would do, instead of just having the Doctor appear to do Doctor-y things.

The Doctor and Jack learn that the Daleks are on Earth. ("Revolution of
the Daleks") ©BBC

And where has the Doctor been all this time?  Stuck in that prison the Judoon put her in at the end of "The Timeless Children", where she's apparently been for literal decades.  We don't get any evidence of her trying to escape (other than a throwaway joke to a P'ting that you can't eat the cell, she's tried), but that's probably because we're seeing the tail end of her imprisonment, where she seems to be resigned to her fate until something else comes along -- with that something being one Captain Jack Harkness, who finally gets to be in a story proper after his extended cameo in "Fugitive of the Judoon".  It's wonderful to see John Barrowman back for a full story, and you can tell he loves it just as much: he's clearly having a ball.  Jack's managed to get himself locked up in the same prison as the Doctor ("I heard a rumour you were in here, so I committed a few crimes.  Well, maybe a lot of crimes.  Maybe more than I should have") and, after nineteen years, maneuvered his way to the adjoining cell so that he could break her out, thanks to a break-out ball and a secretly stashed vortex manipulator.  It's a fun and exciting sequence, although it does leave you wondering a bit why Chibnall decided to go this route, if he wasn't going to do anything specific with the Doctor in prison.  But this sequence does lead to the Doctor's return to both her TARDIS and then to her fam -- only she got the timing wrong by ten months.  But after a quick angry shove by Yaz it's off to the races to deal with Daleks -- this is Doctor Who, after all.

Well, no, that's not fair; to his credit, Chibnall does take a couple moments to discuss the fallout of this, both in a conversation between Yaz and Jack and one between Ryan and the Doctor.  The one between Yaz and Jack is probably the more successful of the two, because Jack can relate to Yaz's pain and sadness: "When I was with the Doctor, I saw more than I could have ever dreamed.  And then... we lost each other.  I didn't know what happened to him.  If he was alive or if I was ever going to see him again.  Hard way to live.  Being with the Doctor, you don't get to choose when it stops.  Whether you leave her or... she leaves you."  It's a good conversation, and John Barrowman and Mandip Gill both take full advantage of the opportunity.  The conversation between Ryan and the Doctor in the TARDIS, however, isn't quite as satisfying -- not because of Tosin Cole or Jodie Whittaker, but because the Doctor's focus feels a touch off.  It seems she's still hung up on the Master's revelations in "The Timeless Children" that there are whole parts of her life that she doesn't remember, but for her it's been decades, so it seems slightly surprising that she's still mulling over this.  I think part of the tension here is that it had seemed she had made some peace with that at the end of "The Timeless Children", yet here it feels like she's back to square one.  Which is reasonable, I suppose, but not quite in keeping with how we think of the Doctor, someone who always seems to look forward, not back.  It's a bit more introspective than we've seen before, and it also seems inconsistent with the Doctor's attitude during the rest of the episode.  (It also doesn't help that the Doctor's declaration that she knows now who she is -- "I'm the one who stops the Daleks" -- is similar to the one to the Master in "The Timeless Children" about how "You've given me a gift.  Of myself.  You think that could destroy me?  You think that makes me lesser?  It makes me more.  I contain multitudes more than I ever thought or knew.")

The Death Squad Daleks confront the last of Robertson's Daleks.
("Revolution of the Daleks") ©BBC

I'm spending a bit of time on these conversations because the main storyline, honestly, is relatively straightforward.  There's some fun interplay between Captain Jack and the others, and Robertson spends a decent amount of time being entertainingly devious and self-serving, but in some ways the Dalek part of the storyline isn't very surprising.  The idea of humans creating Daleks without understanding what that actually entails is a good one, but it occasionally feels like the plot is too interested in moving to turning the security drones into actual Daleks to properly explore what that might mean.  The idea of a Dalek using computers and the machinery of capitalism to create a facility to grow more Daleks is cool, but it also feels like we're just trying to get to the point where we can put Dalek mutants into Dalek shells so that we can have an old-fashioned Dalek extermination sequence.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, and it all looks great, with scores of Robertson's version of Daleks flying around exterminating people, but it does feel a touch unambitious.  That said, putting these Daleks up against "real" Daleks, in those bronze shells, is a great moment and helps underline the racial dimension that's always been the case for the Daleks (as the Doctor puts it, "For a race born out of mutation, they're pretty obsessed with purity").  Also, the act of calling in the Death Squad Daleks to come take care of the Robertson Daleks is an interesting one, as it means unleashing another enemy in order to defeat the first enemy -- and there's definitely something exciting about watching Jack realize what the Doctor's nuclear option entails and the Doctor trying to work out on the fly how to put the Death Squad Dalek genie back in the bottle.  And there's also a lot of fun to be had watching Robertson switch sides back and forth as he tries to gain the upper hand at any given time -- although it's a bit surprising that the Doctor apparently believes his claim at the end that he was only working with the bronze Daleks as a decoy.  Still, it's all reasonably entertaining, and it helps when you know what to expect, honestly; I found myself enjoying this episode a bit more the second time around, once any potential disappointment had been set aside.

And as we come to the end of the episode, we get a bit of a chance to breathe as we say a couple goodbyes.  Ryan has decided he wants to stay on Earth: "Me mates need me.  And I know this sounds stupid, but... I feel like my planet needs me," he says.  It's honestly nice to see a companion making the decision to leave the Doctor behind, since it's something we haven't seen for a while (not since Martha Jones back in 2007, in fact), and it's touching how Graham wants to keep travelling with the Doctor but wants to see his grandson grow up even more: "I don't want to miss out on you, you know, and being here without you ain't going to be the same."  It feels right for the two of them to leave on their own terms (and it means they don't get an unhappy ending), and the suggestion that they're going to carry on the fight without the Doctor ("Some weird stuff going on in a village in Finland," Ryan says.  "Troll invasion, so the locals are saying."  "And you know there's a quarry in Korea that's shut down because the workers are reporting they saw gravel creatures come to life," Graham replies) is perfect.  It's bittersweet to see them go, because Tosin Cole has been great, particularly in showing us how Ryan has developed and changed for the better as a result of his time with the Doctor, while Bradley Walsh has been undeniably one of the best things about the thirteenth Doctor's era to date, but at least their characters got to leave on their own terms.

So ultimately there's not really anything wrong with "Revolution of the Daleks".  In some ways this is designed more for a general audience than the usual Doctor Who audience, and so it's setting out to do Doctor Who-style things in a way that the public wants: the Doctor fighting loads of Daleks.  I just wish they'd been a bit more daring or ambitious with this, either by keeping the companions separated from the Doctor for longer or by causing the new strain of Daleks to be something of a force for good, perhaps (thus leading to an actual revolution of the Daleks: as it is it's not clear what the title's actually referring to).  In essence, "Revolution of the Daleks" boils down to Doctor Who-by-numbers: it's well made Who-by-numbers, but it's still a show that's currently playing things a bit safe.  This is a solid episode, but I wish it had been a bit less risk-averse.

And that wraps it up for this year's Doctor Who: I hope to see you in 2022, when I'll cover Jodie Whittaker's final series as the thirteenth Doctor...

Oh, but before we go, we do have one final Lockdown webcast to discuss: the 14 February sketch "The Genuine Article", produced during the UK's third COVID lockdown.  This one ties in with "Love & Monsters" and features the tenth Doctor confronted by the Abzorbaloff's father.  This one is actually animated and directed by William Grantham, the person who designed the Abzorbaloff for "Love & Monsters" back in 2006, when he was nine.  This one also features a "design a monster" winner in the form of the Krakanord, an insect in a specially-designed suit with buzzsaw blades and an acid gun that is enlisted by the Abzorbaloff's father to gain revenge on the Doctor but which ends up killing the dad because it's ticked off at being stuck in an alcove for three months, living on nothing but Earth food which it detests.  This is a fun, silly little skit, with an incredibly impressive performance by Elliott Crossley as the tenth Doctor (seriously, I genuinely thought I was listening to David Tennant), and a nice way to close out the Lockdown videos.