{"id":1083,"date":"2019-12-03T01:44:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T06:44:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2023-06-13T22:49:45","modified_gmt":"2023-06-14T02:49:45","slug":"remembrance-of-the-daleks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/seventh-doctor\/remembrance-of-the-daleks\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembrance of the Daleks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cFrightening, isn&#8217;t it, to find there are others better versed in death than human beings?\u201d \u2013 The Doctor<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/remembrance-of-the-daleks-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-1232 size-medium alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/remembrance-of-the-daleks-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/remembrance-of-the-daleks-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/remembrance-of-the-daleks-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/remembrance-of-the-daleks-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/remembrance-of-the-daleks-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/remembrance-of-the-daleks-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Now this, this is good Doctor Who. In many ways better than it has ever been. Watching in order, the remarkable contrast definitely stands out. We get a subtle cold open&#8212;a view of the earth with 1960s TV signals echoing just as a large looming spacecraft in passes in space above&#8212;which sets an ominous mood followed suddenly by a hearkening back to nostalgia as we find ourselves at Coal Hill School where the show started. We then get our first view of the interplay of the new TARDIS team and it\u2019s wonderful\u2014the Doctor and Ace tease and banter with a comfort and familiarity and cleverness. They\u2019ve obviously come a long way together since Ice World. Ace ends up at a caf\u00e9 where we see her struggle with pre-decimal currency (an understated nod back as Susan had this same unfamiliarity) while the Doctor immediately starts Doctoring\u2014investigating worrisome anomalies that only he notices\u2014in an odd random way that is purely the Seventh Doctor. Then out of nowhere the great scene where the little girl that we thought was simply playing hopscotch suddenly reappears eerily finishing the famous children\u2019s chant \u201c5-6-7-8-there\u2019s a Doctor at the gate\u201d and we suddenly realize there is something very, very wrong with her. And all this is just the first 5 minutes of the episode!<\/p>\n<p>The pace continues quickly from there and we enter a story of warring Dalek factions and the Doctor\u2019s game of double bluff in the midst of it. It\u2019s hard to list every interesting scene or hugely significant moment as the story is so chock full of them. Aspects of note include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nostalgic touches of the pass &#8211; Some are obvious like the settings of Coal Hill School and Totter\u2019s Lane or direct references to past adventures (\u201cI rigged up something like it on Spiridon\u201d); some are more subtle homage like the appearance of the special counter-measures group (an obvious pre-cursor to UNIT\u2014I love when the Doctor accidently calls the group Captain \u201cBrigadier\u201d); others still are tongue-in-cheek (\u201cThe time is a quarter past five and Saturday viewing continues with an adventure in the new science fiction series, Doct\u2014\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>Dalek advances &#8211; Past hints of Dalek racial purity and internecine violence are brought to a head in full scale battle here as Ace breaks it down into simple terms (\u201cSo, one lot of Daleks reckon the other lot of blobs are too different. They&#8217;re mutants. Not pure in their blobbiness\u2026They hate each other&#8217;s chromosomes.\u201d) I like how they give each faction very distinct operational differences and make note of their mutative divergences. The initial sight of the Special Weapons Dalek is not quite as dramatic as I had remembered but when it fires with a gigantic explosion that leaves two rebel Daleks as nothing but smoldering spots on the ground, it is absolutely amazing. And yes we finally get to see that stairs are no problem.<\/li>\n<li>New Time Lord lore &#8211; The scale and power of the Hand of Omega is great scifi, especially as we get hints of its nature (\u201cIs it alive?\u201d) and the Time Lord history behind it. And then there is of course the Doctor\u2019s Freudian slip\u2014that \u2018we\u2019 rather than \u2018they\u2019 had trouble with the prototype.<\/li>\n<li>Ace &#8211; We finally get to see Ace become the badass we all adore. It\u2019s an incredibly impressive scene and stunt when she uses the Doctor\u2019s souped up baseball bat to literally beat a Dalek to death and bounds across chemistry room tables with explosions and glass shards flying all around as she shatters through a window. Ace! \u00a0It\u2019s also great piece of characterization when she takes out the Dalek with a rocket launcher.\u00a0 She intuitively handles the weapon&#8212;her affinity for explosives giving her no fear&#8212;and aims almost unconsciously on advice that she overheard the Doctor giving long before, surprising not only herself but even the Doctor when she destroys it. Not only this but she gets a heavy emotional arc as well, dealing with the betrayal of the first charmer of a guy she ever meets and falls for.<\/li>\n<li>The Doctor as a game master &#8211; We finally see the Seventh Doctor become the mysterious figure that would define his era\u2014laying plans of a bigger game all his own. Tying it all back to the First Doctor makes him seem even more mysterious than we ever thought. It\u2019s also fun just to get to see him boldly assert his authority in the midst of the chaos and have everyone fall in line.<\/li>\n<li>Great dialogue and direction &#8211; There is so much packed in from the start to finish\u2014the pacing and direction of the siege scene in the Totter\u2019s Lane junkyard is wonderfully tense as the army waits for the \u201cit\u201d inside to show itself and the Doctor\u2019s confrontation with Davros is grand. The script sparkles with tons of great lines, from the army science crew muttering about their utter inability to keep up with the Doctor to the affectionate interplay between the Doctor and Ace (\u201cGive me some of that nitro nine you are not carrying.\u201d)<\/li>\n<li>Weighty scenes \u2013 There are many moments when the pace slackens for a minute to give a character a chance to feel the weight of circumstances or make fateful decisions. Above all these is the hugely contemplative scene where the Doctor has a simple conversation with a shop owner about destiny and free will and the effects of every decision.<\/li>\n<li>Surprise twists &#8211; Friendly school masters who turn under Dalek control, betrayal by seeming colleagues, the true nature of the Emporer Dalek, the Doctor\u2019s master plan. There are plenty of surprises in the story but there is probably no greater shock in this story than having the controller sitting at the battle computer not turn out to be Davros as expected but instead the mysterious little girl.<\/li>\n<li>Social commentary &#8211; Whilst the Daleks are always a caricature of the evils of Nazi ideology, this story brings it home by juxtaposing this with actual earthbound discrimination and white supremacy. Ace\u2019s uncomfortable encounter with institutionalized racism in the hostel presents the problem of how to reconcile hate coming from the kindest people. Meanwhile, the Doctor gets to disparage the military mindset as always. (\u201cWeapons. Always useless in the end.\u201d)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>Best (or worst) unsettling moment:<\/h4>\n<p>The creepy little girl\u2019s scene in the schoolyard definitely leaves you with the feeling of wondering \u201cWhat the heck is going on?\u201d<\/p>\n<h4>Retrofit:<\/h4>\n<p>I, and most others, assumed that the Doctor\u2019s continuation of the plans with the Omega device stem from things he put in place in his first incarnation. This flies in the face of his established history, however, since he doesn\u2019t even know of the Daleks until later. I was therefore surprised to note\u00a0that there is nothing in the story that explicitly says that his interrupted plans to hide the Hand of Omega had to do with the Daleks initially. Instead, he states that he knows they are following him now\u2014which means his whole plot could have been conceived later upon learning that. It also explains why he only just now gets around to dealing with this hugely important device that he left behind.<\/p>\n<p>Also, as many have noted out, the magnitude of what the Doctor does in destroying Skaro is huge. Was it the start of the Time War?<\/p>\n<h4>Regrets:<\/h4>\n<p>Not many regrets about the story itself, but the fact that many of the Daleks seem of shoddy construction as they teeter and totter on camera is a shame. It\u2019s also too bad that there is not a way to convey as much personality for the Omega Device and the Special Weapons Dalek as can be found in the novelization of the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cFrightening, isn&#8217;t it, to find there are others better versed in death than human beings?\u201d \u2013 The Doctor Now this,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1234,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidredd.com\/doctorwho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}