PS Creativity > Reviews > The Classic Series > Destiny of the Daleks

Shown in 1979, Destiny of the Daleks was the sequel to Genesis of the Daleks, as the Doctor, now accompanied by the delightful Time Lady Romana (actually she has a longer name but lets not go into that) finds himself landing once more on Skaro- the war-decimated Dalek homeworld. Actually the Daleks have long abandoned their homeworld, but now a small Dalek taskforce has returned to the planet for some reason. Curious to find out what the metal scallies are up to this time, the Doctor finds that the Daleks are using slave labour to dig into the bowels of the buried science bunker where the Daleks were first created thousands of years ago, in search of their long dead creator Davros, who it turns out is not so dead after all. It seems the Daleks, in their war of conquest against all life in the universe, have fallen afoul of a new enemy- the Movellans who have effectively put the blocker on the expanse of the Dalek Empire. Now the Daleks need the help of their creator to vanquish their new enemies. The Doctor allies himself with a Movellan counter-force to prevent the Daleks from finding Davros, and simultaneously to liberate the slaves from the Daleks- but are his enemy’s enemies really his friends, or do the Movellans have intentions just as sinister as those of the Daleks?

In my previous review of this story, I was pretty harsh on it. I was reviewing Destiny of the Daleks at a time when I was learning the ropes about how to review and how to argue for or against a particular film, how to hold high standards, how to knock something down, and Destiny of the Daleks is in a lot of ways an incredibly easy piece of Television to knock on so many levels. I think ultimately I was knocking the story, less out of a sense of hating the whole thing, and more out of a sense of simply learning how to kick, because in all honesty I have always found Destiny of the Daleks to be an infectious, warming and enjoyable viewing, even though it’s got so many things wrong with it.

Lets see what I really like about this story first.

Well starting with the first episode, it’s pretty faultless. Well actually the opening scene in the Tardis with Romana regenerating into various bodies in order to find the perfect look (huh! women!) could have been skipped. It’s not an offensively bad scene, its not annoying, its not amusing, it doesn’t add anything to the story really except facilitate a change of actress, it is rather stilted though (though thankfully not as stilted as The Twin Dilemma, which really was a headache), and it does go on a bit too long. I could take it or leave it as a scene.

But wait, I said the episode leads on to great things, and indeed it does. The Doctor and Romana have landed on Skaro and the atmosphere is wonderful- just listen to the wind and the eerie silence and watch the vast stretches of desertion. People who voice the opinion that Doctor Who at this point had become the Tom Baker show should be aware that he plays these scenes as they were intended- he doesn’t witter on in anecdotes or perform flamboyantly because he is aware that the silence is meant to speak volumes, so his performance and delivery is sombre and observational as he senses a distinct chill in the air. Did I mention this story has some excellent directing, courtesy of Ken Grieve (who went on to direct for Blakes 7)? Well it is and the cinematography is gorgeous indeed.

The first episode is also the one that displays the most intelligence in the writing department. The scene where the Doctor and Romana are studying a slab of concrete is one of my favourite early clue-finding moments where the Doctor and companion (who in this case has more brains than most) apply their wits to determine what kind of planet they are on. It ranks alongside the scenes in the antique shop with the Second Doctor and Jamie in Evil of the Daleks as my favourite smart moment of clue collecting in the series. Similarly it is wonderful to bask in the glow of the Doctor’s spark of wit as he comments “interesting technique- camouflage and defence” as he observes the landing of a Movellan taskforce on Skaro in a ship that’s burrowing itself into the ground (a great piece of modelwork for the time- in-fact I’d take it over CGI any day). Then the action kicks in and it is as surrounding and smothering as the truly alive nature of the Dalek planet– you feel the stealthy tension as the Doctor sneaks a look at a burial site for the Dalek’s slaves that succumbed to exhaustion or were otherwise slaughtered. You experience the mining explosions in stereo as they erupt around the Doctor and Romana, forcing them to either take flight or remain glued to the spot, encompassed by it all. Then when the Doctor has a pillar come down on his full frame, you feel the weight and claustrophobia of it and the dust blowing down your throat.

The first part ends with a slew of Terry Nation’s clichés as Romana is stalked by a quiet and dishevelled man, and then finally encounters the Daleks to climax the first episode. They actually come crashing through a wall with plenty of gusto. Part two is mostly very high quality. The scene with Romana being interrogated by the Daleks whilst strapped to a lie sensor does have enough high melodrama to pin you down as you watch the electric tension and Romana’s loud and choked up cries of terror as she is bullied into a corner by the mechanical brutes. It is hard not to remark on the poor and battered condition that the Daleks are in, though whilst other fans bemoan how this represents the cheapness of the story’s production, I’ve generally been able to easily put the downtrodden appearance of the Daleks here down to battle damage. Romana is put into one of the slave labour camps and quickly befriends the fellow prisoners Jal and Veldan, who describe the actions of the Daleks. The Daleks come across as being really evil and nasty here, as we hear of how they invaded colonies and attacked space cruisers, and making prisoners out of the survivors, how they work prisoners to exhaustion and how every time a prisoner escapes, the Daleks take reprisal by exterminating selected slaves. As they bark orders to the slaves to remain silent and continue working, they nicely awaken the inner child as they come across appropriately as teachers bossing around the school-kids during playtime. The scene where Veldan is bickering futilely with a Dalek over a collapsed dead worker is like a homage to a brilliant scene in The Dalek Invasion of Earth where a Dalek is pursuing a surviving human who lost his whole family to the Daleks and is screaming in enraged hysterics at the Dalek, but the Dalek is unfazed and emotionless and keeps relentlessly repeating its arrogant orders to surrender.

Another thing about this story I like is the fact that the Dalek headquarters has an intruder warning system of motion sensors that the Doctor ends up tripping when he breaks in. This makes a refreshing change to the other Terry Nation written Dalek stories where it was all too easy for the Doctor to infiltrate the Dalek headquarters without being noticed. However when Davros himself arrives on the scene, things unfortunately do drift into a textbook example of a bad sequel. Davros himself looks worse for wear- worse than he has ever looked infact. Davros usually has an exceptionally well designed mask, but here it literally doesn’t fit him, and the fact that the actor playing Davros is pushing his Dalek skirt-style wheelchair with his feet is made embarrassingly obvious. Meanwhile the character of Davros has been reduced to a thoroughly cartoonish ranting and grumpy version of himself, completely lacking his former subtlety and intellectI think when Terry Nation first created Davros he played carefully with presenting Davros as a man who’s intelligence probably surpassed that of the writer who had written him. Here however Terry Nation does not take the same care with the character. Davros simply rants inanely and incessantly coming across as more childish than any other villain. His persisting ambitions for guiding the Daleks to universal conquest make him seem woefully forgetful of the fact that the Daleks turned on him and nearly killed him in his previous adventure. His ultimate plan of victory is so dumb and so obviously designed to backfire that if I revealed what it was, then it would be a major spoiler because even an idiot could work out how the Doctor would save the day from there- infact it’s as easy as pi. And yet the scene where the Doctor does save the day has enough action and spectacle in a cheap but fast and immediate manner to make the moment where the Doctor has to merely press a switch to win the fight more exciting and satisfying than it has any real right to be.

My criticisms of the story still stand however. The performance of David Gooderson as Davros is one that fans have been rather too polite about, trying to excuse the fact that he couldn’t be expected to fill the shoes of Michael Wisher’s classic performance as the evil scientist in Genesis of the Daleks. But unfortunately his performance is bad in its own right, The first time I watched Gooderson’s performance as Davros, I found it irritating and painful to watch. With repeated viewings I don’t even take the performance so seriously as to get outraged by it and I’ve even learned to find it entertainingly bad- who can resist laughing at the moment where he’s bobbing up and down in his chair as he moves forward. I can’t help but think of this as the story that earned Doctor Who its reputation for cheapness and ‘wobbly sets’ (a cliché that has abounded with the general public despite the fact that to my knowledge no Doctor Who episode has ever had a set that wobbled in the literal sense of the world).

Gooderson’s performance perhaps lets down the story, but then again it is easy to take the view that Gooderson was simply riding a badly scripted character, and the script really isn’t up to much. There’s a particularly dodgy moment of scripting where the Doctor hints that he knows that it is Davros that the Daleks are trying to recover from the bowels of the bunker, but he doesn’t say so but he hints at it in such an overtly telegraphing way its enough to take you so far outside the action and gravity when the Doctor says "If I'm right, we go this way. We're looking for the same thing as the Daleks. I'll tell you what it is when we find out." Unfortunately it is not merely a minor blemish. It’s enough really to tarnish the fandom argument that Doctor Who has plenty of intelligent scripting to compensate for low production values- sometimes Doctor Who is just bad, though usually it is entertainingly so and this story certainly does qualify as entertaining. There are plenty of incidental moments that always compulsively raise a smile from me, like when under Movellan firepower, a Dalek unexpectedly explodes mid-cliché. Like the moment when Romana and Tyssan are climbing a cliff-face and a Dalek is shooting at them from below. The Doctor noticing Davros’ sense of failure now that the Doctor has foiled his plans, and enquiring “What does it feel like?” always raises a chuckle from me. There’s something else as well- the chemistry between the Doctor and roman has a lovely unstated element of hands-on intimacy that I find so comforting, a kind of innocent but unreserved sexuality in the way the Doctor and Romana are often holding hands, and how both the male and female Movellans wear such tight disco-esque clothing that has a certain sexiness underneath the naffness, and when they have their brains disconnected from their body, they seem to fall about in a rather wavering and sensual way. Add to the mix the scene where Romana and a Movellan come to blows and have a fierce and tense wrestling match and Romana shows how tough her boots are and you have just the right level of titillation and hands-on empowerment.

But sometimes the story is entertaining for the wrong reasons and the script even gets to have the Doctor flippantly mock the Dalek’s aversion to stairs- yes we Doctor Who fans can take a joke about Daleks being vertically challenged from other people outside of fandom (no matter how many times they’ve told that joke over thirty years it keeps getting funnier every time- actually speaking seriously Eddie Izzard’s sketch on Dalek plumbers always tickles my funny bone), but those japes do not really have a place in the show itself when it is supposed to be conveying the impression that the Daleks have decimated hundreds of entire worlds with little trouble- I personally was never convinced by the ‘run up stairs’ escape clause- what’s the point of escaping upstairs when a Dalek ray blast can burn your whole house down anyway? Still at least Terry Nation was wise in his script to spare us a Dalek versus K9 confrontation that would really have been the detriment of the Daleks.

The Dalek conflict with the Movellans is never properly drawn out however. The fundamental problem is that the Movellans are sidelined in favour of the Daleks and Davros and the script never really defines the Movellans in terms of their origins or their ambitions beyond seeking mere conquest. I’d venture that for building a credible foil against the Daleks, such vagueness about who the Movellans are is just not good enough. It would have been perhaps better if the Daleks had come across a robot race that had already been established in the series in terms of their origins and goals, such as the Cybermen, or (please don’t shoot me) the Quarks- the fans would love the Daleks and Cybermen to have a knockdown, but it’s probably a bit too fannish to see the light of day, ah well we can dream. The Movellans have also been criticised as being a rather pathetic threat to the Daleks given how easily they can be dispatched, in a way that seems to tread all over the plausibility of these two foes supposedly sharing a war of attrition. I can probably justify this criticism by noting that this story gives strong hints that the Daleks and Movellans have rarely encountered each other in face to face combat, and that most of the conflict must have been fought through space battlefleets, in which case the odds would be more even. But alas some dodgy scripting, mainly revolving around the easy resolution to part 3’s cliffhanger where Romana is threatened with death by the Movellans, completely blows out of the water the far fetched suggestion that the Movellans are on any level as ‘evil’ as the Daleks.

Back onto the positives, I’m very glad that the series was wise to only occasionally revisit the planet Skaro, since it’s always had a certain exotic and dangerous appeal as an alien world, and the brevity of encounters there has allowed that magic to be maintained. In the 1960’s serials The Daleks and Evil of the Daleks, Skaro was an appropriately enchanting but nightmarish place to find yourself in, with perpetual night and an eerie quietness. Genesis of the Daleks got one further and portrayed the planet metaphorically as being Hell on Earth, with all the fires and chaos, abominations, evil and cruelty and perpetual war that represents hell, and the brutal soldiers of that war were all full of hate and bearing Nazi regalia and technological anachronisms like a sordid gathering of all the worst, most bloody periods of human history into one setting. It was this element of the metaphoric and the ability to present an environment of out and out chaos from the word go, that made Skaro such a powerful setting and displayed the full potential for depicting alien environments, and which is why I am glad that the New Series has recently been visiting alien worlds again (and the occasional parallel universe), after a completely Earth-bound first season. In-fact to hark back to the use of an alien planet as a ‘hell’ metaphor, the New Series has actually done so again with the subversive story “The Satan Pit”- one of the really great new episodes that has pushed the boundaries of what New Who is capable of.

But to get back on track, there is something reassuring about the sight of Skaro here, shown in broad daylight on what was clearly a lovely sunny day. There is evidence that vegetation is growing again on Skaro and that the planet is finally healing from the nuclear war that scorched the planet. In fact the planet feels as beautiful, peaceful and as safe and magical as a suburban park. It’s a planet worth caring about, a planet that seems to offer hope again. Like a lot of upcoming young fans, I read many of the Target novelisations long before I eventually saw the episodes they were based on, and a lot of the time, my minds eye imagined these stories on alien planets to be set at the backdrop of darkness and perpetual night, but I’d say that overall I wasn’t disappointed.

In many ways this is a wonderfully optimistic story. The Doctor shows a decidedly ruthless streak here, implementing the kind of vigilante or terrorist tactics that he had rarely resorted to elsewhere, though it was an aspect seen also in stories like Power of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius, Vengeance on Varos and many of the stories of the first season of the New Series. Personally I like it when the Doctor resorts to radical measures in desperate situations- I loved it on a gut level when he beat up bad guys left, right and centre in The Seeds of Doom- unDoctorly perhaps, but so satisfying and exhilarating all the same. I actually grew up on this brand of ruthless Doctor when I read the novelisation of this story at an early age, and to me seeing the Doctor become a vigilante killer is far from being a blasphemy on the character, and actually defines him as a pragmatic law unto himself- after all the Doctor always has been an outlaw.

Unfortunately that scene itself is sold short by poor performances and high flippancy. When the Daleks are forcing the Doctor to surrender Davros by ushering forward their slaves and exterminating them one by one until the Doctor submits, it could have been the best scene of the story- exposing the Doctor’s morality as his Achilles’ heel. It could have been harrowing and hard hitting, and yet there is strangely no tension at all. It is directed flatly with no incidental music, and the actors playing the prisoners seem honestly bored and don’t even try to play the scene seriously- there’s no fear or engagement from them, they seem to say- “just shoot me and get the scene over with”. Similarly when Davros is being threatened with destruction, his line delivery is still completely flat and merely grumpy and his movements show no signs of panic at all. It could have been so much better if the Daleks were seen violently thrusting prisoners forward with their sucker limbs, if there were dramatic close-ups, if the prisoners seemed genuinely terrified and actually screamed when they were exterminated. If we actually had seen a little girl as one of the last intended victims that would finally compel the Doctor’s surrender to save her life, and how great it would be if Davros seemed genuinely afraid and desperate to survive when the Doctor booby traps his life support chair, to the point where we could almost pity the evil man. The scene could have had such great momentum and hard-hitting punch, and whilst it comes off as too mediocre to be offensively bad, there’s always the deeply frustrating sense of how great it could have been. As it is, the highlights of the story remain very much its action sequences.

And yet what is refreshing about this episode is that it is still ultimately resolved on a merciful note that justifies the Doctor’s faith in morality, and in some ways justifies the use of the Movellans. We know that the Doctor passed up the opportunity to destroy the Daleks forever because he couldn’t live with an act of genocide playing on his conscience. In this story we find that the Doctor’s faith in morality has won out as Dalek threat has been neutralised without the need to destroy the Dalek race, since the Movellans have effectively contained their empire, and whilst the Daleks are still in existence they are also safeguarding the universe by occupying the Movellans’ collective attention. Similarly the Doctor here is perhaps more willing to actually kill Davros to leave the Daleks powerless, than in any other story. It is only when all other options are exhausted that the Doctor decides to actually plant a bomb on Davros’ chair so that he can blow him up from afar before the Daleks can get him. This is a compelling moment as the Doctor gleefully taunts Davros about what he’s going to do (in a way that only Tom Baker could have gotten away with) “All I have to do is press this switch, and Boom! Boom! Davros!”, seemingly relishing the prospect of putting to death such an evil man, but once the Doctor is in the clear, his eyes and his hesitancy tell a different story. Which makes it all the more positive that in the end the Doctor defeats Davros’ plans but then takes the humane decision to hand Davros over to the authorities to be tried and convicted for his war crimes. In many ways, had Doctor Who ended in 1980 or 1982 instead of 1989 (which in my opinion would have given the old series a far more dignified ending), then I would certainly not have minded this story resultantly being the final Dalek story in order to wrap up the Dalek saga.

As many fans have pointed out, it would have been better if Davros had been just a one-off character who’s poetic end in Genesis of the Daleks should really have been the end for the character, but this was a sequel of sorts for him and unfortunately it stands as his poorest hour. Davros would inevitably go on to appear in every subsequent Dalek story, and recently he was treated to a superb trilogy of Big Finish Audio Dramas. So far, and perhaps for the best, Davros has not appeared in the New Series at all and the Daleks have done well without him, which hints strongly that for all his elusiveness at escaping justice, Davros was probably finally killed in the unseen Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords. But sadly it seems that Romana was also killed in this war.

My final recommendation is that this really will only appeal to fans. There’s something very entertaining and watchable about it, but there’s definitely a cheapness and lack of professionalism about it- hints that it could have been brilliant, intelligent and powerful, but is overran by a major air of flippancy. But its got a simplicity about it and a minimum of violent scenes that makes it especially appealing to young children. Anyway, it’s crap, but it’s crap that I like.

Originally posted by transvamp on July 11th 2006 at 9:15 pm.

click here to return to The Classic Series reviews