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

In this adventure, the Tardis takes us to the far future, for the Doctor's fourth encounter with Davros, the evil creator of the Daleks. The action of this story takes place after the events of Resurrection of the Daleks but preceeds Remembrance of the Daleks.

Davros, who is now a wanted man by both the Earth Empire and the Daleks, has been hiding out in Tranquil Repose- a funerary parlour on the planet Necros, one of Earth's many colony worlds throughout the galaxy. There Davros has created himself a new identity and built a reputation amongst the funerary staff as being a brilliant medicinal mind in the matters of curing fatal diseases and as such he acquires the title of "The Great Healer".

However Davros's plans are as sinister as ever as he plans to take advantage of a recent mass galactic famine which will make it easier for him to strike against humanity- He prepares himself a new army of Daleks with which to conquer the galaxy at its most vulnerable and set himself up for supreme rule. The Doctor, along with his American companion Peri has come to Necros to pay final respects to his late friend Professor Arthur Stengos, and is unwittingly being lured into a trap and Davros has prepared for the Doctor a fate worse than death.

Mark Gatiss, the creator of the BBC macabre black comedy series "The League of Gentlemen" is a self-confessed Doctor Who fan and has been contributing infrequently but always superbly to the New Doctor Who Series. Given Mark Gatiss' love for the grand guignol of his League of Gentlemen series, I think this episode particularly must have appealed to him and given him a fair degree of inspiration, as this is a Doctor Who story of the most bizarre kind, one that doesn't wince from the gruesome and gory and which immerses itself considerably in black comedy.

The mid-80's era of the show when the Doctor was played by Colin Baker was a short and very poor era of the show, exhibiting some of the worst episodes of the series side by side with episodes that seem to be running on autopilot without any sense of engagement. I'm sure plenty of fans would have preferred it if the series had ended on a high with Peter Davison's last season, instead of letting the show go so quickly downhill from there. However Colin Baker did fortunately have one very good story, and this was the one- "Revelation of the Daleks".

Its funny that I should have mentioned Peter Davison's last season because in so many ways that would have been a great season with which to 'settle' the series as it were so that it could have ended there and then. That season of stories had killed off most of the Doctor's recurring enemies- the Silurians, Sea Devils, the Master, the Daleks and Davros. And yet they decided for this story to resurrect Davros and the Daleks for a few more rematches, and they had done the same to resurrect The Master a few episodes prior- the latter is a decision I was not so keen on, but overall it is perhaps something that worked poetically at making undying villains out of Davros, the Daleks and the Master- because you can't kill the devil can you?

Speaking of immortality, the funerary pyre of Tranquil Repose where this episode is set is an institution of the future that does offer people immortality. It's a place where the rich and powerful can come to when they fall to an incurable fatal disease, so that their bodies can be preserved in cryogenic stasis until such time that medical science has come up with a cure for their condition. This is a concept done very well by this episode, with one scene that gives plenty of food for thought as it discusses whether the idea of cryogenic preservation would work pragmatically in a society that struggles through overpopulation and diminishing food supplies to support the people alive as it is and bases itself on capitalist competition that cannot afford to have sleeping moguls. Furthermore the story is aided by the kind of visuals that convey its atmosphere of chilly catacombs with its snow-covered exterior landscapes and very icy ultraviolet lighting within (reminiscent of the sci-fi film "Trancers"- which by the way, was a very entertaining slice of 80's cheese)- a lot of the Colin Baker stories featured an obligatory abundance of fluorescent colours and lighting, simply for the sake of superficial eye candy, but this is one of the few such stories where the lighting effects really do give strong atmosphere that cuts deep, that grips you by the shoulders and commands your attention.

The thing I lap up about this episode is that it really does say a lot about the era it was written in. Doctor Who has often walked the line between sheer escapism and a show with relevant social commentary. The Doctor himself is in many ways a countercultural icon character for those radicals of the 60's and 70's who reject the conformist life of work and marriage and believe in the values of peace and anti-materialism. But there are long stretches of the show which are devoted to sheer escapism over the more topical stories, particularly the latter years of the Tom Baker era. For me this is one episode alongside a few others in Peter Davison's last season that started to really dig its teeth into issues of the day again, such as the threat of the nuclear bomb and the miner's strike.

This episode covers a lot of contemporary ground it must be said. It refers to a galactic famine that can only be an allegory to what was going on in Ethiopia and other third world countries at the time. We see an allegory of the rampant police brutality of the time (which was heavily alleged during the miner's strike) in one of the show's most graphic interrogation scenes. It refers to the growth of big businesses with a tendency to exploit its menial workers (indeed in places there is a futurist corporate atmosphere reminiscent of Robocop and William Gibson's cyberpunk novels). It uses the landscape of the future as its pallet to explore this mixture of hope and cynicism about where we're all headed. The future is portrayed as an art décor paradise with plenty of wonderful anachronisms of the brass, the marble pillars, statues and oil paintings in this futuristic world of higher technology, but as technology has advanced, humanity is plagued by the same kind of problems it has always struggled with, such as poverty, tyranny, corruption and violence, as well as war and disease. Indeed under suggestion I have come to wonder if there is more than a little nod to the AIDS scare in the focus on incurable diseases.

The episode takes place in a superficially mannered and sophisticated society, and through the eyes of two of its renegades- Natasha and Grigory- the two body snatchers who are debased characters in the eyes of everyone in this polite society- they break us into the funerary place and take us into the bowels of the complex and reveal the true horrors buried within the catacombs, before we are eventually confronted with the puss stained head of Natasha's father- Professor Arthur Stengos who is being kept alive, mutated and brainwashed within a glass Dalek casing. The moment is superb, juxtaposing the ethereal atmosphere which conveys the hope of everlasting life, with the very tortured performance of Alec Linstead as Stengos. What he does is to juxtapose the human element of his psyche with the conditioning for the Dalek mentality, his love for his daughter and his sense of human despair being bulldozed through by the manic rantings of the Dalek propaganda of conquest and extermination and racial purity and the 'new order'. It is a superb sequence that portrays hope of immortality and the undying love and memories of the father only to snatch it all away remorselessly in uncontrollable spurting rage and pleas for death as a mercy, and it really puts a human face to the Dalek's unseen emotions of hatred, rage and almost evangelical passion.

The scene is wonderfully married to an earlier enigmatic moment where the Doctor and Peri come to blows with a savage mutant who does not respond at all to the Doctor's attempts to pacify him with hypnosis using a swinging medallion. The two scenes together- one making suggestion and the other unravelling the same mystery- both fulfil the puzzle piece of this paradoxical blend of juxtaposed humane and savage virtues. In a way the episode gains a lot of its power from this compulsive burrowing at the hidden true ugliness beneath the superficial. I find this refreshing for a mid-80's era of Doctor Who and TV and Cinema in general where negativity was often portrayed as a very naked and surface element of people. The fact that the episode plays largely as a comedy of manners before descending into bloodshed, then is sandwiched by the reactions of the well mannered and desensitised who remark the shattering moment with some of the most calloused and darkest humour, makes its violence, death and grotesques all the more striking. Major characters like Lilt and Takis who head the work at Tranquil Repose, start out as a cheerful double act- infact they share a similar physique to old Laurel and Hardy- but when the story gives them an opportunity to interrogate captured fugitives behind closed doors, it really channels their most brutal and sadistic characteristics and puts them into shocking relief, violently shattering our safe conceptions of the jolly two.

Similarly the character of the woman Tasambeker, who is hopelessly in love with Jobel- her uptight and blindly self-centred boss at Tranquil Repose, begins as a rather pathetic and modest character who is much belittled, but when Davros takes something of a romantic interest in her and begins to manipulate her, she channels her sensitive passions and turns into a very vicious and murderous woman. I love Davros' little romanticised moment where he tells Tasambeker how he has observed her humiliating moments at the mercy of Jobel's bullying and suggests "If someone had treated me the way he has treated you, I think I would have killed them!". Whilst Jenny Tomasin's performance as Tasambeker was rather ill judged and melodramatic, there is something about the music of that scene that really carries the pathos of her character as she surrenders to an undignified eruption of her violent passions.

There is something about this mask of niceties that makes the horrors underneath so monumental. This is rather fitting in this story where the Daleks are painted a cream white with gold trimmings to give them a false air of purity and prestige too. In one chilling example, there is a moment where Davros realises that assassins have come to Tranquil Repose to kill him, Davros deduces that his greedy socialite of a business partner, Kara has employed those assassins, since she would have the most to gain from his death, but when Davros contacts Kara by videophone, he keeps his poker face and pretends not to suspect her, and feigns concern that assassins might be after her head as well, and politely insists on sending two Daleks to her as her bodyguards (on the pretext that unlike her own security officers, Daleks are incapable of being bribed off) and it's just so perfectly sinister and noose-tightening to see the hidden malice beneath the insisted generosity.

Whilst this ordinary workplace may seem a strange environment for a story upon which the whole fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance, it works nonetheless. The desperation and passion of the scene where Stengos is being mentally tortured as he is transformed into a Dalek is a moment that stands alone but somehow is so out of place- sandwiched between two contrasting scenes of humour and etiquette- that it lasts as an omen of the horrific fate that awaits all humans if Davros succeeds. Some fans have bemoaned the tendency for the Dalek voices in this story to be on the squeaky side, but personally I find it a most effective touch at giving the Daleks a distinctly panicky and emotional quality that rather tragically reminds me of the benign human beings that these poor creatures once were before Davros transformed them.

Furthermore there is something about seeing the Daleks as being servile and under Davros' thumb once more (just like in Genesis of the Daleks) that is so unnerving- the only times that they exterminate anybody is when they are ordered to do so by Davros. The Daleks may look like stoic automatons but within them is a savage and psychotically homicidal mutant creature. The Daleks have always been a very evil, belligerent and savage force with a tendency to boast of their supremacy, and when instead they are being silent and obedient, and in a word.... 'domesticated', it just feels unnatural and suspicious and they somehow seem more volatile in this state because you're just sensing something scheming and evil within them, and waiting for them to break out of this rut of servitude and start killing everyone in sight.

For me what the Daleks always represent is a sense of disgust with all that is vile and horrific about humanity- all the chaos and violence and sadism. To me the Daleks can either represent that evil of humanity, or they can represent this sense of disillusionment that simply desires the most ruthless eliminating solutions to the problems of the world- they are the soldiers of a war to end all wars. It is fitting then that this corrupt environment should be the playing field. As mentioned above, the rich and powerful have come to Tranquil Repose to be preserved, but really they are to be discarded as dead weight once they are frozen, because they would be too much of a burden on the struggling economy otherwise. And so when the Doctor and Davros finally meet and have their obligatory little conversation of their mutually opposed ethics, Davros justifies himself well when he argues that he has helped the many people that the government has abandoned- not only is he playing a part in alleviating the galactic famine, but he has resurrected many of the sleeping upper classes just as they were promised, albeit by turning them into Daleks, which Davros describes as a fitting destiny for people of status and ambition. But so commited is Davros that his goals are truly noble that we can momentarily forget that he has committed and manipulated some very evil deeds during the course of this episode that are horrific even by his standards.

This debate between Davros and the Doctor is really one of the few moments of the story that the Doctor is actually a part of. Throughout most of the episode, the Doctor is still on the journey towards Tranquil Repose and is in-fact completely oblivious to the presence of Davros or the Daleks. The fact that the Doctor is oblivious to being observed by Big Brother, to the amusement of a gloating Davros is one of the major comedy highlights of this episode. The large absence of the Doctor's involvement in the plot is partly what makes this one of the mpst unique and atypical of Doctor Who stories, by its plethora of characters with their own important part to play. Natasha and Grigory take over the Doctor's usual role of the investigators breaking into secret locations and discovering the plot to conquer the galaxy, and the skilled assassins Orcini and Bostock take over the Doctor's role as the heroic crusaders, fighting against evil. It seems here actually that the peace-loving Doctor is made superfluous by a bunch of vigilantes. Orcini and Bostock are not merely mercenaries (although the script never lets us forget that they are killers) but they are noblemen from a long gone chivalrous age who consider it a noble honour to kill Davros and end his evil reign, and in that they can do the things the Doctor isn't capable of doing, because as we all know the Doctor could never morally go through with pulling the trigger the last time he tried to kill Davros, and in that way, Orcini and Bostock, as vigilantes represent the counterbalance for how -as mentioned above- the savagery of the universe can only be settled by the most ruthless of solutions.

Orcini, by the way is an excellent character. Very well spoken with piercing eyes and a chivalrous manner. His leather fashion fits him well as a crusader character and a tough nut (and in a way predates the fashion of the Ninth Doctor), and the story and direction gives him plenty of opportunities to display his martial arts, his strategist skills and his larger than life presence. The brilliance of this is that it builds up the hope that this man can kill Davros easily, only to deliver a sumptuous small scale battle (for its small budget- the BBC explosives are quite impressive) between the assassins and the Daleks which concludes when Davros brilliantly overpowers both Orcini and Bostock in a short space of time in a way that momentarily makes us believe that Davros really is as invincible as a god and an everlasting evil, and that literally no mortal man can ever destroy him. But I'll stop there before I give away too much spoiler.

This is certainly an episode, much like others of its era that really aims to please. It features a star studded line-up of actors, from the likes of Clive Swift, William Gaunt, Eleanor Bron and even Alexei Sayle. It is one of the most eye candy, visually sumptuous episodes of Doctor Who, and it boasts one of the most rich and highly literate scripts since the Tom Baker era. It is tuned to be entertaining and keep the audience on its toes in every scene (in a manner similar to the show Network 7 and early episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer), but also maintains a strict maturity and knows which scenes to allow to take centre stage and to form into the peak of the hills so that the abundance doesn't dwarf the main thrust (which I think was neglected elsewhere in the era, to the detriment of the stories). There's not much else I can really say to be honest- it is probably Eric Saward's finest script, as well as another top notch on the belt of Caves of Androzani director Graeme Harper- who will also be directing some of the episodes of the coming second season of the new series, which is why I have selected this particular episode to review in commemoration of the Second Season of Doctor Who and Graeme Harper's return to directing for the series.

On the subject of the new series, here's a little trivial point- when Peri meets the local DJ of Tranquil Repose (played by Alexei Sayle with his usual exciteability and talent for relating anecdotes about his upbringing) there is a Glenn Miller song playing in the background- the same song is played in the New episode "The Empty Child" when Captain Jack is romancing Rose.

This story has now been released on DVD, and has been even more improved for it. There were several moments of poor sound quality in the original version that have been nicely tuned up here for far better viewing- with only one little niggle left that the subtitles function can amend nicely. There is also the option to watch an amended version of the story with improved visual effects to replace the rather dated and misfired little lazer displays of the original- I enjoyed that option actually. There is some unedited footage of the filming of the explosive battle scenes that are very informative as to how these scenes got made. There is a retrospective documentary of interviews interspersed with clips that give high praise to this as a timeless story, as well as mentioning its origins being inspired by the Evelyn Waugh novel "The Loved One" (the 80's saw some renewed interest in Evelyn Waugh after the 1981 superb televisation of Brideshead Revisited). There is also a commentary and finally there are three short deleted scenes, including one moment where Lilt and Takis lament the death of some of Davros' security guards who have been exterminated by Daleks on the rampage- this scene was presumably cut out because it interrupted the momentum of a big action build-up, but I wish it had been left in as it elevates Davros' guards above being simply disposable canon fodder for the body snatchers and assassins to casually gun down now and again (in a rather cold blooded manner), and it also could have provided a necessary bridge between the brutality of Takis and Lilt in their interrogation scene, and their turning into good guys towards the end, which as it was, seemed a bit too paradoxical.

But in any case, this is a superb addition to any self-respecting Doctor Who fan's collection, and may even turn a few heads..

Originally posted by transvamp on March 20th 2006 at 5:18am.

click here to return to The Classic Series reviews