Instead, Chibnall tends to construct his more successful episodes around propulsion and momentum; he likes to have multiple characters doing things simultaneously, while constantly throwing new elements into the mix to maintain some sense of forward movement. After all, despite all the stuff that happens in the episode, it is hard to pinpoint what it is actually supposed to be “about.” There are certainly scenes and developments that feel like they should be important, but they never really feel like organic evolution from one scene to the next. It’s the abandoned husk of that same travel machine that now gets carted away by an unwitting driver, a man who’s so obviously doomed from the second he signs the paperwork that you can’t help but feel sorry for him. An early scene with Robertson and Patterson features a “roleplay” of a public protest that is broken up by a Dalek. Having been cloned back into existence by Robertson’s scientist-slash-flunky Leo, the mutant from ‘Resolution’ has been practicing its two favourite tricks – puppeteering a human host, and online shopping. Actually, heaps of stuff. However, Revolution of the Daleks then reverts back to the default. were better. The idea of humans trying to exploit Daleks as servants before things go horribly wrong is lifted from Power of the Daleks and Victory of the Daleks. Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks (Review), a threat originally designed as potential surrogates for the Daleks, a striking image less than a day after Brexit, The past year has seen mass protests in the United Kingdom and the United States over systemic racism, Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, with the Weeping Angels reportedly due to make a return in the season ahead, J.K. Rowling’s outspoken opposition to trans rights, the Doctor’s most recent regenerations have been read by many as a trans narrative. They are a draw. It's very much a Doctor Who story with very little involvement from The Doctor until Part 2, it's much more of a Davros story than anything else. (A Weeping Angel on trial is a Big Finish production just waiting to be written…) There’s even an imprisoned P’Ting, which seems a bit harsh, though it might just be locked up to keep it safe from Yaz. Except it’s not really hers – it’s the new-build TARDIS in disguise, and its destruction takes out the Dalek forces and ties up that loose end in a neat bit of storytelling. As the Doctor prepares to leave, Ryan decides to stay. The mastermind behind the theft turns out to be Jack Robertson – the Trump-envying, Scooby-Doo villain last seen burying toxic waste during the divisive ‘Arachnids in the UK’. Indeed, in some ways, the episode feels like it is a loose assemblage of familiar elements thrown together into a shape that is recognisable to casual observers as Doctor Who. Revolution of the Daleks had a lot going for it, but how did it fare as a story? It would be experimental and innovative. Minor nit-picking but it’s mentioned in the episode that the Doctor away from the companions for “ten months” not “eight” and it’s “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” she quotes not “Chamber of Secrets”…, but otherwise yeah, this review is spot-on. The idea of raising an army of Daleks from “liquidised humans” is lifted indirectly from both Revelation of the Daleks and Bad Wolf. Things pick up a few short hours after that adventure, which saw a buried Dalek mutant hijacking a human host and eventually constructing a scrapyard casing. In Victory of the Daleks, the older gold models are destroyed by the “new paradigm” Daleks. The Doctor is using the Daleks to explain hatred, rather than using hatred to explain the Dalek. Yawn. At one scene (when Robertson decides to make a deal with the Daleks and the Doctor barely reacts), I actually thought maybe they used rehearsal footage for the episode. The Doctor’s problem is that the “drones” look like Daleks. “I’m the one who stops the Daleks.” Of course, this is perhaps the most basic function of the Daleks, and it was thoroughly subverted and deconstructed in the Moffat era Dalek stories, but at least Revolution of the Daleks understands it. Davros: Terry Molloy. It’s a little too reliant on navel-gazing for that – but what the episode does is try and tackle questions raised by the Doctor always being the centre of the series’ universe, and what it takes to overcome her gravitational pull. This is unlikely to be anyone’s all-time favourite Doctor Who episode. Luckily for the human race, it doesn’t take too long before the Doctor’s broken out of space-prison. At one point during her captivity, the Doctor quotes Harry Potter and the Philosopher‘s Stone to herself, which feels like something of a poor decision, given J.K. Rowling’s outspoken opposition to trans rights while the Doctor’s most recent regenerations have been read by many as a trans narrative. (The pair are even visited by the ghost of Grace, in what feels like a strange nod to Jenna Louise Coleman’s cameo in Twice Upon a Time.) The older models show up and tear through the newer designs. If the dastardly duo had stayed in control of the Daleks for any length of time and we’d seen Britain slowly fall into the depths of fascism while the companions looked on helplessly, the episode could have come across as both derivative and ham-fisted, particularly when compared to ‘Genesis of the Daleks’. This would go a long way towards nullifying one of the core criticisms of this iteration of the character, arguing that the failure to show the Doctor actually stopping terrible people from continuing to do terrible things was not a character flaw but simply a gap in the writing. “I’m not who I thought I was,” the Doctor confess to Ryan. It helps that Robertson gets some of the episode’s most fun lines. However, the episode never develops it. This isn’t necessarily a problem, as Doctor Who has a long history of picking up influences from across pop culture. “The license fee payers have had enough of experts.”, To be fair, Robertson is great fun in Revolution of the Daleks. Interestingly, Revolution of the Daleks makes a point of demonstrating that Robertson did not survive the events of Arachnids in the U.K. unscathed. Davies frequently referenced Harry Potter, with the books serving as a touchstone in The Shakespeare Code and Davies even considering casting Rowling in one of his holiday specials. And Revelation Of The Daleks is actually bloody good. Revelation of the Daleks is the sixth and final serial of the 22nd season in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in two weekly parts on 23 and 30 March 1985. “Me mates need me,” he tells the Doctor. This is supposed to be a big crowd-pleasing holiday story aimed at general audiences, so why not do as many Dalek stories as possible? However, while this approach to scripting makes sense in terms of easing the workload for actors like Jodie Whittaker or Bradley Walsh, Chibnall struggles to make it work in terms of character or pacing. Ahead of transmission, the idea that Team TARDIS would need to tackle the Daleks by themselves was played up as being the meat of this story, leading to speculation that Captain Jack would step in as a sort of surrogate Doctor – he’s certainly got Dalek experience. It is impossible to imagine Chibnall constructing a holiday special featuring characters bantering around a couple of generic sets. Ryan’s departure means that a clearly torn Graham must also say his goodbyes, although his reasoning is far more straightforward – if he leaves to travel with the Doctor, he’ll miss his grandson taking those first steps into adulthood. Revelation of the Daleks Review ... Review. Eric Saward’s “Revelation of the Daleks” is a much better book than his other title in this series, “Resurrection of the Daleks”, which was atrocious. There’s nothing wrong with recycling elements. From 2005 to 2017, the Doctor Who Christmas specials were tipsy indulgences, often overblown but fully flavoured. I could’ve enjoyed it regardless of the look, though, if only the writing and direction (and editing?) Indeed, part of what’s frustrating about Revolution of the Daleks is how close the episode comes to making a barbed point, only to pull back at the last minute. Essentially, past and future collide and conflict. Given that The Sound of Drums found a corrupt Prime Minister working with the Toclafane, a threat originally designed as potential surrogates for the Daleks, there is even a clever bit of metatextuality to all this. These scenes culminate in a line of dialogue from the Doctor that would be wildly out of character in most other situations: “New can be very scary”. However, the reference seems likely to be out of date for any children who started watching with The Woman Who Fell to Earth, but perhaps they aren’t the audience. Team TARDIS, along with Robertson for seemingly no other reason than so he can betray them later, now need to sort out humanity’s DIY alien invasion. The result is an episode that is messier and more overstuffed than Resolution. Patterson is very clearly meant to be an analogue for Theresa May, given her relative no-nonsense style and her stoicism in contrast to Jack Robertson’s flamboyance. There is also an all-out Dalek invasion of Earth, like from The Dalek Invasion of Earth or The Stolen Earth. What does it take for a companion to leave the Doctor? Not from our perspective, anyway – as far as Thirteen’s concerned, she spends a good few decades in the company of some returning alien races, all of whom have supposedly gone through the judicial process. Together, their intention is to reverse-engineer the Dalek technology – which as far as they know is nothing but a very advanced robot – and mass-produce them to roam the streets. But we're certainly prepared to defrost a bit towards him. They serve that function very well in Revolution of the Daleks, as they help to get the Doctor out of her depression and affirm who she is underneath it all. The Doctor may be a Timeless Child, but Ryan is not. Series 12 of Doctor Who closed with a cliffhanger where the Doctor got arrested by the Judoon.What was surprising about “Revolution of the Daleks” was it continued a few storylines from the Chris Chibnall era. The revelation that comedian John Bishop is joining the show for the next season further adds to the multiple TARDIS team dynamic without, presumably, the romantic or magical attachments. Instead, the episode resets Ryan and Graham to the default from The Woman Who Fell to Earth, with Ryan learning how to ride a bike again. The Doctor and Peri arrive on the planet Necros to visit a facility called Tranquil Repose, where the wealthy can have their newly deceased bodies cryogenically frozen until medical science can cure them of their ailment. Revolution of the Daleks is one-third of the way over before the Doctor reunites with her “fam.” As with episodes like Praxeus, this makes it easier to organise shooting schedules for the cast. Skaro-variety Daleks, that is, further adding to the cast of aliens we haven’t seen in a while, and they’re not too happy that their racial purity is being threatened by human-fed knock-offs. Revolution of the Daleks doesn’t really work. Its true that Eric Saward perhaps crams it full of too many ideas. Torch would, eh? All of these elements push against one another for space, and none of them really feel like they belong together. “If I’m not who I thought I was, then who am I?”. The Doctor even gives Ryan and Graham some psychic paper. I wish this story had mostly focused on Jack and the fam trying to defeat the Daleks on their own That could have made for a great character-driven story that RTD would have absolutely nailed. The Eleventh Doctor skipped twelve years of Amy’s life in The Eleventh Hour, and spent the rest of his tenure trying to atone. As the pre-title sequence informs us, courtesy of some Big Chunky Captions that the show currently favours, not only is this episode a follow-up to the events of ‘The Timeless Child’, it’s also a sequel of sorts to the 2019 New Year’s Special, ‘Resolution’. To be fair, Doctor Who has a history of bringing back these characters after these sorts of extended absences. Peri: Nicola Bryant. Then, within a matter of minutes, the episode has zigzagged yet again. The episode is supposed to build to his decision to leave the TARDIS. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! “Can you believe that?” Graham asks. Arachnids in the U.K. was clearly a structural nod to stories like Aliens of London and World War III, Rise of the Cybermen and Age of Steel or The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky. I’m surprised I haven’t seen any comments about the visual quality of the episode. Yaz is spending most of her time in the new-build TARDIS that brought them home, having gone a bit Zoom-and-Enhance as she tries desperately to concoct a rescue plan. The larger problem is that these elements are thrown into the mix on top of a variety of other plot threads, and nothing has any time to breath. He also gets to say, “Take me to your leader.”. Chibnall even recycles jokes. Resurrection of the Daleks is a minor classic in my opinion. And the Chibnall era could use more of that. The biggest plus would be that it would be great to see how these characters work on their own without the Doctor. However, the revival of the Brigadier in Mawdryn Undead was a symptom of an underlying problem with that era of the show: Doctor Who was retreating into the comforts of nostalgia. Following Doctor Who: Timelash, Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks has been collected as part of The Colin Baker Years as Story #143 (or Story #142 if you count Shada). Your email address will not be published. And so Yaz is left in a TARDIS control room that suddenly seems a lot bigger, her trust in the Doctor tarnished but intact thanks to a surprisingly earnest heart-to-heart with Jack earlier in the episode. This is why people don’t like experts.” At another point, he ruminates on the bureaucratic mechanics of the Daleks’ evil plan. Was it just me, or did the ‘look’ change about halfway through? I turn my attention to one of the two Sixth Doctor stories to get a 4* rating from the Radio Times. After all, there is a lot of clever and pointed commentary that could be drawn from the idea of the British government employing the Daleks. Martha Jones departed to care for her traumatised family. 3.0 out of 5 stars A much better book than Resurrection. This Doctor Who is smaller on the inside. Showrunner Russell T. Davies made it abundantly clear that if you could handle the challenge, there was absolutely no drug more addictive than setting foot inside that TARDIS. Sadly, the Chibnall era has never been particularly interested in biting political and social commentary. Revolution of the Daleks is supposed to be about Ryan’s departure. Skaro-variety Daleks, that is, further adding to the cast of aliens we haven’t seen in a while, and they’re not too happy that their racial purity is being threatened by human-fed knock-offs. (NOTE: This review features spoilers. Indeed, the decision to shift the action to the present day with a fictionalised Prime Minister pushes Revolution of the Daleks closer to something like The Sound of Drums. The Doctor wishes to pay his last respects to his friend, Professor Arthur Stengos, but it turns out this is just a ruse to lure him into a trap. Now, technically, joint last with The Pirate Planet and Doctor Who: The TV Movie to be released in the classic Target Books branding and format. The media still weren’t sure of what to make of the latest cabinet reshuffle. However, Theresa May was succeeded by Boris Johnson as Prime Minister in July 2019, rendering the implied reference almost a year and half out of date. Shortly before the titular revolution, we find the companions kicking their heels back on Earth with no word from the Doctor, and no clue as to whether or not she’s even alive. That would be growth. Check out our reviews of Series 12 episodes one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine and ten. Revolution of the Daleks is a story without any real clear arc or flow to it. After all, there is one sizable difference between Revolution of the Daleks and Victory of the Daleks. There was little in Arachnids in the U.K. to suggest that this would happen, with Robertson just walking away at the end like Ilin in The Ghost Monument, King James in The Witchfinders or Daniel Barton in Spyfall, Part II. The Doctor first became a hero when he encounted the aliens in The Daleks. The result of all this is an episode that feels incredibly empty and shallow. Jack Robertson is introduced as an industrialist hoping to profit off the Daleks, but wanders into the TARDIS, finds himself in the midst of an invasion, briefly allies with Daleks and then somehow blunders out of the story. Instead, it is a cautionary tale about the dangers of fanservice as an end unto itself, and a suggestion that it is right to be wary of elements inserted into overcrowded stories that exist for no greater purpose than to play to the existing fan base. Earlier in the season, Fugitive of the Judoon landed on evocative imagery almost by accident: the idea of a black woman being aggressive pursued by a bunch of violent law enforcement officers with no accountability resonated strongly. Unfortunately, Chibnall lacks that flourish, and so it is all rather flat and generic. Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks is a rollicking adventure. A lot has happened over the past year. Chris Allcock | The website's critics consensus reads, "Despite fun moments and some welcome reunions, 'Revolution of the Daleks' doesn't have the emotional weight to pull off its social commentary and two goodbyes." The Daleks are part of the visual language of Doctor Who. Colin Baker. Despite repeatedly reminding everyone just how immortal he is, Jack gets spared a horrific series of deaths this time around, and before long the Doctor arrives to taunt every last one of the infuriated mutants into her TARDIS. Now revelation is a highly regarded story. Daleks yelling at one another should make for compelling television – funny and horrific at the same time. Okay, maybe not. After all, such a speech would foreshadow Ryan’s decision to depart in the same way that Sarah Jane’s story in School Reunion set up the departures of Mickey and Rose later in that season. This time, the dynamic is reversed – the Doctor, still stewing over being the Timeless Child, is being particularly clingy while the companions are keeping her at arm’s length, with neither group really able to conceive of what the other has gone through. With so much to wrap up in one episode, though, what we actually get isn’t a war. It won’t sit proudly in the number one spot when YouTubers rank the Christmas specials. Graham grumbles that without a sonic screwdriver or some psychic paper they can’t follow in the Doctor’s footsteps, but given how often the show teaches us that the Doctor isn’t defined by her gadgets, their half-hearted attempt to confront Robertson and save the day still comes across as a bit of a damp squib. However, in Revolution of the Daleks, it seems to happen simply because Chris Noth is having fun in the role and its’ possible that the show might want to bring him back again. The Doctor proceeds to define the Daleks to Robertson. After all, the companions returned to their normal lives. Here, Chris Chibnall chooses to confront the scar that ten months has left upon the companions’ relationship with the Doctor. Then came the Time War, and the Doctor was suddenly the most amazing, brilliant, astounding and important figure in the universe. The Doctor is back in action with Doctor Who‘s New Year’s Special “Revolution of the Daleks.”. The past year has seen mass protests in the United Kingdom and the United States over systemic racism, but Revolution of the Daleks is never interested in developing that idea beyond a single striking image. When Captain Jack finally springs the Doctor from her cell, the two characters get their first proper interaction since ‘Journey’s End’ (not to mention a callback to Jack’s favourite smuggling technique). The shots of Daleks working at “border control” is a striking image less than a day after Brexit, but Revolution of the Daleks refuses to connect the use of the Daleks by Prime Minister Jo Patterson to any latent racism or xenophobia. Of course the Doctor then collapses the TARDIS on top of the Daleks. The cobbled together Dalek casing from Resolution is a major plot point in Revolution of the Daleks, but it also plays as metaphor for the episode itself. Parallel universes, mind-wipes, temporal paradoxes… For many years now, the Doctor’s friends haven’t walked away – they’ve been ripped away. Ian Levine was brought on board as an unofficial consultant. Instead, Revolution of the Daleks just piles plot developments on top of plot developments. Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks is the final series in the twenty-second season of Doctor Who. Bad people do bad things, and there is nothing that any of the characters can do to stop them. To give Revolution of the Daleks some credit, the episode seems to conceptually understand the role that the Daleks play within the cosmology of Doctor Who. Everyone’s going to say this…but I will to. Given the chaos in the modern world, there is a lot of material with which the show might work. However, just because the Doctor has been … Though controversial at the time due to its excessive violence. To be clear, it’s very obvious that Chibnall did not intend any offense or insult. However, Bad Wolf aims for more than just “bigger budget reproduction.”. At the same time, it is hardly revolutionary. This Doctor Who review contains spoilers. Oddly, the 45 minute ‘Revelation Exhumed’ has interviews with most of the cast and some crew making it odd that neither Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant weren’t included. Like Resolution before it, Revolution of the Daleks is a special that largely works through momentum and spectacle, while failing to cohere into anything greater than the sum of its separate parts. After all, the Daleks are such a fixture of Doctor Who that it is very hard to think of anything new to do with them.