Remembrance of the Daleks

Crush the lesser races! Conquer the galaxy! Unimaginable power! Unlimited rice pudding! Et cetera! Et cetera!

Remembrance of the Daleks is the one story that people who do not like the Seventh Doctor era will come back and give an exception to. It's also funny to see the old time fans geek out whenever there is a glimpse of the Special Weapons Dalek introduced in this story. I looked forward to this story with a bit of trepidation as you always do when you hear that something is supposedly so good and yet you fear that you may not like it.

Plot Summary

The story opens with Ace and the Doctor arriving at Coal Hill School in 1963. The Doctor is immediately intrigued by a monitoring van with advanced monitoring technology. Ace leaves for a bit to get something to eat at a local café where she meets Sgt. Mike Smith. The Doctor enters the van to study the equipment and meets Professor Rachel Jensen. Ace and Sgt. Smith return as the group is called away to the death of a soldier. Ace and the Doctor tag along. All this is observed by a young girl.

The van arrives at the I. M. Foreman junkyard where a soldier has been killed by a Dalek blast. The Doctor notes that the Dalek is trapped in a shed. He urges Group Captain Gilmore to disengage but Gilmore orders his men to attack. The Dalek emerges, unphased by the human weapons. The Doctor orders Ace to give him two bottles of Nitro-9 which he uses to destroy the Dalek. Ace and the Doctor then steal a van and head back to Coal Hill.

Sgt. Smith turns over the remains of the Dalek to a specialist named Ratcliffe, who takes it back to a special facility. However, Ratcliffe is a fascist and working with a mysterious Dalek figure who remains hooded.

Ace and the Doctor arrive back at the school and begin to look around. The Doctor suspects the Daleks are looking for the Hand of Omega, a weapon that the Doctor took with him when he left Gallifrey. He notes rocket blast patterns and suspects that the school is a center of Dalek activity. Searching the basement, they find a matter transporter. The Doctor sabotages it as a Dalek is arriving, killing it. However the activity arouses a monitor Dalek. Ace gets to the exit where she is knocked out by the headmaster. He then locks the Doctor in, trapping him. Ace quickly comes to and knocks the headmaster down and releases the Doctor. They run as the Dalek blasts through the door and orders the headmaster, who is under Dalek control, to repair the transporter.

Outside the school, the Doctor discovers a weapons transport ordered by Gilmore, including several anti-tank rockets. Taking possession of them, they reenter the school as the headmaster has finished repairing the transporter. Alerted to the human presence, the Dalek attacks and Ace destroys it with the rocket.

Gilmore has ordered more weapons to be brought up but they won't be there until the morning. Unaware that the transport has been repaired, the Doctor leaves on an errand. Ace and the other women go to Mike's mother's house to spend the night. The Doctor ponders his next action over a mug of tea at the local café, contemplating the repercussions. Early in the morning, he takes possession of a coffin from a local undertaker in which the Hand of Omega is hidden. He also uses it to infuse Ace's bat, which he borrowed, with stellar energy. The Doctor then has the coffin buried in a local cemetery.

The Doctor meets up with the military and they head back to headquarters with the Doctor ordering Ace to stay behind until he sends for her. She reluctantly agrees but eventually leaves the house, become disgusted upon finding a "No Coloreds" sign hanging. She heads back to the school and discovers that several Daleks have appeared through the repaired matter transporter. She partially disables one with the amplified bat, but is quickly cornered by three other Daleks. However the military and the Doctor arrive at this moment, having become aware of her departure. The Doctor uses a sonic weapon to distract the Daleks enough to get Ace free and then the military destroys the three with more anti-tank rockets.

Looking over the wreckage, the Doctor realizes there are two factions of Daleks in pursuit of the Hand. The Doctor decides to work to ensure the correct faction takes control of the Hand. He once again disables the transporter and gives instructions to Gilmore to fortify the school. The Doctor fills Ace in that he actually wants the Daleks to capture the Hand, which is a stellar manipulator, he stole from Gallifrey when he fled with Susan. He is now simply focused on making sure the humans don't get in the way and killed.

Ratcliffe, working on information from Mike, locates the buried Hand and pulls in a team to recover it. He is unnerved that as his men work, they are observed by the same young girl who has randomly appeared through the story. Eventually, they extract the Hand and take it back to their warehouse. At the warehouse, the mysterious figure reveals itself to be the young girl, having been transformed into a Dalek battle computer by the lead renegade Dalek. She activates the control device for the time corridor and then has all of Ratcliffe's men killed.

The Doctor and Ace arrive at the warehouse, having tracked the Hand's signal. They sneak in and sabotage the time corridor controller, delaying the renegade Daleks' escape as well as alerting the Imperial Daleks of their location. The Doctor further distracts the renegades by leaving a calling card. This attracts the Daleks who move out in pursuit back to the school.

The renegade Daleks attack the school but pull back before they breach the defenses upon being informed of the approach of an Imperial Dalek transport. The transport lands and several Daleks emerge, heading towards the warehouse. The initial force is beaten back by the renegades and they call in reinforcements in the form of the special weapons Dalek.

In the melee, Mike let's slip that he has been working for Ratcliffe and is arrested. However, he escapes his captors and makes his way to the warehouse where he is captured by the renegades. However, as the Imperial Daleks attack, Mike and Ratcliffe break loose and grab the time corridor control. The Dalek computer girl is sent after them and she kills Ratcliffe with an electric discharge. Mike continues to flee and she goes after him.

The Doctor sneaks aboard the Dalek transport ship and disables their ground defenses, allowing them free passage. He also uses the technology to hack into the communications system. As he does so, the Imperial Daleks capture the Hand of Omega. The Doctor and his group head back to the school basement where the Doctor uses the transporter to create a communications device with the Dalek mothership.

Ace does not go with the Doctor. Learning of Mike's escape, she heads back to his mother's house to try and take him back in. Upon arrival, he holds her hostage with his gun. But, the Dalek computer girl arrives and kills him with an electrical burst. She then turns on Ace.

As the transport arrives, the Doctor signals the mothership and the Dalek Emperor reveals himself as Davros. Incited by the Doctor, Davros activates the Hand of Omega, intent on increasing the power of the Skaroan sun for weapons development. Instead, the Hand causes the Skaroan sun to go supernova, destroying Skaro in the process. The feedback recoils and the Dalek mothership is destroyed also, although Davros flees in an escape pod prior to its destruction.

With the Imperial Daleks gone, the Doctor confronts the sole remaining renegade Dalek. The Doctor informs it that all renegade Daleks, Skaro, and even Davros have been destroyed. Unable to process it's failure, the remaining Dalek self destructs. This also frees the mind of the Dalek computer girl, who had been trying to kill Ace. Ace comforts her as she comes back to her normal self. Later, Ace and the Doctor quietly slip away as the remaining group attend a memorial service for Mike.

Analysis

This was an altogether excellent story and I can see how even those that are not fans of the Seventh Doctor enjoy it. I must also say that I'm glad I saw Silver Nemesis first as the two stories are very nearly identical except that instead of two factions of Daleks, you have Cybermen vs. Nazis. I can also understand the disappointment with Silver Nemesis more as Remembrance of the Daleks is more obviously the true twenty-fifth anniversary story, no matter what the labels say.

As fun as the constant action and blowing stuff up was, the true greatness of the story is in how it was played. All the actors took the story seriously and they didn't allow themselves to be carried away in either melodrama or in too much parody of who their character was supposed to be an homage to. I say that because every major character was a callback to a previous character. The most obvious is Group Captain Gilmore who the Doctor even calls Brigadier early in the story. But other characters are reflective as well.

The misguided and treacherous Mike Smith is a call back to the betrayal of Captain Mike Yates, with a dash of Sgt. Benton thrown in. Professor Jenson is a nice blend of the appearance and kindness of Barbra but with the intelligence and confidence of Liz Shaw. Allison has that spunky young blonde that is reminiscent of Jo but with a dash of the reliable competence from Vicki.

There were other homages as well. Obviously the whole thing being centered around Coal Hill School and the I. M. Foreman junkyard are pretty blatant. But you also have subtle touches, such as Ace picking up a book on the French Revolution (loaned from Barbara to Susan in An Unearthly Child) and the bulk of the classroom action taking place in the chemistry room (Ian's classroom). There are several other points in the story where people who had interacted with the Doctor recall seeing a white-haired old man rather than the Seventh Doctor. It is the light touch that helps this story as if it had become too obvious in it's references, the charm would have been lost.

On that note, there is the plot. My general complaint about Seventh Doctor stories is that they are forced to leave information out so that either the plot or the motivations of some of the characters are lost. Here, we have a strong action story that is allowed to have a few moments to breathe and explain any missing points. In fact, the only thing that is left unresolved is how the Doctor knew that it was the Hand of Omega the Daleks were after. That is a glossed over plot point and once the story gets fully going, you soon let that point go.

The story stays tight with the Doctor and Ace jumping in right away. There is little downtime where we feel like we are waiting for something to happen and even the few "back and forth" moments seem purposeful and a natural progression from the previous point. What few quiet moments there are are given over to the Doctor explaining things in a more natural feeling exposition scene or to character building moments, causing us to care about these characters more as the story progresses.

This also has to be one of the Doctor's best stories in terms of keeping people alive. Only a handful of soldiers are killed on the army side whereas Ratcliffe's entire retinue makes up the bulk of the human casualties. None of the Doctor's group are killed except for the treacherous Mike and even he could have stayed alive if he had let things go and stayed in custody.

The direction of this story is quite good as well. The actor's performances are utilized well and a number of differing angles are used for shots. There is excellent lighting and the action sequences pop very well. I heard once that when they were filming the battle sequence early on a Sunday morning, several London residents called the police because of the explosions and then seeing Daleks emerge from the mist and smoke. The level of realism is quite good and seems incredible for a 1980's story. In fact, apart from camera style clues that I've cottoned on to from watching other British programs from this era, it is nearly impossible to tell that this story was made in the 80's. It has a flow and style that could easily be set in a much later era.

Looking over the production as a whole, I could really only pull two negatives. The first is that the Daleks occasionally fell victim to production problems. When moving about the London streets, that had a tendency to wobble and sway a bit over the cobblestones. That rattling gave enough of a visual cue reminder that these are simple props that it took me out of the story every once in a while. Not badly, but it was one of the few points where the production value slipped a bit.

The second negative was the interaction between Ace and Mike in Episode Four. Through the first three episodes, their interaction was pleasant and natural. However once Mike was revealed to be working for Ratcliffe and the renegade Daleks, there was a layer of tension and melodrama added to their interaction and I'm not sure either actor pulled it off well. Some of that is writing as it is very difficult to make melodramatic tension sound good but the couple of scenes they had together after that point were just unpleasant to watch, nearly to the point of being painful. It came not as a source of sadness but relief when the little girl went Palpatine on Mike.

Speaking of the little girl, that was a very good piece of filming there. The girl was quite creepy and the use of nursery rhyme music whenever she appeared gave her an extra level of creepiness. I have wonder if Steven Moffat didn't have her in mind with his little "Tick Tock" rhyme in Series Six. Compound that with her surprise reveal as the Dalek battle computer. The production team did a good job in misdirecting the audience into thinking Ratcliffe was working with Davros and that the Emperor was another Dalek. The reveal of the girl as the computer and Davros as the Emperor was very satisfying to watch.

Overall, this is an excellent story and one that I would easily return to for a second watch. I can also imagine showing this story to a relative newcomer to Doctor Who and having them enjoy it on one level while a more experienced fan enjoys it on a deeper level. A well executed story all around that is enjoyable to just about anyone that gives it a chance.

Overall personal score: 5 out of 5