Suddenly everyone sees and knows too much!
When in doubt, roll the Daleks out. As Season Twenty-Two of Doctor Who comes to a close, the fate of the series rests in the balance. Producer John Nathan-Turner pulls out all the stops to bring Colin Baker’s debut season to a strong finish by headlining the scourge of Skaros in script editor Eric Saward’s “Revelation of the Daleks” (Story Production Code 6Z). The problem remains, alas, that the Daleks, having been on the losing side of a dozen confrontations with the Doctor over the years, each more feeble than the last, have worn out their welcome; their staccato cries of “Exterminate!” and single-minded devotion to evil lack the ability to captivate the imagination in 1985 they possessed in 1963.
By the Third Doctor’s era, some twelve years prior, the Daleks already are little more than hapless tin cans, their worn-down props in desperate need of refurbishment. Indeed, Davros himself, creator of the Daleks (alongside Terry Nation, to be sure), becomes a mere cipher of the cunning, calculating, amoral foe first seen in the Fourth Doctor’s run, and by the time the Fifth Doctor confronts him in “Resurrection of the Daleks,” Davros exists on a one-dimensional plane, all vitriol and no guile. There’s nothing new under the Skarosian sun…
But somehow, Saward, Nathan-Turner, and director Graeme Harper—helming his second “finale” story after a strong showing with Season Twenty-One’s “The Caves of Androzani“—manage the unthinkable: they make Davros and the Daleks interesting again. True to the story’s title, there’s no hiding them, and scarcely eight minutes pass before the first Dalek, in resplendent white with gold roundels and trim, rolls onto the screen, followed by Davros (Terry Molloy)—or at least his head—spinning around madly, rejoicing that the Doctor has fallen into his trap. Wisely, Saward and company realize that there’s little point in sequestering the perfidious pepperpots until that traditional first episode cliffhanger, particularly given that “Revelation of the Daleks” is the last of the two part, ninety minute stories experimented with this season. No, these Daleks are “revealed” right away, and the audience gains awareness beyond the Doctor’s own, emphasizing that they are watching something happen to him rather than experiencing events alongside him. With few exceptions, it’s only the Doctor who is unaware that Daleks are puttering about, and their matter-of-fact presence, patrolling like robotic rent-a-cops amidst humans, adds greatly to their impact.
The emphasis on seeing the Doctor recurs throughout “Revelation of the Daleks,” which follows “Vengeance on Varos” in casting the audience very explicitly at the center of a panopticon; viewers watch others watch the Sixth Doctor and Peri on screens, much as the audience itself is doing at home, and characters frequently speak upwards towards cameras mounted high on walls in the halls of Tranquil Repose, a cryo-mortuary on Necros, devoted to housing victims of disease in cryogenic suspension until cures can be found for their maladies (a concept very much in vogue in the 1980s). The TARDIS arrives on the snowy plains of this necropolis planet so that our time travellers can attend the “funeral” of Professor Arthur Stengos, a renowned agronomist, and their travel by foot to the mortuary is monitored on a screen by Davros—and also, in an exceedingly jarring subversion of viewer expectations, by a nameless DJ (Alexei Sayle), played here as an amalgamation of Wolfman Jack and any number of stereotyped American personalities, who spins tunes from Earth’s past for the frozen inhabitants of the cryo-catacombs.
The viewer really doesn’t know what to expect, a rare experience on Doctor Who, made more intriguing by rather camp segments involving the vainglorious mortician Jobel (the incomparable Clive Swift, in a role inspired by embalmer Mr. Joyboy from Waugh’s The Loved One) and his blue uniformed cadre of assistants; a highly formalized and heavily stylized agri-factory owner, Kara (Eleanor Bron) in thrall to Davros, who stands in the way of her control of the food supply for the galaxy; plus an attack on the complex by corpse snatchers seeking the very body of Arthur Stengos that the Doctor has arrived to mourn. Combined with tense, almost discordant music courtesy of Roger Limb and exceptional direction by Harper, who employs camera angles shifting from point-of-view to (barely) steady-cam close-ups of action sequences and high, long shots showing off the set work and well chosen location scenes, the overall effect is one of welcome disorientation. This is not, Nathan-Turner seems to shout, your parents’ Doctor Who…
Breaking the fourth wall in a way rarely if ever seen on Doctor Who since the First Doctor’s infamous Christmas toast to the audience in “The Feast of Steven” episode of “The Daleks’ Master Plan,” the DJ frequently speaks directly to the camera itself, and by extension, the viewers:
DJ: Now listen, you guys. I don’t wish to alarm you but there’s some pretty weird things going on out here.
It is, to borrow an overused phrase, decidedly post-modern in conception, pulling the audience’s viewpoint backwards and forwards, calling into question not the veracity of what is being seen but which viewpoint to prioritize: that of the DJ, Davros, the morticians, the grave robbers, the factory owner, the Doctor? Or rather, the question becomes: whose story is it, anyway? For the Sixth Doctor and Peri receive almost no focus in the first thirty-odd minutes, featuring mostly in scenes where their cautious approach to Tranquil Repose is overseen by Davros, who cackles with glee as they saunter into his subterfuge. But he’s not just a cackling fiend; this time, he has a plan.
Old story habits die hard, and Saward drops a traditional monster reveal near the half-way point of the first episode (corresponding to the “normal” first episode cliffhanger) anyway: a see-through Dalek, replete with the guts of the Skarosian slug within—until a close-up reveals a human head grafted into the viscera amidst trademark Sawardian goo, belonging to Stengos (Alec Linstead), the real “revelation” of the Daleks in this story.
The corpse snatchers turn out to be his daughter, Natasha (Bridget Lynch-Blosse) and Grigory (Stephen Flynn), a medical mercenary of sorts, who come to rescue him from his cry-sleep. Stengos, fighting through Dalek conditioning, begs Natasha to kill him, for he is but the vanguard of the “new” Daleks that will rise from the countless bodies stored in the cryo-catacombs to restore the Daleks to supremacy. It’s a harrowing scene, with the Daleks finally partaking in the existential body horror that gives the Cybermen, or at least the original ones, so much of their potency to scare and unsettle viewers. Linstead switches effortlessly between Stengos and the Dalek imprint within him, with subtle vocal processing giving his struggle to resist a real heft, counterbalanced by the agony on Lynch-Blosse’s face as she finally grants his last wish.
Another post-modern-esque twist comes when the Doctor and Peri enter the Garden of Fond Memories, and the Doctor sees a memorial carving—of himself. His first impulse is not to think of it as a trap, or, as Peri puts it, “a gag,” but as a bona fide marker of his demise, the TARDIS having brought him to his own future, one in which he is dead. The audience, though, knows this cannot be the case, given all they have seen that the Doctor has not, yet the Doctor’s insistence, delivered with a characteristic Sixth Doctor mini-meltdown directed at his companion, works against the audience’s certainty. Not that there’s much time to contemplate which of our narrators might be unreliable, because the giant “stone” carving collapses on the Doctor to conclude the first episode.
Where so often the audience has been conditioned to accept that grey-painted styrofoam stands in for rocks and debris and all manner of deadly peril even as it bounces airily about, here Saward, Nathan-Turner, and Harper flip the expectation once more: the falling carving is made of styrofoam, a mere prank played upon the Doctor. The Doctor, no matter the regeneration, has long been given to “on the nose” commentary, yet never does the drollness strike more dryly than when, after clambering out from under the mere ounces of fake rock, he declaims, “it’s all part of an elaborate theatrical effect.” Indeed it is, Doctor, indeed it is.
The Doctor is, of course, captured by the Daleks in short order, chained up alongside Natasha and Grigory to enable them to explain the main plot thread to the Gallifreyan: Davros has found a means of reproducing Daleks using the bodies stored in Tranquil Repose. The facility has never actually released a “patient” even after their underlying diseases have been cured. The rich and powerful housed therein—the only ones able to afford the service in a galaxy that suffers massive food shortages—would pose a danger to the current ruling classes, leading to a tacit understanding that entry into the cryo-chambers is one way only. This surplus of bodies that will not be missed thus serves as a convenient supply of genetic material for the experiments of the “Great Healer,” as Davros styles himself.
The weight of the multiple plot threads begins to show by the hour mark, as Saward’s efforts to establish the setting leave little time to actually resolve them. This is not, for all the build-up, a story in which very much happens, nor does that which happens make much sense. In an attempt to add some action, yet another set of characters enters the fray: Orsini (William Gaunt), a lapsed Knight of the Grand Order of Oberon, and Bostock (John Ogwen), his odiferous squire, hired by Kara to assassinate Davros. With fourteen speaking guest parts, there are simply too many voices in play, and in any other Doctor Who tale, the overall effect would very much suffer, but here, the constant frame switching seems to acquire a narrative momentum of its own, the viewpoint changes themselves a form of action.
Which is not to say there’s not action a-plenty to wrap up the story, with multiple ray-gun shoot-outs, explosions, and moments of derring-do—and, oddly for a pre-watershed series, severed flying fingers. Orsini and Bostock attempt to kill Davros in a fusillade of bullets, only to find they have dispatched a decoy, and they blast away back and forth with a platoon of Daleks before succumbing, the Knight’s false leg getting blown off in the process. Not to be outdone, Natasha and Grigory, sent by the Doctor to destroy the Dalek incubation room, get themselves killed in the explosive process, while the DJ whips up a weapon, “a highly directional ultrasonic beam of rock and roll,” with which to defend the studio against Daleks bent on killing him for his role in foiling Davros’ plans. The body count in “Revelation of the Daleks” reaches epic proportions, rivaling “Warriors of the Deep” for most on-screen deaths, all of a rather violent bent. And that’s even before Davros boasts that the cryogenically frozen bodies he does not intend to transform into Daleks have become a source of food for the hungry masses of the galaxy, the proceeds providing funding for building his Dalek army. Skaros Green is people…
The final subversion of expectation in “Revelation of the Daleks” comes as the “real” Daleks appear on the scene, in the dark grey design seen in “Resurrection of the Daleks,” summoned by two mortuary workers, Takis and Lilt (Trevor Cooper and Colin Spaull), in an attempt to save Tranquil Repose. It’s a worthy callback to Davros’ original role in the Dalek timeline: the unworthy creator, only called upon in the Daleks’ moments of need and readily discarded thereafter. Upon learning of Davros’ plan to create Daleks subservient only to him, the Supreme Dalek is in no mood to talk, planning to return him to Skaros to stand trial, his white-cased, human-brained Daleks to be reconditioned to serve the Dalek Empire, a fate somewhat at odds with the established Dalek insistence on “purity” in all things. The tension between the factions adds immeasurably to interest in the Daleks, their typically monolithic—and monochromatic—portrayal finally getting some well-deserved shading. The grey Daleks and a captive Davros escape Tranquil Repose just before Orsini, seeking an honorable death, triggers a massive explosion that destroys the entire compound—and Davros’ “new generation of Daleks” along with it.
Of the massive guest cast, Alexei Sayle and William Gaunt as the DJ and Orsini stand out. Sayle’s versatile range, switching from American accents of the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s to something rather more British, gives the character a surprising depth, far more than one might expect from a role that initially seems to be played for a joke, and makes his ultimately fatal efforts to protect Peri more meaningful. Gaunt’s turn as the grizzled yet honor-bound mercenary could easily fall into a similar one-dimensionality, but Saward’s script gives Orsini depth that, in the hands of a lesser actor, could come across as hackneyed; the mix of humility and confidence Gaunt provides turns the hired killer into, indeed, a Knight of the Grand Order of Oberon.
Surprisingly, Nicola Bryant—and Peri—manage to hold their own in this crowded story, a testament both to Saward’s understanding of the character and Bryant’s own abilities. Peri remains a level-headed contrast to a Sixth Doctor who still vacillates between emotional states, speaking a plain wisdom that mirrors the audience’s own when seeing the Time Lord run off into danger. Too, Peri’s guilt when she strikes an assailant over the head with a stick to save the Doctor, indirectly leading to the assailant’s death, comes across hauntingly; one notable feature of Nathan-Turner and Saward’s time in charge has been a focus on the effects traveling with the Doctor has on companions, and here Bryant conveys a growing unease given Peri’s experiences.
Colin Baker, too, suffers from fewer lines than might be expected given the size of the cast, particularly in a season closing story. But like with Peri, the Sixth Doctor makes the most of what lines he gets. Though much of the action takes place regardless of the Doctor’s presence—his absence would not have resulted in much of a different outcome—he nevertheless helps the audience mediate what they see, to care about the story, which has enough plot holes and random asides to sink “Revelation of the Daleks” were it a standalone story outside the Doctor Who universe. It is, after all, the Doctor’s story, and though Saward, Nathan-Turner, and Harper bounce the viewpoint around, that’s the one the viewers trust most. But for how much longer?
More than anything else, “Revelation of the Daleks” proves that Doctor Who is capable of reinventing itself—going through a regeneration, one might even say—but by the time the story airs in March of 1985, Season Twenty-Three has already been scrapped, owing as much to BBC budgetary constraints as to concerns, both legitimate and otherwise, from BBC higher-ups that the show had lost its way. The strength of this story, its willingness to play with the nuts and bolts of the series and its presentation, might well have helped encourage the remounting of Doctor Who after its initial “suspension,” which many at the time read as a prelude to cancellation. Still, fully eighteen months will elapse between the final episode of Season Twenty-Two and the first episode of a truncated Season Twenty-Three, the longest hiatus ever. From here forward, Gallifrey’s favorite son is living on borrowed time.
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Post 148 of the Doctor Who Project