-I don't mind 10 speaking with Tennant's natural accent. But this is the second episode in a row where Rose uses a cartoonishly bad fake accent. Get better jokes RTD.
I wish Tennant had used his natural accent rather than the fake "Estuary English" one he actually used. His natural voice is much warmer. The excuse that they didn't want it to look like they were touring the North because Eccleston's a Mancunian was pathetic.
@UnKillFill Tooth and Claw? I enjoyed your review but I recall rather enjoying that episode. The flying monks were a bit bonkers but I thought it had nice ideas and unlike you, I actually found Ten's dismay at Rose's antics amusing.
I love "Tooth and Claw". After the dismal "New Earth" it was a breath of fresh air.
Also, the writer of this episode Malcolm Hulke clearly got some ear-bending by the nerds of the day because in this the Doctor remarks that the creatures should have been called Eocenes rather than Silurians and that whoever named them that clearly didn't know what they were talking about. Respect to Malcolm Hulke for calling himself out, there! Clearly a man not above striving for self-improvement.
Malcolm Hulke was a filthy commie (as you can see from the star pin on his lapel). I'm not saying that as hyperbole - he was genuinely a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain at one point.
And his episodes are still less heavy handed than some of the rubbish we get today.
They then pick up some conveniently placed rapiers. The Doctor proves to be Inigo Montoya in this conflict and handily defeats the Master.
That sword fight is one of the greatest things ever put to film. Some of the slashes were so slow, they could've had landing lights.
Also, without wanting to create a pile up of reviews, here's my review of
Destiny of the Daleks:
Before I dig into this story, I need to address a couple of (pink) elephants in the room.
The first is that this episode has another authorship controversy. Although it's credited to Terry Nation and is cited as his final script for
Doctor Who, Douglas Adams (who was script editor at the time) apparently rewrote as much as 98% of the story, which I have no trouble believing because his fingerprints are all over it. Apparently all Nation contributed was the basic outline and K-9 being minimally involved in the story.
Douglas Adams is a writer who you will either love or hate. I'm a fan personally, but the number of douchey creative writing students I've come across who think they're being "quirky" and "funny" by copying his style (which is unfortunately very easy to mimic, but also very difficult to match if you know what I mean) has soured things a bit. Adams was essentially Joss Whedon before Joss Whedon was a thing.
I also think Adams' contributions to
Doctor Who are a little overrated.
The Pirate Planet has some great ideas, but it's not a great story overall, especially when it doesn't have the budget to back those ideas up (how anyone thought they could pull it off is beyond me).
City of Death is wonderful, but
Shada would probably be forgotten as another pedestrian story were it not for the fact it was left unfinished and became the legendary "lost" story. Adams is also responsible for ushering
The Horns of Nimon into production, which ended up being the season finale after
Shada was cancelled (if I'd been watching
Doctor Who at the time, I'd have been pissed). Also, if you were interested in checking out the long-awaited novelisation of his unmade story
Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, I can tell you right now not to waste your time (although to be fair, that was written by someone pretending to be Adams rather than the man himself).
Adams was also responsible for the next elephant in the room - Romana's regeneration scene, which happens at the beginning of this episode. Mary Tamm, who played the first Romana, decided not to return for a second season as she felt the character wasn't being used to her full potential. Lalla Ward, who'd guest starred in the previous story, "The Armageddon Factor" as a completely different character was drafted in to replace her. I think the idea of having a Time Lord companion and having to deal with them regenerating is genius, but the way it's handled here leaves a lot to be desired.
Although I said this was Romana's regeneration scene, there's no actual regeneration. The episode starts and she's already regenerated offscreen. The episode doesn't give any explanation as to why other than she felt like changing bodies (although I've seen theories put forward that she regenerated due to being tortured by the Shadow in the last story) and there aren't post-regenerative complications. On its own that might raise a few eyebrows, but what happens next confines the scene to infamy.
When the Doctor asks her to try on some different bodies, Romana regenerates a further three times (and one of the regenerations is into an alien that looks nothing like a Time Lord). There have been various explanations put forward as to how this is possible (one of which is that it's a trick similar to Ten regrowing his hand in "The Christmas Invasion"). I personally think Adams was just mucking around (I think this also goes for a dumb Dalek-related retcon detailed below), but it doesn't make this scene any less stupid. Best just to forget about it really.
Now that's out of the way, let's get on with it:
Doctor to Romana II: “You can’t go around wearing copies of bodies”
You’re one to talk. You’ve done it twice already (the Abbot of Amboise and Salamander) and you’ll do it twice more (Commander Maxil and Caecilius (and I guess John Frobisher too)). And that’s not even counting spin-offs.
If you've ever read
War of the Daleks by John Peel (and if you haven't, don't worry, it's not very good), you'll know they've actually landed on Antalin here rather than Skaro. An entire convoluted plot point just to explain why Skaro looks a bit different in this story. It's almost as bad as writing
an entire book just to explain why the Celestial Toymaker acts slightly differently in
The Nightmare Fair and still fucking up the continuity.
Is this
Destiny of the Daleks or
Invasion of the Space Hobos? (yes, I’m recycling that joke, but this is the second time this has happened and as you’ll come to see, this episode does plenty of recycling of its own).
10 minutes in and the Doctor’s already desecrating a grave site. The Fourth Doctor could be a real cunt sometimes.
What’s Robot Head’s avatar doing flying around in this episode?:
Also, how is it the model shots are actually more impressive than the ones in
Resurrection of the Daleks, which was made half a decade later?
Doctor: “How far away would you say that was?”
Romana: “About a mile.”
If that’s a mile, the London Marathon suddenly looks a whole lot less impressive.
The hills are alive
With the sound of blasting
Lol, the Doctor’s supposed to be crushed under an impossibly heavy concrete beam, but whenever Romana brushes up lightly against it, it wobbles. This is why I love Classic
Who.
One of the Space Hobos is stalking Romana with a length of rope. I don’t like where this is going. It doesn’t help he looks like Christopher Lloyd and Peter Cushing’s mutant offspring.
They’ve pulled the trick from
The Dalek Invasion of Earth where debris falls in front of the TARDIS, blocking it off. Terry Nation was the master of ripping himself off.
Enough jokes have been made about the Movellans being Boney M, so I’ll try something a bit different.
Erm... Walk like a Movellan?
I’ll show myself out...
Why did we just see Romana falling down the shaft three times from slightly different angles? This isn’t one of Chuck Norris’s roundhouse kicks from
Walker, Texas Ranger; we don’t need to see it from multiple angles.
I can actually feel Space Hobo’s disappointment as he realises he can’t use his rope for its originally intended purpose:
True story - the guy who plays the Movellan Captain was Freddie Mercury’s boyfriend at one point. The outfits the Movellans wear do look like the kind of thing Freddie used to wear on stage. McLaren from
Porridge (aka Tony Osoba, aka the most famous black Scotsman ever) also shows up as one of them.
The Dalek crashing through the glass is impressive, but it loses something when a huge plate of glass is still stuck to the Dalek and when the Dalek yells “Do not move” about nine times.
Romana’s expression upon being captured by the Daleks and facing possible death is the same expression I have when I realise I’ve run out of Chilli Heatwave Doritos:
The Daleks look like absolute crap this story. I quite like the light grey with black sensor domes livery, but they’re scuffed and scraped to hell and don’t have a consistent look (one of them has an extra casing round its luminosity dischargers, but the others don’t), and apparently the one which is a slightly darker grey than the others is the Supreme Dalek when in the past the Supreme Dalek’s been jet black. It gets on my nerves I tells ya.
Talk to the hand, cos the face ain’t listening.
Fun fact about Tyssan (the guy I’ve previously been referring to as Space Hobo). At the time of filming, the actor who played him was deaf. If you look carefully during one scene, you can see Tom Baker doing some subtle bits of sign language to help him out.
The Daleks left the control room totally unguarded? I know they’ve pretty much got this planet locked down, but that still seems unlike them.
“Tyssan look! I’ve found a stash of giant amoxicillin! Let’s go get stoned!”
The Doctor giving the Daleks one last middle finger by pointing out they can’t climb after them before scampering off is pretty damned funny.
I know a lot of this story takes place in a mine, but most of the time it looks like they’ve bumbled into the area behind the studio sets (which may well have been a money-saving gambit).
The build up to the Davros reveal is quite well handled even if there’s a bit much of the Doctor going “I know something you don’t know.”
Although the Daleks look tatty this episode, they’re nothing compared to Davros, and not just because he’s covered in cobwebs when we first see him. Michael Wisher (who played Davros in
Genesis of the Daleks) wasn’t available to reprise the role (this happened again when they asked him to do it for
Resurrection of the Daleks), so they cast David Gooderson instead. Thing was, this episode’s budget was cut to the bone (more than usual) because they blew all their money on a fucking Steadicam (which they abuse the shit out of during some of the chase scenes), so most of the costumes and sets in this story are recycled, including the Davros mask from
Genesis, meaning it wasn’t properly fitted to Gooderson’s face. You can see the poor bloke working his mouth extra hard just to try to get the thing to move properly. He’s not a bad Davros (and he’s a super interesting guy - I saw
an interview with him recently and had no idea he had such a storied career), but the ill-fitting mask nearly ruins his performance.
MrTARDISReviews pointing out that there’s an explosion sound at the same moment Davros bats the bag of jelly babies away is the only remotely funny thing he’s ever done, and it’s not even that funny. Don’t worry though William. I’ll find out where you nicked that joke from eventually.
What is it with this episode and close ups of fingers flexing? We had Davros doing it at the end of the last episode and now that Movellan chick. Did the director have a finger fetish?
Bahahaha that shot of the Doctor and Davros about to round a corner and then nopeing the fuck out when they see a Dalek was great.
Heeeeeeeere’s Tommy!
The Movellans consult space Wikipedia. All those donation drives didn’t stop Jimbo having to make cutbacks:
One of the good points of this episode is the Doctor-Davros dialogue exchanges are excellent.
One of the bad points of this episode is that they hired the worst extras ever to play the space hobos. They’re about to be killed and they look at best slightly miffed and at worst like they’re going to burst out laughing.
Another bad point is David Gooderson looks like he’s drunk driving when wheeling Davros’s chair around. They cut one shot just as he smacks into a wall.
Oh good, Tony Osoba’s back. Just in time to force Fletcher to
follow him up a rooftop.
Fuck off with that “Daleks are robots” shit Adams. I suppose that at least when Classic
Who did stupid retcons like that, they were generally ignored going forward.
So the Movellans have a highly visible external device which, when removed (which is done very easily), renders them non-functional.
How did this lot bring the Daleks to the brink of defeat again?
Why am I suddenly watching behind the scenes footage from the “Video Killed the Radio Star” music video?:
Romana’s facepalm as the Doctor boasts about his computer programming skills is memeworthy:
The Movellans can also be
reprogrammed using that external device? Again, how did they bring the Daleks to the brink of destruction?
There was no other option to destroy the Movellan ship than to send a bunch of slow-moving Daleks to Allahu Ackbar the shit out of it?
Once again the Daleks leave the control room unguarded. Idiots.
Wouldn’t it have been a better idea for the Daleks to detonate the explosives themselves rather than having a big red button the Doctor has easy access to?
This isn’t going to be the last time Tyssan comes a cropper of
a bunch of tin cans.
Whoa, Romana just grabbed the Movellan captain by the dick (do Movellans even have dicks? And do I want to know the answer to that question?):
The Doctor just defeated a Dalek by throwing his hat over its eyestalk and Davros is now yelling “Behind you!” This episode has descended into pantomime.
The Doctor’s “Elephants are pink” statement makes me chuckle every time.
The rocks in front of the TARDIS could’ve been easily cleared away all along?
I said this was a story I was "meh" about and I stand by that. This story is just about the most aggressively "meh" thing I've ever seen. It's got some great dialogue and some good ideas, but it's cheap and tacky and there's a lot of nothing happening. If you watch this episode with my review to hand, you'll notice that several minutes pass without me making a comment. This is because for large parts of this story I simply had nothing to say.
There's nothing to particularly praise here, and at the same time there's nothing to get worked up about (except for the Romana regeneration scene and "the Daleks are robots", but the story doesn't make a big deal out of either of those points and they never come up again). It just kind of... exists. Its worst crime is that it's a slightly lame follow-up to
Genesis of the Daleks. I can't imagine waiting four years for the next Dalek story and then getting this.
Next time I think I'll do something I haven't seen before, and something which doesn't involve Daleks or Cybermen. Stayed tuned for
The Mind of Evil.
