TV Review - Doctor Who (S25E01) "Remembrance of the Daleks"

(For my first review, I decided I should start with something I know well. Here's a Doctor Who story I've been wanting to write about for some time now.)

Doctor Who is one of the longest-running sci-fi shows around. This is down to its very flexible formula which allows its main characters to wander through time and space and also through the various genres in fiction. It also helps that it can change the main character in appearance, personality, performance and just about every aspect. It's a show that's all about re-invention, which brings me to today's topic. I will be discussing a story that's all about re-invention, one which tried to reclaim the ambiguity of the early show while sending it off in a completely new direction. Ladies and gentlemen, today we hold a Remembrance of the Daleks.

Remembrance (written by Ben Aaronovitch) was the opening story to Doctor Who's 25^th anniversary season, so fittingly it returns to the show's roots as it were: London, November 1963. The Doctor and his new companion Ace become embroiled in a brutal fight against the Daleks, who have landed to seize a powerful weapon created by the Time Lords known as the Hand of Omega. Things are complicated further when it transpires that two rival Dalek factions have arrived and have waged a race war against each other, and a duplicitous human faction also want the Hand for their own ends. All fairly run-of-the-mill so far. Where the story diverges from past ones is in the Doctor's role in events, as it's revealed the Doctor was the one who set this whole saga in motion in the first place, by planting the Hand of Omega on Earth to draw the Daleks into a trap. As well as the Daleks, the Doctor has his own self-righteous mission to carry out, and he shows here that he can be as ruthless as the tentacled, metal-plated fiends.

Remembrance aims to recapture the air of uncertainty that surrounded the Doctor in the far-off days of '63. Nobody was quite sure where he came from or what his game was. Did he have some secret interest in the Earth, or was he just slumming it with mere mortals for kicks? The show soon chose the latter option and fashioned him as an aimless wanderer who only wanted the freedom to live his own life and sniffed at the authorities who tried to stop him or anyone else from doing so. But here, the Doctor is shown in a very different light. The Doctor is much more calculating and shrewd. He has a plan but he doesn't trust anyone else to fully tell them what it is. It's quite a sharp turnaround from Season 24 where the Seventh Doctor was a buffoon who seemed to blunder in and out of trouble by luck. The Doctor has become more contemplative as he considers his role in events. There's a pivotal moment where he discusses cause-and-effect late at night in a cafe, and how the smallest actions can have the biggest consequences. It's a nice analogue to Tom Baker's famous “Do I have the right?” speech in Genesis of the Daleks. And then there's the notorious ending where the Doctor prods Davros into destroying Skaro, and then talks a lone Dalek in committing suicide. The bottom line here is that the Doctor is a force to be reckoned with.

That's the idea, anyway, but how well do they pull it off? Well, acting-wise it's done quite well. Sylvester McCoy is, for me, the most problematic actor that has ever played the Doctor, as his performance often fluctuates from marvellous to downright embarassing. Fortunately, he avoids any major missteps here. He plays quiet and brooding very well, such as in the aforementioned cafe scene. The only scene where he's called on to ham it up is his slanging match with Davros. It helps that it's supposed to look bad, as he's merely taking the piss out of Davros's megalomanic rants.

But there's a bigger problem here, one that cripples the story considerably and means it's only good, rather than an absolute classic. The problem comes from the Doctor's attitude towards violence, something which has always been a little grey about the show. The Doctor usually avoids violence unless absolutely necessary and looks down on those who revel in it. When it involves a race like the Daleks, who are filled with murderous bigotry and refuse to negotiate with anyone, the Doctor takes a very hardline approach and shows little remorse for wiping them out. Nor do I feel he should, after all to let the Daleks escape means putting countless innocent lives at risk. So I don't have a problem with the Doctor killing Daleks in this story. My problem comes from the way he treats other people who use violence. For instance, upon meeting a Dalek in Totter's Yard, the Doctor blows it up with a cannister of Nitro-9. Later, Mike Smith blows up three of them just as they're about to kill Ace. The Doctor acts completely shocked that Mike would do such a thing, saying “There were living beings in there”.

I'm sorry, what?

The Doctor, who is currently planning the massacre of an entire race, is lecturing others for using violence? He even encourages people to use it at times, especially Ace. He shows her that Nitro-9 is a very handy deterrent to Daleks, and also gives her a supercharged baseball bat so she can whack them to her heart's content. The Doctor is happy enough to use violence when it suits him, but only when it suits him. The rest of the time, he has a holier-than-thou attitude which I find quite irritating. And what's all this about humanity's “ingenuity when trying to destroy itself”? From the man who helped build a missile that can blow up a whole planet? With respect Doc, shove it up your Eye of Harmony.

This is the “dark Doctor's” first outing, so I assume these problems are down to the writers' uncertainty as to how they were going to use him. He does become much stronger in Season 26, but alas, it holds the story back from greatness.

The other elements in the story work much better, thankfully. Ace is far from a one-note damsel and multiple sides of her character are highlighted, especially in her relationship with Mike, where her tentative feelings turning to devastation and then anger at his betrayal. It plays well off Ace's history, and also foreshadows her future relationship with the Doctor. Sophie Aldred pulls it off brilliantly, even if some of her lines feel a little clunky (“They're retreating, all of them. Wiiiimps!”)

Dr Jensen and Group Captain Gilmore ground the story well, playing the ordinary people having their perception of the world turned upside down. The novelization (also written by Aaronovitch) expands on this by having sections written from Dr Jensen's perspective, portraying the Doctor and Ace as utterly alien and even frightening.

But the most intriguing human characters are Mike and Mr Ratcliffe, members of “The Association” - a secret fascist militia working with the Daleks to seize control of Britain. What's striking (and disturbing) is how normal these characters are. When Ratcliffe talks about the glorious regime he's going to usher in, he doesn't feel the need to rant like Davros, he merely states it as a fact. Mike claims he's not doing this out of some belief in white supremacy, he just wants to make a more stable future for his friends and family, to “fair chance”. Even Mike's unassuming mother holds these beliefs. A sign on the living room window saying “No Coloureds” is there for all the world to see, not hidden in some secret drawer. Remembrance shows how easily the seeds of racism and bigotry can be sown, even without the aid of a police state.

Of course the Daleks show this belief at its most extreme. The white Imperials and the grey Renegades hate each other more than they hate the non-Daleks. This paranoia leaves them open to exploitation by the Doctor, who allows one faction to obliterate the other. Even those claiming to be on the same side betray one another – the Renegades exterminate the Association when they have no further use of them. It isn't just the Doctor who's re-evalued here. The story focuses on what makes the Daleks such a terrifying creation in a way the show hadn't done for 13 years. And it shows why an ideology based on hatred, fear and violence is ultimately self-defeating. Its proponents become so paranoid they soon turn on each other.

The Daleks are at their most spectacular here, blowing up London left, right and centre. The Imperial ship interior is very well done. The Special Weapons Dalek is a fine addition which for some reason has only made one televised appearance (The novelisation adds more here, showing how it was once a normal Dalek that went insane from exposure to radioactivity and has since been dubbed “The Abomination”). One wonders, with all the money poured into the production, why Remembrance wasn't the “official” Silver Anniversary story. You'd have to go a long way to find someone who'd say Silver Nemesis was better. The Daleks also add to the story symbolically, the colour contrasts of the two sides playing into the chess motif.

And then there is the eerie little girl who keeps reappearing. While the Creepy Child is a fairly tired cliche, it somehow feels completely fresh, possibly because Classic Who was almost entirely childfree. Jasmine Breaks's acting is sufficiently sinister (if a little wooden, but it suits the role) and there's a rather disturbing loose thread left at the end of the story. We've no idea where her parents are or what happened to her after this. Did her enslavement to the Dalek battle computer scar her for life? The lack of resolution adds to the bleak tone at the end of the story.

So, Remembrance of the Daleks, if you're unfamiliar with the classic series or with the Cartmel/McCoy era, it's a very good story to start with. It's not just a celebration of the show's past, but also a hint to its future. The mythification of the Doctor would carry on for the next two years, than into the New Adventures range and finally into the new series itself.

I'd also highly reccommend Aaronovitch's novelisation as it has plenty of extra details that give new depth to the story.