Who Reviews Resurrection of the Daleks by Jeffrey Zyra

“I'll say one thing for you, Davros. Your conversation is totally predictable. You're like a deranged child, all this talk of killing, revenge and destruction.”

Written by Eric Saward

The TARDIS is stuck in a time corridor which they discover leads to 1984 London near the docks. In one of the warehouses is one end of the time corridor as they begin their investigation they run into Stein who is trying to escape the forces that control the time corridor. In the warehouse they stumble upon the army that was dispatched there due to something that looks like a bomb. While looking around the time corridor is activated and a Dalek appears. 

While on the other side of the time corridor a Dalek ship is attacking a prison space station.  They are after a particular prisoner and they are hopeful he can find a cure for the Movellan virus that attacks the Dalek tissue inside the Dalek casing. Davros is soon freed and he is out for revenge against the Daleks and especially The Doctor who he learns is on the other side of the time corridor. Davros is determined that nothing will stop him this time and he will go to no lengths to achieve his revenge.

Resurrection of the Daleks is the last story to feature Janet Fielding as Tegan.  She leaves at the end of this story in what appears to be something of a sudden decision. Mainly she is sick of seeing good people getting killed. This is something of a departure from many companions leaving as they usually find a cause to help on a planet or fall in love but not often does a companion leave because it isn’t fun anymore. She has a good reason also as practically everyone but Lytton and his minions and The Doctor, Turlough and Tegan die in this story.  So, you couldn’t blame her at all even though she might have changed her mind as she did run back too late to see The Doctor leave.  

Resurrection of the Daleks is one of the more violent Doctor Who stories ever. In fact, as I said above everyone dies in this story and it starts off with the Daleks prisoners trying to escape and getting shot down in the street by Lytton and his men. Even the innocent bystander gets killed.  Even the guy using his metal detector while Tegan is trying to escape gets killed. It was a tough day to be at the river near that warehouse. But there was a lot of death and violence in this story really wasn’t the norm. Yes, people have died on Doctor Who before but this time it just seemed that the body count was really high.

I really liked this story even though the story didn’t make sense in a few parts. They went to the space station prison to free Davros to save him but hope that The Doctor shows up so they can make a duplicate of him so they can assassinate the High Council of the Time Lords.  This part of the story does not make much sense. It’s as if this was added on later. It would have been better if they just tried to get The Doctor’s memories about Daleks defeats with that machine instead of the High Council part.

I also liked how the Daleks had to find their creator again and this time they had to use human mercenaries. It really shows how vulnerable they have gotten over the years and what has happened to them during the war with the Movellans. They never would have considered using humans unless they were Robomen. I guess they decided that the Ogrons were not cutting it and decided to use humans. Problem is Lytton is playing his cards close to his chest and even the Daleks do not trust him. Lytton was an interesting character and we would see him again in Attack of the Cybermen but how fearless do you have to be to work with the Daleks. In a way he is a bit like them as he did not have a problem killing one of his men as he made his escape.

Terry Molloy makes his first of three appearances as Davros. I really liked his portrayal of Davros and it is the best one along with David Wisher in Genesis. He just has that way of sounding threatening and then calm that just makes Davros seem so evil. He plays a great Davros and it is too bad that he is not playing Davros in the new series. Terry Molloy just has that Davros scream talking down pat that is second to none and he will always be Davros no matter who else plays him from now on. Julian Bleach is good but not Terry Molloy good.

Resurrection of the Daleks is a favorite of mine and I might be biased a bit because Peter Davison is my favorite Doctor and this story takes place in his era. Yeah, the story is almost a rehash of Destiny of the Daleks with the Daleks looking for Davros yet again but this time we see Davros turning against the Daleks which we’ll see more of in the next Dalek story Revelation of the Daleks. It is also very entertaining as we see the Doctor go a little bit dark as he proclaims he is going to kill Davros. The Fifth Doctor would never go through with it but this is the second time a Doctor tried to kill Davros as the Fourth Doctor tried in Destiny of the Daleks. Overall I enjoyed Resurrection of the Daleks despite its faults and I’m always entertained whenever I watch it.

Grade B +

Big Finish Reviews+ Davros by Tony J Fyler

Tony examines the great dictator.

When Steven Moffatt launched Series 9 of on-screen Doctor Who with a two-part story that involved a philosophical discussion of Davros, his origins, his nature and the possibility of his redemption in a universe where definitions of good and evil are no longer rigid, not only was it seen as a staggeringly original move, but the showrunner was careful to frame his story and its discussion so as not to disturb a single thread of the Big Finish four-story epic that was I, Davros, which had shown us, in as much detail as I, Claudius, the youth, the steps along the path to the dark side and the eventual apotheosis of Davros, creator of the Daleks. I, Davros was a masterwork, released in 2006, the year after Doctor Who made its triumphant return to the screen, and it gave eighties TV Davros Terry Molloy the chance to put flesh on Davros’ psychological bones.

But three years earlier, and before the show returned to TV, Molloy faced off against Sixth Doctor Colin Baker in a story simply entitled Davros, one of three unconnected stories challenged to take a deeper look at key villains in the show’s history from a different angle.

The set-up is simple – Davros has been thought ‘dead’ for over a hundred years. Humanity’s perspective on the Daleks and their creator has shifted somewhat, especially given the fact that the impetuous pepperpots of death immediately turned on their creator almost every time they worked together, and Davros spent a lot of time in between those engagements in suspended animation, entirely unable to influence their development. Now, humanity is filling up the galaxy and needs a genius du jour to help them develop the technology to cross intergalactic space, and especially to solve the problem of galactic famine.

Humanity needs a hero. Davros could be it. He’s offered the chance for ‘redemption,’ and, encouraged by the idea of humanity’s aspiration to greatness and in particular by one woman’s interest in what made him the man he is, he seems enthusiastic to take it.

The Sixth Doctor, always something of a hothead, argues passionately that ‘Daleks can’t change their bumps,’ that Davros is the way he is because he’s made his choices, because he’s a scorched-Skaro philosopher who cannot accept the idea that his bleak view of the universe can be wrong. He’s evil because he’s evil, essentially, and for Davros there can be no such thing as redemption, because he cannot envisage any higher authority that could grant him such a thing.

Davros was written by Lance Parkin, and it mostly takes the form of a series of conversations between Molloy’s Davros and other characters – Baker’s scornful, spiteful Sixth Doctor;  Bernard Horsfall’s businessman, Arnold Baynes, who offers Davros his redemption in the eyes of humanity by virtue of humanitarian action; Wendy Padbury’s Lorraine Baynes, Arnold’s wife and the pro-Davros historian who wants the story of his life straight from his age-blackened lips; and Eddie de Oliveira’s Willis, an anarcho-syndicalist journalist who’s come to pen a destructo-piece on Baynes and gets way more than he bargained for. In between the conversations though, which rehearse the arguments of Davros’ youth on a planet at total war, we get glimpses, snatches of his memories, played out for us by a full cast, and the Parkin vision of Davros’ youth plays directly into I, Davros three years later – in fact, we had to double-check the release dates to make sure the dream sequences were not simply re-used recordings from the I, Davros series. Whether they were in production at the same time and the four-episode Davros biography was simply released at a later point or whether the I, Davros scripts were in development and were available for use for Davros, we’re not sure, but what’s certain is that the memories Davros replays for us in this release go forward to form part of his ‘official’ biography – including the shocking truth about the real genesis of the Daleks, and what Davros did to the only woman to ever threaten his psychopathic self-isolation. We also learn a lot about what it’s like to be Davros from Parkin’s script. We learn of the physical pain, which torments his every moment and drives him endlessly, relentlessly to survive, not to let himself be beaten by it, and not to take the easy way out, whatever that means – the simplicity of death or the complexity of a cloned, pain-free body to replace the eternal life sentence in which his genius is trapped - and we learn his psychology, that has that scientific, black-and-white ruthlessness and applies it to every living thing in the universe, including himself, for all he skews the ruthlessness in his favour by virtue of his ego. There can only be one supreme scientist of Skaro, and it will be him. There can be only one supreme power in the universe, and it will be him, but within that paradigm, he’s quite capable of analysing himself, his strengths and frailties with psychopathic clarity – the same clarity with which he judges the universe of his inferiors.

The tragedy framed in Lance Parkin’s script is that redemption could have been a possibility for Davros if he’d only encountered a different Doctor at this point in his life – he honestly admits to considering it, to hoping for it even, and maybe the Fifth Doctor, or the Seventh, or the Eighth, might have given him the benefit of enough doubt to allow him to take the small steps of trust in a new direction that could have led Davros onto a new path (a motif used in The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar, where the Twelfth Doctor’s compassion leads him to give Davros the benefit of that doubt). But it’s the Sixth Doctor, his judgment, his scorn, his certainty that Davros, alone among all organic creatures in the universe cannot change, cannot ever make atonement for what he’s done to the universe, that acts like the devil on Davros’ shoulder, that convinces him that he is in fact what the Doctor says he is, that he is incapable of change. And, as in Genesis of the Daleks, when Davros makes his move in this story, without a Dalek anywhere to be seen, it’s still ghastly and breath-taking and pulse-pounding. Even after everything we learn about Davros in this audio, and that’s a lot, when he makes his move to achieve power here, it’s still shocking. We still don’t entirely see it coming, and there’s a brutality to it that punches us in the face. Parkin cleverly lulls us into Davros’ confidence, shows us the young Davros, unscarred, unmutilated, a Davros flirting with the idea of love, and then slams us against the wall of expectation with the reality of Davros now, a Davros for whom other people are nothing but pawns and players, pieces on the board of his game of universal domination. It’s clever writing, because when a villain has returned time and time again, it’s tempting to think we know how things will go when they appear, so by subverting all those expectations and letting us into the world of the younger Davros, and indeed, the older Davros considering mending his ways, to be punched in the face with the sheer brutality of his ultimate nature makes him a fresh evil again, making Davros, the story, something that will remain special as the decades roll on. It’s also something that plugs directly into on-screen Davros and the future development of the character at Big Finish – we learn here about the way in which Kaleds were fed in their cities and bunkers, and how Davros, faced with the intellectual problem of galactic hunger, could have devised his Great Healer plan from Revelation of the Daleks. There’s mention made here of the beginnings of a sensory illusion that makes its presence felt in The Davros Mission and in Terror Firma. There’s even a plan outlined here that eventually surfaces as a crucial plot element in The Curse of Davros.

Clearly, from the names we’ve already mentioned, there’s some top flight Who talent in Davros – Molloy and Baker are on blistering form, their conversations very much a precursor to The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar’s intimacies between the Time Lord and the Kaled. Bernard Horsfall is in full command of his performance here, convincing as a man who rules his own empire, but one who’s not stupid enough to be unnecessarily dogmatic or rigid. Padbury turns in a very different performance to her usual Zoe, part corrupted historian, part schoolgirl crush. It makes for a closed-in, claustrophobic environment, in which the mesmeric personality of Davros can work its magic, poisoning everything it touches with its shocking reasonablenesss.

Davros is a very special audio story. If it’s in your collection, play it again today. If not, it’s the best £2.99 you could spend. Get it now.

Big Finish Reviews+ I, Davros by Tony J Fyler

Tony Fyler goes to Skaro.

When it comes to mammoth undertakings, Big Finish has always had the staggering optimism of the wonderfully clueless. They haven’t been clueless, which means they’re either maddeningly overconfident, or just really, really brave and good. What determines which they actually are is the rate of their success. Bringing back classic TV monsters and villains for new adventures and making them as good or better than the originals – plenty of Dalek stories, Robophobia, Spare Parts, Domain of the Voord and a handful of Vardan stories versus plenty more Dalek stories, a few weird Cybermen stories, an odd Morbius double, The Feast of Axos, an OK Krynoid story and The Juggernauts probably puts them ahead in the ‘brave and good’ category on points. Creating companions as good as any – yes, any – on TV: Charlie Pollard, Lucie Bleedin’ Miller, Bernice Surprise Summerfield, Hex, Eli real person on a journey of destiny, rather sabeth Klein, Oliver Harper and Evelyn Smythe probably more than make up for the incidental Hannah Bartholomew, Flip Jackson, Sally Morgan and so on, and most of them could stand toe to toe with Sarah-Jane Smith and Jo Grant. But what really gives the company its claim to being as good as it thinks it is is its talent for expanded worlds – Gallifrey, Jago & Litefoot, Counter Measures, Bernie Summerfield,  Unbound, and there, right there, is Big Finish’s version of a Roman epic. I, Davros dares to tell the story the TV show never did – the story of the man behind the monster, from his youth to just before we first meet him in Genesis of the Daleks. The sheer scope of such a thing is ridiculous and scary. Delivering the definitive Davros in just four hours seems like an insanity.

So does it work?

Pleasingly, it does more than work. By bringing the sense of Roman epic I, Claudius to the story, and merging it to the world of racial supremacy and dirty war envisaged by Terry Nation, Big Finish does the seemingly impossible – taking us into the world where Davros’ creation of the Daleks make a hideous kind of sense, and where he is a real person on a journey of destiny, rather than just the scheming, screaming megalomaniac we know as the force behind the Daleks.

Episode 1 – Innocence – is the most ‘Roman’ of the four episodes, with Davros as a teenage boy, born to a wealthy, political and military family, but with an overriding interest in science and history. Rory Jennings (Tommy from the TV episode The Idiot’s Lantern) plays Davros with a clipped precision and either a quiet or a psychopathic disinterest in the people around him as people, rather than as players in his story – the uncertainty over whether he is merely quiet and reserved or actually a psychopath is cleverly, creepily rendered as we see him in the context of a ‘Roman’ family saga – a Caligula or Nero in his own time, his mother Calcula unhealthily doting, his father Nasgard (played with surprising brio by Richard Franklin) determined that an army career will be the best thing for him, Aunt Tashek a kind of prophetess of doom over the household, and Yarvell, Davros’ sister, the only one who can prick his bubble of self-importance. Innocence is the story of exactly that – the journey from a kind of normality to the first steps on a journey towards monstrosity, and when Davros goes – still with a magnificent quietness, far beyond the pale of even the moral bounds of Kaled society (a society predicated on war and the philosophy of racial purity, don’t forget), it’s more shocking than anything the Romans did, straying into territory familiar to horror fans from the Omen movies. Oh yes, there’s more than a pinch of Damien Thorn in the young Davros, his relinquishing of ‘innocence,’ and the allies he finds on that path setting his destiny a long way from that of any normal Kaled soldier or politician.

Episode 2 – Purity – shows us Davros at 30, now played by on-screen Davros actor Terry Molloy, but played as ‘human’, desperately frustrated by his lack of progress into the Kaled scientific corps, taking a desperate gamble to earn promotion and once again shake off a ‘normal’ destiny in favour of the one he believes he is due to have. Davros signs up for what could be a suicide mission across the wastelands of Skaro to the Thal dome and back, determined to win his chance to help direct the Kaled cause. Along the way, he encounters weakness, disposes of friends, runs into old enemies and learns a lot about the kind of weapons that could win the war, the threats of politics and the threats closer to home, to bring the coldly rational psychopath back out of hiding, and make him determined that nothing will stand in the way of his career.

In Episode 3 – Corruption – Davros learns to play politics with the leaders of his race, while rising to the summit of the Kaled Scientific Elite. He’s growing old in this play, but still has not become the thing he will become. If you’re looking for a ‘Genesis of Davros’ moment, this is where you’ll find it, but not before one final temptation threatens to sway him from his terrible destiny. You remember that hint of Damien Thorne? Episode 3 throws a threat more terrible than any other his way, just as the third Omen movie did to Damien – the threat of love, here embodied in a young researcher with a fine mind, Shan. But while Davros acknowledges her brilliance – and admits a thing about the future creation of the Daleks that will surprise you – we know from the beginning that any hope she has of turning him from his path of extremism and extermination will be doomed. That’s the scope of drama we’re in with the I, Davros collection – it’s Shakespearian tragedy, because we know going in what becomes of the protagonist, so we know his pathway leads not to love, happiness, children, but to darkness, to impotence, to horror.

Episode 3 sees that moment we’ve always wondered about – the horrible wounding of Davros, his rebirth in his life-support unit, but it also shows us how the transformation went beyond the physical, how the creature we know was essentially born out of a will to survive, a will to prove wrong people who thought his physical disabilities meant he was lessened, and how his terrible clarity of purpose, already at psychopathic levels as a child, became stripped of all but the most political of pretence.

And Episode 4 shows us the path coming full circle, as Davros begins to simply outlive the people he grew up with, to span generations on a planet where, famously, no-one dies of old age. It shows us Davros captured by Thals, rescued by a young lieutenant by the name of Nyder, and taking more and more control over the offspring of Skaro, leading to not one but two conclusions, both as shocking and horrifying as each other. But the mission of I, Davros is completed with terrifying effect – we hear Davros assume control of everything he needs, and we hear the creation of the Mark I Dalek. From the end of I, Davros to the beginning of Genesis of the Daleks is nothing but a little time away, and we’ve traveled the whole length of Davros’ life up to the invention of at least the prototype Dalek. The scope of the drama and the tragedy of brilliance perverted by single-minded dedication to hatred and self-supremacy, only ever suggested on-screen, is shown to us through these windows on Davros’ life at its pivotal moments – first blood, taking control of his destiny, the rejection of love, uncovering of corruption, his transformation into a power that could theoretically live forever, and his development of the ultimate evolution of Kaled life. While in Michael Wisher’s and Terry Molloy’s performances particularly on TV, so much of this is hinted, it took the dedication of four hours of superlative audio to render this journey in a way which, nine years later, still feels fresh, and shocking, and absolutely canon, true to Nation’s world, but with a grander storytelling sweep than any he ever mustered.

Big Finish is a company with many triumphs under its belt. It’s hard to beat the ambition of Spare Parts, the Cyberman genesis story, hard to dwarf the achievement of the second Bernice Summerfield box set – four hours of Gabriel Woolf’s return as Sutekh. But in I, Davros, it’s possible the company achieved a thing that can stand as its greatest contribution to the expanded world of Doctor Who, and yet also stand on its own terms as the history of a world and a character we think we know, given a new vitality, a new horror, and a new warning on the single-mindedness of science stripped of conscience, of ethics, and of everything bar the ends it sets itself.

https://www.bigfinish.com/ranges/released/i-davros