Day: August 21, 2012

Hey, here's another old Who review. Originally posted on Brontoforumus, 2008-03-14. (I guess my last Who review post was a Dalek serial too, but what the hell, that was like 6 weeks ago.)

Destiny of the Daleks is Tom Baker's second and final confrontation with the titular monsters (memo to Rusty: yes, they only did two Dalek stories in eight years), as well as Lalla Ward's first appearance as Romana (she'd played Princess Astra in the previous serial) and the second appearance of Davros.

It's a pretty run-of-the-mill story; by far the best sequences are the creepy, antediluvian ruins of the Dalek city, best used in the end of the second chapter when a cobweb-covered Davros begins to awaken.

It's sort of downhill after that. The creepy aliens of indeterminate race and sex turn out to be bad guys, Davros and the Doctor banter back and forth about their respective philosophies, and the whole thing sort of falls apart in the last chapter where it turns out the two alien races are in a stalemate because their battle computers are evenly matched.

The Daleks' blind obedience to Davros is a pretty radical change; not only have they, over the few hundred years since Genesis of the Daleks, gone from attempting to exterminate him for being inferior to reviving him because he's much smarter than they are, but within the span of two episodes they go from "Self-sacrifice is illogical and therefore impossible" to strapping bombs to themselves on his orders.

And on the subject of logic -- I've noticed more than one fan bellyache about the "Daleks trapped in a logical impasse" element, as that sort of story is much better suited to the Cybermen; Daleks aren't generally depicted as slaves to logic.

For a serial with both Terry Nation (writer) and Douglas Adams (editor) named in the credits, it disappoints. There are a few good Adams-y one-liners in there, but they're far between. As for the "comedy" in the opening segment, Romana's regeneration scene painfully fails to amuse, and of course reminds us that no two writers can agree on how regeneration works anyway.

It's not great, it's not terrible. Rent, don't buy.