6.7: Revelation of the Daleks

In which Alexei Sayle kills Daleks with rock’n’roll.

Broadcast: March 1985

Watched: January 2021

Revelation of the Daleks, Part One

“I hope they’re on time, she’s already started to froth.”

I love this. I know it’s dysfunctional. I know it sidelines the regulars. I know it’s far nastier than what is still ostensibly a kids’ show should be. I can’t help it. I love it.

The whole idea of Necros, a place that pretends it has people in suspended animation when it’s actually doing other horrible things to them, is so wonderfully creepy. The Daleks as security, just kind of there, barely treated as a threat by most of the staff. (At one point, some bored humans wearily hold their passes up to the eyepiece.) The way the “body snatchers” actually just want to get Natasha’s Dad back because there are no legal means. The discovery that the currently powerful don’t want their predecessors to be walking about again. The cast! The direction! It’s great.

And Alexei Sayle as a DJ, playing A Whiter Shale of Pale to the dead - the clash of the form and content of his public pronouncements, the asides like he’s a Greek chorus (second time this season). The glass dalek, containing a half mutated human whose voice gets more Dalek-y the angrier he gets. The direction, and the clever way it puts shots on top of each other to give us the sense we’re going down into the catacombs. The terrifying cliffhanger, in which the Doctor finds his own grave and just as he’s dealing with the existential angst it literally crushes him. Davros watching, orchestrating, laughing hysterically throughout. 

All that and it’s the only Doctor Who story ever based on an Evelyn Waugh novel (The Loved One). It’s so good.

It’s very [writer and script editor Eric] Saward that the first thing we see is the TARDIS arriving, the Doctor summoned to a trap, and then the regulars get nowhere near anyone else for the next 45 minutes. I like the blue outfits - a big improvement - although after she accidentally tears the Doctor’s cloak Peri is AGAIN managing the Doctor’s emotions while he rejects her apologies. I like that Peri is a botanist, and the Doctor is still, after Two Doctors, eating nut roast rolls like a good veggie. (What is an agronomist and why is this era so obsessed with them? There’s another next season.)

“No door, no letterbox. No letterbox, no post,” is a lovely, Doctor-ish bit of logic, though the lack of a door does feel like a literalisation of Saward’s plot blocking.

Grigory and Natasha are basically Bates and Stratton again, a sort of subplot that you just know isn’t going to go anywhere but is there entirely to show how nasty the world is. (The “cliffhanger” halfway through this in the four part version is completely rubbish: characters we don’t care about hiding behind a pillar.)

In subplots that aren’t so disconnected - Orcini takes half an hour to show up at all, but is fantastic when he does. The actress playing Tasambeker is nearly 50 which is quite old for a student, third year or otherwise.

What exactly is the revelation of the title? The fonts in the opening credits have gone weird again, like in Attack.

Revelation of the Daleks, Part Two

“Get your hands off me you creep!” Finally she says it. Great character note that Jobel worries about his back before saying “anyway he’d be squashed”. 

Again, the opening here is all the regulars. It’s like Saward has learned that he needs to foreground them but not *why*. Actually, despite my assumptions to the contrary, the Doctor does do something in this story after all: he saves the president, we just forget because he’s an off stage character. Then later on the Doctor shoots a Dalek and then Peri plants a grenade on it, and the Doctor solves a galactic famine using a weed so maybe we’re being too harsh. (No way could Davros solve a famine by reusing the dead as food, the maths doesn’t stack up.)

Making enquiries about his own funeral is one of the most Doctor-ish things Colin ever does. The sales pitch scene is brilliant.

I’ve only just realised that Kari’s plan is for Orcini to assassinate the president, as well as Davros. Later on I will realise for the first time that the Doctor accuses Davros of killing Kara, then Orcini gestures that it was him. (“You before me!” Love that scene).

The Doctor telling Peri she’ll be safer with Jobel a few scenes later is... problematic. Then she laughs off his creeping on her. She spends a lot of time managing arsehole men’s emotions. I like how the DJ is genuinely nice, even if the paucity of shots in which you can see both Sayle and Bryant is... suspicious. [This is paranoia, apparently they were very nice about each other.]

It’s kind of hilarious the way Davros thinks “Hey, become a Dalek!” is an attractive offer. The way Jobel’s wig falls off is a nice bit of loss of dignity in death. Similarly, the way a Dalek shoots Orcini’s fake leg off to disable him.

The DJ puts himself in danger a bit easily - but Alexei Sayle shooting Daleks with rock and roll deserves to be far more iconic a scene than it actually is.

Anyway - memory doesn’t cheat, this is great. By far the best of the season, and would stand out in any other season too.

Have some of the effects been replaced? I’m sure we used to see the fake Davros melt. We do see his hand shot off though, lol. Later on we see model shots of Tranquil Repose blowing up and a spaceship trying to take off.  Are these new? I don’t recognise them.

Why did they bother cutting “Blackpool”? It works as a punchline even if they never made The Nightmare Fair. [The story cuts away halfway through the final line, referencing the first story of the next, cancelled series; it eventually appeared as a novelisation, then as a Big Finish audio.]