Evelyn Waugh of the Daleks

Surprise, surprise: the Doctor’s not been crushed by his own head after all (though Colin Baker’s rampant egotism is threatening to bury the show by this point, admittedly). While Jobel - the latest in a very long line of creeps (be it masked or, in his case, wigged) trying to get into Peri’s pants - is preparing another interment, up pops the Doctor with nary a scratch. Although that ‘fake’ blood’s a bit of a mystery - I mean, if the statue’s made of polystyrene then where does the blood (fake or otherwise) come from?

Apparently reinvigorated following his brush with precognition, this Doctor’s got a mystery to solve: who made the statue and just where did they find all that material to make his fat head? Not to mention finding out who thought casting Jenny Tomasin was a bright idea (surely not Harper; I detect JNT’s hand here…). Col’ does at least try to make up for her lacklustre chemistry by rifling through the mental thesaurus that must have proved handy in his Crosswits days (exactly how many synonyms for ‘burial’ was that again?). And anyone notice how the whole suspended-animation-entertainment thing has just the whiff of Tom Cruise-starrer Vanilla Sky about it (itself a remake of a far superior Spanish original; just as Saward‘s script here is a car-crash between The Loved One and Soylent Green)?

Let’s hear it for Clive Swift, shall we? One of the most overlooked gems of this story (and his constant putdowns to Tasambeker - as with Grigory and Natasha’s sniping in episode one - prove rather complimentary to the leads’ own fraught relationship). Amidst the rather gratuitous series of stabbings and dismemberments this episode offers, it’s only Jobel’s death at the hands of his former admirer that has the requisite pathos required (every other death scene is perhaps a little too full-on for what is nominally a children’s show). And the scenes beforehand showing Davros whispering Iago-like in Tasambeker’s ear reminded me a lot of Palpatine and Anakin in Revenge of the Sith (but then, as an Episode III apologist, I probably would be).

Meanwhile Peri’s getting to know the DJ (who quickly spots Nicola Bryant’s twang for being as fake as a six dollar bill). I don’t really know what to make of Alexei Sayle’s performance in this story, to be honest (stunt casting, to be sure; but I’m not sure if he’s just taking the piss or whether his manic meanderings is a way of saying that - even in death - there’s no escape from that certain type of motor mouth). And he does only just beat Vogel for most ridiculous extermination in this episode.

I can remember thinking when I first saw this episode twenty years ago that - at twenty minutes in - it was time for most of the cast to get culled (pretty much every story that year had already inured me to the fact that rarely did secondary characters in Season 22 make it to the final reel). So when everyone starts getting stabbed, exterminated and blown up left, right and centre then it hardly comes as a surprise (and besides, Grigory and Natasha’s presence in this story is largely pointless, so it’s fitting they die pointlessly). The only thing that still surprises me is just how gratuitously this gets done, seeing as this went out at about 5.20 on a Saturday tea-time (Kara’s stabbing, for one, is particularly visceral). And am I the only one who recalls a similar scene in Robocop when Davros has his hand blown off (a film strongly condemned only a couple of years later for its levels of graphic violence; yet still made explicitly for an adult audience)?

And like pretty much all the post-Genesis Dalek stories (at least until ‘Remembrance’) the metal meanies’ presence here is almost superfluous (and as if to reinforce this change in attitude to the show’s most notorious creations, here the Doctor shows no compunction towards blowing up a laboratory of incubating Daleks; whereas in ‘Genesis’ it was a subject of great moral debate). And the cloned Davros thing is a bit of a cop-put (while being symptomatic of the show’s then preponderance to recycle its own recent past; copying the Borad’s plan from ‘Timelash’ to a tee).

But William Gaunt is very good, Terry Molloy gives easily the best Davros since Wisher (shame David Gooderson was ‘busy’, ahem) and there’s a pace and vigour that the show wouldn’t experience until the next Dalek story three and a half years later. But again a Saward script reeks of clumsy moralising (how can Takis and Lilt - vicious, torturing thugs for much of the duration - suddenly become nice guys who just want to enjoy their jobs again?) and the failure to make the Doctor a moral figure in an increasingly immoral universe. Perhaps Lord Michael of Grade had a point when he said the show had ‘lost its way’ after all..?

Still, time for a holiday after all that - how does eighteen months grab you, Peri eh?

(‘The Bumper Book of Made-Up Doctor Who Facts’ has this to say about the 1985 hiatus: the real reason for the show’s ‘suspension’ was Philip Segal’s plans to make a transatlantic version of Captain Zep)