Doctor Who – tape 1639
Over to UK Gold, and it’s the first appearance of Lalla Ward’s Romana in Destiny of the Daleks. Not the first appearance of Lalla Ward, of course, who appeared in a previous story as Princess Astra.
This is a controversial regeneration scene, as Romana tries out various bodies, before going back to Princess Astra’s. This made a lot of people very angry, and was widely regarded as a bad move.
Romana even Cosplays as The Doctor.
The Tardis lands on a random planet, as it so often did, and it looks a lot like a quarry, as thay so often did. Some locals bury a dead body, and a spaceship arrives.
The Doctor and Romana run past some explosions.
The Doctor gets trapped under a falling beam, so he takes the opportunity to catch up with his reading. “He’s got it wrong from the first line.”
Note the author, Oolon Colluphid. That should be a clue that this episode is the first in the season where Douglas Adams was the Doctor Who script editor. He’d written for the show before, but this season he was given the full time job of Script Editor, so the casual humour of the show can be attributed in large part to him.
Romana goes to find and fix K9, while the Doctor has some visitors.
And Romana returns to where the Doctor was to find him missing. She’s being followed by a man with a rope.
Rather than ask him why he’s following her, she runs, and falls down a shaft.
Meanwhile, the Doctor has been taken to a spaceship. As Arthur Dent might say, “Now this is what I call a spaceship.”
His benefactors tell him the name of the planet they are on. Skaro. But their mission is secret. That’s Suzanne Danielle there in the middle, who I recently got confused with both Suzanne Dando and Jill Dando.
Then all that’s left at the end of this first episode is the shock reveal of the Daleks, something every single Terry Nation Dalek story manages to do.
The next episode sees Romana interrogated by the Daleks as to what she knows, and the Doctor and the alien, the Movellans, learn that the Daleks are digging down into the old Kaled city looking for something. She also meets some of the slave workers digging for the Daleks, including David Yip.
There’s another controversial scene, where the Doctor climbs up a shaft, then taunts the Dalek with “If you’re supposed to be the superior race of the Universe, why don’t you try climbing after us?” This was another line that was very disliked by fans of the time, lampshading the unspoken limitations of the Daleks.
The Doctor knows about a hidden shaft down to the lowest levels, so they can get there before the Daleks have drilled down, and they discover what the Daleks are after. Davros. With a very underwhelming introduction.
Before the next episode, UK Gold have wheeled out a Christmas ident.
These Daleks seem to like rhyming. We’ve had “Seek Locate Exterminate” and “Seek Locate Do Not Deviate”
The Movellans change their objective, from Davros to the Doctor, because he knows more about the history of the daleks. This is because the Movellans are androids themselves. So they lure the Doctor into the open by putting Romana in a tube with a Nova device which will incinerate her.
Before the next episode there’s a bit of old Top of the Pops, with The Jam and Rod Stewart singing First Cut is the Deepest.
Then, in part four, the Doctor realises why the Movellans and the Daleks were both after Davros. Because their two logical armies were unable to reach a point of advantage. He demonstrates with the example of Scissors Paper Stone, although I don’t think that particular game really demonstrates the difficulty of being too logical.
The Movellans intend to leave with The Doctor, who can make them less logical, and detonate the Nova device to destroy the Daleks, Davros and everyone else on the planet.
Meanwhile, Davros is sending a squad of suicide Daleks to destroy the Movellans.
The Doctor goes to find Davros and stop his plan, but Davros is protected.
One of the Movellans, who hasn’t been incapacitated by the human workers in their rebellion, is trying to detonate the Nova device, and Romana bundles on to try to stop him.
The Doctor overpowers the dalek by throwing his hat over its eyestalk.
Then he gets Davros to explode the explosives being carried by the Daleks. Lots of exploding daleks, including one shot that’s a bit of a cheat. We see a row of five daleks.
But just before they explode there’s a cut and we only have two daleks
Followed one frame later by the explosions. Two exploding daleks, and three explosions in the ground where the three daleks were originally.
I guess they couldn’t afford to blow up five daleks.
Davros is put in a cryogenic freeze, to stand trial for his crimes.
And the Doctor and Romana clear out a few styrofoam rocks from in front of the Tardis so they can go on their way.,
After this, another story, but from earlier in Tom Baker’s era, The Horror of Fang Rock. I’ve already looked at this when it was on another tape, so I won’t repeat myself here.
After this, the recording stops, and underneath there’s a bit of a film, Crazy from the Heart. Then that recording stops, and underneath that, there’s some encrypted German satellite channelm showing Wayne’s World. The tape ends here.
Adverts:
- UK Gold VIP Club
- Trail: Top of the Pops
- San Miguel
- Nintendo – Starwing – Rik Mayall
- Trail: New for 1994 on UK Gold
- Trail: Friday on UK Gold
- Audi
- Diet Coke
- Telemillion
- Maxwell House
- Chicken Tonight
- Blockbuster video
- Fairy
- Gateway/Somerfield
- Trail: Doctor Who – The Face Of Evil
- Trail: Filthy Rich and Catflap
- Milk
- Clearasil
- Salon Selectives
- Asda
- The Heart of Chicago
- Bounce
- Burger King
- Fairy Dishwashing Liquid
- Milk