Revelation of the Daleks

Upon hearing of a friend's death, the Doctor takes Peri to the planet Necros to investigate. Necros is home to Tranquil Repose; a cryogenic suspension facility for the insanely rich who have been preserved at the moment of death, waiting for the day when their ailments can be cured, but Davros has arrived as well and has raided the vaults to use the sleepers as genetic material for a new race of Daleks. Davros is performing double duty though; not only is he duping the workers of Tranquil Repose, he is also extorting money from a businesswoman named Kara after providing her company with a new protein product to sell to the developing planets of the galaxy, and guess where the meat is coming from ...

Okay this is my favourite of the season, hands down. I remember at first when I saw it being marginally annoyed at how little the Daleks were actually in it, even if they were now dramatically restyled in white armour with gold accents, but the truth is this really isn't a Dalek story in the traditional sense. This is a Davros story, and an incredible one to boot. Script writer Eric Saward freely admits that he was not happy with the end product of his Resurrection of the Daleks the season before, and he sets out to do them justice, even if he hardly has them in it at all. After all, the armies of Daleks out there are decimated from the war with the Movellans, so Davros is starting from scratch again and he's not making the same mistake that saw the Daleks try to kill him the first time. And where better to find genetic material than in bodies that people have more or less given up for dead? The really clever thing here is how Davros took the themes shown here - corporations, stocks, finacial power - and developed them in such a way (hurrah for retcon!) that both that audio and this televised adventure flow together almost seamlessly. Hurrah for Davros, you may say, but without Revelation there wouldn't have been the foundation for that brilliant script. And, just in case you have not heard, this is a particularly violent one, complete with painful exterminations, a brutal interrogation and beating, legs shot off, a hand shot off ... it's all here. But none of it is ever gratuitous. Heavens no.

The cast is magic. The interplay between the vain Jobel and the pathetically doting Tasambeker is a joy to behold, right up until the bit where one rejects the other so badly that there is a graphic stabbing with a syringe full of embalming fluid. There's the DJ, who comes off as a bit goofy, but he's here in the role of the choregus, a little narration here and there as he plays requests for the cryogenically suspended, much to the displeasure of Davros. Kara and Vogel, the mogul and her assistant, are a riot in their office paradise - snobs to the core when it comes to hiring the noble Orcini and his dirty squire Bostock to bump Davros off and gain control of the food supplies for the whole agalxy, even if they're not really clued in to where it comes from. Then again, Kara is an agressive businesswomen, she would probably just shrug and keep on selling food made from the dead so long as she made a profit. In amongst all these gems are the Doctor and Peri, who feel more like they are guest starring in their own series than anything else, but their sometimes rocky friendship had changed over the season and we see the Doctor being a bit warmer towards her. Peri always ribbed the fifth Doctor and had him just shrug it off, so her teasing of the sixth just lands her in arguments as he is prone to sarcastic remarks of his own, but by now those instances are fewer and fewer, and Peri's voice has a lot more confidence to it. And her hairstyle has changed for the better too.

The DVD release of Revelation of the Daleks comes with extras like any other, but what stands out to me is the new CGI effects option; some of the effects in the original were just plain poor, with lasers hitting their target victims to no effect (blame the extras too if you will but there's only so much one can fix), and laser beams staying in one place when the muzzle of the issuing weapons wavers by a few centimeters. Those original effects can be enjoyed as always but the enhancements take them away, as well as give the Daleks different weapons fire that looks fluroescent, for lack of a better term. And thanks to the effects as well, we get to see a Dalek fly on screen in an episode made two years before the *real* first time it happened in Remembrance of the Daleks. Ah magic.

One thing that is not changed, though, is the final line of the adventure. The season would have ended with the Doctor saying to Peri: "I'll take you to Blackpool!" when she requested they go somewhere fun. This would lead to the planned season twenty three premiere The Nightmare Fair, but before it was broadcast it was announced that Doctor Who was going on hiatus for 18 months, and those scripts that were ready were shelved, and the word "Blackpool" was cut. It was a long 18 months full of uncertainty for the show's future, but the gap left makes it a good place for Big Finish to place some adventures with the sixth Doctor and Peri, as well as three of the novels from the "missing season" and the first Doctor Who play on Radio 4. Yes, that time was a bit dismal, but now, as always, the show has gone on.

NEXT EPISODES : THE NIGHTMARE FAIR / THE ULTIMATE EVIL / MISSION TO MAGNUS