The Juggernauts

Separated during an attack on a deep space cruiser, Melanie and the Doctor eventually find themselves on the colony world Lethe. Melanie's escape pod brings her into the company of Professor Vaso, himself a crash survivor, and some three months later the Doctor arrives - on a mission from the Daleks. Vaso is in fact Davros, escaped from his Dalek captors and now attempting to carve himself a new niche to continue his experiments, but the Daleks see his newest project as a threat to them: a breed of machines called the Juggernauts, but the Doctor knows them as the Mechanoids...

Is it just me or is this concept of Davros trying to get into big business starting to wear a bit thin? It was great in Revelation of the Daleks when he was bleeding Kara's factories dry on Necros, and then the Big Finish audio Davros took the whole concept even farther (even if it was meant to take place earlier) but now... I can't help but feel it's been done enough. Davros is indeed a cutthroat individual, having sold out everyone in his past to get what he wanted, even the entire Kaled race (Nyder would have gotten his eventually if you ask me), but he's never going to be perfect in a three piece business suit. Exterminating the shareholders as a means to succeed seems a bit heavy-handed even for him, more an act of desperation than a well thought out move.

The real shocker in this whole adventure is Melanie. Well, once you get past the Doctor co-operating with the Daleks. Mel has a lot more guts here than ever before, even going so far as to (gasp!) kiss a boy! Yes, Mel in involved in an office romance. And why not - she's been marooned for three months with no sign of the Doctor but makes sure that it's known she'll be off with him again the minute he shows up. And when he does there's no recrimination, no rebuke, just relief to see him again and joy at the idea of resuming their travels together. I can almost liken it to Zoe's relationship with her boss in The Indestructible Man - the computer geek finding happiness.

They said The Juggernauts was a gritty tale, and to an extent it is, but it's not as extreme as it could have been. Davros' improvements to the Mechanoids are of course gross and scary but nothing he hasn't done before. His intent is to create an army of perfect Dalek-killing machines and purge the universe of his creations to start from scratch, but are these oversized tennis balls really the instrument of their destruction? I'm not sure how many people really bought into that scheme back in 1965 when the Daleks ran into the Mechanoids in the final episodes of The Chase, but there was enough of a battle sequence to make people ignore their disbelief and enjoy the carnage. There's a good old fashioned clash in here again but it's just noise, really. Shoot. Dalek scream. Mechanoid jibberish. Boom. More shooting. Repeat.

I have had this CD in my collection for two years, waiting for the blog to roll around this far to enjoy it. Maybe there was too much pressure on it from me to be something it's clearly not, which is to say a good Dalek story. It's more the continuing saga of Davros where the Daleks play a less and less significant part. In episode four Davros says that after centuries have gone by he can no longer be held responsible for the Daleks, and I am starting to agree. Once upon a time as far as the televised episodes went there was no having one without the other, but after a while it's good to have them part ways. The news that Davros is returning to the new series next year to face tenth Doctor David Tennant (and companions galore in a season finale/series pause to end all) is interesting, and I am wondering what the angle is going to be. Still a Dalek master, or is he working on other things now?

Let Davros go. Let him and the Daleks part ways; stop throwing them back together when the result is always going to be the same.

NEXT EPISODE : CATCH-1782