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

The Chase

The Daleks are back.

Armed with a time machine of their own, the Daleks are on a singular mission to hunt down the Doctor and the TARDIS crew and assassinate them following their interferance with the invasion of Earth. This is where the dynamic between the Doctor and his arch foes changes to become what it will be known as for the rest of the series, when the Daleks will forever know his name and be obsessed with killing him. But they will also fear him, and later on will even endow him with a name in their own folklore: Ka Faraq Gatri, or, Bringer of Darkness. Imagine if you will from the Daleks' point of view: this stranger has stopped and entire invasion force, and now a crack sqaud of Daleks will be sent after him to exterminate him once and for all.

And of course, they'll fail.

I couldn't help but feel that this story was maybe two episodes too long. The TARDIS is pursued across time and space by the Dalek ship, landing on the planet Aridius (a planet that has obviously changed its name as it was once covered by vast oceans and was anything but arid), then the top of the Empire State Building (which allowed me to merge it with a viewing of Sex and the City - I watch it between episodes when things get slow), the deck of the Marie Celeste, a haunted house, and then the planet Mechanus. Okay, it's a chase. The Daleks are chasing the Doctor. I get it. But it's a pretty thin premise, with all these short stops thrown in for the sheer novelty of it. The dialogue between the regulars is not the best, although they have the whole family atmosphere going on at the very start, with Ian reading some book in the living quarters, Barbara hard at work making a dress for Vicki, the Doctor tinkering with something he liberated from the museum on Xeros, and Vicki wandering the ship bored. As the story progresses there are some weak interchanges, and some pretty bad slips in the visual effects department including Daleks on sets where they are not supposed to be, studio ceilings visible over the top of the TARDIS console room walls, and boom mics and studio cameras lurking in the jungle on Mechanus. And then there are the supporting cast in episode 6 - the Mechanoids and their captive human, astronaut Steven Taylor. The Mechanoids were soon paired off as the new mortal enemies of the Daleks, and the two species would have wars across the galaxies in comic strip adventures. They're cooler than the Thals. And as for Mr Taylor and his panda, Hi-Fi.. well... wait and see.

At the end of the adventure though, it's goodbye for Ian and Barbara. They've had enough and they take an opportunity to go home. The Doctor is outraged, citing reasons of terrible risk involved with their desires, but the real truth is he has grown attached to them since they came on board the TARDIS. Susan has left him, and now the last of his original crew are going too. I'd be annoyed if I was being left with custody of Vicki as well. Maybe they should get someone new on board, some hunky guy to be a bit of eye candy but also make him a bit like Ian, have him challenge the Doctor on occasion but still make him his own man, someone maybe from the future who doesn't need everything explained to him.

Hey.. where'd that Steven Taylor guy get to...

NEXT EPISODE : THE TIME MEDDLER

UPDATED 9 OCTOBER 2005: I showed the edited highlights of The Chase to my friend Jay yesterday. I had warned him that this is one of the worst examples of production values, with sound bleeding from scene to scene and all sorts of visual bloopers like strings on bats, Daleks where there should be no Daleks, BBC studio cameras and boom mics visible here and there, flubs of dialogue, and the awful kaleidoscope outer space scenes with the TARDIS in flight. Jay was apalled and kept whimpering "Why, Sean? Why?". I look at it as a great opportunity for the restoration team to clean up some of those effects, maybe tidy up some sound issues, really get their teeth into a project. We shall see one day.