Resurrection of the Daleks

I first acquired video technology in 1995, on a sunday morning. That afternoon I went to town and bought Resurrection of the Daleks, which I had long been wanting to do. This then was not only the first Dr Who video I ever bought, but the first video full stop. 

Watching it, I felt the same buzz of pleasure and excitement as I had back in 1984 when Resurrection was first aired. This is quite simply my favourite Dr Who story of all time. After the plain old silly Destiny of the Daleks some years previously, wherein the Daleks shouted a lot but were about as menacing as tins of corned beef, Resurrection was summat else again. These Daleks were vicious, menacing killers; behaving exactly as Daleks are supposed to but rarely do. They were also wonderfully irrational: dropping everything (one imagines) to go halfway across the galaxy to rescue Davros, simply to serve their own ends, and then deciding to exterminate him anyway. There is an extremely vague plan to invade Earth and an even vaguer one to depopulate Gallifrey's time lord population, but this is all good. If the Daleks here were seen as boringly logical and killing only one or two people (as portrayed many times in the past) then they would just be dull. 

The gradual massacre of the Space Station personnel, the use of chemical gas, the mutant Dalek scuttling around the warehouse, the Daleks having to rely (at first) on human Troopers, the shock revelation of the Dalek agent...I could go on and on but will instead confine myself to two extra points. 

First, Davros. This time I found the portrayal of him even better than in Genesis. Then, he was a cold, ruthless scientist who ranted occasionally. Now, a thousand and ninety years later (or whatever) he is utterly obsessed with revenge with his own Daleks, as willing to kill them as they are to kill him. His ability to defend himself now, and his shocked reaction to the Daleks' defeat and having to use human soldiers, are lasting memories for me. 

Then there is Lytton, a wonderfully compelling, ruthless character. Right from the off he is threatened with extermination by the Supreme Dalek, he clearly is less than willing to be working for them and yet he performs his duty with chilling efficiency. I think Lytton rates as the second best human baddie in the entire series ('second' best? Well, no one can beat the War Lord!). I think his becoming a good, or at least less bad, guy in Attack of the Cybermen to be rather inappropriate. A question though, if all this happened to the duplicate Lytton, is there a real one knocking about somewhere? 

So, a definite ten out of ten here. Resurrection is what Earthshock could have been like if all the supporting cast had been killed off. It increases the realism, the excitement. I'm glad this story went as far as it did, and if Sylvester McCoy and Pantomime were to threaten the show a few years down the line, then it came out just in time.