Black Orchid. Is that the coolest title of them all or what? I know the flower in question was only jammed into the story so as to provide said title, but even so it’s got such a great ring to it.

Anyway…

Small scale, time-out stories can be very effective when done right; stories with simple plots have the advantage of not requiring any clumsy exposition. When they’re done wrong they can be terrible, like Boom Town, but occasionally one comes along that has the subliminal effect of making the viewer snuggle into the sofa rather than hide behind it. Black Orchid is such a story, and aside from a few minor quibbles I love it to pieces.

A major criticism this story receives is that its status as a whodunit is demolished by us seeing the criminal every step of the way (okay so we don’t see his face, but we see who it isn’t). This would be a fair point were it not for one simple fact: this isn’t a whodunit. Terence Dudley was a professional writer and I’m sure such matters probably crossed his mind while he was writing it; he has produced instead a blood-relative to the whodunit, a story where the hero, whom the audience knows to be innocent, has to prove that innocence before he gets banged up for a crime he didn’t commit. Such stories can be very good and dramatic in a time’s-running-out way, and often stand up to repeated viewings better than mysteries that have little going for them once the truth is known.

The story opens with a servant being strangled; for such a gentle story this is a very dramatic opening, even if it is a dream sequence and even if we don’t see either murderer or victim above the knee. After this start though it winds down, and opens properly with some excellent location footage of a 1920s railway station. In terms of period detail Black Orchid scores very highly, especially the fantastic studio set of the main hall. Historically-set stories almost always look great in the location scenes, but such quality in studio wasn’t beaten until Ghost Light seven years later (not that there were a great deal of period pieces in that time, however).

The opening TARDIS scene, a bane of the early Davisons where the three inexperienced companions uneasily struggled to act like they had chemistry, is better than most and is over quite quickly (which might be why, now I come to think of it). Upon emerging from the ship, the story’s gentle pace allows for some great dialogue that enriches the atmosphere rather than coldly advancing the plot. However, the cricket match goes on a bit too long – it all seems a bit indulgent, although it is unusual to see upper class people on TV (it’s now shockingly politically incorrect to portray people who live above the poverty line), and some of the dialogue (“ripping performance, old boy!”) is a bit sickly for my tastes. I should point out the scene where Davison bowls out that extra, which competes with the birth of his children to be the Proudest Moment Of His Life, but really I’m just frustrated that it goes on far too long. It shows up the story’s biggest weakness: it is poorly paced. The main dramatic arm of the plot, the Doctor’s murder accusation, doesn’t happen until the second episode which means that the first episode contains nothing of note in terms of the narrative. While this allows for some great characterisation, a chance to develop the ambience and the occasional good witticism (it’s a very smoothly written episode), it does mean that there is an awful lot of padding for such a short story; perhaps it could have done with a bit more exposition in this first instalment. Having just praised the writing, the “Master” line is another indulgence that is only just carried off and the “Doctor Who?” routine is dragged out yet again like the gimp in Pulp Fiction being released from his cellar. Spotters of goofs can look out for the moment when Barbara Murray (playing Lady Cranleigh) backs into a painting in the scene where Nyssa and Ann are introduced to each other.

Nyssa’s doppelganger contrasts with the realistic tone of the story (not counting stock elements like the TARDIS, obviously), driving it into the realm of magic realism; the presence of Latoni the Brazilian tribesman is also incongruous as his presence there is not explained until right at the end.

Adric gets a small, neglected role in this story and if it were anyone else (with the possible exception of Mel) I’d say that was a bad thing. Tegan’s ‘Charleston’ routine is annoying (mainly because Janet Fielding, although she would improve later, grates horribly at this stage), and the idea that she should be rehearsing it only to do it for real in a few minutes is silly and contrived. Sarah Sutton’s acting as Ann is also poor; her very serious, somewhat staid acting style just about passes for the ultra-prim Nyssa, but when it comes to a character who is occasionally called on to express emotions from time to time she seems very forced and artificial. She also struggles to make her physical tasks look natural: note the scene in the second episode where she runs from the bedroom in tears, as she can be seen clearly and deliberately pushing the chair over as she runs past rather than knocking it.

Roger Limb’s electronic score, while not terrible in itself, doesn’t sit well with a period setting (a problem throughout the 1980s), but this isn’t a problem for the masque scenes where there are authentic period songs playing. One thing I’ve always wondered though is that since this is set in the 1920s nobody has the Australian pegged as a criminal. 

The Doctor’s gothic pastiche of secret corridors and hidden bodies is given remarkably little emphasis, and the cliffhanger really does suffer from the story not being a whodunit; it comes at the point between the two sections of the story, after the plot-light beginning but before the dramatic ending, and the fact that someone who is not the Doctor is trying to murder someone who is not Nyssa lacks the kind of impact I imagine it was intended to have. Afterwards though Ann makes her accusation and much as I enjoyed the opening I am glad it’s finally started to get moving. It is a gripping scene, spoiled only by the Doctor’s “I am a Time Lord, I have a time machine” routine that is inappropriate to the story.

Calling Nyssa, Tegan and Adric accessories to murder is an attempt to inject more tension that misfires as it makes absolutely no sense and is never subsequently mentioned. The TARDIS being moved from the railway station is padding, and it being revealed to anyone who wants to see is also annoying (after all, it was the Doctor’s fear of being discovered that began the series in 1963) but it’s the smug, self-congratulatory presentation of the scene that galls me rather than the actual content itself. 

The disfigured George (an excellent and disturbing piece of makeup) breaks out of his room by burning down the door – an impressive piece of pyrotechnics for a studio scene and a similarly good stunt as he crashes through the flames. It also creates a very logical and uncontrived resolution, whereas in a lesser story everyone would simply run to the rooftops for want of somewhere better to go. George’s backstory is similarly good, an appropriate scene of exposition which differs from others by not involving two characters who know the plot explaining it to each other anyway for the benefit of the viewers.

The confrontation on the roof is very good and dramatic. George Cranleigh is a sad and tragic figure, played surprisingly sympathetically by Gareth Milne. Only his final death is disappointing (despite being another good stunt), as it is difficult to believe why Lord Cranleigh would suddenly dart forward to embrace his crazed, insane brother while he is perched on the edge of a rooftop. The final scene is excellent though: in an extraordinarily touching and enigmatic finale (in a way I can’t quite put my finger on) the Doctor is given a copy of George’s book Black Orchid – but the author’s photograph is not of George but of his brother. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s a very poignant ending.

Black Orchid is a pleasant little story spoiled only by small problems such as its poor pacing. Even so it is a refreshing break from John Nathan-Turner’s and Eric Saward’s usual production style, that got back on full swing in the next episode. It got it right where the other Davison two-parters got it wrong: it aims low, and consequently scores high.

I would pinpoint season 21 as the major downturn of quality that eventually spelled the end of the original series of Doctor Who. Season 20, although it consisted entirely of sequels, emphasised the storytelling that largely forgave the occasional over-the-top moment of continuity such as was seen in, for example, Mawdryn Undead. Here though, Warriors Of The Deep was the largest step yet towards suicide, having the dreadful burden of including not one but two old monsters from the show’s past, the youngest of which was eleven years old. Not only that, it’s also one of the shoddiest and cheapest serials the programme ever made; not even the very early Hartnells had so many production faults.

My reviews tend to be mostly linear – I work my way through each element of the story as it comes up. That means I now have to do a complete about-turn and say how brilliant the modelwork is of the sea base, the Silurian ship and later the attack craft Sentinel 6. It’s very hard to reconcile this with what else is seen on screen, as it feels like it’s the only aspect of the production that any money was actually spent on. Unfortunately then the amount of screen time afforded to it is small, and we are instead subjected to the awful set of the bridge. Many of the sets in this story are bad, consisting of eyeball-aching white but without the stylised distinctiveness that made The Ark In Space work so well. The bridge has an even greater problem of being offensively floodlit, multiplying its tackiness a thousandfold.

Better is the Silurian ship; maybe it is so much more subdued to create a contrast between the alien and human environments. Whatever the reason, any scene set here comes as a relief to an extent, but is undermined by the presence of the Silurians: excellent in their 1970 debut story Doctor Who And The Silurians, here complete jokes. Their obviously plastic heads are fixed in grins, their voices are silly and squeaky, the lights on their heads flash in time with their words for no particular reason and they even have stupid names. They are only rescued by some decent lines; Johnny Byrne’s script is actually quite good in places with the Silurians displaying some nicely idiosyncratic mannerisms – but the aforementioned voices present a giant drag factor as far as their lines are concerned.

Also doing no favours for the lines are the horribly boring guest cast. In the first scene featuring them Nitza Saul as Karina comes off worst, saying her lines flatly and without any real feeling. Tom Adams as Vorshak is a little better but in later scenes has trouble with sounding desperate, and for my sins I find it hard to take seriously anyone whose eyebrows resemble their rank stripes. Martin Neil as Maddox fairs best, actually managing to sound like he cares about what he’s saying; the decent script allows him to cover for some obvious exposition with some reasonably interesting lines. Ian McCulloch is terrible as Nilson, and even the respected actress Ingrid Pitt is difficult to watch as Dr. Solow, such is the quality of her performance.

The opening TARDIS scene is shaky (a common complaint of this era) despite Janet Fielding’s improvements as an actress and Peter Davison’s dynamic new haircut. We see Davison fluff a line talking to Sentinel 6, and in technobabble terms “materialisation flip-flop” makes me wonder if Byrne was taking his job entirely seriously. Back on the sea base Byrne is very succinct when it comes to the technical talk from the crew at their posts, which while uninteresting to listen to at least presents the actors with lines within their range. Maddox’s synch-up scene has a new lighting effect – normally I wouldn’t mention something so minor, but as it distracts from the terrible set it’s more important than normal.

The scene where Captain Eyebrow gives the pantomime villains of Solow and Nilson Maddox’s disk has some more pleasing lines that nicely sketch in the complexities of the setting, even if they are delivered by partners in plankness McCulloch and Pitt.

The Doctor can tell that they have landed on a sea base instantly, which is unconvincing. So begins their exploration, and gradual revelation of certain plot points. I’d say that the sight of the Silurians spoils the mystery, except that there isn’t one; until they show themselves the humans are boring people doing boring things. Hexachromite gas is namedropped very deliberately, in a tokenist attempt to avoid a deus ex machine ending that falls on its face by making the ending very obvious while being subsequently ignored again until it is needed. Mark Strickson overacts when activating the lift, emphasising too much that Turlough has made an error, but it’s amusing to see him get caught in the closing doors.

The Sea Devils make their appearance now. They look good to begin with: dimly lit, shrouded in mist, and not moving, with an atmospheric score by Jonathan Gibbs helping.

The cliffhanger contains the first real incident of the episode, and while the reactor room set wobbles a bit during the Doctor’s fight it is actually very good, being very large and opulent (and maybe what the other 50% of the budget went on. It certainly didn’t go on the monsters.). The episode ends with an excellent stunt, closing a mediocre instalment helped in part by a script that so far just about manages to keep its head above water. This is followed by a well-shot underwater sequence – a rarity in Doctor Who. Pennant Roberts who also helmed the excellent The Face Of Evil) is not a bad director as long as he’s not doing action scenes. I could live without the close-ups of the horribly fake heads of the Silurians though. The Sea Devils start to move and although they have the same voices as in their debut, they look even worse than the Silurians, with their heads wobbling about and falling over.

Turlough’s scream of “save yourself” showcases Strickson’s penchant for intentional ham, and the ‘bad breath’ joke misfires – if only Russell T. Davies had learned from this that bodily functions jokes aren’t funny.

The Doctor raids the bridge, brandishing a gun and making cheesy “we have a problem” quips, going totally against his character (which at least sets a precedent for Resurrection Of The Daleks). Do I detect Eric Saward’s influence here? This scene makes me realise how little has happened so far; the regulars have only just met the other characters, while it has taken the monsters an episode and a half to start moving.

The back story of the Silurians and Sea Devils starts to cause a problem now. It would difficult for casual viewers to accept them and their attitudes without having seen this story’s prequels; as they were made over a decade previously a lot of fans probably would have had trouble as well. As such it is hard to relate them with the Doctor’s insistence that they are moral creatures: he says that “all they ever wanted to do was live in peace”, yet here they are on an obvious offensive. Solow portentously saying “Nilson, we must speak” loudly in the middle of the bridge is also an annoying moment.

The foam doors in the airlock look terrible, but they hide something infinitely worse: I’ll reinforce a clichй here and say that the Myrka is a strong contender for the title of worst monster ever. Large monsters were often a problem for the show, but other poor efforts like the Skarasen had the advantage of being models, meaning that the actors were not required to interact with them; watching people attempt to act in the presence of this ridiculous monster that can barely stay upright is cringe-inducing. The Doctor’s line of “it takes a lot to impress the Myrka” is unintentionally funny in this context: its head is totally inanimate and lifeless (like all the other monsters in this story, admittedly, but scaled up), and it moves so bizarrely that I sometimes think that the two operators were trying to move in different directions. Tegan actually manages to deliver her lines reasonably well; never a great actress, how she managers to perform here is beyond me, but I was sorely tempted to speed through her squirming under a weightless door while the Myrka wobbles about over her – which I unfortunately get subjected to again in the next episode’s reprise. When it gets blinded it doesn’t move any differently than it did before, which isn’t really surprising. Also, the extras it kills perform some of the most inept death scenes I’ve ever seen outside Destiny Of The Daleks, with all their ‘find your spot – shake about – lie down’ staginess.

This cuts away to another appalling scene with the Sea Devils. In their debut they were very good, running around athletically and shooting their excellently-realised weapons. Here they shuffle around like geriatrics, with their heads lolling uncontrollably, and firing weapons with cheap and nasty video effects. Sauvix says that “the ape primitives are no match for my warriors” – at least their mouths move when they talk, mate. Neither humans nor monsters move about much in the action scenes, but this is fine as neither side can shoot straight either.

The episode mercilessly cuts back to the Myrka, and we get to see Ingrid Pitt make a bad situation a lot, lot worse by attempting to karate kick it in one of the programme’s most toe-curlingly embarrassing scenes ever. Surely one for the blooper reel, how anyone thought it would work is beyond me; it’s as if Solow took the Doctor’s earlier line about impressing it a bit too literally. After this the monster’s death is pat and uninteresting, but oh so very welcome.

Icthar’s “it is they who insist on fighting” is a cool line, although when confronting the Doctor they drop in references to previous stories with no regard to anyone except the most insular fans. The “final solution” references are less subtle here than in the still-obvious The Dalek Invasion Of Earth, which had the advantage of a) slipping the line in relatively unobtrusively among several and b) being two decades closer to topicality. Hexachromite is mentioned again for the first time since the opening episode; there when you need it, ignored when you don’t. Preston and Vorshak are killed unnecessarily, making up Saward’s need to have a certain percentage of characters killed every episode regardless of narrative requirement (91.7% of characters die in this episode by the way, not counting the regulars and the nameless extras. All part of the service), and the Doctor’s line of “there should have been another way” is a cheap attempt at justifying a bog-standard, Saward-style ‘kill ‘em all’ resolution.

That this isn’t the worst story of the season reflects the downward slide it represents. It has a few nice moments from a genuinely talented writer that save it from a bottom-of-the-barrel rating, but fails because of the production which was now turning completely in on itself. It is a dull, uninspiring and poorly made story that unfortunately sets the tone for the next few seasons; it took the old master Robert Holmes to life the programme out of its rut after this, and that was only temporary. Arc Of Infinity showed signs of future problems, but Warriors Of The Deep was the first story to take them to extremes, and it is deeply sad to watch it in the knowledge that this story marked the beginning of the end for Doctor Who.

I've had Planet Of Fire on video now for about five years but this is only the third time I've ever watched it. While it's by no means below average, I've always found it quite hard to work up much enthusiasm for it and I can't quite put my finger on why. Maybe it's the slightly shaky way that Peter Grimwade imposes his usual complexities on what is really a very straight story: he is restricted from stretching out too far, like he did with Mawdryn Undead, by the need for his story to do certain things like write out Turlough and Kamelion and write in Peri. Having said that, his first script Time-Flight shows that there is such a thing as overstretching. Anyway, the story itself...

One of the most common criticisms of this story is that the planet Sarn looks suspiciously like Lanzarote. I don't have that much of a problem with this specifically; my problem is that both Sarn and Lanzarote look like quarries. Expensive quarries, I grant you, and exotic, but still quarries. Then again, I suppose if they'd stuck to Dorset they'd never have had the scope to show off their new Bond-girl companion's assets. Fair's fair though, I have to say that Nicola Bryant makes a promising debut here (although her accent veers about uncontrollably) as she's written to be a much more proactive character; the following season it would just be two whingers whinging*.

The first episode begins with yet another backwards-religion-with-token-anarchist-who'll-side-with-the-Doctor-and-eventually-end-up-in-charge set up, but in fairness the dissenters are a well-written attempt at showing how the religion has developed over time as opposed to coming from the stockpile of rationalists like all the others. Also, the character of Timanov is supremely well acted by Peter Wyngarde.

Typically Grimwade-esque touches appear, such as mysterious alien touches blended into a normal Earth setting, and having apparently disparate elements that won't come together until later. In the case of Planet Of Fire it is the Trion artefact that has managed to find itself in a shipwreck, which is never properly explained. The fact that it has no bearing on the plot except to get Peri into the TARDIS does make it appear a rather cheap and lazy tool to introduce the new companion, but it's better than the usual method of "wow, a police box, I think I'll go inside" and it does help to generate the effective sense of mystery that sustains the first episode as it's linked with Turlough's hitherto unseen marking (a slight writer's liberty I feel) that actually looks quite painful. I should just mention at this point that the scene where Turlough rescues Peri form drowning is very well directed, with lots of quick cuts making it seem genuinely action packed. Then again, although it's not my field, for the female / gay audience out there I'm not sure how the sight of Mark Strickson in his Y-fronts compares with Captain Jack getting defabricated in Bad Wolf.

The TARDIS scenes are better than average in this story as the departure of Janet Fielding has greatly relieved the overcrowding problem (two's company, she's a crowd) that the TARDIS suffered from during Peter Davison's tenure. Also, it's interesting to note that the Doctor has changed his clothes for the first time in three years ("no time to wash, I've got a universe to save"). It's not significant, and frankly I'd take his usual costume over that waistcoat that seems to have been made out of a lampshade, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. There are a few points of genuine interest, such as the fact that Turlough's suddenly come over all shifty again like he did in the Guardian trilogy, and also that Kamelion is treated as if he's been in every episode so far. A season on and he's still as crude as ever; at least with K9 they managed to update him a bit between seasons 15 and 16. He really is inept here, far too crude to function as a character as the prop has no means of expression other than a few basic movements. In order for it to have been a success they should have stuck to just using the voice (like with K9) instead of attempting genuine animatronics. The production team only had him in this story because they didn't get away with him just disappearing after The King's Demons and as a character he's a lot to impose on any writer; Grimwade does well in the circumstances by having him spend much of his time as the hybrid shape shifter struggling to maintain the shape of Peri's stepfather Howard. By the way, how rubbish is it giving a stepfather a name like Foster?

Anyway, with all the Earth-elements together Dr. Hero, Mr. Shifty and Miss American-Eye-Candy set off for Sarn (notice how Peri's hair is immaculate when she wakes up from unconsciousness) and it is only now that a few plot points come together, although a lot is still left unexplained across the episodes. They all arrive on Sarn - and how thick is the makeup on the location scenes? Blimey, there's controversy on the new series about all the innuendo with Captain Jack, but it's 1984 and the Doctor's a transvestite! The twist introduction of the Master is a genuine surprise (unless you happen to have the video with a big picture of Anthony Ainley on it), but then again it's always disappointing to see the Master mugging like a loon as it's clear from episodes like Survival that Ainley is not a bad actor. Further Master scenes in part two actually show the Master being quite intense. Reports say that this is how he wanted it to be, but John Nathan-Turner, with his infallible eye for taste and style, ordered him to camp it up. This conflict of interests plays out on screen, but in the circumstances I can put it down to Kamelion's instability.

The second episode is really a big runaround between Kamelion and Peri, with Turlough's edginess the only thing that maintains the tension in an episode where nothing much happens: it's episode three come twenty-five minutes early. Ainley is given very moody dialogue by a sympathetic writer and the episode in general is very well acted, but on the whole it feels padded out (notice the one paragraph it gets here as opposed to the six the first episode gets). I do like the scene where Timanov finds Kamelion wandering in a daze and believes him to be the Outsider: all together now, he's a Star--maaaaaaan...

Episode three continues the formulaic feel with yet another doom laden exchange between the Doctor and the Master. Turlough is given above average characterisation - even in their last stories it was rare for companions to be so motivated - but with each revelation about his past the episode gets a bit more contrived, although it's minute compared to that artefact taken by Peri in part one. Also, I should say that Edward Highmore looks nothing like Mark Strickson, even though they are supposed to be brothers.

The volcano begins to erupt and we see the TARDIS is again used indiscriminately, a problem the plagued the Davison era, with the Sarn natives being let in to see the sights and just because a polystyrene pillar came down. That, it has to be said, is the kind of effect that hasn't improved since Ixta struggled with a weightless slab in season 1's The Aztecs.

This episode is more interesting though as it presents the first new ideas since the first part, like the god Logar really being a space suited man and the idea of numismaton gas. It strikes me as odd that this gas, which is the whole point of the plot, is only mentioned now. The Doctor only takes note when it comes pouring out the top of a mountain (a nice effect), which I would imagine would be hard to ignore. The cliffhanger is a good twist and shows some quality CSO, bit is let down by some unusually naff dialogue (for this episode, anyway) given to the Master. These paragraphs are getting thinner and thinner aren't they? It just goes to show how little of substance actually happens in these middle episodes.

Episode four sees the typical Grimwade complications coming thick and fast, but they just about come together. There are still big plot holes though, like how the numismaton gas changes back to normal fire. I'm usually generous towards Doctor Who, so I'll say it just about hangs together even though it is hard to take the Master seriously in his Lilliput form. The scene where three people look down on him is well matted, but the combination of film and video always looks a bit dodgy. The use of stock footage of a volcano is generally good but no effort is made to tally it with the location shooting, so rivers of lava appear and disappear. Also, in another Grimwade trademark, Kamelion is defeated by pretentious technobabble. The Master is destroyed utterly, but neither for the first or last time...

After the introductions in part one it becomes increasingly difficult to find anything to say about Planet Of Fire. By no means a bad story - it could have been terrible given the massive requirements imposed on the writer - it serves simply to write out an old companion and introduce a new. It does that well enough, but it can itself only be called average.

*And a partridge in a pear tree.

Imagine if you can the most annoying, pedantic, anally-retentive fan you can: the kind who harasses strangers when they hear their kids humming the theme tune, whose heads explode every time WOTAN calls the Doctor “Doctor Who” and who have to shield their eyes from the Seal of Rassilon in the Vogan control room. Now imagine what happens when you give this fan a degree of creative control in how an episode is made. Alternatively, instead of imagining it, you could just watch Attack Of The Cybermen. I know that Ian Levine bashing is so commonplace now that it can be boring to read, but I’m not letting that deprive me of my share – it’s really the writing and Levine’s insular continuity references that bring this episode down. It’s generally well made (apart from the score), as with the case with any episode it’s the writing that’s make-or-break.

When not wallowing in its own filth, this episode borders on the average. The introduction is well shot (even though the Cybermen’s P.O.V. shots are so heavily distorted it makes them look nearly blind) and the sewer set is large and impressive, although very often characters are brightly illuminated even when their torches are switched off. Oh well, I’ll put it down to creative licence and dramatic necessity.

The location filming is also good, and it also introduces the terrific Maurice Colbourne as Lytton, the one continuity reference I’m actually happy with (he had only been in it the last season, after all). Terry Molloy is reasonable outside of his Davros mask and Brian Glover puts in a good performance that saves his comic-relief character. Payne’s comment that Griffiths is allergic to nylon is funny, an example of the flash of wit that occasionally permeates the episode. 

The regulars come off less well though, having to endure the same self-conscious banter that the Davison team had to endure as introductory material. The Doctor’s comment of “here we go again” is ironic, but Colin Baker’s overacting is rescued by his final, sweet coda to Peri of a promise not to hurt her. In general though they are very poor; I don’t know if it was Levine or Paula Moore responsible for their scenes, but they come off as being written by amateurish fans. While original characters get some decent lines the Doctor is portrayed as the self-conscious eccentric that we (OK then, I) used to be when playing Doctor Who when we were little. His pompous, facetious dialogue sounds like Adric’s from Earthshock, and the worn-out ‘distress call’ routine is the oldest clichй in the book.

The policemen serve no function other than to look mean; their purpose is never explained either here on in their previous story Resurrection Of The Daleks. The Totters Lane scene is extremely annoying, potentially a nice nod to the fans ruined by the fact that the Doctor actually has to make something of it – his excited “look!” when pointing to the sign must have come off to the casual audience like a child showing off their snappy new socks. Also, Malcolm Clarke’s awful score grates, here sounding like an electronic version of the Steptoe And Son theme. There is no point in changing the TARDIS either; Levine was simply indulging himself. The Doctor referring to Peri by a multitude of other companions’ names must have also seemed very odd: “why would he call her Jamie?” asks Mr. Jones from down the road. This is so annoying, as parts of this episode have real potential.

Payne’s death is quite creepy, scary without being too intensive (that comes later). It is shortly followed though by the Doctor gleefully duffing up a fake policeman; the Doctor goes against the series ethos so much I wonder if it was worth having that ethos in the first place.

There is little point in hiding the Cybermen from shot as their name appears in the opening credits (in capital letters, no less) and I would imagine that they were what the 8.9 million viewers were there to see (a significantly higher figure than the rest of the season). However, there is some seriously nifty direction keeping them out of sight and that’s always good to see, however worthless it may be. Their proper introduction is very good, as one is seen coming towards Lytton and his team Tenth Planet style – although the ‘March Of The Cybermen’ theme from Earthshock seems a bit cheesy and melodramatic when there’s only one of them on screen. There is a sense that this was written for the ordinary four-part format, as their reveal comes about halfway through the episode and would make for a good cliffhanger. Bullets kill Cybermen here, but this can be reconciled with the knowledge that they are being severely weakened by Cryon interference. In any case, it’s better than their usual aversion to gold which is one continuity reference mercifully absent. Their voice modulation here muffles their speech, and Brian Orrell is annoying as the Cyber Lieutenant. Their ship on the dark side of the moon is a smug nod to The Invasion (as is their presence in the sewers in the first place) but at least in this case not one that affects the understanding of the story.

There is a pleasing interlude with some good location shooting for Telos, and Stratton and Bates are a good duo that provides some actual quality for a moment. After that though we come to probably the worst derivative indulgence of them all: Michael Kilgarriff as the Cybercontroller. Nobody considered that even though the character had been great in The Tomb Of The Cybermen (and that was due more to Sandra Reid’s costuming and Peter Hawkins’s voice) that hiring a middle-aged actor with a beer gut (no disrespect) as opposed to an actor actually suitable for the role twenty years on. They hired a person no longer right to play the part of a Cyberman and all because he’d been in it before – and what makes it doubly pointless is that The Tomb Of The Cybermen was at the time completely missing, making Kilgarriff’s prior performance entirely irrelevant anyway. Back on Earth though, there is some reasonable back-history delivered and I have to say that the black Cyberman looks incredibly cool.

I’ve always said that the great thing about a good cliffhanger is that you get to see it twice, while the dreadful thing about a bad cliffhanger is that you have to watch it twice – and this is the worst cliffhanger I’ve ever seen. An amazingly inept scene shows Russell shooting at a dummy Cyberman, followed by him shouting a half-hearted “no!” and making no effort to dodge a Cyberman’s fist. This is followed by Peri’s appallingly-delivered final words, although in fairness to Nicola Bryant I don’t thing even Meryl Streep could have made the line “no! NO! NOOOOOOOO!!!!” work.

After the break, it goes on to talk about The Tomb Of The Cybermen as if all the people watching had seen it. Such a busy story necessitates here a large expositions scene and while it does help a little in explaining what is going on to the audience – and it’s the non-fans who are the show’s bread and butter – what is going on, although it does create a rather boring plot for them as the Cybermen’s plan revolves around rescuing a planet that is only ever mentioned in passing. I feel that they would care more about the idea of it attacking Earth in one year’s time; in fact they’d be better off just avoiding this story altogether and watching The Tenth Planet instead.

The rogue Cyberman is again from The Invasion, but it isn’t so bad as it doesn’t have to be to work – and the scene where its fist bursts through the doorway decapitating another Cyberman is a genuine jump moment; one thing you can’t call this story is badly directed (apart from that cliffhanger, obviously). The Cryons sound good and have some nice lines but are conceptually clichйd, and they would have been less cheesy if they were simply called Telosians. A good theme in this story though is the aliens’ difficulty with Griffiths’s Cockney dialect.

The hatchway taking Lytton and Griffiths to the surface is an old fork-lift truck pallet that I used to carry about when I worked at B&Q, which spoils the illusion slightly. I’d also say that the hatchway echoes the one in The Tenth Planet but it might be a coincidence and in any case I’m getting bored of all these continuity references. 

The Doctor has a decent scene with Flast, even if it does concern that stupid plot. The revelation that the Cybermen can’t time travel properly is interesting despite meaning very little. Also Rost and Varne have a good rapport, the line “you never were very bright” reminding me of the twins Cora and Clarice from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels.

The Cyberman that flaps aimlessly at its burning arm damages their credibility still further and shows how far they fell outside the black and white years. The hand-crushing scene is undermined by the old cut away – cut back directorial trick and by the fact that the blood is very obviously painted onto some undamaged hands – but it’s the thought that counts and the thought is very unpleasant indeed. Thank you Mr. Saward, shining light of narrative justification. The other surplus characters are polished off in quick succession, showing Saward’s stupid philosophy that if there aren’t x number of deaths per episode then it won’t be any good. While I’m on the subject the mortality rate in this story (not counting Cyberman extras or the regulars) is 85.7%, which is very excessive considering the numbers involved; it’s not that they die (Horror Of Fang Rock had a mortality rate of 100% and was superb), but that they die pointlessly through a sense of requirement that it should happen regardless of circumstances.

The TARDIS changes back to a police box (why change it in the first place?), and Lytton’s death is actually quite poignant. The action scene with the Cybercontroller is reasonable but standard, and I’m getting tired of seeing empty Cyberman suits exploding. The end is very annoying also, as the sonic lance (why get rid of the sonic screwdriver if you’re just going to replace it with something else that does the same thing?) being used to detonate the vastial – to reiterate, a made-up gadget is put into some made-up powder and everything goes boom. And the lead Cyberman’s gesture of “run, lads!” doesn’t help either.

When I was young I used to like this; I’d seen the stories it references so that didn’t worry me, and I just rode the wave of pyrotechnics. Looking at it objectively though this is a silly, inward-looking and very anal episode that probably put more nails into Doctor Who’s coffin than any other. The Cybermen can be such good monsters when written well, but when put in the hands of people who forget that the programme’s audience might not be as knowledgeable as them they become what any other monster would be in such circumstances: mediocre at best.

One of the best things about Remembrance of the Daleks is the pacing. Aside from a few breaks for character development and exposition on the background, this story does not stop moving. Now a story that doesn’t stop moving can be a bad thing, because it can result in a story that’s all flash but no substance – all plot but no reason to pay attention to the plot. But there are enough big ideas in Remembrance that it not only occupies the higher brain functions, but also ushers in a whole new conception of Doctor Who at the same time.

This story is most important for introducing a morally ambivalent side of The Doctor, as well as marking the beginning of the Cartmel Masterplan to bring a more ominous depth to The Doctor. This is perhaps a Doctor who has realized his error in not destroying the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks. Or perhaps he realized what a time paradox that would create, since his own life was so intertwined with the Daleks anyway. And this isn’t just taken as a snap decision. The coffeeshop scene between The Doctor and Geoffrey from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air shows that The Doctor is very conflicted over his decision. He has determined that this is the right way to destroy the Daleks, when they are about to reach the height of their physical power in the universe. But he says, “Every decision creates ripples in time. The larger the decision, the greater the ripples.” He isn’t sure what results the destruction of Skaro is going to have. But no matter how much he doubts, his plan has already been set in motion, and so he has already forced himself merely to guide the action to its proper conclusion.

Ace also fares well in Remembrance of the Daleks. I’ve seen a lot of reviews on Outpost Gallifrey bemoaning her acting abilities, or lack thereof. But while she’s no Meryl Streep, she handles herself well when the material is good. She gets her fair share of action scenes, as does everyone else in this story. But it’s her quieter scenes where she fares best, in particular the scene where she discovers the ‘No Coloureds’ sign on Mrs. Smith’s bed & breakfast. Watch her face, and you can see how she goes from disbelief to disgust as she crosses the room to ask Mrs. Smith about the sign, then leaves before saying a word about it. 

I believe the best Doctor Who, as well as the best fiction in any medium, works best when its stories develop on multiple levels of meaning. Remembrance of the Daleks is one of the best examples of this in 1980s Who. The ‘No Coloureds’ scene is the centrepiece of the story’s treatment of the issue of racism. The emotional effect of that scene carries over into all the other mentions of racist and ethnocentric ideas in the story. Without this scene in mind, Ratcliffe would be little more than a stock neo-Nazi, and the same would go for Mike Smith. The very idea of racism disgusts Ace. What this scene does is show how ordinary people, like Mike’s little-old-lady mom, can develop notions that drive them, like Ratcliffe, to betray humanity. 

Ratcliffe is an idealist who has found, through his alliance with the renegade Daleks, what he thinks is a path to realizing his ideals. Ratcliffe’s and Mike’s shadowy Association is a precursor to the modern European National Front movements. Ratcliffe, really, is just a bitter war veteran who went against the grain of his people at the time. Mike Smith and his mother are just ordinary people who want to protect what they think is important about England. It’s this moral shortcoming that leads them to ally with the renegade Daleks, which of course, leads to their deaths. This other theme of Remembrance of the Daleks is extremely important to the success of the story, because it humanizes characters that could all too easily be stereotyped by a lesser writer.

As a sidenote, listening to the DVD commentary by Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred, you learn that these two pivotal scenes were almost cut entirely by the production team, as they felt the scenes detracted from the action. Sylvester and Sophie demanded that they be kept in, and justified it to their bosses as merely giving the audience a breather. Though I haven’t heard John Nathan-Turner’s and director Andrew Morgan’s side of this story, this would indicate a near-total ignorance of the importance of in-depth character and thematic development for a good story. Doctor Who may have been a low budget science-fiction television serial, but that’s no reason to think of it as merely a kid’s adventure show. I see it as just another example of the same attitude that resulted in thousands of hours of classic BBC programming being consigned to the trash bins because they were just some old black and white prints of silly television shows like Quatermass, The Avengers, and Doctor Who.

Getting back to the story proper, I consider this Davros’ best outing since Genesis of the Daleks, since he appears so little. Davros here acts as the perfect counterpart to The Doctor, staying behind the scenes, using his Daleks to manipulate events to his own benefit. In the same way, The Doctor manipulates the Daleks for his own benefit. Some may call their confrontation at the end of the story over the top. But Terry Molloy’s Davros was the ultimate shouting nemesis in Doctor Who. I consider it quite fitting that The Doctor used Davros’ own short temper to destroy his home. I even named my blog ‘Unlimited Rice Pudding,’ I thought that scene was so cool.

Also cool is all the explosions in Remembrance, which just get wonderfully bigger and more spectacular as the story goes on. The Daleks get a pretty good showing here, though they still never matched the sheer menace they embodied in the Hartnell and Troughton days, or that they would embody in the Eccleston days (I mean day). The confrontation between the army and the Dalek at Totter’s Lane in episode one is one of the most gripping Dalek scenes of the decade. The little girl at the heart of the renegade Daleks’ battle computer is suitably weird, though her incidental music can grate on the ears sometimes. Keff McCulloch’s incidental music was far from the best of Doctor Who. Even the Davies series, while generally pretty awesome, has never equalled some of the creepy scores that Dudley Simpson used to write.

I have only two gripes with the way the Daleks are handled in Remembrance. One, of course, is the way The Doctor talks the renegade leader to death at the end. The Doctor and the Dalek come off as simply not saying enough. Having your home planet destroyed would probably make the average Dalek angrier, and few Daleks I’ve seen would self-destruct simply because something didn’t compute. If there was any good way to talk a Dalek to death, Rose Tyler did it in Dalek.

My second gripe is that the series never really explained the Dalek’s transformation from psychopathic killing machines to psychopathic killing machines dependent on logic. I’ve come up with sort of an explanation, but it probably won’t satisfy most of the truly angry among fandom for the logicising of the Daleks. In Evil of the Daleks back in 1967, the Dalek Factor was established as a propensity to obey without question the orders of a superior. I can imagine a state existing among Dalek society when even their leaders asked themselves, “Who should I obey?” And the best answer they could come up with was logic. I think the real world problem might originally have been the the writer of Destiny of the Daleks, where all this logic stuff was first dreged up, thought the Daleks were just robots, so made them logic-dependent for their larger plans. Thankfully, the Daleks have regained some independence of thought under Russell T. Davies’ stweardship. But other than these minor quibbles, this is the best Dalek story of the decade.

To round off, the supporting characters work quite well in the story. Group Captain Gilmore’s group is clearly a UNIT predecessor, and the relationship between Gilmore and his scientific advisers Rachel Jensen and Allison mimics closely the early Brigadier/Doctor relationship from season 7. There’s a grudging respect, but still a considerable difference in methods. Watching the banter between these three, and their growing trust in and reliance upon The Doctor provides some of the funniest moments in the story. It makes them quite well-rounded and interesting characters. I always laugh at Rachel and Allison griping that The Doctor’s idea of needing their help involved lifting a television set down to the school’s cellar so he could hook it up to the Dalek transmat. And as Group Captain Gilmore says, “Only a fool doesn’t listen to his Doctor.” I’d certainly trust these three to defend Britian from alien attack. Granted, this is partially because I live in Canada, which aliens tend to ignore in Doctor Who.

Last note – Mike Smith > Mickey Smith? Could Russell T. Davies be drawing some kind of parallel between the two? Perhaps he’s trying to make some kind of point about the impossibility of The Doctor’s companions forming stationary relationships. Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence. I think it more likely that he’s trying to provoke hardcore fans into making near-groundless connections like these for no real reason. Joke’s on us, then.

Some people embrace Conventional Fan Wisdom wholesale, and others are fanatically opposed to it. Whichever camp you belong to, there’s always one story that you genuinely and without bias feel is misrepresented, either in a positive or negative way. There are always a couple you secretly like (The Dominators, anyone?) but I’m talking about real fiery vehemence here. My story of this kind is Remembrance Of The Daleks, a dreadful, crudely made noise-fest that stands as Doctor Who’s most overrated story. I’ve been looking forward to reviewing it, as this is my chance to set my opinions out properly.

The odd thing about it though is that it doesn’t begin that badly; in fact it begins with the best pre-titles sequence of them all (and The Unquiet Dead’s was pretty good). It then leads into some reasonable location work that is often praised for its gritty realism – but so what? Doctor Who has always looked great on location. The only example of bad location shooting I can think of off the top of my head is…this story, in fact, when amazingly anachronistic buildings can be seen in some of the shots.

The scenes set in Coal Hill School are an indulgence; it’s not the best example, but continuity is a big problem in this episode, which comes at a time when the programme was improving in that department. Here we have several old locations visited and many old stories referenced, and in many cases these are used to ground plot points like the fact that the Doctor knows his way round the Totter’s Lane junkyard. This is exactly the kind of thing that Attack Of The Cybermen gets criticised for (in terms of tone and production it is Remembrance Of The Daleks’s closest relative), and yet this one gets off scot-free. Ben Aaronovitch takes certain liberties with established rules, a big one being that ghetto blasters playing Guns ‘n’ Roses in 1963 are a Bad Idea. Why would the Doctor even let Ace remove it from the TARDIS in the first place? It performs no plot function; it is merely a bland and watery attempt to sketch in Ace’s characterisation as a ‘rebel girl’.

On the subject of Ace, Sophie Aldred is very poor in her second story. Her performance is wooden and bland (at least she had some energy in Dragonfire), and she and McCoy have no rapport whatsoever (fortunately this would improve over time). In fact, the majority of the actors in this story are poor: McCoy seems uncertain about how to deliver many of his lines, and the guests are almost uniformly dreadful. Simon Williams and Dursley McLinden are two planks in a pod as Gilmore and Mike respectively, Terry Molloy hams it up like a mental patient, and then of course there is Jasmine Breaks. I know she was only a child, but she drags down even further every scene she’s in. Mike’s conversation with Harry the cafй owner is painful in its tweeness, and when Harry says “I had enough of that during the war” - as if he still relates every event of his ongoing life to it twenty years on – you can almost hear the ‘Crowbar In Period Detail’ box being ticked. The one exception to this is Pamela Salem, who nevertheless has to struggle against some poor lines.

The scene in the playground is nicely atmospheric, but is let down by the interminable Breaks. At this stage though the story is not terrible, merely bland, and if it carried on like this it might just scrape and average. After this we get to Totter’s Yard, for an annoying and destructive piece of continuity. Why should the Dalek be snooping around there? When was the Doctor there? Yes, I know, but I’m talking about the dwindling audience here. It does begin dramatically though, with the unseen enemy (if only it stayed like that) trapped and the soldiers keeping their distance. It is here that the characters start to become annoying: the Doctor’s line of “what a predictable response” is so one-dimensional that I’m in serious danger of a paper-cut from it. All the characters may as well have signs – I’m the anarchist, I’m the pacifist, I’m that rationalist, and so forth – such is the rudimentary nature of their roles. Karen Gledhill as Alison is certainly eye candy but she’s a bit of a waste of space really; she performs the same role as Rachel, as if Salem’s character had just reproduced by splitting down the middle. Really she is just making up the Totty Tally; this story tries and fails to be a blockbuster, which is a bit of a rubbish genre anyway.

The Dalek fires, and completely manages to miss Mike. Get used to this, because there is going to be a lot of it. However, this being a Ben Aaronovitch episode, it does explode some barrels rather impressively; the pyrotechnics are the best thing about this episode. The actual introduction of the Dalek is well directed by Andrew Morgan, but the Dalek itself is dreadful. It looks like it’s made of moulded plastic, it’s head and eye hardly moves, and watching it wobble about on even a flat surface trashes their credibility completely, it having been carefully restored in their previous story. Also of note is the Dalek’s complete inability to hit even stationary targets; this will be taken to truly ridiculous extremes throughout the story. It is a mark of a bad writer that Aaronovitch backs himself into a corner where he has to repeatedly contrive a reason why the Dalek can’t kill anyone.

The potted history of the Daleks in the van is also unnecessary, and McCoy and Aldred have all the charisma of a bowl of semolina. And not even warm semolina, either. When they reach the school though it is good to see a cameo from the ever-popular Michael Sheard. However, the Doctor going on about “great evils” to total strangers is clumsy and irritating.

The interior sets are good, and in fact better than the location scenes, which is extremely unusual. The French Revolution reference back to the opening episode is quite sickeningly smarmy; on it’s own it gets by, but given that another two stories are referenced in that same scene its smugness becomes oppressive. I’m only one episode in and I’m sick of it.

The transmat in the cellar is a great piece of special effects but is misconceived from the start: its only purpose is to set up the Daleks climbing stairs. This is often called a defining moment for the show, but really it’s one of the stories lowest points: for a start it’s a massive in-joke and nothing more, and it would have been better to just leave it at the Dalek climbing stairs later as it chases Ace. Secondly it is so badly written that it epitomises what is wrong with this story. The Dalek chases the Doctor up the stairs, chanting “exterminate” over and over and over again. Outside, Ace has a fight with the headmaster and overpowers him, before opening the door. The Dalek is still just sitting there repeating its catchphrase; it’s only once the Doctor and Ace are long gone that it actually gets round to firing (what was it doing?). It is possibly one of the worst executed scenes ever, and turns the Daleks into total jokes. They are appallingly written, with their dialogue limited to just the basic catchphrases. They say “exterminate” (or a variation) a truly staggering 27 times in this story, more than in the black and white years at all if I’m not mistaken. Seven people in total are actually exterminated; I feel that the instances of the word should tally with the number of exterminations, or else it becomes boring rhetoric from a writer with no better ideas. Here the Daleks have a Rhetoric Rate (if you will) of 74.1% (a percentage derived from comparing the number of times the word is said to the number of exterminations). Going on the strength of the only onscreen extermination, this rises to an unbelievable 98.3%. It is quite ridiculous. I like their new modulated voices, but there is no consistency to them. 

The much-praised cafй scene is just a jarring attempt to make the Doctor seem mysterious, but it’s so shallow that it just makes the Doctor look very pretentious. It’s as if this script is held together with PVA glue.

The Hand of Omega is another poor effort, retro-active continuity used to justify a badly-defined sci-fi gizmo. The floating casket is superb though, with even an effort made to create a shadow for it (something that lets down almost every other attempt at CSO the show ever did), although it consequently does require a blind vicar. That baseball bat, however, is just lame.

The rebel controller is initially good, but when it is revealed to be the girl it falls to pieces, just like any other scene where Breaks is present. Ratcliffe’s Nazism is more puddle-deep characterisation, a token attempt to provide the character with motivation (hint: just stick with lust for power. Never fails).

Ace finds the “no coloureds” sign – oh wait, the Daleks are racists too! The subtext! The subtlety! The underlying issues are like insect stings in this episode, they’re that annoying. The scene with the television is one of Doctor Who’s worst ever moments, not because it can’t be reconciled with anything else the series ever did, not because it demolishes the fourth wall with a giant metafictional wrecking ball, but because it’s probably the most sickening, smug and thoroughly irritating in-joke the programme ever did – and it had some clangers in its time.

The Dalek chases Ace through the school, of course waiting before she has gone before it actually fires at anything. Its aim is so bad that it looks like it’s just aiming at random objects. The bat attack made me cringe, and the Dalek’s aim is no worse without its eye. The cliffhanger to the second episode builds on the previous episode’s weaknesses: Daleks cluster round Ace and chant “exterminate” all the live-long day. Daleks so predictable and childish generate no tension as it’s blatantly obvious that they are just going to sit there chanting away to themselves until someone comes to the rescue. And lo, this is exactly what happens: the Doctor turns up with a dish with some flashing lights on it (“I rigged up something like it on Spiridon”: another example of a previous episode being used to avoid coming up with new ideas) and knackers the Daleks. It’s just terrible, and what annoys me is that people criticise poor old Destiny Of The Daleks for this kind of thing, even though this is a far worse offender. The claw that throttles the Doctor worked in Paradise Towers (although there’s less gurning here), but that story had a sense of humour. Maybe if this one wasn’t so preoccupied with being gritty it might be able to laugh off its naffness.

The Dalek mothership has a great set for the bridge, but Terry Molloy is absolutely dreadful as Davros / the Emperor, screaming his lines as if his mouth is full (“weport!”).

The Quatermass reference is the second-most smug in-joke of the programme, although the Doctor’s discussion of Gilmore’s nickname is actually a good, genuinely human moment that comes as a relief. The exposition scene here has more join-the-dots characterisation, with the Doctor stopping just short of turning to camera and saying “I’m mysterious, you know”.

Wow – some people actually get exterminated in this episode, which came as a surprise, although of course we don’t get to see it. The Supreme Dalek uses an old casing (I think) and looks good, but the time controller is naff. I’m prepared to forgive this one though as it was state-of-the-art at the time, even if it does show a lack of foresight.

In between Attack Of The Cybermen-style references to past Dalek stories Keff McKulloch cracks out his drum machine; I’d hoped to avoid mentioning him because he actually started off okay in this episode, but when the action scenes step in he degenerates into someone mucking about with a keyboard. His tinny percussions completely undermine the early 1960s period detail.

Mike gives himself away in a lumbering, contrived scene; outside, Daleks fire at soldiers over a dozen times and only hit anywhere near them twice. The shuttle landing, however, is magnificent (even though wires are visible); if only that much attention was paid to the script.

The confrontation between Mike and Ace is abominable as neither of them can act, and the dialogue (“you scumbag! I trusted you!”) is straight out of EastEnders. It is followed by an equally bad confrontation between Renegade and Imperial Daleks, in which neither side can hit large, static targets. It’s so poorly done that I genuinely cannot understand this episode’s popularity – although I like the Special Weapons Dalek. The Doctor states that “the Daleks are such boring conversationalists”; given Aaronovitch’s script that just sounds ironic.

It was pointed out to me once that Ratcliffe’s and Mike’s deaths are inappropriate; they set up a possible racist undertone, but just got zapped without this being developed or resolved in any way, which is absolutely true now that I think about it but since this lurching attempt at a subtext drops dead on the starting line anyway it hardly matters. I have no idea who pointed that out to me, but thank you! In fact, there are so many examples of this sort of thing that I’m getting sick of listing them – but the “blobs” speech sounds like a GCSE student wrote it.

We don’t need Davros, and we certainly don’t need Molloy. At least when he’s unmasked his speech impediment goes, but he really is a prime cut of ham here. In fact he’s beaten only by McCoy, who’s “infinite rice pudding” speech is just about the only part of this story that gets criticised as much as it deserves to be. He namechecks The Power Of The Daleks, and his “have pity” plea is a direct reference to Genesis Of The Daleks.

The Cartmel Masterplan is used as another tool to allow the writer to make up any super weapon he likes and have it do anything he likes without having to explain it, although it is unusual and good to see some 16mm film recording for the model shots. All that’s left now is the Supreme Dalek whirling round and round as it self destructs. Really I’d rather not talk about it.

This episode’s popularity truly staggers me. The Discontinuity Guide says it has “mystery and magic into the series with much intelligence and revisionist continuity”, which it quite simply doesn’t, and The Television Companion quotes one reviewer as saying “they [the Daleks] were evil, cunning, vicious, all by themselves (or so it seemed). Dignity was finally restored.” Was he even watching the same episode? The Daleks just wobble about chanting meaningless catchphrases and missing with their weapons; they’ve never been so pathetic. Even Andrew Cartmel lists this story as his favourite – it must just be me. Despite its pretensions, Remembrance Of The Daleks is a silly kids’ show with nothing to recommend it.