Remembrance Of The Daleks
daveyboy7472
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For me, this is where the real McCoy era started and it can be seen straight away in the opening ten minutes how much change was occurring from the previous Season. There is a new dramatic emphasis, a new Darker and mysterious Doctor and Ace proves herself to be a tougher, more action orientated companion, which is just as well as this story is as action-packed as they come.
McCoy embraces this newer Doctor really, and it's really appropriate it should be introduced into a story with the Daleks. It especially shows in those early scenes involving Gilmore, (who I consider just be the Brigadier in disguise, so wish they'd brought him back for this rather than Battlefield.)I like all the Hand Of Omega stuff and the references back to the First Doctor and his Era and in particular the first story, though Totters Yard looked a little closer to the original than it did in Attack Of The Cybermen. I also liked the first hints that The Doctor is more than just a Time Lord, which he says himself in the deleted scene.
Off course in continuity terms it is a bit of a cock-up as The Doctor hadn't even met The Daleks until his second ever story so it is a bit of a weird to contemplate he may have known them before he even met them....
I know people moan about the continuity 'Porn' in this as they like to call it but it was the 25th Anniversary year, so with The Daleks who were as old as the programme itself, it should have been expected.
The cliffhangers from this story are superb, the second one with Ace and the Daleks the best one for a long while. It was also great that the Daleks themselves were the main focus of the story and I liked the continuing theme of two Dalek factions that had started in Resurrection, now complete with opposing human factions as well. It was the first time they had the main focus for many years and it was good Davros's role was minimal. I also thought it was good how it was suggested the figure Raven was talking too was Davros, but it wasn't!
I also liked the Sixties setting and all the Quartermass references. The big scene for me, (think they were the same one) was where the racists attitudes of the Sixties were highlighted by Ace finding the sign of the window about no coloured people been allowed to stay and the TV Announcer introducing a new programme which may or may not have been Doctor Who itself.
The two veteran who actors, Michael Sheard and Peter Halliday were good as the headmaster and vicar respectively and I just love Pamela Salem in this as the continually baffled Rachel.
For once the incidental music was appropriate and as the last Dalek story of Classic Who, it was a good one to end on. I can't think of anything really bad to say about it. Best story of the Season and my second fave McCoy Era story overall it was an enormous improvement on the previous Season.
McCoy embraces this newer Doctor really, and it's really appropriate it should be introduced into a story with the Daleks. It especially shows in those early scenes involving Gilmore, (who I consider just be the Brigadier in disguise, so wish they'd brought him back for this rather than Battlefield.)I like all the Hand Of Omega stuff and the references back to the First Doctor and his Era and in particular the first story, though Totters Yard looked a little closer to the original than it did in Attack Of The Cybermen. I also liked the first hints that The Doctor is more than just a Time Lord, which he says himself in the deleted scene.
Off course in continuity terms it is a bit of a cock-up as The Doctor hadn't even met The Daleks until his second ever story so it is a bit of a weird to contemplate he may have known them before he even met them....
I know people moan about the continuity 'Porn' in this as they like to call it but it was the 25th Anniversary year, so with The Daleks who were as old as the programme itself, it should have been expected.
The cliffhangers from this story are superb, the second one with Ace and the Daleks the best one for a long while. It was also great that the Daleks themselves were the main focus of the story and I liked the continuing theme of two Dalek factions that had started in Resurrection, now complete with opposing human factions as well. It was the first time they had the main focus for many years and it was good Davros's role was minimal. I also thought it was good how it was suggested the figure Raven was talking too was Davros, but it wasn't!
I also liked the Sixties setting and all the Quartermass references. The big scene for me, (think they were the same one) was where the racists attitudes of the Sixties were highlighted by Ace finding the sign of the window about no coloured people been allowed to stay and the TV Announcer introducing a new programme which may or may not have been Doctor Who itself.
The two veteran who actors, Michael Sheard and Peter Halliday were good as the headmaster and vicar respectively and I just love Pamela Salem in this as the continually baffled Rachel.
For once the incidental music was appropriate and as the last Dalek story of Classic Who, it was a good one to end on. I can't think of anything really bad to say about it. Best story of the Season and my second fave McCoy Era story overall it was an enormous improvement on the previous Season.
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Also, has anyone noticed that's it's almost invariably in the episodes that lay on the continuity refernces that make errors in continuity? In the three Doctors, 2 meets 3 (despite not knowing what he'll look like or what will happen in the war games and the fact that the Doctor should remember being 2 experiencing everything thats going to happen already), in the 5 doctors and the 2 Doctors we have all the stuff about 2 apparently being from after the war games (resulting in the season 6b stuff) and here, in the 25th anniversarry, about the Doctors and the Daleks past, we have a story where it's implied the Doctor met the Daleks long before the Doctor actually met the Daleks (my personal explanantion is this is a result of the time war, as that must surely have affected all of Gallifreys history for it to not exist in any times now, therefore it must have rewritten a lot of the Doctor's+Gallifreys timeline, which could mean it took place throughout the classic series and the first Doctor may have known of the enemy before we met him).
So, all in all, not sure what to make of this. It is quite enjoyable, but I'm not sure how much of my enjoyment of it is actually genuine. There are lots of negatives. Some of the acting+dialogue isnt great, and the little Dalek girl whose suppossed to be creepy just seems silly. Some of the musics weird, and I just dont really like it.
I think though, rather than there being anything actually wrong with the story etc (I genuinely think if this story were made at any other time in the shows history I would really enjoy it) theres just something about this season and the next where you can tell Dr Who's on it's last legs. It might look great, and the plot might be good, yet theres something about it which just doesent match up to the quality of 60's+70's Who. You can just tell this show doesent have much longer left and I dont think, for viewers at the time, it can have been to much of a shock when the show was cancelled again in 1989.
Overall, I think it is a good, decent, and fairly enjoyable story. However I do think it's massively over rated and that the main reason it's seen so positively by fans is that it's miles better than the rubbish that had come in the previous season. It is a good 4 episodes, however, for me, it just isnt as good as some in Dr Who's glory days. I'd like to properly enjoy, but cant. However I understand why it's rated so highly by so many
In some ways I know what you're saying here as I feel the same way about the following story(more of that tomorrow though)
I don't think the story is overrated but you could be right in that it's thought of miles better because of the other stories in McCoy's Era and as I've already said, you watch the story back to back with Dragonfire(or indeed any Season 24 story) you can see the improvement right from the opening few minutes. Unfortunately though Season 25 was a big improvement overall, the standards of this story were never really matched again until the following year. Indeed it feels like a Season 26 story at times but I think it was a good story in it's own right and could quite comfortably have fitted into any other 80's Season with a few tweaks.
You get the feeling that if the production team had just had time between Seasons 23 and 24 to think about what they wanted, they may have come up with this in the previous year.
You'll find I'm probably quite critical of those McCoy stories I've watched (and I've only really watched the "good" ones so I dread to think what season 24 must be like). As I said in my previous post, I think you can really tell in these stories that it was near it's end (I think theres a reason the show cam back after season 22, despite the hated 6th Doctor) and I'm not at all surprised that it was after this that the show got cancelled. But in the whole, I do think this is an era of missed oppurtunity as this story along with most others in this season (again, the next stories also an example of this and I'll probably comment more tommorrow) have HUGE potential which, in my opinion, they rarely meet (though I'm watching Ghost Light at the moment, and it is rather good).
Great episode
'WHO YOU CALLING SMALL!'
I think it's true what sovietusername says that if you stuck it in a stronger era of the show, it might not look so good, and I wouldn't put it by any means up there with the great stories of series 13 and 14, but all the same, it's a good story.
Bat.
Pow!
All.
Second, I didn't like any of the characters. The Doctor and Ace were mostly just smug and irritating. A lot of the supporting characters felt like two-dimensional stand-ins for UNIT. Ratcliffe and Mike were just ciphers, opportunities for the scriptwriters to strut their middle-class PC stuff with a bit of a "racism is bad, kids" parable. There was also the worst misuse of Davros ever. He was just a ranting paper tiger, far too easy for the Doctor to provoke and outwit.
The story was partly redeemed by some decent scenes with the Daleks, but otherwise I would say that it only looks good when compared with the others in the same season.
Everyone goes on about the excessive continuity - which is perhaps surprising after Cartmel had spent most of the previous season dispensing with eactly that. But the interesting thing is that the continuity is there for those who want it, and there is a hell of a lot of it too, but everything is fully explained within the context of the story so those with no prior knowledge can easily follow what's going on.
Fortunately, in between seasons, Ace has changed from an annoying brat into a terrific foil for the Doctor, and an excellent companion in her own right, getting stuck in with that baseball bat and leaping through windows. Not since Leela have we had such a physical companion and it's a welcome breath of fresh air. And with Sylvester now taking on a more brooding, cerebral role having Ace flying about is vital in maintaining the pace of the story. The two of them gel so well in this story and you can sense the affection between Sylvester and Sophie really kicking in here. The swapping places while driving the van skit is brilliant. Sophie's expression is superb.
The supporting characters may be rather briefly sketched in places, and they remind me of supporting characters in 21st century Who - they are there for a reason, they have enough characteristics for the purposes of the story, but that's about it. There's simply not enough time to give us any more background as there's so much plot to cram in. The pace and style of storytelling is also very modern Who. The story moves at a cracking pace. I love the opening episode as there's no messing about setting up the scene, we're thrown right into the middle of the action.
And the Daleks, for years theys have looked cheap, broken, badly looked after, but here they are presented (again as in modern Who) as an unstoppable threat. And they actually look good too. The one cornered in the junk yard is almost unbeatable, on it's own (much like the one in Nine's Dalek). So, immediately, the stakes are raised - if just one Dalek is this bad, what about when the rest arrive? No one takes the piss (like Baker taunting them the climb up after him in Destiny), because the Daleks here represent a real danger, and, brilliantly, they actually do climb up after the Doctor at the cliffhanger. That was a tremendous sequence at the time. The impact it had has long been diminished by billions of CGI Daleks flying all over the place these days, but it was a genuine thrill for all fans back in 1988. And before anyone mentions it, I know a Dalek was seen hovering in Revelation but the effects shot isn't terribly clear in that story, and anyway, the one that comes after McCoy explicity climbs the stairs! How cool was that!
This story benefits hugely from the extensive location work (though the Daleks do struggle on the cobbles at times and maybe they should have stuck some boards down so they didn't wobble so much). The effects are excellent too, especially the Dalek ship landing and all the explosions. The racist subplot is perhaps a little clunky and heavy handed, but it also serves to remind us that, as originally conceived, Daleks were basically Nazis. The little references to Quatermass, the design of the Dalek Supreme resembling that in the old comic strips, and even the self referential TV announcer joke about the show itself are clever but inessential - those who are really paying attention get the jokes, get the hints, but it doesn't matter if you're not paying such close attention - the story works just as well and nothing is lost.
In other words, this is how to do a story for the fans. First and foremost you get yourself a damn good story, well plotted, well cast, well directed. Only then do you look at the little bits of, I hate to use the phrase again, fanwank. This is directly opposite to how Attack of the Cybermen was constructed, which started off with a wealth of continuity and then tried to hang a story around it - this is why Attack failed so badly. But Remembrance, ahem, remembers that the Fans are very small minority, and even in 1988 the majority of people watching Doctor Who were members of the General Public who don't want a cliquey Fan Love In, but an entertaining and exciting slice of TV.
And in Remembrance of the Daleks that's exactly what they got. Best McCoy story by a mile. One of the best Who stories ever I reckon. It strikes me that Remembrance is really setting the template for Nineties Doctor Who and it looks terrific. So I think it's something of a shame that Nineties Doctor Who only happened in book form, not on TV.
From both their perspectives, this happens after their many battles, so I'm not sure if I'm understanding what you mean here.
Probably the fact that the 1st Doctor is supposed to have left the Hand in Totters lane sometime before he met the Daleks...
It's really simple. The Doctor never met The Daleks until his the second, same-titled story in 1963. During that story, The Doctor had no idea whatsoever who the Daleks were and he knew nothing about Skaro or it's history at all.
So the fact that he was supposed to know about them in the very first story in 1963 before he met them for the first time in the second story is where the confusion lies.
Well the fact that that the guy with the coffin refers to the 'old bloke with the white hair' is quite a giveaway. And the fact the story is set around Totters Yard would indicate that as far as this story is concerned, the First Doctor would have known about The Daleks before he had to leave 'suddenly', referring to him fleeing with Ian and Barbara etc in the TARDIS.
I would also advise you to watch the very first Dalek story and especially the first two to three episodes. There you will see The Doctor knows as much about The Daleks as the viewer did at the time.
My reading of the situation, and I'm not saying it's factually correct, is that from the Welsh guy we see looking after the coffin where the Hand Of Omega is, had been expecting the First Doctor to collect it. If that's the case, it implies the First Doctor put there in the first place during those few months he and Susan were settled in 1963 when she went to Coal Hill School. From what else is revealed in the story The First Doctor had no chance to recollect it as he was forced to leave 1963 when Ian and Barbara forced their way into the TARDIS. (hence, 'I had to leave suddenly')
If that's the case, why it took him 7 incarnations to go back and sort it out is more of a mystery!
I think it is clear he put it there during the Coal Hill days, but I'm just supposing his original reason for doing so might have been nothing to do with Skaro, and then perhaps the Seventh Doctor, finding himself back there again, got the idea of reprogramming it to destroy Skaro.
It's a good point. No-one knows why the First Doctor took it from Gallifrey in the first place and why he left it there in 1963 to collect in his First Incarnation at a later date. I always assumed he put it there as some trap for the Daleks but maybe if it didn't and he had other plans it would explain the inconsistencies surrounding The Doctor's knowledge, or lack of, the Daleks at that time.
I would imagine the Doctor was expecting some unpleasant, power-mad species to turn up wanting to get hold of the Hand of Omega and programmed it to zap them, not knowing at that time it would turn out to be the Daleks. Why the First Doctor would do that I neither know nor care.
Possibly the Time Lords themselves.
I thought he took it to stop the Time Lords themselves from using it, presumably on each other!