Monday, April 22, 2013

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary: Destiny of the Daleks





Doctor Who: 
Destiny of the Daleks 
By Terry Nation

“If you're supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don't you try climbing after us?”

The Doctor is surprised to see that Romana has regenerated into the image of Princess Astra.  He says she can’t be like that and tells her to try again.   She tries a whole bunch of different personas but none of them fly.  She finally decides on looking like Princess Astra and The Doctor reluctantly agrees.   They land on a planet that the randomizer has chosen. The Doctor installed the randomizer to prevent The Black Guardian from finding them.

They land on a planet that The Doctor seems to find familiar. All rocky and looks like a quarry The Doctor and Romana go investigating but earth tremors appear to be happening and The Doctor gets trapped under a rock.  Romana tries to go back to the TARDIS to get K – 9 to help get him out.   The Doctor is soon freed by a group of disco dressed robots called The Movellians.  They take The Doctor back to their ship where they tell him that he is on Skaro. 

Romana gets back and finds The Doctor gone and goes looking for him when she falls down a shaft.  She is quickly frightened as the tremors start up again and this time the Daleks burst through the wall and quickly capture her and put her in a slave detail removing rocks.  The Doctor asks the Movellians why they are on Skaro and they say they are here to fight the Daleks and stop them from getting to their creator.  The Doctor soon realizes that Davros is still alive and that is bad news for everyone in the universe if he is reunited with The Daleks.


This is the last Doctor Who story that Terry Nation would write for Doctor Who and his creation the Daleks.   Once again he has a story that centers around Davros played this time by David Gooderson and I’ll say he is an adequate replacement for Michael Wisher but not as good as him.  Terry Nation has the Daleks at war with another computer race the Movellans and the Daleks need their creator to help and defeat them.  It is a pretty good idea and a good way to bring Davros back from the dead as we all thought he bought the farm at the end of Genesis of the Daleks.


The concept of two robot races fighting each other is an interesting one but Terry Nation has done that before with the Mechanoids so this is not a new idea but this time it works better as the robots are actually humanoid in appearance.  But the Movellans are pretty silly to look at.  Since it is the end of the 70’s and disco was in full bloom it did make sense to have them look discoish in those white costumes and dreads.


Destiny of the Daleks isn’t the best of Dalek stories but it is one that is fun to watch in a guilty pleasure kind of way.  Even if it is to laugh at Davros mask as it is stretched out and taped and pasted together especially near the mouth or the way the Movellans fall down when you take their power packs off their belts.  I like it because of the Daleks and during the time I was exposed to Doctor Who I had just seen Genesis and they weren’t in it that much so Destiny gave us a lot more Dalek action.
Grade C +

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