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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