Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 666: Revelation of the Daleks, Episode One
Dear diary,
This is more the relationship that I like to see between the Doctor and Peri. Yes, they're poking fun at each other's weight and having a bit of a bicker, but it comes across more as good-natured joking around than anything malicious. I think it's clearest when the pair are trying to scale the wall into Tranquil Repose, and the Doctor makes a point of saying he may not be able to lift Peri, considering how much she weighs. She then calls him 'porky' in response. It feels perhaps more natural to a real friendship, where you might joke around and call each other names, and I think I quite like that. I could have done without all the innuendo with the Doctor's fob watch, though! This is the last story in which the Doctor is given his very 'rough' persona, before it all gets toned down a bit for Trial of a Time Lord. On the whole, I've enjoyed the concept of having a less-likeable Doctor, but I think they did mis-step a little bit in first giving him four episodes at the end of the previous season (leaving the audience nine months before the next one to muse on the fact that they don't like the new Doctor), and in planning to soften him across his entire era - I think we needed to see more of this incarnation's softer side as this season wore on, just to reassure us that he's the same Doctor underneath it all.
This is also the last story to feature 45-minute episodes during the 'classic' run of the programme. Again, I think it can be a good idea - the 21st century series has shown that - but the production team at this point just haven't quite known what to do with them. In the making of documentary on the Attack of the Cybermen DVD, Eric Saward comments that he liked the 45-minute format because it allowed you longer to really flesh out your characters, but I don't think many of the writers have really done that! Robert Holmes has still been the master with The Two Doctors, and even Saward himself is doing a better job than usual of populating his world in this story (though here perhaps more than ever, you can see him trying to emulate Holmes' style), but I think episodes have largely felt a bit clunky this season. It was most highlighted in Timelash, when the episodes just dragged on-and-on, well past the point when I would have comfortably have liked a break from them. I'm almost wondering if I might watch that story again at some point with the international-style cliffhangers reinserted to make it four episodes - it could fare better!
Thankfully, there's a lot more to like in today's episode than there was in the last few. I really wasn't sure what I'd make of this story - it's been so long since I've seen it that I couldn't remember a great deal. I think I quite like it, with plenty of action going on to keep me interested, and I almost like the fact that the Doctor and Peri don't actually get involved with the main plot at all in this first half. I'd worried that it would feel like it was taking the mick too much, but it's allowed the cast of guest characters to firmly establish themselves before our regulars arrive. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like once the two worlds collide - I don't think we've ever had so much time setting up the guest cast before the Doctor or his companion meets them, have we?
Perhaps the one slight disappointment that I've got about it is the way the Daleks have been used. We're introduced to their part in the narrative without any fanfare - we simply cut right to some of them in Davros' lair. I know I used to joke about the fact that the 'Episode One Cliffhanger' would be the pepper pots turning up, even though we know they're in it from the title, but I sort of want a bit more of a song and dance made of them. The best Dalek moment in the entire episode, for instance, is as we watch the Doctor and Peri walking off down a large ramp into the complex, and suddenly behind them, right up close to the camera, a Dalek whizzes by. That's actually scary. If we hadn't seen the Daleks in the story yet - and if you didn't know that they were in it - I think that would be a real 'heart skips a beat moment'.
It would also be helped by the fact that we've got Daleks in this episode quite unlike the ones we're use to. Back in Day of the Daleks, I complained that in the colour-era stories, the Daleks always looked a bit rubbish. They're tatty, and broken. The different props have been mixed and matched and put together wrong, so they don't fit. The paint work has been touched up in dribs and drabs, where you can still see the wet patches, and they're that dull grey colour. It worked well for the bleak Genesis of the Daleks, but they just don't have the flair or style of the 1960s versions. But here! Oh! They're white and gold! They're brand new, and I've always loved this colour scheme on them. It adds to the moment when one glides past the camera, because you're almost not quite sure. It looked like a Dalek, but could it be…?
This episode is also home to the glass Dalek, and it's - you've guessed it - another image that's been seared on my brain from reading Doctor Who: The Legend years and years ago, before I saw this tale. There's something so wonderful about the idea, and I love the way it's been lit, sat up on its little platform. Beautiful. I'm sure that a similar creature appears in Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, and it's no wonder that it's made the jump from page to screen, because it's such a beautiful visual concept.
While I'm on the subject of visuals - how lucky were they to have been hit by so much snow during the filming of this one? That opening shot of the TARDIS arriving on the bank of a river, with the snow being blown around by the wind, and the winter sun sitting in the sky… oh, it's beautiful. As the Doctor and Peri explore, you can't help but think that there really is something a bit alien about all of this, and it seems so perfectly suited to a story that's so steeped in the tones of death. I can't help but think that had they filmed this simply on a regular wet autumn day, it would have looked pants.
