Will Brooks’ 50 Year Diary - watching Doctor Who one episode a day from the very start...
Day 530: Destiny of the Daleks, Episode Four
Dear diary,
For a moment, I thought that this episode instantly negated my theory about the Daleks splitting off into factions and only this group becoming robots. Davros kept banging on about them being robotic creatures in general, and if he doesn’t know, then what hope is there for the rest of us? Actually, though, I think it can be reconciled with my earlier thoughts - he’s just been brought up to speed with the events of his sleep by these Daleks, and they’ve possibly only described to him their decent into being robots, and neglected to mention their mutant brothers who are still out there spreading hate among the stars. There we go, that solves it. If you squint a bit.
In all, I think that Destiny of the Daleks feels a bit… lightweight. The Daleks have come to revive Davros to fix their computer, and then the Doctor tricks him into blowing them all up before he can even get close to the machinery. Story over. I don’t know that it’s particularly more lightweight than many other Dalek tales, but it certainly feels like everything just been a bit too leisurely for my likings. I’ve enjoyed lots of individual elements from the story, but I think this is one of those instances where the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
Still, even this final episode manages to give me lots of things to enjoy. Chief among them is probably the Doctor getting a race of war-like robots to play games of Rock, Paper, Scissors in order to teach them a thing or two about logic - that has to be one of the most Doctor Who things in the world, and I absolutely love it. I’m also keen on the number of Daleks that are milling around today. I some shots, there’s only 5 of them, but the way the camera pans across seems to make it feel like a lot more. Then, when they all start blowing up, they go in pretty spectacular explosions!
The most important thing about this episode, though, surely has to be the fact that it’s Terry Nation’s final written contribution to the world of Doctor Who. He’s been with us since 1963, and the programme’s second story, and has been responsible for 7-and-a-half Dalek tales (eight-and-a-half, if you want to count Mission to the Unknown as separate to The Daleks’ Master Plan), and two non-Dalek adventures. He’s come in for a bit of stick from me, over the years, for his particular brand of writing, but looking at his average scores, he’s not doing too badly!
For his Dalek episodes (I’m including Mission to the Unknown, and only counting Episodes One - Five and Seven for Master Plan), he averages 7.02 as a score. For The Keys of Marinus and The Android Invasion, his two Dalek-less stories, he comes in at a slightly lower average of 5.80. Still, considering that the Daleks are his lasting legacy to the programme (and the world!), that’s not bad going!
