Doctor Who/Remembrance of the Daleks

Remembrance of the Daleks
25x01
Airdate	October 28, 1988
Production Number	7H
Written by	Ben Aaronovitch
Directed by	Andrew Morgan
← 24x04 Dragonfire	25x02 → The Happiness Patrol
Doctor Who — Season Twenty-Five

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Remembrance of the Daleks is the first serial of the twenty-fifth season of Doctor Who, and the one-hundred and fifty-second serial overall.

Guest Stars: Michael Sheard (Headmaster), Pamela Salem (Dr Rachel Jensen), Simon Williams (Group Captain Gilmore), Joseph Marcell (John), Terry Molloy (Davros), Peter Halliday (Vicar), Roy Skelton (Voices/Dalek Voices), Royce Mills (Voices/Dalek Voices), Brian Miller (Voices/Dalek Voices), Hugh Spight (Dalek Operator), John Scott Martin (Dalek Operator), Cy Town (Dalek Operator), Tony Starr (Dalek Operator), Hugh Spight (Black Dalek Operator)

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• This story sees the return of a more manipulative Doctor, and a curtailing of the extremely "silly" portrayal Sylvester McCoy had brought to the role the previous season.
• The Doctor arrives intending to either finish hiding the Hand of Omega, or else trick the Daleks into taking it after he's had a chance to give it its genocidal instructions.
• Discovering two factions of Daleks, he winds up spending much of the story trying to keep Group Captain Gilmore and his batallion out of the cross-fire and letting the Daleks take care of each other.
• The Daleks and their homeworld are apparently destroyed in this story, although Davros survives. The fact that the Daleks eventually return to perpetuate the Time War, as allluded to in the revived series (starting with Dalek) has not been explained.
• This story marks the earliest known incursion of the Daleks on Earth in calendar terms.

Characters

Ace: This is Ace's first full-fledged adventure as a companion, having left with the Doctor at the end of Dragonfire.

The Doctor: This story is the first of several which aimed to put some mystery back into the character. After years (since The War Games) of thinking that the Doctor left home mainly out of a kind of restlessness and maybe (as per his attitude in An Unearthly Child) some political trouble, we discover that the Doctor stole more than just his TARDIS when he left home, and that his whole purpose in coming to Earth, 1963 was to find an obscure place to bury it in hopes that everyone -- his own people, the Daleks, everyone -- would forget about it. He also lets slip a suggestion the he might have had more involvement with Gallifrey's "old days" than we previously believed. Most of these hints are not made good on in the remaining run of the series, although the novels picked up many of the threads and ran with them.

Davros: The creator of the Daleks is seen to have reached a kind of apotheosis in this story. Having been reduced to little more than a shriveled head mounted in a sea of electronics, he is about as close to being a Dalek as someone born in a humanoid body will ever get. He's also regained power over a significant enough faction of the Daleks to style himself Emperor, whereas since Destiny of the Daleks, he was seen to be the renegade.

Referbacks

An Unearthly Child: This episode is something of a reinterpretation of the show's earliest days, explaining exactly what the First Doctor and Susan were doing on Earth in 1963 in the first place. The TARDIS materialises just down the street from the Coal Hill School where Susan attended and was taught by Ian and Barbara. The first Dalek in the story is encountered in I. M. Foreman's scrapyard at 76 Totter's Lane. There are several hints that mere days have passed since The First Doctor departed, abducting the two teachers, including a copy of a book on the French Revolution on a table in the school's lab (a book Susan borrowed from Barbara but is not seen carrying back to the TARDIS).

The Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks: The Doctor explains to Ace how the Daleks came into existence.

The Three Doctors, The Deadly Assassin: The Doctor explains a bit of Time Lord history to Ace, including how Omega was the first Stellar Engineer and Rassilon founded Time Lord society.

Revelation of the Daleks: The last time the Daleks were seen, there were also split into two factions, but the tables have been turned since that story, and Davros is now the Dalek Emperor (but probably not the same Emperor as in the later story The Parting of the Ways).

Also, Dr Jensen ordinarily is a professor at Cambridge, where Dr Liz Shaw also studied and worked. They are never tied together, but Dr Jensen is being used by Group Captain Gilmore in a similar capacity to that The Brigadier intended to use Liz before the Doctor turned up. The similarity in both situation and personalities are close enough that the Doctor mistakenly addresses Gilmore as "Brigadier" early on.

Trivia

Behind the Scenes

• This was actor Michael Sheard's sixth and final appearance in Doctor Who. Mr Sheard passed away in 2005 and thus will never appear in the revived series. His others were:
  • The Ark as Rhos
  • The Mind of Evil as Dr Summers
  • Pyramids of Mars as Laurence Scarman
  • The Invisible Enemy as Supervisor Lowe
  • Castrovalva as Mergrave

• This was actress Pamela Salem's third, and so far final appearance in Doctor Who. Her others were:
  • The Face of Evil as one of Xoanon's voices
  • The Robots of Death as Pilot Toos

Allusions and References

Dr Jensen and Allison have a conversation which mentions "Bernard" and the "British Rocket Group". Both are references to the character of Bernard Quatermass, from a series of movies penned by Nigel Kneale. The first Quatermass stories actually pre-date Doctor Who.

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