Big Gay Longcat reviews Doctor Who: Remember the Daleks Part One

Remember the Daleks is the first story of season 25. It stars Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor and Sophie Aldred as Ace. Although it is a Dalek story it is not written by Terry Nation, which bodes ill for how good this can possibly be, but then on the other paw it is written by Ben A Ronovitch who is a manny that likes Ars Magica* so maybe it will be good after all? Let's find out.

It starts with a pre-titles sequence (which is also how season 24 began, although I assume this is a coincidence) in which we see the Earth from space and hear mannys talking. Then sinister music starts playing and a Dalek spaceship appears before we cut to the title sequence. This is a great opening, reminding us that the Daleks are the very best baddys in the whole of Doctor Who and the only ones to have successfully conquered the Earth (twice).

The TARDIS arrives near a school and the Doctor gets interested in a van because it has technology on it. When asked, Ace denies having any Nitro Nine in her bag but even I can tell this is a lie. Ace goes to get noms and meets Sergeant Mike, while a little manny watches the Doctor as he investigates.

There's something sinister about the little manny, although I can't quite put my paw on what exactly it is yet. She sings

"Five six seven eight, it's a Doctor at the gate."

And I don't think that is a coincidence - she recognises the Doctor somehow. It is a mystery for now, and it is a good thing they did not have modern-day internets in 1988 or else there would doubtless be speculation that the little manny was Susan, or Romana, or (somehow) both.

The Doctor goes in the van with Gandalf and Aragorn with Professor Rachel Jensen and takes over so the plot can get going. There is a ded manny to see so they get Mike and Ace and all go in the van to meet Group Captain Gilmore. The Doctor predicts that the manny was killed by "a projected energy weapon" or, as Rachel calls it,

"A death ray?"

By which they mean a pewpewpew gun. Sylvester McCoy plays the Doctor as suitably alien, beyond just being an outsider to these new characters who all know each other, with lines like

"What a predictable response."

Soldiers surround the place and one of them gets exterminated, proving the Doctor right. He had perhaps ingratiated himself with "the military" a bit too easily (since they are not UNIT or mannys he had met before) but this turn of events properly establishes him as knowing things and being on their side.

"Listen to me, Brigadier..."
"Group Captain. Group Captain Gilmore!"

As the level of danger escalates, this is a perfectly pitched tiny moment of humour in amongst the peril. With lines like that and the later exchange between Gilmore and the Doctor:

"Nothing even remotely human could have survived that."
"That's the point group, Group Captain, it isn't even remotely human."

The dialogue in this scene is very good at establishing the situation and the characters and their dynamic with the Doctor. It also builds up the threat posed by a single Dalek very well.

Sadly the payoff is not as good as the build up. The Dalek emerges and starts missing with every shot from its pewpewpew gun, though the soldiers are not successful either. The Doctor blows it up with Ace's Nitro Nine, making him look like the only competent character in the story so far.

The Doctor and Ace take the soldiers' van and drive around while the Doctor gives Ace some of the Daleks' backstory... or should that be The Backstory of the Daleks? There is also some business with them changing who is driving the van that is clearly meant to be comedic but is just confusingly directed instead.

Mike introduces Group Captain Gilmore to Mr Ratcliffe, who is played by George Sewell from UFO and The Detectives. Something is mysterious about him... and I don't just mean his name, which makes him sound like he might be a mouse on a high place... because the next scene we see Mr Ratcliffe in, his mannys have knocked out two of the soldiers and stolen the ded Dalek for an unknown purpose.

Mr Ratcliffe is taking orders from an unseen manny in a Dalek chair - it looks a bit like Davros although I know it isn't Davros because I have seen this before. But I think that we are supposed to think that it is Davros so there will be a surprise later on, however this will obviously only work if we have not seen it before or read this review before.

The Doctor and Ace go back to the school where they meet Mr Bronson, who is played by Michael Sheard from Doctor Who (the last of his six guest appearances, having already been Rhos in The Ark, Dr Summers in The Mind of Evil, Laurence Scarman in Pyramids of Mars, Lowe in The Invisible Enemy and Mergrave in Castrovalva. And yet the Doctor never felt the need to investigate or explain why these six different characters were so similar...) and he acts strangely too.

The Doctor and Ace go into the school's basement. Ace has a bat which is not of the flying mouse variety but is of the sort used in American sports, demonstrating that the BBC were still trying to appeal to American viewers at this point in the show's history. This kind of bat is also the sort to be used for a bit of the old ultraviolence, and I suspect that this is the reason that Ace has it since, as I have speculated before, this Ace is a psycho.

In the basement there is a Dalek teleporter. A Dalek tries to teleport in but the Doctor breaks the teleporter so it disappears. Another Dalek comes and the Doctor and Ace run up the stairs to get away because everybody knows Daleks can't climb stairs.

Mr Bronson turns out to have been a Dalek henchmanny and he traps the Doctor in the basement and then the Dalek comes up the stairs after them, ending the episode, proving for the first time that stairs are not an insurmountable obstacle for the Daleks, and forever confining "everybody knows Daleks can't climb stairs" to the "lose you 10 points" category on QI.

This makes for a great cliffhanger ending precisely because "everybody knows Daleks can't climb stairs" and so the reversal of this well-established truism is genuinely shocking and powerful... the first time you see it.

As with it not being Davros in the Dalek chair, the cliffhanger loses a lot of its effectiveness once you are expecting it, so the episode can never be quite as good on repeat viewings as it was when seeing it for the first time.


* Ars Magica is a tabletop Role-Playing Game about wizards in the 13th Century who speak Latin.

My friend Longdog has been playing in an ongoing game of Ars Magica for a while now, and has been enjoying it very much. His character is a magic dog who can speak, read and write Latin and he has a job as a librarian W-wording for some wizards. Sometimes the wizards go off to have adventures and then he can get up to all sorts of magical doggy mischief while they're away.

Here is a picture of Longdog studying the rules in order to be ready for his next session!