Wow, dude…you don’t look so hot.
The Doctor (Colin Baker) and Peri (Nicola Bryant) travel to Necros for a funeral but uncover things aren’t right on the funeral home planet. Inside the Traquil Repose, the bodies of the frozen dead are being used for experiments by Davros (Terry Molloy) to make a whole new generation of Daleks. Now the Doctor, Peri, and others must stop Davros and before he has an army of killers behind him.
Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks is the final series in the twenty-second season of Doctor Who. It aired from March 23, 1985 to March 30, 1985 in two parts. Following Doctor Who: Timelash, Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks has been collected as part of The Colin Baker Years as Story #143 (or Story #142 if you count Shada).
Oh, this isn’t going to boost your ego at all…
Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks is a rather strange and disjointed Doctor Who serial. The plot really feels all over the place and there seem to be too many factions in play to really get a handle on any of the characters. Be it the workers at Traquil Repose, Davros with his Daleks, the other Daleks, the Doctor, the DJ (Alexei Sayle), the mercenary Orcini (William Gaunt) and his assistant Bostock (John Ogwen), or the couple Natasha (Bridget Lynch-Blosse) or Grigory (Stephen Flynn), it feels like there are way too many characters for an hour and a half sequence. This should have either been a bit longer or really pared down.
In addition to the busy plot, the DJ part of the story kind of grates on me. With Peri, who’s supposed to be American, and this DJ who is supposed to be imitating American DJs, I find it rather distracting (as an American) trying to listen to them. The accents were all over the place and not close to any regional accent. The DJ was just over-the-top and interjected in to the plot on occasion (he’s supposed to keep the frozen corpses up to date on events). I really expected him to play more into the plot, but he didn’t really end up doing much.
Hey Davros…how’s it going?
Davros stories are always fun, but I like him much better as a creepy little Dalek than a disembodied head. The series was the first serial to show the Daleks floating (though you don’t get to see them take the stairs until Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks in Story #151). I liked the warring Dalek factions, and I do like the sleek white Daleks.
I’m not a big fan of this period of Doctor Who. Colin Baker is one of my least favorite Doctors and the “American” Peri is a rather obnoxious companion. The series is the last serial to have a 45 minute episode part until the relaunch, and also the last to mix film and video sources. Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks is followed by Doctor Who: The Mysterious Planet which is the first part of the bigger storyline The Trial of a Time Lord.
Preceded By:
Doctor Who: Timelash (Story #141)
Followed By:
