Doctor Who fans the thought occurred to me that outside of reviewing the classic story Shada i've not taken a look at any serial from the Tom Baker era. Well the other day I started looking at stories from his time in the TARDIS and without realising it the story I chose a story from the exact same season as Shada should it have been completed and so here is my review of the season 17 opening serial Destiny Of The Daleks.
The plot of the serial is The Doctor and a newly regenerated Romana find themselves of Skaro and in the middle of a battle centuries in the making. The plot of the episode is honestly pretty weak and is easily the weakest dalek story i've seen from the classic era since there is no real plot to it for the most part but that being said the pacing of the episodes and of the story is honestly really good and due to that the time did fly by for each of the episodes.
Now this serial does have Tom Baker as The Doctor and it also introduces Lalla Ward (who appeared in the season 16 finale The Armageddon Factor as Princess Astra) here playing Romana. Together they are joined by David Gooderson as Davros , Peter Straker as Commander Sharrel , Suzanne Danielle as Agella , Tony Osoba as Lan , Tim Barlow as Tyssan , Penny Casdagli as Jall , David Yip as Veldan , Cassandra as a Movellan Guard and Roy Skelton as the Dalek Voices.
Now having seen Lalla in Shada so I do now that she can indeed act when the script is really good and the same is true here she is honestly really good in her debut story there are of course some rough edges in her acting but that's really it. Tom is really good in this episode but he doesn't get much of a chance to shine really which is a shame but given that he's acting opposite both the daleks and davros it's kind of understandable. As for the guest actors like Tom they don't really get much of a chance to shine which here is a bit of an issue because alot of the guest cast do play important characters.
Now this episode is famous or rather infamous for Romana's regeneration scene mostly because it's played for laughs. I personally had no problem with it since it's only a short scene and once it's done it's never brought up again but at the same time that might also be why alot of fans don't really like it because the regeneration doesn't have an effect on the story but I honestly feel that doing a regeneration scene and having it played for laughs is a rather fresh way of doing it and while that kind of scene wouldn't work for The Doctor it does however work for his companions if that makes sense.
This story is also kind of historic because it's the last Doctor Who story that Dalek creator Terry Nation wrote. However even tho he is the credited writer of the story there was a lot of Douglas Adams who according to director Ken Grieve wrote 98% of the script so it's difficult to say who wrote the Romana regeneration scene but given that Terry most likely didn't write that much of the dalek stuff that might explain why the story and the daleks just aren't that good in this story.
Let's talk about Davros because he really doesn't do anything at all in this story and i'm not making that up he does nothing that adds to the plot of the story. I honestly feel that he was added in at the last minuet due to the fact he has little impact on the actual plot of the story which is a shame because he's the one who created the daleks and like the daleks the makers of the show don't treat him with any respect.
You want proof of that the Davros mask is in such bad shape that his eyes don't even open so it looks like he's fast asleep and there are times where the mouth looks like it's falling of. The Daleks aren't in much better shape because they've been kept in storage for some time and so there models have a lot of tear to them it honestly makes you wonder why the BBC didn't take better care of the models since the daleks are one of the icons of this franchise even in the late seventies.
Now this serial does have a lot of location work a shocking amount for classic Doctor Who in fact I recon that at least 99% of this serial was done on location. Which actually means there's no K9 in this serial because the production crew had issues with the last time there was large amount of location work for an episode and so to save themselves the bother of going through all that trouble again they simply wrote him out at the start of the story.
The Movellan's just didn't seem that interesting to me which is a shame because having robots going to war with the daleks does sound interesting. However they don't really have that good of a look either to me they looked like they just stepped out of auditioning for that hologram thing for The Star Wars Holiday Special only they were done on half the budget and were acting opposite Tom Baker and don't worry if you don't get that Star Wars reference but trust me they do look pretty bad.
This serial is four episodes long but really doesn't have the story to cover that amount of episodes if anything it should have been two or three episodes long. However due to it being four episodes it does mean that the plot does get effected since it doesn't really kick in until episode 2 or 3 which isn't really something you want to happen for a story this short the plot should kick in around episode one since then you'd have more time to flesh out the characters and make the guest characters seem actually interesting.
Now this is a dalek story and so that means we do have to talk about our favourite pepper pot monsters. In my opinion the daleks in this story just aren't scary which is a shame because by design they should be scary in all most every scene there in but here there just not in fact in one case there the butt of a joke which while it is a funny joke it makes them less scary at least in my opinion it does.
Overall this is a pretty weak Dalek I can't say if this a weak Tom Baker story since apart from this one i've only seen one but even so this story gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.