Doctor Who: Resurrection of the Daleks (1984)
— Dr. Who Story No. 134 (DVD)
Science Fiction Video
Written by Eric Saward
Starring Peter Davison
ISBN: 0-7907-7754-1
Publisher: Warner Home Video / BBC Video, $24.98
Resurrection of the Daleks, is the first and only full story featuring the fan favorite cybernetic aliens during Peter Davison’s era as the Doctor. The story revolves around an abandoned area of London riverside, and a space station that holds Davros, creator of the Daleks, in prison.
We start out with the Tardis getting dragged to Earth by a time corridor created by the Daleks. On board are the Doctor, Turlough (Mark Strickson) and Tegan (Janet Fielding). The plot as a whole gets somewhat complicated and convoluted during this four-part storyline. You have two main locations, one being an abandoned riverside warehouse that houses canisters containing a Dalek-destroying virus. These are guarded by duplicates, copies of humans create by the Daleks. The other location is a rather worn-down space station that has been holding Davros prisoner for 90 years. The warehouse is set in the 1980’s, while the space station is set in the far future, with a time corridor created by the Daleks connecting the two. The Daleks are trying to free Davros from his cryogenic prison to help them with the Movellan virus. Meanwhile, the Doctor and the space station crew are trying to stop the Daleks and Davros from reeking havoc and destruction as they go about their plans. Suffice it to say, there is a lot of death and destruction in this story, with virtually only three people making it out alive in the end.
The Daleks in this story come out being pretty good at being the villains, with their "shoot first and ask questions later" strategy, which also involves using human soldiers to help them take over the space station. Davros, played by a new actor, Terry Molly, is his old wonderful scheming, screaming and plotting self, trying to help the Daleks with the virus while also going about with his own secret agenda. However, as mentioned, the story is a bit too much, with many subplots that really don’t make a lot of sense, or don’t go anywhere. One example of this is that the Daleks are making duplicates of people, including important people on Earth, which are supposed to be used to take over the planet. The thing about this is that they never show any of this, only talking about it, and it never comes up again later in the story.
As for the acting, it’s pretty good, but there is some weak stuff when it comes to supporting actors. I found many of the space station crew actors a bit under par and not believable enough. This wrecks the story line somewhat, but not totally. Peter Davison is at his usual best, along with his two main companions. I just wish they could have gotten it all together with the supporting cast.
As for special effects, they are hit-and-miss. There are some really good makeup effects when the Daleks using gas attacks on the space station crew. However, some of the battle scenes have rather poor effects, and some almost seem to be missing parts, such as people being killed by nonexistent laser shots. The acting of some of the death scenes is rather bad too, but this only happens in some of the shots. As a whole, the battle scenes are fairly good, especially when the Daleks first attack the space station.
This DVD marks one of the first Doctor Who stories to be done in Dolby Digital 5.1, which unfortunately, isn’t done very well. It really doesn’t show what could have been done with today’s modern sound systems. Hopefully they will get better at using this if the BBC continues to try it. The commentary tracks are done by Peter Davison, Janet Fielding and director Matthew Robinson. Peter is just hilarious, and Janet does a good show in the commentary as well. The director, as usual, is a bit more serious, but does add to the winning commentary on the Resurrection of the Daleks. The now obligatory text commentary option is full of some good information about the show, from shooting locations, film dates, guest actor credits, and even goes into detail on how this whole Dalek story evolved in the years it took to actually get to the screen. This text is not as good as usual, but still fun to see anyway.
Other extras on this DVD include some on location shots with Eric Saward and Matthew Robinson. These were filmed more recently, and show some of the filming locations used in the London riverside area. There is a fairly interesting interview with John Nathan Turner, some extended and deleted scenes, and a BBC "Breakfast Time" featurette from 1984 with Janet Fielding, and another "Breakfast Time" interview with John Nathan Turner and Janet Fielding from 1986. There is the now usual boring Photo Gallery, a feature which I've never seen done really well yet on any Doctor Who DVD that I can think of. You also get some grainy trailers, and yet another Tardis-Cam, the latter of which I’m getting a bit tired of on these DVDs.
While this is not the best that Doctor Who has to offer, Resurrection of the Daleks does have its moments and is a decent sci-fi show. I would recommend it as a rental to non-Doctor Who fans. As for diehard fans of the show, you can’t go too wrong with this piece of the large Doctor Who pie.
(review (c) October 2004 / David Flemming)