Remembrance of the Daleks

It's difficult for someone who likes Season 24 to put their finger on just what happened with "Remembrance of the Daleks", although when you think about it, it's stunningly simple. Doctor Who raised its game in every way possible, acquired a sense of purpose, and remembered what being Doctor Who was actually about.

Having something to head towards was a good thing. For the past year the TARDIS had landed, taken off again and what happened in-between had little or no bearing on other stories in the season or even the series. It was refreshing after the continuity-addled "Trial", but not new. Doctor Who had been a stranger before in his formative years, and he'd also been a friend, at least to the clutch of returning faces in the Davison and Colin Baker years. What he hadn't been for a long time was a stranger to us, or even perhaps something else. In "Remembrance" the Doctor's most mysterious moments aren't his reference to having "trouble with the prototype" or having laid all the traps in the first place, but are embodied in the resentful looks he gives Gilmore, or the troubled traveller that rests in Harry's Cafe late at night to "bury his past". This sensitive, perversely human alien hadn't taken time out to reflect for a very long time. How ironic that the Fifth Doctor had long before noted that life was made up of such "small, beautiful" moments, and yet by the end of "Dragonfire" he'd spent so long dashing about he'd been forgetting to actually have them.

Then there's the way "Remembrance" is made with such an utter and complete sense of love. Small touches, like the establishing shot of the funeral parlour with the milkman passing outside, or the way the Doctor and Ace swap seats in the van as it passes through a tunnel, or the Special Weapons Dalek, are little bits of magic that nobody ever thought of adding before. If you're pre-occupied with tying four complicated scripts together, or making sure your story fits in with "The Tenth Planet" twenty years before, or simply rushing to get it done because you started the year with no script editor or stories, then just banging out the season is going to be a triumph. But with "Remembrance", everything pointed to them having time to lavish a little extra love on the end result as well.

Above all, with "Remembrance" those in charge finally realised what making Doctor Who was about. It wasn't about adhering to a set of rules, having to have the TARDIS land in every Part 1, having to bring back three recurring villains in every season or having to have a glamorous assistant. It was about fresh new ideas, and innovation and scaring the kids, and making the hero magical. The appeal of the Daleks in the first place was that they were awesome, fearsome and original. Arguably, every production team up to "Remembrance" completely missed the point of dusting off four battered casings and bringing them back. Here, they have a Special Weapons machine, an Emperor, a Mothership and rival factions. They were as exciting as they had been all those years ago. And so was Doctor Who.

In these respects, the series began Season 25 by travelling back to its roots in more than just the obvious way. It became concerned again not what Doctor Who was about, but in working out how it could once again be as fun and exciting as it was at the beginning.