Revelation Of The Daleks

There's plenty of death to be found in the Dr Who stories (only a few contain no deaths at all), but there are not many stories that could be said to be actually about death in any detailed way. This one is a concentrated parody of various practices of the death industry, especially in America. There is a send-up of the practice of cryogenics, where people pay to have their dead bodies frozen until such time as a cure for whatever disease killed them is developed, a connection made explicit in the scene where the DJ comments on Beck's Syndrome. Partially inspired by Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One novel, the script also pokes some fun at the culture of tritely named resting places, much to Peri's disgust. Kenny Everett used to specialise in jingles and clips borrowed from American radio stations during his own DJ career, and once played an advert for a place calling itself the Shrine of Light Mausoleum, in which an earnest voice over explained the peaceful and pleasant ambience the institution had to offer. Tasambeker's promotional spiel to the Doctor and Peri isn't entirely dissimilar.

The people working there clearly have little reverence for either death or life, except when publicly required, though, as witnessed by Jobel's reminder to the staff that they need to forget that the President's deceased wife is just a stiff for the duration of his visit, and the unsentimental way he checks out and discusses the condition of the various corpses. Ultimately, to them, it's just mundane work and they've obviously become long inured to its macabre nature.

To complement the mausoleum setting, we also have a protagonist whose trade relates to death in a different way, a professional assassin. Orcini is the culmination of Saward's experimentation with mercenary characters (Lytton could be considered an earlier draft). Effectively, these characters are psychologically damaged personalities, as a result of living in a world where ruthlessness is the only key to survival. What helps elevate Orcini above any similar examples by the same author is the fact that Orcini clearly knows and understands this. He has managed to retain a sense of idealism, and ambitions towards nobility, even in his current circumstances (expelled from the Grand Order of Oberon, he nevertheless still considers himself bound by their rules, and wishes to be accepted back into them). He interprets his mission to kill Davros as "a crusade against evil" which will be "just like the old days".

If anyone could be considered the hero (or rather antihero, in this case) of the story, it is Orcini. Saward's relative lack of interest in writing for the man in the colourful coat and the high spirited American girl is indicated by the way his story sidelines them for so much of the time, and even when those two do appear, their scenes are often fairly inconsequential, until over halfway through the story at least (even the cliffhanger with the toppling gravestone was only added by an unenthusiastic Saward to comply with a request from the producer).

Orcini's personality comes in for far more intense examination here. His interest in honour and history is further demonstrated when he is able to explain the name and function of a sword to his squire, Bostock, for example. It's also fitting, as he is a man who recognises he has little to look forward to but the past. He goes into the mission intending it as a last gesture, his motivation personalised. Uninterested in Kara's political schemes, and probably indifferent as to her ultimate agenda, Orcini accepts the mission because he sees it as a means of redemption and vindication for him, a way of granting posthumous recognition to his name, as well as a chance to kill a being he considers evil.

Jobel and Tasambeker are both rather weak and deluded people, each putting up an act to try and impress the outside world. Tasambeker feels unable to exert any authority other than by by bullying and shouting, and even then it never works. Takis and Lilt both tease and ridicule her pretensions at bombast, which only frustrates her even more, and it is clear from her dealings with both Davros and Jobel that she lacks self-confidence. Fated to be a victim of the caprices of these other two characters (she does not have the authority to be able to resist Davros's intention to have her made into a Dalek, and she does not have the charm or strength of character to be able to persuade Jobel to run off and escape with her), she ends up in about as pathetic or pitiful a position as she can before her eventual extermination, although in the process she does manage to expose the hollowness of the act Jobel puts on around him. She not only kills him, but inadvertently destroys his vanity in the process, when the man's absurd ginger wig falls off during his final collapse.

Neither character really evokes much sympathy though. Tasambeker remains thoroughly unlikeable and irritating even when in the most desperate state. Jobel is bumptious, self important, laughably pompous and a drooling lecher, as seen and commented on several times. He is a man who struts and puffs himself up, revelling in the chance to throw his authority around and sarcastically assert how much he knows best. There is also a suggestion that he is something of an incompetent dilettante, cautiously going along with Takis and Lilt's hints of working against Davros, while crudely passing this off as a joke after Tasambeker's warnings and apparently still assuming that his claims of loyalty (and would-be indispensability to the place) should be enough to keep him safe.

Even Natasha and Grigory, although nominally sympathetic, have some blood on their hands, having killed at least one guard. They may have good reasons for having to resort to desperate measures, such as not being allowed to gain access to Stengos's body legally, but it still means they are morally compromised to some extent. That aside, their main function, other than exposition for the Doctor, is as a means of reacting to what transpires to be eventually happening at Tranquil Repose. Principally, this involves confronting the hideous parody of a living creature that Natasha's father has become, perched in a glass Dalek shell and begging for death for as long as he still retains any vestiges of his original identity. This mirrors the Doctor and Peri's initial encounter with the mutant, and in both cases the suffering of Davros's victim can only be cured by a mercy killing. Real death becomes a release from the artificially generated mockery of it.

The story makes liberal use of semi-humorous double acts (possibly a device borrowed from Robert Holmes), with Takis and Lilt possessing a slightly Laurel and Hardyesque physical presence. This pair's morality is somewhat dubious, given that we see them willingly torturing Natasha and Grigory at one stage (Lilt is even about to "mark" Natasha by slashing her face with a knife, until warned off by Takis, and he also seems the more sadistic of the two in the said torture scene). The way in which they turn out to have been against Davros all along and wanting to restore Tranquil Repose to its former nature therefore begs a few questions. It's easier to believe that Takis may have been acting up to what was expected of him, but Lilt does not appear to need such encouragement.

The other main double act from the support characters is Kara and Vogel, the nature of which is left ambiguous. It's been assumed that the two of them are having an affair, although it could just be that the latter is unusually sycophantic (or perhaps they would like to be in a truly romantic relationship with each other but daren't risk it or believe themselves out of each other's rank?). The script allows itself a self aware moment when Bostock comments about them "They're like a double act", and even Vogel's death is played in such a way as to imply stronger feelings for each other than either has openly stated.

The DJ feels like more of a spare part in narrative terms, with his scenes being mostly isolated from the main story, at least until Peri meets him. They do give Alexei Sayle a chance to display his anarchic charisma and performance skills, as well as compounding the mortuary satire (by having tacky lowbrow entertainment as some of the material being broadcast to the bodies), but he's also quite likeable and guileless when first encountering Peri, and his use of sonic rock and roll to kill the invading Daleks is fairly ingenious and unusual.

Davros benefits from being given a strong base of authority in the story's setting, for the first time since his original story. Just as his name was feared on Skaro, so his designated title, the Great Healer, is spoken of with awe and reverence on Necros. He negotiates trade deals with political figures and has also managed to build a reputation for himself as a provider of famine relief, with a Soylent Green-inspired gruesome twist of the food happening to derive from the dead bodies installed under his care. Principally though, we are reminded of the Frankenstein nature of much of his work, dealing as it does her with not only the attempted reanimation of life, but the genetic and physical distortion of people's physical bodies. This latter is a common theme in the Colin Baker stories (for example, the Cyber-conversions, and the various experiments caried out by Quillam, the Rani, Dastari, the Borad, Crozier, or Ruth Ward's Vervoid infection), but is possibly utilised to greater effect in horror terms in this story than any of his others, partly thanks to some appropriately grim and nasty make-up for the victims of his work that we see, although the harrowing nature of the scripting, already alluded to earlier, also helps. More incidentally, this story also sees a factonalising of the Daleks on colour/origin lines, with Davros's white Daleks aligned against the older gunmetal grey ones, a division that will be kept up in the next Dalek story.

The catacombs offer us a glimpse of the planet's own history, before Tranquil Repose was built. It's fitting that they appear to be both gloomy and morbid in design, hinting at some sort of esoteric cultism, with gargoyles and various other grotesque sculptures on display. These and the dark vaulted rooms suggest a superstition and ritual-riddled former civilisation on the planet, one which may have become extinct either before or because of its being colonised by humans.

On the whole, the standards of direction, lighting and set design are all very high, probably as good as 80s Dr Who ever achieved. It may have been serendipity, but the snowy location scenes do add a striking visual starkness to it, and there is some excellent lighting for the Tranquil Repose and catacomb scenes, along with an appropriate blood-red flavour for the laboratory. The marble effect for the walls is particularly noteworthy, as is the seemingly huge and detailed set used for Davros's den. In addition to all this, the model shots mostly manage to convincingly imitate the filmed industrial location. The costumes aren't quite as good - several pale blue overalls that don't seem to fit the settings very well and aren't that interesting to look at. I don't much care for the effect of the cap designs being continued via heavy make up on people's foreheads either (principally Tasambeker's).

Not every bit of humour works, some of the ideas feel awkwardly tacked on (such as the statue business mentioned earlier - it's a little unlikely that Davros would go to all trouble for a practical joke, or even bother with trying one at all), but the strength of the characterisation, concepts, and the production work in general, help raise this one to be one of the most interesting and rewarding stories of its era.