Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks (Story 152)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Remembrance of the Daleks is the only Sylvester Mcoy Dalek story and it's the best 7th Doctor they made. It involves the Doctor returning to the very Junk Yard where the program began in 1963 just a few days after his first incarnation left. For some reason, two warring factions of Daleks have traveled back to this time as well. Why are they there and what do they want... and what exactly was the Doctor doing in 1963 London back in the first episode anyway? All these questions will be answered.
It is so cool that Dr. Who is coming out on DVD with all the extras you could want. It's a pity other show DVDs such as the recent Farscape episode don't have such extras. Hopefully the forthcoming Star Trek DVDs will. Here's a list of the extras you'll get...
commentary by Sylvester McCoy & Sophie Aldred, deleted scenes, out-takes, on screen production note subtitles, multi-angle scenes, the original trailers, photo gallery
Ths commentary is pretty good. More consistent and informative than the Robots of Death Commentary but not quite as entertaining as The Five Doctors Commentary or the Caves of androzani Commentary. Sophi and Sylvester talk a lot about things that happened on the set and the careers of some of their costars in the story. Pretty interesting stuff...

On another note... if you're looking for new Dr. Who material. Look for the audio releases of the missing episodes. Look for my list "Missing Dr. Who's on Audio and Video" to find out about this. [....]Look for "The Web of Fear" for starters. "The Dalek's Master Plan" Audio Release is awsome too. Also check out Big Finnish productions for the new audio adventures of Dr. Who featuring Doctors ranging from Peter Davison to Paul Mcgann. Was this review helpful? Did you learn something new from it? Please vote Yes.

Okay, folks. Before you go writing a one star review about how "BBC Video has double-dipped again and they don't even have half the series out yet!", let me provide some backstory on the trials and tribulations that led to this release. I'm not going to discuss the actual episode (aside from the music), as I haven't seen it yet, and many others have said more interesting things about it anyway.

When Remembrance of the Daleks was first released on DVD in the UK, a number of mistakes were made in the restoration process that led to some video effects being eliminated (eg. a Dalek ray gun was removed from a scene where a soldier gets exterminated, although his skeleton still shows through). Corrections were made for the subsequent North American and Australian releases, but UK viewers had to put up with it for a while. In 2007, the Restoration Team decided to go back and remaster the episode from scratch, with a new set of bonus features and the missing effects reinstated. It was included in a boxset release of the five Davros serials there. As you may recall, there were originally plans to release the Davros set and a standalone version of Remembrance in North America in March 2008, but thanks to complications over the inclusion of Big Finish audio dramas in the boxset, both releases got canned. In July 2009, the Special Edition was released in the UK in a standalone version, which is now coming to North America, eight months later.

So now that that's out of the way, is this worth buying if you have the original? Well, considering how the UK release of the Key to Time season blew the original North American set out of the water, it can be easily assumed that the BBC has given us a worthy double-dip for this release.

Aside from the brand new remastering job, the special edition boasts these special features:

Dolby Digital 5.1 re-mix by Mark Ayres.

The original commentary with actors Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred from 2000 is re-used.

Steve Broster has produced two new documentaries for this version:

Back to School (dur. 32' 38") - cast and crew talk about the making of the story accompanied by rare behind-the-scenes material. With actors Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred, Simon Williams and Karen Gledhill, writer Ben Aaronovitch, script editor Andrew Cartmel, director Andrew Morgan and journalists Moray Laing and Paul Lang.

Remembrances (dur. 15' 14") - cast and crew talk about the influences and references to other Doctor Who adventures that are spread throughout the story.

The original Extended and Deleted Scenes package (dur. 12' 24") has been supplemented by brand-new introductions to each scene from Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred.

Outtakes (dur. 4' 12") - bloopers and gaffs from the recording of the story.

Multi-Angle Sequences (dur. 1' 03" and 0' 47") - allows the viewer to watch Ace's escape from the Chemistry lab and the Daleks blowing up the large gates from one of two camera angles. Via a menu, the viewer should be allowed to choose which angle of each scene to start on, but should be free to use the 'Angle' button on their remote to change the view at will during play. This is a feature that was never implemented as intended on the 2000 release.

Trails and Continuity (dur. 4' 58") - BBC1 trails and continuity announcements from the story's transmission, in this extended package.

Photo Gallery (dur. 8' 36") - production, design and publicity photos from the story, heavily expanded and packaged into our now standard video sequence format.

Isolated Music - gives the viewer the option to watch the story with the clean music track.

Radio Times Listings in Adobe PDF format for viewing on PC or Mac. Programme subtitles. Subtitle Production Notes.

Also included is the documentary Davros Connections (dur. 43' 15"), which was originally exclusive to the Davros Boxset, but is now being included in this re-release. This is an in-depth look at the history of the Daleks' creator, Davros, as portrayed in both the TV stories from the BBC and in audio adventures from official licensee Big Finish. With actors Terry Molloy, David Gooderson and Peter Miles, producer / director Gary Russell, director Ken Grieve, writers Eric Saward, Ben Aaronovitch, Gary Hopkins and Joseph Lidster. Narrated by Terry Molloy.

Oh, and one final note: parts one and three each originally featured a song by The Beatles in scenes set in the cafe. While the UK version of this DVD includes the songs (thanks to blanket licensing agreements), they are obviously impossible to clear outside of the UK, so some replacement music has been used. It shouldn't really affect the viewing, as no actual footage has been cut.

For those of you still on the fence because of the double dip, consider this: the only reason Remembrance is getting re-released is because the Restoration Team screwed up the remastering process the first time around, and wanted the opportunity to go back and fix it. And whatever DVDs come out in the UK first, usually make it to North America next. Since this new DVD has improved picture and sound quality, and much more bonus features, I would definitely recommend getting this even if you have the original, on the basis of the new special features and the 5.1 sound.

Even the very title, REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS, suggest that nostalgia is going to play a big part in the story. This breakthrough 1988 episode by Ben Aaronovitch once again pits the Doctor against his oldest enemies, and for a Doctor Who serial, the scripting is unusually fast-paced, with not only an inordinate amount of action and better-than-average visual effects, but also some very well-developed characters and unexpected surprises.

Sylvester McCoy has by now very firmly established himself as the Doctor and kicks off his second season by re-introducing an air of mystery to the role. Just when the fans thought they knew everything there was to know about their hero, along come some new plot twists and hushed moments of dialogue to turn the Almighty God Of Plot Continuity on its head. New companion Ace (Sophie Aldred) wastes no time in establishing her rapport with "The Professor," and the two of them are already forging a partnership that will be the best-loved duo since the days of Tom Baker's Doctor and Elisabeth Sladen's Sarah Jane Smith.

More than a mere hat-tip to the series' own pilot episode, REMEMBRANCE actually returns to 1963 London and familiar settings last seen haunted by William Hartnell's incarnation of the first Doctor: to include Coal Hill School (including some prominent scenes in the Chemistry lab), and Foreman's junkyard in Totter's Lane. The long-standing question of just exactly what the Doctor was originally DOING here is finally answered as two warring schisms of Daleks emerge out of space-time and begin the all-out battle that viewers have been waiting for since 1984's REVELATION OF THE DALEKS. The Daleks somehow don't quite come off as terrifying as audiences may remember them; despite their murderous ways and their unending grating screams of "Exterminate," they present more like long-absent friends than the ultimate threat to the universe. Even the "Emperor" Dalek, last seen in 1967's EVIL OF THE DALEKS, has undergone a makeover in the style of the old Dalek cereal box comics.

More central to the story, however, is the wonderful character development and the repeated emphasis on racism. Sophie Aldred's 1990's teen spirit is justifiably thrown off by the ways of the early 1960's --besides being baffled by the old English monetary system, she runs up against harsher realities such as the "No Coloureds" sign in the window of the boarding house run by Mike's mother. From this we can guess where Mike (Durslet McClinton, in a tragically handsome romantic foil for Ace) soaked up his "look out for your own" attitude, and how that idealism in turn caught fire with Ratcliffe (George Sewell) who once found himself at the wrong ideological end of what passed for "patriotism" in World War II. Ratcliffe's resentment has brought him into a reckless partnership with the renegade Dalek faction, who are themselves in turn despised by the "racially pure" Imperial Daleks. (Ace's deep revulsion to racist attitudes will be more fully explored in the later episode GHOST LIGHT.)

REMEMBRANCE launches Doctor Who into its final triumphant run on BBC --Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred shepherded the series through its two final seasons with some of its best-ever writing and production values (which, alas, would not be enough to save the series from its ultimate cancellation by the Beeb in 1990). McCoy's unreadable "man of mystery" performance is first glimpsed in this episode, mostly in form of hints and verbal slips that do not go unnoticed by Ace. The grander backstory of the Time Lords is widened out as well, and there are quite a few references to past episodes that longtime fans will enjoy. The script even manages a couple of gags at the series' own expense, as well as providing a plausible "early origins" basis for the secret military agency that will later be known as U.N.I.T. Simon Williams' Captain Gilmore appears to be played mostly for comic effect in a kind of exaggerated foreshadowing of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The performances by Pamela Salem as Rachel and Karen Gledhill as Alison go a long way towards solidifying the "peacetime chaos" that was English society in the early 60's. The opening pre-credits shot of the Dalek mothership looming over an unsuspecting Earth is brilliantly accented by a background babble of 1960's media sound bytes, to include speeches by John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Besides some hilarious commentary by McCoy and Aldred that demonstrates just how closely the two worked together during their time in the series, the DVD has cleaned up the eternal problem of Doctor Who background music dampening out the dialogue. Special Features are little more than the obligatory biographies, blooper outtakes, and alternate camera angles of two effects sequences --not all it's cracked up to be. Aaronovitch clearly has some big shoes to fill (this being the first Dalek serial in the series NOT directed by Dalek creator Terry Nation), and he carries it off very well. No character (least of all Ace) is left standing around looking for something to do, the story's pacing proceeds at a comfortable rate with very little filler, there are a number of total surprises (even to hardcore fans who think they already know all about Doctor Who), and of course plenty of action scenes with lots of Daleks going kerboom. Definitely one of McCoy's best outings as the Doctor, as well as the best Dalek serial ever (with the possible exception of 1974's GENESIS OF THE DALEKS). This episode occupies a place in my own personal Top Ten list of Greatest Doctor Who Stories Ever.

This review is based on the VHS release. The region 1 DVD includes extras such as commentry and deleted scenes.

By the time Sylvester McCoy took over the role of the Doctor, the BBC had practically killed the series by imposing restrictions on the producers with regards to what type of scripts they could use, what level of violence they could display, what target audience they should aim at and a reduced budget to boot. It was commented in a lot of newspapers that the most evil villan the doctor had to face was not the Daleks or Cybermen, but rather the controller of BBC 1!!!

The first few McCoy episodes were awful and it seemed as if there was no hope for the series, but Rememberance of the Daleks proved that McCoy's Doctor could have some truely "classic" episodes along with "Ghostlight" and "Curse of Fendrick".

The Doctor takes Ace back in time to Earth in the early 1960's and seems to stumble across a lone Dalek in a junk yard (looking for cleap parts for it's spaceship perhaps?). He assists the military in destroying it and, with the help of their scientific adviser from the British Rocket Group (does the name "Professor Quatermass" mean anything to you?), he tracks another souce of alien activity to the local school - Coal Hill School.
As the plot unfolds we discover that the Doctor has been planning these events for some time and wants to use a secret Time Lord device called the Hand of Omega as bait to attract and destroy the Daleks. Unfortunately, two rival groups of Daleks show up looking for the device and a war breaks out between the Imperial and Regular Dalek forces...

A good storyline, breath-taking cliffhangers and excellent effects help to turn this story into one of the all-time greats and should have been the tenplate for all further episodes. We see the return of the "white" Dalek design from "Revelation of the Daleks", along with a new "Special Weapons Dalek" and the "Emperor Dalek". The Dalek shuttlecraft is looks convincing when landing, the Dalek weapons now fire "bolts" that pass through objects rather than the old "static line", and when a bolt hits someone we get a decent "kill" effect instead of that awful "negative" effect of the past. Even better is the visual proof that Daleks CAN go up and down stairs!!!

Doctor Who fans will have a blast as they notice subtile links and references to first Doctor Who story. For those who havn't followed the series from the beginning, Coal Hill school is where Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter attended classes and where Ian and Barbara (his first companions) taught English and Science. The classroom where Ace battles a Dalek is Ian's science classroom and the copy of the French Revolution that Ace picks up is the one that Barbara loaned Susan and which Susan was horrified to discover was full of errors. The junk yard where the lone Dalek is destroyed is the same junkyard where we first see the TARDIS... I could go on, but see how many you can find ;)

The Doctor's 25th anniversary season starts off with a bang with the instant classic, "Remembrance of the Daleks." If you're a Who fan, this is where the McCoy years go from mediocre to great and never look back.

The story takes Who back to it's roots--and the junkyard of Totter's Lane where we first met the Doctor. This time around, the Daleks are there, having pursued the Doctor to gain access to the Hand of Omega, a stellar manipulator the Doctor "borrowed" when he left his home world. But what the Doctor didn't count on was that two factions of Daleks would show up in 1963 London to claim this prize. Or did he?

The Doctor/companion team of Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred really gels here into one of the best the show has seen. The script by Ben Aaronovich is smart, fast-paced and puts a new spin on the "typical" Dalek storyline. All that and after 25 years, the Daleks finally get the ablity to go up stairs (in one of the BEST cliffhangers in all Who history).

But it's the extras on a DVD that make it worth the price of admission and, once again, the BBC is up to the task. Remembrance features a good commentary by Aldred and McCoy, a couple of deleted scenes (they're nice but you can see why they were left out) and some bloopers. All in all, the extras are good, though not as strong as Caves of Androzani.

That said, Remembrance of the Daleks is yet another stellar Who entry on DVD and one that fans should consider a must-have. New fans will enjoy it as well, though you may be thrown by the Dalek history referenced throughtout the show.

Highly recommended.

"Doctor Who" fandom has generally been split when judging the 7th Doctor/Sylvester McCoy era of the show. With "Remembrance of the Daleks", usually hailed as one of the 7th Doctor's best stories, now out on DVD for the first time, that split is as obvious as ever.

"Remembrance" is set in London, in November, 1963, opening "Doctor Who"'s 25th anniversary season by revisiting events from the show's very first episode. The script, written by then 25 year-old Ben Aaronovitch (who later made a big splash in the subsequent "Doctor Who" book line) is a terrific one, layered with references to the show's past, to the societal fears of the time (uncertainty over the burgeoning civil rights movement, and the Kennedy assassination, all linger over the story), and, of course, gives us a more descriptive view of "Doctor Who"'s signature monsters, the Daleks, than ever before. The production, on the other hand, seems stretched paper-thin, with ultra-wobbly Daleks, a really awful '80s-synthesizer incidental score, and primitive CGI effects that dated as rapidly as '70's DW's fascination with Chroma-key.

The DVD commentary track is recorded by Sylvester McCoy himself, and by Sophie "Ace" Aldred. The on-screen chemistry between these two, for which the McCoy era is fondly remembered, is present on the commentary track, which is sadly a little dull when compared to Peter Davison's comedy stylings on the "Caves of Androzani" DVD, also out this month. Aldred audibly enjoys the story, but McCoy's final reaction is "HMMM...". I agreed with both of them.

The notable extra is a stunning montage of 13 deleted scenes, with linking text describing their place in the originally-conceived story. This presentation is as handsome as the presentation of the deleted scenes in "The Godfather" box set. Honest! Also welcome are McCoy's on-camera jokes and bloopers -- the man is a human outtake reel and he's quite funny in these. The best of an obligatory photo-gallery is a shot of McCoy on location watching his stunt-double in action.

"Remembrance" can also be watched with pop-up production notes, which sometimes border on the painfully obvious ("TV sets took a long time to warm up in 1963") but which add interesting trivia. You can also select a "music-only" option, but the Casio drums and the synthesized handclaps are so painful that you're probably best off skipping that.

"Remembrance of the Daleks," considered by many to be one of the best McCoy stories, is pretty good. It attempts to make the entire series up to that point come full circle for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Who. No anniversary celebration would be complete without the good Doctor's greatest (and most loved by fans) enemies--the Daleks. In this tale we find the Doctor and Ace back where William Hartnell was so many years before them and the "Professor" has returned to finish what he started. Two warring factions of Daleks have come to Earth to do what they do best: exterminate. They've also come to collect a device to aid them in their time-hopping destruction. The Doctor, Ace, and some well-meaning humans combine forces to stop them. The only problem is that there are a few in their ranks who can't be trusted. Will the Doctor and Ace be able to figure out who's who before one of the Dalek factions grabs hold of the Eye of Omega? "Who" knows?

This particular adventure has plenty of action and mystery in it to keep the viewer interested. McCoy and Sophie Aldred (Ace) have great chemistry on the screen, and that makes the story even more enjoyable. While many see McCoy as one of the worst incarnations of the Doctor around, I like him just fine. He, along with the writers, explores the Doctor's darker side that seems to have originated with Patrick Troughton's Doctor and came through even more with Colin Baker's turn as the Time Lord. Aldred, full of youthful exuberance, steals most of the scenes that she is in. She's given a love interest in this tale that allows us to see Ace go from bat-wielding tomboy to blushing beauty. The rest of the cast gives solid performances as well.

As with all of the original "Who" tales, the show suffers from bad special effects. To many, including myself, these subpar effects actually make the show more enjoyable. In this particular adventure, however, they become annoying at times. This is best highlighted by the wobbly, jittery movements of the Daleks. It's hard to believe that the fiercest enemy of the Doctor suffers from a bad set of shocks.

The DVD, much like all of the DVDs in the original series' catalogue, comes with some great commentary from the Doctor and his companion, a fun blooper reel, a Who's Who feature on the primary actors in the show and multi-angle scenes.

Look beyond the lumbering movements of the Daleks and you've got one of the better Doctor Who adventures in "Remembrance of the Daleks." Fans of the original series will be glad to see the old Doctor in all of his glory. For those of you who only know the Doctor from the new series, you're in for a treat.

The answer is a bit complicated.

In 2007, 2entertain in the UK decided to release a Davros Box Set in their market. It would contain all five of the classic series stories that featured Davros. Four of them had been released before, however, with only Destiny of the Daleks being new to the DVD market. With that in mind, they decided to try and soup up the box set a bit.

They had been unhappy with the original UK edition of Remembrance of the Daleks. It had faults in the restoration that meant some special effects had gone missing, and one of the featurettes didn't work as intended. (Both of these problems had been repaired for the later North American edition that's been on our market since 2002.)
They decided one way to improve the Davros Box Set would be to make a Special Edition, with those faults fixed and some new special features added.

They also decided to make special arrangements with Big Finish Productions, the licensed makers of audio dramas of Doctor Who and its related characters that have been producing new stories regularly since 1999.
These arrangements were to include all of the titles they had made to that point that featured Davros on a DVD/Audio Disc, plus one new story with Davros exclusive to this box set. And to tie the audios and the TV stories together, they made a further featurette, Davros Connections, and gave it its own disc.

BBC Worldwide Americas soon announced plans to release this set in North America as well, however they soon had to retract these plans and were only able to release a single title, Destiny of the Daleks, the one we hadn't had in our market yet. The retraction occurred because the price point they wanted to sell it at, $100 for the whole set, would have undercut the UK's price point by about 50%. 2entertain were concerned that this would cause UK consumers to simply import the North American edition and not buy the UK one, and told them they had to increase the North American price to match theirs if they wanted to release it. BBC WA felt they couldn't sell it at that price and chose not to try. The UK price was inflated on this occasion due to the inclusion of the Big Finish audios, which at the time sold from Big Finish for $25 per title. It was a big discount to a consumer to buy all 8 of them as this DVD-Audio, but was still a back breaker price wise for the North American market.

BBC WA did try (and in fact did announce this) to release the Remembrance of the Daleks: Special Edition on its own at that time, but 2entertain prohibited that as well as it wasn't yet available on its own in the UK market. In the summer of 2009, however, it was finally released on its own there packaged along with the Davros Connections
featurette disc, and this March 2010 North American release is effectively the North American mirror of that UK summer 2009 release.

If you buy this title and become interested in the audio drams you hear clips of in the Davros Connections disc, where you can buy them in either CD form or as a direct mp3 download (for about half the price). The stories are the four part "I, Davros" miniseries (which do not feature the Doctor), and the three Doctor Who audio drama
stories: "Davros" starring Colin Baker, "The Juggernauts" starring Colin Baker and Bonnie Langford, and "Terror Firma" starring Paul McGann, India Fisher, and Conrad Westmaas. They all also star Terry Molloy as Davros (who also played him in the three 1980s TV stories). (The story that was exclusive to the UK Davros Box Set was called "The Davros Mission", and it is not available from Big Finish, as again, it was exclusive to the UK Davros Box Set.)

Since the string of DVD releases began `properly' with "The Robots of Death" in 2000, the stories selected have been classics, ones that - with little exception - will be praised by the fans as a whole, provided they like that Doctor's era to begin with. One of the most obvious choices is that of "Remembrance of the Daleks" as the first Sylvester McCoy release. It's not that "Remembrance" is considered the best McCoy adventure; however, it has a sort of generic action-adventure feel and relative lightness of heart that keeps the regular fan from feeling alienated or confused, unlike those stories. Therefore, this is likely to be the McCoy DVD that appeals to the most fans overall, and I can well see the logic.

Upon starting the story, it is instantly apparent that this DVD boasts the clearest picture yet seen on a Doctor Who DVD. Detail is excellent, black level spot-on, picture blemish-free, and colours very vibrant and true - the colours seem more...well...colourful than on the videocassette. Unless I'm greatly mistaken, "Remembrance" was shot entirely on video, unlike most "Doctor Who", and the consistent nature of the quality makes it easier to concentrate upon the story. Sound is also quite admirable; while the dialogue is very good, music and SFX are both astoundingly clear (again, somewhat unexpectedly so). It's unfortunate that a 5.1 mix couldn't be had, but I am more than willing to settle for this 2.0 track.

Merits of the story aside, it is obvious from putting the disc into the player that this will be a fun DVD. The thing is choc-a-bloc with extra features, including items well-known among the fan community but never released commercially. The "Extended and Deleted Scenes" are a collection of thirteen very interesting cut sequences, ranging from an extended version of the café discussion, to the famous "more than just an ordinary Time Lord" lines. These are in every bit as good a shape as the actual episodes, having obviously been sourced from a high-quality format and cleaned up as appropriate. Other interesting extras include the original trailers for episodes 1 and 2, an isolated track of the musical score, cast biographies, and production trivia subtitles. Regrettably, the included commentary - featuring lead actors Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred - is rather dull and entirely skippable, focusing mostly on working with other actors and shooting on location (which merely regurgitates a lot of the production subtitle track). The remaining features, such as an outtakes reel, aren't actually that high on the entetainment scale either, but they're worth viewing at least once.

Don't take me wrong; despite a few lacklustre extras, this is definitely a keeper of a disc. If you like "Remembrance of the Daleks" you will certainly want, and enjoy, the quality DVD presentation. It is becoming increasingly clear just how fortunate we Doctor Who fans are to have such marvelous DVDs of a cult TV programme; hey, take a gander at the Star Trek discs in comparison. Here's looking at many more fantastic Who releases to come.

By 1988 "Doctor Who" was a show with a long enough history that it could time travel into its own past, and yet a fine enough show that it could do so and still be fresh and engaging rather than musty. "Remembrance of the Daleks" brings the Doctor and his relatively new companion Ace back to the old London junkyard where it all started back in 1963, and countless little continuity references and in-jokes pepper the story throughout its four episodes. Sometimes this can bog a story down and be confusing for new viewers, but here anyway these pitfalls are avoided--though they cleverly add an extra level of significance for the long-time viewer, they are pretty much unobtrusive so that the story flows coherently without an encyclopedic knowledge of "Doctor Who" lore. Except for the biggest continuity reference of all, the Doctor's arch-enemies (also vintage 1963) the remembrance of whom give this storyline its title. They require a little explanation, and that's exactly what the viewer gets in the first episode as the Doctor recaps for Ace more than two decades of Dalek background in a few seconds laced with hilarious comedy while hurtling down the road in a "borrowed" military van. And so a plot device that could've been static, stale, and boring is in fact ingeniously rendered dynamic, fresh, and engaging for old-timer and newbie alike. Just one more example of why the longest-running sci-fi series on our planet just never gets old.

Actually, the Daleks are really at their best here in a way we haven't seen for a long while, and not just because of the revamped special effects making their death rays look more deadly and finally granting them full conquest of the staircase obstacle (which made the poor devils seem so ineffectual back in "Destiny of the Daleks"). In fact, I suspect their recovered evil luster is probably related to the fact that the withering presence of Davros is absent until his disappointing and slightly anti-climatic appearance in the last episode, his last diminishing return in the show's history (knock on wood!). No, for the vast majority of the story the Daleks are the principle villains--two warring factions of them, in fact, which adds a wicked twist to an old tune while picking up the melody where "Revelation of the Daleks" left off. But Imperial or Renegade, the Daleks are again portrayed as ruthless and deadly, manipulating human victims through mechanical implants when not exterminating them dead on sight and without warning, and all according to their own malevolent initiative and according to their own sinister masterplan. Once again the Daleks really feel like a serious menace, and the story is superbly thrilling as a result. The special-weapons Dalek is also a nice touch, though he's a bit heavy-handed--um, well, heavy-turreted rather.

More to the point, this is indubitably a "Dalek" story rather than merely a story featuring the Daleks. What I mean is that the characteristic xenophobia of the Daleks is seriously foregrounded on multiple levels, both as their primary motivation as characters--even their internecine warfare is due to the fact that "they hate each other's chromosomes"--and as the overall theme of the storyline, the point of the tale as it were. Daleks, such sublimely logical creatures and yet their actions are motivated by that most irrational of urges: hatred of those different from themselves. For this they will conquer, enslave, and murder without pity. Kind of sounds like human beings on a bad day, doesn't it, and many aspects of the plotline and script explore the "Dalek" in us all, and yet cleverly within the specific historical context of British society in the 1960's. That such is the overarching theme of "Remembrance" is signaled to the attentive viewer in a rather magnificently subtle fashion by a dramatic pre-title sequence (somewhat unusual for the show's format during its classic run): you see a close-up shot of the Earth in its entirety while hearing 1960's radio waves emanating from our globe into space, the first of which goes "Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children's future..." and goes on to Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech even as a Dalek spacecraft lumbers menacingly into view "Star Destroyer" style, closing in on its blue-green target. Positively chilling. This is one thing great science fiction always does: explore the human through the alien, the familiar through the fantastic, the present through the future. This is also a hallmark of "Doctor Who" throughout the years, one big reason why we can look past lame special effects and minor flaws time and time again and enjoy this show year after year.

Of course another reason the show never gets old is that the Doctor regenerates time and time again, giving the main character a new face and style each time and giving a new actor a chance to craft his own spin on our favorite centuries-old vagabond of a renegade Time Lord. "Remembrance of the Daleks" in fact marks the opening of Sylvester McCoy's second season in the role, but still it's the earliest story of his tenure to make it to DVD thus far. What are we to make of his take on the Doctor? How are we to judge the Doctor in his seventh incarnation? Well, maybe the high quality of his enemies gives him a boost here, but this here seems to be the real...oh never mind, that's a wretchedly predictable pun, but still true in so far as it goes. He has a masterful ("doctorful"?) grasp of the character's underlying personality traits, magnifying many of them while giving them all his own particular imprint: Delightfully eccentric, bumblingly curious, wonderfully arrogant, deeply ethical but not ostentatiously so, sarcastically compassionate, highly irreverent, likeably alien--a goofy mastermind ("doctormind"? okay okay enough) starkly out of place and yet cozily right at home anywhere and anywhen he goes. McCoy's timing and delivery are often spot on, too, convincingly making sudden shifts from comedic to serious mode and back again. At his most deeply serious, there's what I now personally consider a mostly overlooked high point of the show's long history, a deeply reflective scene with him at a late-night cafe chatting with the guy at the register about the course of history and cause & effect and all, meditating (as we realize later) on the enormity and potential consequences of what he's preparing to effect through the most cunningly poker-faced guile: the total and utter extermination of the Daleks along with their entire solar system. I never thought that the fourth Doctor's classic "Have I the right?" scene from "Genesis of the Daleks" might have anything close to a rival, but what that one accomplishes on an dramatically epic scale this one does in a hauntingly quiet register that's almost (almost, I say) as effective and in some ways more moving actually. "Every large decision creates ripples," he comments thoughtfully, and yet this time, this time thank goodness, the Doctor doesn't hesitate!