Day 509: Destiny of the Daleks Episode 4

We last left our look at Destiny of the Daleks contemplating how the three main voices, being Douglas Adams, Ken Grieve and Terry Nation, the script editor, director and writer respectively, could work together considering that they have such differing things that they bring to the table. The answer, I suppose, can be found by dividing them into pairs. By doing this, each voice is able to come together with the other, using their respective strengths to create something worth engaging with.

So, first let's look at the combination of Adams and Grieve. Adams brings comedy, and Grieve is able to use his eye for a more interesting looking programme to make the jokes work in a way that wouldn't necessarily be expected from other directors. Take, for instance, the botched escape from the Movellans halfway through this episode. Essentially, the Doctor gets up, feels a Movellan gun on his shoulder and immediately sits back down again. Grieve shoots all of this in close-up, both giving the set-up to the escape attempt a tension that makes the end-game more rewarding as a joke, and also adding the new joke that we, as an audience, are only focussed on the Doctor's face and not necessarily on the Movellan behind him, thus making the sudden appearance of the gun an unanticipated event and creating a joke out of that as well.

Adams and Nation work surprisingly well together as well. Nation has provided the bare bones of a simple adventure plot-line, leaving Adams to fill in the rest. Adams takes the simple adventure and, by adding jokes and the like to keep the audience interested, is able to make up for the fact that the adventure plot-line is fairly basic. But the plot-line is still fun, and has some interesting ideas within it, so it can provide flesh to Adams' simple little jokes throughout. Take for instance, the fact that we have two computers fighting each other, and they can't defeat each other because each is able to accurately predict the others' move. The way in which this is illustrated is through a simple game of scissors-paper-rock, which the robotic Movellans are hopeless at, whereas the more intuitive Doctor is able to win at the game fairly regularly. It's a simple and fun way to look at the larger idea, and is one step of allowing us to see past the flaws of the story and have some fun with it.

Grieve and Nation are also a strong pairing. Nation is writing a 1960's adventure story, and Grieve is able to at least make it look interesting.

Take, for instance, the above shot. The use of Daleks in foreground, middle and background helps give the impression that there is a far larger Dalek fleet, much as Nation would have wanted. The sole Dalek in the foreground makes the shot feel imposing, and injects an amount of menace into the shot, making the Daleks something to be feared. This is a director who is able to take Nation's work and modernise it, making it feel more exciting as a result. Another example can be found in the deactivation of the Nova device, shot with a handheld camera, and with a particularly shocking shot of a dismembered Movellan arm at one point, which is a very exciting sequence.

At the end of the day then, Destiny of the Daleks isn't that bad. It's well directed, and the plot is able to have its weaknesses accounted for by the script editing. It is interesting to note though, that we have a story where the voices involved with making it are seemingly in opposition. One wonders what it would be like if everyone were on completely the same page...