Day 614: Resurrection of the Daleks Part 2

There are a lot of things that I'm not keen about in Resurrection of the Daleks. One such thing is something that I had never realised until I watched it again tonight. There's a character called Mercer who acts as one of the main characters. He helps lead a group of people on the prison ship that the Daleks have attacked to try and destroy it with Davros still on it, and in the process meets Turlough and works with him as they attempt to figure out the best course of action to take. He's also killed towards the end of the story, when some Dalek troopers encounter him by surprise. The fact that I had never noticed that his character, one which has actually played a large role in the story and is one that I cared about, dies, makes me feel that perhaps the director, Matthew Robinson, could have drawn a little bit more attention to this fact.

But this is not that kind of story. Resurrection of the Daleks is an action story, pure and simple. It's actually quite a good action story, filled with violence and explosions and plenty of adrenaline. The Daleks are used as an assault force, destroying everything in their wake and leaving no survivors, reminding the audience of why they are powerful foes and creatures to be feared. Similarly, the use of humans working for the Daleks as troopers adds a cheaper way to have larger action scenes, as humans cost less money to hire than full Dalek props. It's all written well too, with enough going on such that the audience never loses interest (as I alluded to yesterday), and the direction keeps everything at a cracking pace as well.

But that's all to the story's detriment, in the end. There are so many scenes that I look at and shake my head at. The Doctor picking up a handgun and using it to kill a Dalek mutant. The fact that so many characters die needlessly. The fact that a major scene is the Doctor picking up a gun and holding it directly at Davros's head. That last point is a particular bugbear for me because it's given no build-up and seems completely out of character for the Doctor. We should never see him consider killing someone, holding a gun before their face and contemplating pulling the trigger. All of this could be excused by having the doctor turn away and take the non-violent option, and yet he doesn't. Instead, he goes outside to check something and gets locked out. It feels completely out of character for the Doctor and is the major reason why I find it hard to really like this story.

Perhaps this is the reason that Tegan leaves at the end of the adventure. Fed up with the violence that she's encountered, as well as all the death and destruction, she proclaims that none of this is fun any more and runs off. I should mention that Tegan, for all her faults, did eventually mature into a strong companion. Add to this stories like Kinda and Snakedance, which took her character to new horizons that no companion had ever been to before, as well as strong performances in episodes like Enlightenment, and we can see a good character leaving the series, after a distinguished time in the TARDIS. But perhaps her departure is a little prophetic, as from this point onwards, things are going to be a lot more violent and a lot darker.