Which one : Gaudy, violent but brilliant Dalek number.
Cast : Doctor : Colin Baker
Peri : Nicola Bryant
Davros/Great Healer : Terry Molloy
Kara : Eleanor Bron
Vogel : Hugh Walters
Jobel : Clive Swift
Tasambeker : Jenny Tomasin
Takis : Trevor Cooper
Lilt : Colin Spaull
DJ : Alexei Sayle
Orcini : William Gaunt
Bostock : John Ogwen
Grigory : Stephen Flynn
Natasha : Bridget Lynch-Blosse
Stengos : Alec Linstead
Written By : Eric Saward
Produced By : JNT
Length : 2 x 45 minute episodes.
First Broadcast : 23 – 30 March 1985
Whats good : Ultra weird, ultra violent and ultra strange.
Whats bad : Alexi Sayle as the DJ. Destroying a Dalek with pure focused Rock-And-Roll?
Plot : The sixth Doctor takes Peri, to planet Necros, to see his old friend Arthur Stengos. Stengos is residing at The Tranquil Repose funeral/cryo facility; where terminallly ill patiwnts are frozen until cures are developed. Who is the Great Healer and why is he stealing the frozen bodies of the residents? How are the Daleks wrapped up in this?
Review With Spoilers: Revelation Of The Daleks is the sixth and final story, of season 22 – and marks the Sixth Doctors; only meeting with the Daleks and Davros.
If one 80’s Who serial, can sum-up; where the show was going wrong – in the latter days then Revelation Of The Daleks, is it.
Gaudy, violent, edgy, unforgiving, unsettling and stark. You could level a lot of accusations at this one. You could also praise it – in the same token, though. Who has never been so unflinchingly bold and horrific; not since the Hinchcliffe/Tom Baker days maybe. Bit this is Hinchcliffe era – amped up.
The violence is laid on thickly here, with plenty of deaths. Dalek innards and partially converted human/Dalek corpses littering the screen. All underpinned by a tangible layer of downright freakiness.
All of this is best summed up by Davros, having his remaining good hand shot off, only for his severed finger to end-up; scattered all over the floor.
Undertaker Jobel, is stabbed to death with a syringe; by his assistant. Stengos is found mutating into a Dalek, inside a glass casing – all scabby and blobby and covered in wires. If this is a kids drama, then Who must have seriously lost it’s core audience focus.
“KILL ME………!” Stengos
The acting is not to be encouraged either, with a frankly weird and annoying turn from Alexi Sayle – as the DJ. Clive Swift is also rapey-creepy as Peri admirer; Jobel.
The Doctor and Peri’s relationship has improved little, since Attack Of The Cybermen and they spend much of this story, bickering intensely. It becomes a little distracting and detracts – from what could have been a good partnership.
Baker himself, is probably at his most obtuse here, making you wonder why he bothers carting Peri around the universe – and why Peri continues to travel; if they dislike each other so much.
All that said, Revelation Of The Daleks can be viewed as an edgy, if slightly silly – oddity, in a Who series which was a victim of its own stylised decade.
In a decade, when Hellraiser, Freddie Krueger and John Carpenter’s – The Thing; set the standard for visceral gory SFX. Doctor Who naturally wanted a piece of this horror action.
🔵🔵🔵⚪⚪ (3/5)
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