Doctor Who: Destiny of the Daleks

"Destiny of the Daleks" is a Doctor Who classic.  It's a fourth Doctor story with Romana and featuring the Daleks.  There are many, many shots of them wandering around quarries (a typical classic Who location for representing other planets).  It even has Davros, creator of the Daleks.

Look behind you!

The story begins with a scene that has caused Whovians some consternation over the years.  The Doctor's traveling companion, Romana, is a Time Lord.  She decides to regenerate and tries on several different bodies before settling on a copy of someone they met in the previous episode.  How can this be?  That's not what happens when Time Lords regenerate!  Eh, this doesn't bother me.  Doctor Who is filled with continuity problems, as this episode demonstrates beautifully.  There is some precedent for being able to choose a regenerating Time Lord's new body.  In the episode "The War Games," the Time Lords force the second Doctor to regenerate before exiling him to Earth.  The second Doctor gets a choice about what he will look like.  When he can't decide, the Time Lords decide for him.

the Doctor, Romana, and K-9 in the TARDIS

After Romana chooses her body, she and the Doctor leave the TARDIS to explore the unidentified planet on which they've landed.  At the end of the previous episode, the Doctor fitted a randomizer to the controls of the TARDIS so that they wouldn't know where they were going.  This was to prevent the Black Guardian from hunting them down because they had thwarted him in the season-long story arc that just ended.  I'll go into detail about that when I blog about the Key to Time season.  All they know about this planet is that it is highly radioactive, so they have to take radiation pills.  Or do they?  The Doctor has a timer that beeps every so often, alerting them that it is time to take the pills.  This plot line lasts about twenty minutes into the episode, and then the pills never appear again.  Oops!

The Doctor and Romana observe a spaceship landing and watch some exhausted looking humans bury someone.  They end up separated when there is an earthquake and debris falls on the Doctor, pinning him to the ground.  Romana heads back to the TARDIS for K-9.  They left him on board because the Doctor had been fiddling around with his circuitry and sort of broke him.  

What's that he's reading?

The Doctor passes the time with some interesting reading- a book by Oolon Coluphid.  Oolon Coluphid is mentioned in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, although his name is spelled differently here.  Douglas Adams was the script editor of Doctor Who at this point in its run.  The Doctor is rescued by the Movellans.  

Movellans

It was the Movellans who the Doctor and Romana saw landing earlier.  The Doctor ends up getting some interesting information from them.  They are on Skaro, homeworld of the Daleks, and the Daleks have been using human workers to mine for something deep beneath the old Kaled city.  Meanwhile, Romana goes back to where she left the Doctor and gets captured by the Daleks.  What are the Daleks looking for, and why does there seem to be more to the Movellans than they let on?

inside the Movellan ship

Continuity mistakes jump out right here.  First, when the Daleks question Romana, she claims not to know anything about the Daleks, which their machine confirms as true.  Not only is there no way a Time Lord doesn't know about the Daleks, but later on in the episode, she is full of information about them.  I'm just going to think she fooled their machine and not think that someone didn't think this part through.  The second mistake is espcially nit-picky, but what are Whovians, if not nit-picky?  The Daleks are searching under the Kaled city for Davros.  Except, when the Kaled city was destroyed in "Genesis of the Daleks," that's not where Davros was.  These aren't biggies.  The biggie is when the Doctor refers to the Daleks as robots and talks about how Kaled mutants used to be inside them.  Kaled mutants are still inside them.  Daleks aren't robots.

Daleks

Nit-picking over!  I love this episode, if that wasn't obvious by my tearing it apart.  The Doctor finds Davros first but has to hand him over to the Daleks so he can escape.  Why do the Daleks need Davros now after they left him for dead centuries ago?  That has to do with the Movellans' secret.  The Movellans are robots.  The Daleks and the Movellans have been at an impasse in their war because each side is perfectly logical.  The Daleks think that Davros' illogical mind will help them break the stalemate and win the war.  The Doctor isn't about to let either side have an advantage over the other, but I'm not going to spoil how it all turns out.

finding Davros

This was the first story broadcast with Lalla Ward playing Romana.  Fans refer to her as Romana II because someone else played Romana during the previous season.  Romana II is my favorite companion.  She is smart and funny and a Time Lord.  She is presented as the Doctor's equal.  Doctor Who's main weakness, for me, is that throughout the show's history, many of the female companions have been, well, weak.  They scream too much or are kind of dumb.  The best female companions end up being the ones who buck this trend- Leela, Zoe, Sarah Jane Smith, Romana I and II, among a few others.  

Time Lords play Rock, Paper, Scissors, too.

Romana is a younger Time Lord than the Doctor, but she holds her own.  There are times when she seems to know more than he does.  The Doctor and Romana II have a great relationship.  It reflects their deep friendship and mutual respect, but it isn't so serious that they don't tease each other and goof off together, too.  Romana is like a female version of the Doctor, and I love her for it.