How can a story written by Terry Nation after Genesis of the Daleks be worse than another story written by Terry Nation before Genesis of the Daleks? When it appears that Terry Nation has forgotten the most fundamental principles of his own creations and treats them as a mere race of robots, that's how. Mind you, it's hard to know how much of this is Nation's fault and how much is script editor Douglas Adams' fault. Contrary to popular belief, not everything that Adams touched turned into a Heart of Gold, and when he was given Nation's standard shorter-than-needed scripts, he filled in the rest. While this gives us a few nice Hitchhiker's references, it also gives us a story in which the Daleks are at war with the Movellans, who are described as another robotic race. Another robotic race? Since when are the Daleks primarily thought of as robots? If that were the only thing wrong with this story, it might be forgiven - but it's not. We get bad acting from Tim Barlow as Tyssan. We get horrifying acting from the extras. We get a return to Skaro that makes it look nothing like the planet depicted in Genesis. We get Movellans who look exactly like you'd expect a humanoid robot race designed in 1979 to look. And worst of all, we get a completely different actor playing Davros. David Gooderson fills in for Michael Wisher, who was unavailable, but the budget didn't stretch to making a new Davros mask or chair that fit him, so he used Wisher's. The difference is obvious. It's also obvious that Gooderson, while a decent enough actor, simply isn't Davros. Not by any stretch of the imagination - or the mask, for that matter. But worst of all, the Daleks are seemingly on their last... um, legs in this story. The casings are knackered, for one thing, and we doubt it's because of the Movellans; even Roy Skelton seems to be phoning in the Dalek voices. They themselves are losing the war against the Movellans because they can only think logically - just like the computers they are depicted to be in this story. And whenever the Doctor can defeat a Dalek with a well-placed hat... ugh. Surely they've got to be better next time, right?
Tony Whitt has previously written TV, DVD, and comic reviews for CINESCAPE, NOW PLAYING, and iF MAGAZINE. His weekly COMICSCAPE columns from the early 2000s can still be found archived on Mania.com. He has also written a book of gay-themed short stories titled CRESCENT CITY CONNECTIONS, available on Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle format. Whitt currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.
