Revolution of the Daleks

Chapter The 178th, which sees corrupt politicians, violent attacks near a seat of power, and people confined inside for long periods of time, none of which would ever happen in real life, obviously.

Plot:

[Warning: spoilers spoilers spoilers; read no further if you haven't seen the 2021 New Year's special yet.] The 'fam' have spent ten months on Earth not knowing where the Doctor is, or whether she's alive or dead. Yaz has become a bit obsessional about working out how to pilot the Gallifreyan TARDIS that the Doctor sent them home in back to find her; Graham and Ryan persuade her to engage more with protecting the Earth, as it looks like the Daleks are back. Jack Robertson, the US Mister Big that created giant spiders with toxic waste, has bought out a tech start-up and is partnering with its CEO Leo and the UK government to create security drones that bear a striking resemblance to the Reconnaissance Scout Dalek. This is because it is based on the stolen shell of that Dalek, recovered from GCHQ on New Year's Day 2019. Unfortunately, Leo hasn't stopped at copying the shell, and has cloned a creature from some organic cells he found in it. Unbeknownst to Leo, the organism, once plugged into the company's systems, has started a cloning project to create many more creatures, and has adjusted the drones to be more deadly. When Leo shows Robertson the creature, Robertson orders it destroyed, but it takes over Leo before he can throw it into a furnace.

The Doctor has been in prison for many years after being locked up by the Judoon. Captain Jack breaks her out, and they travel to Earth and meet up with Yaz, Graham, and Ryan. The fam are not particularly happy with the Doctor for abandoning them for so long, particularly Yaz, but the Dalek situation on Earth is too pressing to allow any discussion on this bar four or five long conversations here and there. They all track down the Dalek clone farm, but too late to stop the creatures waking up, zapping into the clone shells and killing lots of people. To solve the problem, the Doctor uses the "nuclear option" of calling in more 'real' Daleks who - because of their obsession with racial purity - kill all the clone Daleks after a memorable confrontation between both factions on the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Robertson turns traitor and offers up the Doctor to the remaining Daleks, so the Doctor uses herself as bait. The Daleks swarm in to what they think is the Doctor's TARDIS to attack her, but it is instead the Gallifreyan TARDIS disguised by its Chameleon Circuit, and the Doctor a holographic projection. It collapses in on itself  trapping those Daleks, and Jack, Ryan and Graham blow up their ship, destroying the rest. They also rescue Robertson, who claims he was just trying to help and is later hailed as a hero by the press.

Captain Jack stays on Earth to visit Gwen Cooper. The Doctor invites the whole fam to travel with her again to new adventures, but Ryan wants to stay; he's reconnected with his Dad and his friends over the ten months he's been back. Graham chooses to be with his grandson rather than continue his travels, and they say an emotional farewell to the Doctor and Yaz. The Doctor gives them both psychic paper to help them in their investigations to protect the Earth when she's gone. A little while later, once on their own, Graham and Ryan both see a vision of Grace smiling at them... somehow.

Context:

Over a few days in early January 2021, I re-watched this story on my own a couple of times making notes and analysing the scene structure and timings. It must have taken three or four days elapsed at most, maybe up to seven when including my first watch on New Year's Day (see below). In that short time, because of exponentially rising Covid-19 cases and deaths, the UK has gone into Lockdown 3: The Revenge (a second sequel, and everyone knows those are always much worse than what came before). After lockdown started, the UK broke the wrong sort of records with the most Covid-related deaths registered on one day, more than happened in any of the earlier spikes since March 2019. Across the pond, the President of the United States of America incited a seditious attack on the US Capitol, and a group of white supremacists broke into said building with pipe bombs and confederate flags. Lawmakers in the US are now planning to impeach this president for the second time, which would be a historic first. There's probably all sorts of awful stuff happening related to Brexit as well, but it's so far down on the news agenda that I'm not hearing about it. Seven days. 2021 is going to be just as interesting a time to live through as 2020. Happy New Year!

First time round:

The whole family could not all leave the house at the same time until late December as a couple of the youngsters had to self-isolate for the standard 10-day period starting immediately before Christmas, after their classmates had tested positive for Covid-19. Luckily nobody got any symptoms, and on the first day of 2021, when it had got dark, we were able to take a socially-distancing family walk around the immediate neighbourhood looking at everyone's Christmas lights and giving them marks out of 10. When we got back, it was not long before the start of Doctor Who. I found myself rushing around trying to get food ready for a TV dinner in front of the goggle-box (a luxury afforded us only rarely and usually for Doctor Who broadcasts) while additionally putting together my own 'Previously on Doctor Who' clips package on the fly from the Blu-ray discs containing Fugitive of the Judoon and The Timeless Children, as the Better Half couldn't remember the details of Jack's 2019 return, or how the Doctor ended up in prison. Once the broadcast time came round I was just about settled down with all the family (the Better Half and three children - two boys aged 14 and 11, and a girl aged 8). Everyone enjoyed it, though the Better Half not quite so much as me and the kids.

Reaction:

Revolution of the Daleks in 71 minutes long, which makes it the longest Doctor Who Festive special for over ten years. From a quick and unscientific scan of responses to the story on the internet since its broadcast, it has not been as divisive as previous tentpole episodes written by Chris Chibnall. Most think that this is one of the better of the big stories of the last couple of years; it's down to each individual reviewer how faint or otherwise such praise is intended to be. If you don't like the current house style or characters then obviously 71 minutes is going to seem like a long time. For me, the first fifty-five minutes flew by, and it was only towards the end that I had any issues with what I was watching. It intrigued me as to why that was; not just what slowed things down towards the end, but also how the start had flowed so seamlessly. Hence, as mentioned earlier, I watched this scene by scene, pausing the action and making notes. The first thing that became clear on doing this is that, though it might seem on first watch that the story was very action-orientated, it is not at all. The first proper action scene is not until past the halfway mark at around 36 minutes in (Jack and Yaz defending themselves against a Dalek mutant attack), and the scenes of Daleks attacking humans or one another thereafter add up to only about five minutes of running time. The Daleks don't go on the attack until the 45-minute mark, which in an ordinary episode would be close to the end (interestingly, when they do, the first casualties are in a uniform that makes them look very like redshirts, the Star Fleet characters that always get killed in Star Trek - was this coincidence or deliberate in-joke, I wonder?).

Though the title and publicity, and overall first impression, suggests this is a big Dalek story, they don't necessarily have the main focus, though they appear throughout, spread out cleverly. It's an interesting sleight of hand. Before the brief bursts of action, the Dalek plot is all about a linear, building menace as the elements all come together. There is no intrigue nor mystery; by the time our heroes are investigating Jack Robertson, we in the audience know almost everything: we're shown the original Dalek casing being stolen, then in the next scene we see who took it, and in the next scene we're told how (although, as many have pointed out, the original plan to poison the driver transporting the casing involves guessing exactly where he's going to stop for tea en route, unless they've replaced every roadside vendor in the area with an assassin). The scenes interspersed with this are a straightforward linear subplot too: one might have expected the Doctor escaping from space prison to have had some of the twists, turns or surprises associated with jail break scenarios in dramatic form, but no. We see some scenes of the routine of her long incarceration, with some fun uses of favourite old monsters like Ood, a Weeping Angel, one of the Silence and a P'ting; then, after this, Jack arrives and uses his big bubble device to get them both out. It's a fun and exciting moment, but it is straightforward. It's also dodgy optics that the Doctor as a woman seems incapable of even trying any plan to escape until a man comes to save her. I guess the point is that she's brooding on the events of the season finale in 2019 and her new mystery identity, but it does make her seem a little bit passive early on.

The third - and arguably most important - plot thread is about the Doctor's inadvertent abandonment of her fam for ten months, and the impact this has. Collectively, this has the most screen time in the story. There are long scenes (five minutes for the two-hander scene of the Doctor and Ryan in the TARDIS, almost as long for the scene of Yaz and Jack talking about what it's like to part company with the Doctor). These are nice character scenes, but again there's not much in the way of value reversal. The best moments are between Jodie Whittaker and Mandip Gill as Yaz. The aggressive shove that the Doctor gets from her female friend on returning to Earth is one of the only moments that actually shocks. There's also a lovely moment later when the Doctor casually tosses out a very traditional Doctor line as they plan to defeat the bad guys with some risky stratagem "When have I ever let you down before?" before the penny drops as the Doctor and Yaz exchange a sad look, and the former realises exactly what those words now mean.

So, ultimately, this story is a weave: two or three unconnected and linear plotlines weaving in and out of each other, but not really impacting each other at all. The Doctor could have encountered the security drone Dalek plot at any point in her era; it’s not connected – thematically or in terms of inter-plot complication – with her stay in prison, or her ten months apart from the ‘fam’. I’m not criticising this structure per se, it’s rather elegant in its way, but there is a challenge sustaining it over such a long running time. It certainly works early on, when there are three different plots to intercut. From circa 25 minutes in, though, when the team are reunited, there is only two plots left, the prison break stuff being done with. The story still manages to sustain for a while, as it makes logical story sense for the abandonment plot to get some focus at the point where the Doctor and friends are back together after so long.

When the Dalek plot heats up, though, it has to take centre stage, and that’s where its simplicity becomes more obvious, and is the point where the level of story interest looks most unsustainable: the Doctor has the idea to call in more Daleks to do her dirty work, she calls them, they come, they do her dirty work. Simple as that. The danger that they will attack the humans instead of the clone Daleks is mentioned, but immediately dismissed. This is a shame, as that might have upped the ante during this crucial point. Jack Robertson then turns traitor, which might have worked as a dramatic plot reversal if he wasn’t playing the role (very well) for comedy throughout. I didn’t believe his selling the Doctor out was going to cause any complications, and in fact it makes things easier for the Doctor as it sends all the Daleks to her fake TARDIS switcheroo. This is a neat bit of business, it has to be said, meaning the mechanism of their defeat has been in plain sight all along, and also works to get rid of a time machine that otherwise would be left on Earth indefinitely.  Mention of Chris Noth’s performance as Robertson highlights that it isn’t just plot that can provide the energy to drive a narrative. Both the American-accented characters called Jack, i.e. Noth and John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, bring a lot of energy to proceedings and make any scene they are part of zing and zip. They get most of the funny lines too, which means there isn’t as much scope unfortunately for Bradley Walsh to do jokes. He’s equally adept at drama, of course, and gets a little of that, but it would have been nice if he’d had a bit more to do in his final outing. Harriet Walter is great too, though conspiring to intercept the Dalek casing and then getting it to a willing private backer so quickly means she is far too competent to be representative of our current UK government.

Production value is as good as performance too, but ultimately both need to be in service of a plot. The Doctor’s final plan was simply to blow the Daleks up. The ‘getting towards the end, let’s just blow it up’ gambit is not rare in Doctor Who, but it is usually a sign that the plotting hasn’t been 100% successful. Every step has felt a bit too easy, and once the Daleks are defeated there are still 11 minutes more of the running time left. Aside from a nice moment – with an Emily Maitlis cameo – of the press turning the awful Robertson into a hero, this is all about Ryan and Graham leaving. Whether 11 minutes for this has been earned or not will depend on your feelings for these characters. I think they just about get away with it. Ryan’s decision seems a natural progression from themes highlighted in last year’s Can You Hear Me? Graham’s decision in reaction to Ryan’s also makes perfect sense. It’s a much more old-school companion departure than any seen post 2005; nobody got killed, sent to another dimension or memory-wiped, which means there could be the chance for these characters to return as guests one day, just as Captain Jack did here. I’m not totally sold on Graham and Ryan stepping up to be Earth’s defenders just because they’ve both got a psychic paper each, though. I fear for their long term safety if they do too much of that!

Connectivity: 

Both Revolution of the Daleks and The Sontaran Experiment involve cloned alien armies who want to take over Earth to use it as a base. Both have scenes set in London (unless the Doctor was joking in the Sontaran story about underground stations, and - let's face it - he probably was); both have scenes recorded in the West Country area of the UK (Dartmoor and Clifton Suspension Bridge - Bristol is just about in the West Country, I think, though purists may argue).

Deeper Thoughts:

Two knights lost, and maybe even the queen at risk, but a Bishop's being moved into play soon. [Casting spoilers ahead if you’re not caught up with Revolution of the Daleks, or are keeping clear of all Series 13 pre-publicity.] Changing regular cast members always affects the dynamics of a show. The Peter Capaldi Doctor stories subtly and sometimes not so subtly changed when he was teamed up with Bill and Nardole rather than Clara, just as Capaldi Doctor and Clara was different again from Matt Smith Doctor and Clara. In the 20th century, similar changes took place when Jon Pertwee was replaced by Tom Baker – the dynamic between each man and companion actor Elisabeth Sladen, who provided continuity between the two eras, was markedly different. Now that John Bishop is joining as new companion Dan alongside the Doctor and Yaz, it will be interesting to see how much this changes things. I have no experience that I can recall of John Bishop as a comedian or actor, so have no choice but to keep an open mind as to what his performance will be like. Most of all, it’s encouraging to know that they have got enough in the can thus far that they can show us a few shots of Dan in the mini-trailer that aired on BBC1 after Revolution completed.

Assuming that no other regular cast members are added, it will be a three person TARDIS crew, and I think this is a good move. I'll miss Ryan, and particularly Graham; I also would have been happy to see a series with just the Doctor and Yaz (we may get some short time with just the two of them before they meet Dan, you never know). But, if there's got to be a male identification figure in the regular cast - and someone's obviously decided there has to be - then I'm glad it's just one. The one major flaw with the stories broadcast between 2018 and 2020 was that, with four people in the cast, it was difficult to find enough for everyone to do. They made a better fist of it than the last time it was tried in the 1980s when Sarah Sutton as companion Nyssa would sometimes not get to leave the TARDIS while everyone else was off adventuring, but even so someone (usually Yaz, it has to be said) drew the short straw and may as well as been locked in the box given the lack of material with which they had to work. Doctor Who started in 1963 with a four person cast, and the 1980s was perhaps just a nostalgic echo of that. But in 1963 there was a reason for things to be set up that way: the Doctor wasn't the hero, he was conceived as a dark and not wholly trustworthy mentor character. Hence, there was a need for a male and female hero accompanying him, plus a youngster to get into scrapes. The Doctor developed over the years to become more heroic and more youthful, so the default position eventually became to have just one other cast member, usually female, and occasionally two (in that instance usually one male, one female).

There was clearly a decision made for the 2018 series that there needed to be a younger male and female companion accompanying the Doctor, but also the mature male perspective represented. This new set-up (again, assuming nobody else is yet to be announced) of Doctor with younger female companion and slightly older male companion seems the best way to balance that spectrum of identification without the weight of needing to support four cast members' action in each episode. Of course, if rumours are to be believed, there may be another casting change before the end of the year that will have even more impact. Yes, the rumours have started that there's going to be a new Doctor coming. After a flurry of tabloid newspaper reports early in January, but no official confirmation one way or the other, it's gone quiet. The slightly shortened run planned for later in 2021 will be Jodie's third series, and the pattern of all the recent Doctors is that they've only done three series before leaving the role. All the previous ones have done more episodes per year than Whittaker, though, and had a few extra specials on the way. As such, I would be sorry to see her go so soon, if the rumour is true. It may not be, though. It could be just that a reporter knows as well as I do that three years is the usual limit, and spun a story out of that. It could be that Whittaker's agent is negotiating for more money if she agrees to stay in role longer. Who - in a very real sense of the word - knows?! I don't think I'm going to engage with this further until it has been confirmed for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say that the next Doctor will be a woman again.

In Summary:

Comes apart a bit towards the end, but generally a nicely woven yarn.