Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks (3/5)
This special is a mess. It's a mess with quite a bit of fun stuff in it, but it's a mess all the same. And definitely a step down from the previous Christmas...sorry, NEW YEAR'S special, Resolution. But while the BBC continues its war on Christmas aside, let's long at this piece of twaddle.
So, from Revolution, the dalek scout shell is taken away in a truck. The truck driver parks outside a roadside cofee stall, buys coffee, but it's drugged, and he's dragged away, and the casing is retrieved. How the evil-doers knew he'd stop at that particular spot, or how they knew he'd order a beverage is beyond me, but whatever. The shell is used as the basis for defence drones in the UK, as part of a partnership between the incoming prime minister (who I can't help but wonder is meant to be a spoof on Theresa May) and Evil Busines Guy from the episode Arachnids in the UK. No, I don't recall their names, and no, I don't care.
Anyway, Yaz is trying to find the Doctor, while Graham and Ryan have kind of moved on. Meanwhile, the Doctor is still in the space jail she was put in at the end of the prior season. These jail sequences are pretty good - they're well edited, and there's good fanservice as we see other beasties imprisoned. Such as the Weeping Angel that always tries to break its cage, but can't (and being a Weeping Angel, we never see it in the attempt), or the Doctor meeting a silent, always commenting that "hey, I haven't seen you before." Oh, and the metal-eating monster from season 11 is back. No, I don't recall its name, and no, I can't be arsed to find it. But whatever, Jack Harkness breaks the Doc out of prison.
Concerning Jack himself, I'm mixed - John Barrowman still does a good job, but he's aged a lot since he first appeared, so there's kind of cognitive dissonance that someone meant to be immortal has visually aged - kind of how Ian McKellan looks weird in The Hobbit when he looks older than he did in Lord of the Rings. Also, nice as it is to have Jack back, he still has to share the spotlight with five other characters (Doctor, three companions, Evil Business Guy), so he doesn't stay around much. Turns out the Doctor has been in prison for decades, and is still hung up over the Timeless Child revelation. Jack gives her the same pep talk that Ruth did in The Timeless Children, so...yay for repeating morals?
Fine. Back to Earth. A dalek drone was tested against fill-in rioters where it used stuff like a water cannon (keep that in mind), but now, in December 2020, the new prime minister (election cycle? What's that?) is unveiling thousands of drones in the UK, who'll do everything from scanning your passport, to having selfies, to aiding the police. Proving that the human race, or the UK, is filled with idiots. Because by this point in time, everyone on Earth knows (or should know) what daleks are, but no-one asks "Ms. Prime Minister, why are your drones built after Nazi space robots?" I've heard it argued that the episodes where the daleks revealed themselves en masse (from the Davies Era) have been retconned, but even if we accept that as being true, that doesn't make this much less stupid. Because not only should eyebrows be raised at UNIT for instance, but even that aside, apparently the entire country is fine with this, as people greet their new drone buddies with open arms. Ah yes, because it's not as if drone warfare isn't hugely controversial, or police under scrutiny these days. Nup. People love the drone rollout. Why? Because the human race is a bunch of idiots. Whether that statement applies to the DW humans or the writers of the BBC is a question I'll leave to you.
But hey, the dalek scout's DNA endured from the last special and have hijacked one of the scientists, and he's grown artificial daleks in Tokyo (why Tokyo? Fuck, I dunno). They get teleported into the casings of the drones, who go on a rampage with their death rays. Yes, the drones that originally had watercannons and the like in the prototype now have death rays. Why some genius decided to equip them with death rays, or how they got the tech for death rays is a question that's never asked, let alone answered. So, yay, daleks yelling exterminate.
Actually, to be fair, I do like the dalek drone designs, with the red eye and the red laser, not to mention the blacks and greys of their casing. Makes them visiaully distinct at least.
So, to deal with daleks, the Doctor calls in...more daleks! Yes, you see, the Skaro daleks will exterminate these Earth daleks because they're impure. That...isn't too bad a plot twist actually. Though it does have Evil Business Guy sell out the human race to survive, and lots of pew-pew and explosions and the Doctor having a second TARDIS or something, I kind of lost track. Though I did laugh when Evil Business Guy is hailed as a hero in the UK for standing up to the daleks. Once again proving that the human race is too dumb to live. I admittedly laughed a bit here at the sheer absurdity of it, and the grim realization that I could see this happening.
Oh, and the prime minister is killed during this as, on live TV, there's explosions everywhere, but assures everyone things are under control, and is shot on camera, and then the cameraman is shot. Gallows humour. Nice. Seemed to be channeling a bit of Harriet Jones there for a bit though.
Anyway, Jack leaves, Yaz stays with the Doctor, and Ryan and Graham leave. The goodbye isn't the greatest farewell the series has done, but it isn't too bad. I'll also give credit that I've finally got a sense as to what defines the Thirteenth Doctor, and that's family, or, rather, a yearning for companionship, given how she reacts. I don't know if that's really an in-depth defining trait, in the same way that I feel Docs 9-12 were defined, but hey, it was something. And, anyway, episode ends.
So, yeah. Episode's a mess plotwise, but there's some good stuff in it. That said, the series is still in a dearth of quality writing that I feel has plagued it since Moffat's era. Only at least with Moffat, his time was very creative conceptually. Chibnall is a bit more down to earth, like Davies, but his run lacks anything really creative, or if it does have it, it's nonsense (cough*Timeless Child*cough). Take what you can get I guess.
