Destiny of the Daleks

Destiny of the Daleks

https://twitter.com/archivetvmus71/status/1138411675856572421

https://twitter.com/NothingLane/status/941067357690191873

I guess the first two episodes did have a strong suspense to them and the Daleks did come off formidable and menacing enough.

I like Destiny but I do think the second half is a bit sloppy and makes a bit of a hash of that early promise.

Still I do wonder if that columnist has ever seen Genesis if they think Destiny was too terrifying for the kiddies.

I don't really have a problem with it. Lalla's excellent performance alone is enough to make it watchable.

It's fine.

^ Prefers it to Genesis.


You know what? He isn't alone either...

I love the Doctor's line in Episode 1 of 'Destiny': "Who was it said the living are just the dead on holiday?"


DOTD is great fun to watch but is possibly my least favourite serial of Season 17.  
Oh and happy birthday Lalla Ward!

I found it to be quite poor when I first saw it on its original broadcast, but over the years my thoughts on it have become more positive.

Also is it just me or does anyone else get a Blake's 7 vibe from it?

I like it

In 1979 this was a bit of a disapointment for me.

Bad Points.
The annoying regeneration scene for Romana. It just seemed to be an excessively flippant treatment of what is a very important aspect of a timelord's life-cyle.
Poorly realised Daleks - falling apart, cardboard cutouts or banging into scenery.
Poorly realised Davros - wobbled like mad when he had to move along the corridors and i didn't like Gooderson's portrayal. Gone were the Dalek like vocals and instead we get "angry geezer in a wheel chair".
Beautiful but hardly credible adversaries for the Daleks. Easily disabled by sbdy stretching forward and grabbing a power pack conveniently place around their waste. And then they have a slow motion fit and carefully lie down so as not to hurt themselves. And they get defeated by paper-rock-scissors. And yet they are one of the dominants creatures in the universe, have developed their own sophisticated societal structures and technologies and presumably faced off against organic life forms before.
The bizzarre decision to employee a block of wood to play Tyssan- the leader of the prisoners.
A script that undermined any sense of threat from the Daleks and / or Davros: the excessive reliance on school boy humour, the pointless teasing of the daleks (e.g., "why dont you climb up after me"), the ridiculing of davros - all served to sabotage any sense of threat that the daleks could have had in this story. Eric skillfully avoided this mistake in his Dalek stories treating them as a serious threat with action and dialogue chosen appropriately. Likewise in the McCoy era Dalek story.
I don't understand why the Daleks went looking for Davros. As far as they were concerned he was dead. They exterminated him at point blank range. What possible help could a rotted, decomposed corpse be to the Daleks in their war against the Movellans?

There are numerous good points though.
Tom & Lalla play beautifully off of each other.
No K9.
Its a pre-Adric story.
The design and filming of the Movellan spacecraft was very good.
Suzanne Danielle looked stunning in her outfit.
It resurrected Davros, ensuring that character could be used in later, better stories and /or portrayed by better actors.

Despite the above I watched it again last year and I did actually enjoy it. Time changes things. As does 15 years of NuWho and Moffat's/Davies' bullshit.

I have to say reading the novelization at 11, years before I finally saw the TV story, it did become easy to envision in my mind as a nightmarish Hinchcliffe horror that picked up the tone properly from Genesis. The hostages scene for instance read a lot more horrific on the page.

Ironically I would probably place the blame chiefly at Hinchcliffe for letting the Dalek props fall to neglect and disrepair as he wasn't keen on using them.

I suppose in regards why the Daleks are digging for a presumed dead Davros, you could either theorize that the Daleks were as much looking for Davros' leftover useful scientific research notes on their genetic engineering in the old bunker as him himself, or maybe there's the suggestion that the organic non-machine part of the Daleks (or at least of the advanced Dalek Supreme) is following some kind of instinct hunch or premonition that he is alive after all.

Or you could maybe go with John Peel's explanation for how they knew he was alive (basically it involves Rachel's report of the events of Remembrance and the 7th Doctor's confrontation with Davros, being among the Ministry of Defence records the Daleks captured and read during their 2164 occupation of Earth).

Tanmann wrote:I have to say reading the novelization at 11, years before I finally saw the TV story, it did become easy to envision in my mind as a nightmarish Hinchcliffe horror that picked up the tone properly from Genesis. The hostages scene for instance read a lot more horrific on the page.

Ironically I would probably place the blame chiefly at Hinchcliffe for letting the Dalek props fall to neglect and disrepair as he wasn't keen on using them.

I suppose in regards why the Daleks are digging for a presumed dead Davros, you could either theorize that the Daleks were as much looking for Davros' leftover useful scientific research notes on their genetic engineering in the old bunker as him himself, or maybe there's the suggestion that the organic non-machine part of the Daleks (or at least of the advanced Dalek Supreme) is following some kind of instinct hunch or premonition that he is alive after all.

Or you could maybe go with John Peel's explanation for how they knew he was alive (basically it involves Rachel's report of the events of Remembrance and the 7th Doctor's confrontation with Davros, being among the Ministry of Defence records the Daleks captured and read during their 2164 occupation of Earth).

In the tv version the hostage sequence was wasted in my view. No sense of horror or even danger about what the daleks were doing.

That said i am not too keen on the book of this story. I adore Terrance Dicks for what he has contributed to the programme over the years. Like others he has just been earning a living but he has done so with what appears to be some care and attention to the product. But around this time (i.e.,very late 70's and very early eightites) he seemed to have reached a point where he was just churning out the books on auto pilot.

I thought the story made clear the Daleks were looking for Davros but i cant remember the detail sorry. But either way they were in the wrong place. Davros was killed in a bunker, not the main dalek city. I guess when his life support kicked in to save him after the daleks shot him it also transfered him from the one place to the other. Or something.

I quite like the sound of John Peel's explanation as you outline it.

stengos wrote:In the tv version the hostage sequence was wasted in my view. No sense of horror or even danger about what the daleks were doing.

Pretty much, yes.  

That said i am not too keen on  the book of this story. I adore Terrance Dicks for what he has contributed to the programme over the years. Like others he has just been earning a living but he has done so with what appears to be some care and attention to the product. But around this time (i.e.,very  late 70's and very early eightites) he seemed to have reached a point where he was just churning out the books on auto pilot.

It's a bit of an auto-pilot work, but it does plug a few gaps in the TV version, and I felt it got a bit more to the essence of what Terry Nation intended.

I thought the story made clear the Daleks were looking for Davros but i cant remember the detail sorry.

There's a maintained mystery about what they're digging for, during the first two episodes. But once they enter Davros' lair and announce their objective is the spot he should be in, I think the ambiguity is sadly removed.

With a bit of script tweaking they could've had it be that the Daleks were only looking for his leftover research materials, but were alerted into a panic hunt for Davros once they realized he was alive and moving.

Still it's possible enough that finding his notes if he was still dead was their plan B and was enough to galvanize them to go with their long reach of plan A so it wouldn't necessarily be a wasted venture.

But either way they were in the wrong place. Davros was killed in a bunker, not the main dalek city. I guess when his life support kicked in to save him after the daleks shot him it also transfered him from the one place to the other. Or something.

I interpreted that as a follow-on to Genesis where Sevrin mentioned to Bettan that there was a way to the bunker through the Kaled dome itself (presumably some connecting tunnel linking the two) but that way had been buried by the Thal's rocket strike. And I thought that's what the Daleks were trying to access by digging into the remains of the Kaled city.

I quite like the sound of John Peel's explanation as you outline it.

It's a good starting point, but he goes a bit crazy with it in War of the Daleks.

What is this horse shit? Sounds like something that gullible loser George McFly would watch. Dork probably believes those space aliens are real or something.

Biff Tannen wrote:What is this horse shit? Sounds like something that gullible loser George McFly would watch. Dork probably believes those space aliens are real or something.

Oh please Doctor Who is not a show for dorks. Would dorks watch a show with a big butchy boy like Jon Pertwee?



Funny thing is he was the butchy boy of the Doctors