The Doctor's Greatest Adventures Week: Destiny of the Daleks

Well hello there and welcome back to Day 2 of The Doctor's Greatest Adventures.   Before we get started I wanted to say Happy Birthday to my mom.   Here's hoping you have some fun this fine, bright day.

 As was mentioned yesterday... or was it the before or after?  Time travel is a bit of mucking about.  Anywho, we last interacted with the Doctor he was dealing with Ice Warriors and I feel the need to shoot on ahead in honor it being my mom's birthday and this tall fellow is her favorite doctor and all.  Let's us journey down the time corridor and end up directly after thwarting the Black Guardian and developing a randomizer (of which I am not certain the Doctor ever switched off) to avoid detection by the Black Guardian but The Doctor (Tom Baker of The Mutations, Doctor Who, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Black-Adder II, The Silver Chair, Cluedo and Medics) and timelady Romana (Lalla Ward of The Prince and the Pauper, The Duchess of Duke Street, Hazell, Doctor Who and Riviera) have landed on the remnants of Skaro after its thousand year war.  This is Destiny of the Daleks.

Hello Swinden!!

The Doctor: Oh, look! Spoilers!









Having escaped the Black Guardian The Doctor and regenerated Romana find themselves on a planet with an unusual amount of radiation.  The Doctor suggests the anti-rad pills be kept at the ready and journeys onward.  After a rockslide holds one of his legs, Romana goes for K-9 as assistance.  A collection of silver haired individuals scoop up the Doctor and reveal that the planet in question is Skaro during some sort of mining operation on the planet.  Explosions reach a conflict between the Daleks and their enemies the Movellans and the Daleks are looking for any possible edge to end the steadfast war they have been in by stealing the remains of Davros.

Jem and the Holograms are tough on intruders!

In Genesis of the Daleks, they turned on their creator and presumably killed him but his life support systems actually left him in a state of suspended animation (that old chestnut)  After being revived and brought up to speed, Davros (Dave Gooderson of Hazell, Doctor Who, Codename -Icarus- , Seaview and A Touch of Frost) concludes that the logical parties have no means of imagination in which to wage war and with the lack of instinctual nature feels they will be stalemated indefinitely.

Caught between two warring parties, the Doctor must continue to play along with their madcap plans of conquest until he, Romana and K-9 are safely away.  Were either of these factions triumph over the other may mean more devastation to the known universe and therefore the Doctor must interfere.

A few bits of interest and trivia about this 4-part episode.  Several of the fans seems to believe that Romana burned through about 5 regeneration cycles to pick the look she wanted.  According the script she was projecting a 3D image similar to the Doctor's old mentor Kam-Po did.  So it is a wardrobe gag on what to wear, oh what to wear.

The book the Doctor is reading is called "The Origins of the Universe" by Oolon Coluphid, a character created by then script writer/editor and later author Douglas Adams of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, this character when on and wrote a series of philosophical best-sellers all depicting God and what we deem bizarre and inexplicable errors or creations.   Read the book and you too will enjoy.

This is also Lalla Ward's first appearance as Romana when previously she portrayed Princess Astra.  13 million viewers saw this on its original release in 1979.  

I say, these quarries are all starting to look alike.