Revelation of the Daleks

Revelation of the Daleks is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in two weekly parts on March 23 and March 30, 1985. This was the final serial of the original series to be broadcast in 45-minute episodes; this format would return 20 years later when the series resumed in 2005.

1 Synopsis
2 Part One:
3 Part Two:
4 Continuity
5 Production
6 In print
7 Broadcast, VHS and DVD releases
8 References
9 External links
- 9.1 Reviews
- 9.2 Fan novelisation

Synopsis

The Sixth Doctor and Peri encounter the Daleks on the planet Necros, where the mercenary Orcini is on a mission to kill Davros.

Part One:

The TARDIS lands on Necros, the location of the funeral home, Tranquil Repose. The Doctor and Peri have come to visit a deceased scientist acquaintance. On the way, the Doctor points out great numbers of flowers that are similar to the soybean in terms of food versatility. The Doctor is attacked by a mutant, and Peri is forced to kill him to save the Doctor. Before he dies, the mutant tells the Doctor that the Great Healer used him as a genetic experiment and his appearance and hostility were a direct result of the experiments.

At Tranquil Repose, a disc jockey plays songs and chats as a form of entertainment to those who are in suspended animation. He keeps the asleep aware of current events, but saves for moments of private reflection the fact that cures for some of the afflicted have been perfected decades ago.

A couple, Natasha and Grigory, have illegally entered Tranquil Repose, also looking for the man the Doctor is visiting — Arthur Stengos, Natasha's father. Upon finding his assigned suspended animation capsule, they discover it is empty. Shocked, they continue looking and head downward. They find a dark room filled with pulsating brains and other experiments. Grigory walks past a Glass Dalek casing with a mutating red creature inside it. It opens its eye, and Grigory comments on how gruesome the thing is. When Natasha looks at it, the creature opens its mouth and starts saying "Na.. tasha? Natasha?". Natasha is shocked as she realises it is the head of her father, and he is being metamorphosised into a Dalek.

Kara, who owns a company which distributes food throughout the galaxy (though one of many), is a pawn of the Great Healer, who is in actuality Davros (now apparently reduced to a disembodied head in a tank as a result of being infected by the Movellan virus). He takes virtually all the money she makes. To dissolve this arrangement, she has hired the mercenary Orcini and his squire, Bostock. She provides a transmitter to Orcini which has a five-button passcode. This must be entered when Orcini enters Davros's headquarters. Orcini accepts the contract solely for the honour of killing Davros. With Davros eliminated, she believes she will have the power and the capital necessary to control the galaxy.

Arthur Stengos, who is now just a head with red flesh growing over him, explains to Natasha and Grigory what's going on. He tells them that the brains of everybody in Tranquil Repose are being used to metamorphosise into new Dalek mutants. He says that his mind has been conditioned to serve 'The Great Healer', but he can't remember who 'The Great Healer' actually is. As a last request, he orders his daughter to kill him before he fully mutates. While hesitating, Grigory pulls up his own gun willing to do it, but Natasha stops him and shoots her father herself. The two are then captured, thrown in a cell, and questioned by Takis and Lilt, who try rum on Grigory as a truth serum. As they are about to enter the Tranquil Repose, the Doctor and Peri find a giant statue of the Doctor, which suddenly collapses on him...

Part Two:

Peri is worried about the Doctor, and asks Mr Jobel if he will be alright. But Mr Jobel says the Doctor might be dead from the fall of the monument. However, the monument is a lightweight fake, and the Doctor is unharmed.

The Doctor and Peri are met by Mr. Jobel, the self important Chief Embalmer, and his subservient assistant Tasembeker. Peri is intrigued by the centre's DJ, whose American accent reminds her of home. The Doctor sends her off with Jobel to meet the DJ, so that he can meet the person who erected the statue.

Orcini destroys a Dalek and Davros is notified. He is convinced Kara has sent assassins, so he deploys some Daleks to bring her to him. They arrive, kill her secretary, and take her back. Meanwhile Tasembeker, who has been coerced by Davros to spy on Jobel, attempts to warn the Chief Embalmber out of misplaced love for him. When Jobel cruelly spurns her offer, Tasembeker fatally stabs him with a syringe. She is then exterminated by a patrol of Daleks.

The Daleks capture the Doctor, and throw him into a cell with Natasha and Grigory who are soon rescued by Orcini as scapegoats. Orcini penetrates Davros's lair, and apparently kills Davros, but Orcini realises that the kill was too easy. The real Davros appears with a group of Daleks, and quickly subdue Orcini and Bostock. When Kara is brought in, Orcini betrays her motives to Davros then stabs her to death.

Natasha and Grigory infiltrate the incubator room again, and plan to destroy the brains that are scheduled for metamorphosis. Natasha's gun dies due to lack of power, so Grigory attempts to arm the self-destruct switch on the brain incubator console. A glass Dalek incubator materialises and exterminates them, then in turn explodes.

The Doctor tells Peri to get back to the TARDIS and hail the President's ship, which is enroute for the internment of the body of the deceased First Lady. The DJ persuades Peri to use his equipment. Overhearing the transmission, Davros orders the DJ killed and Peri captured. The DJ produces a sonar weapon, which blows up two Daleks as they enter his room, but is killed when a third Dalek enters. Peri is captured. The Doctor overhears the events via broadcast audio and rushes to save her but is caught by two Daleks en route. Both meet back in Davros' laboratory where he reveals that he has a new army of Daleks, hidden in catacombs underneath his laboratory.

Daleks loyal to the Supreme Dalek arrive from Skaro, called by Takis, who now realise what has been going on. Takis leads the Skaro Daleks to Davros' lab, but they are met by a group of Davros's Daleks. The Skaro Daleks win and progress toward Davros. The Skaro Daleks arrest Davros and take him Skaro to stand trial. Davros tries to get the Daleks to take the Doctor as well, but they do not recognise him in this regeneration. Upon learning of what Davros had established on Necros, the Skaro forces decide to continue what he began and control the galaxy's demand for famine relief.

Orcini wants to detonate his bomb before Davros's ship leaves, refusing the Doctor's offer to build a timer. They all rush out and Orcini blows the bomb. The Dalek ship manages to take off before the blast, but the Doctor states that Orcini did die for something very honourable: the destruction of Davros's new generation of Daleks.

Takis, looking over the destruction, complains to the Doctor that they are all out of a job. The Doctor tells him that they can harvest the flowers that grow on the planet and use them as a new food source to replace the product Davros had created from dead bodies. A disgruntled Peri wants a vacation, so the Doctor agrees: "All right, I'll take you to-..."

Continuity

For the first time, Davros and the Daleks are seen to hover some distance above ground. In the transmitted version, the camera angles chosen didn't make it entirely clear that the Dalek was flying (some fans commenting that it looked more like the Dalek was giant-sized), so the sequence was remade for the DVD release of the story. All subsequent Dalek stories also feature levitation.
It is never explained how Davros survived the Movellan virus which he contracted at the end of Resurrection of the Daleks. Although Davros says that he managed to escape the space station via an escape pod, no mention is made of his condition. The Big Finish Productions audio adventure Davros portrays another encounter between the Sixth Doctor and Davros set between Resurrection and Revelation, which goes some way to explain the inconsistencies between the two serials including how Davros recognises The Doctor despite his regeneration. However, the canonicity of the audio plays is unclear. In particular, the Sixth Doctor insists in Revelation that this is their first meeting since Resurrection.
Davros creates a new race of Daleks using human tissue. After the Time War, the Emperor Dalek creates a new race of Daleks from human contestants killed on the Game Station, in The Parting of the Ways. He states that only one cell in a billion is pure enough to become a Dalek, just as Davros claims to have only used the bodies of the elite at Tranquil Repose.
The Doctor indicates he is 900 years old; this is the first firm indicator of his age since the Fourth Doctor's era, suggesting that approximately 150 years has passed for the Doctor since that time. In "Aliens of London", the Ninth Doctor would also claim to be 900 years old, despite the Seventh Doctor in the interim claiming an age of 953 in Time and the Rani, followed by the entire lifetime of both the Seventh and Eighth Doctors. The Tenth Doctor is also proclaimed as 900 years old in Last of the Time Lords, and 903 in Voyage of the Damned. See "The Doctor's age".
In one of the rare instances of the Doctor actually using a firearm, he disables a Dalek by shooting it with a machine pistol.
The Doctor's final word is edited out; he would have said "Blackpool", as the planned story The Nightmare Fair was to be set there. This would have been the first story of the next series, and would have been written by former producer Graham Williams. However, the programme was then put on an 18-month hiatus. The Nightmare Fair was later novelised by Williams for release by Target Books. Nightmare Fair will also be resurrected by Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant for a Big Finish audio play.
Coincidentally, the official Doctor Who Exhibition Centre now resides along the Golden Mile in Blackpool; oddly enough, this same exhibition centre was advertised in one of the original continuity announcements following the end of the second part of the story (and thus only a few minutes after the unfinished line itself), as can be seen in one of the special features on the DVD release.

Production

Serial details by episode
Episode	Broadcast date	Run time	Viewership (in millions)
"Part One"	23 March 1985 (1985-03-23)	44:31	7.4
"Part Two"	30 March 1985 (1985-03-30)	45:27	7.7
^[2]^[3]^[4]

Upon translation into German, this story was renamed Planet der Toten (Planet of the Dead), which was the name of a 2009 episode as well.
The BBC has a policy against allowing script editors to commission stories from themselves. Saward got around that policy by writing the script during a six-week period between his contracts.
The majority of this story was written while Eric Saward was on holiday on the island of Rhodes; and many of the names (such as Lilt and Orcini) come from places, products and people he encountered there ^[5]. Tasambeker was named after a Greek saint.
The story is loosely based on The Loved One and Soylent Green, as noted in the 2005 DVD commentary for the story. The theme of processed human remains feeding a starving population comes straight from Soylent Green, while the black humour, many of the set designs and scenes, and the characters Jobel, Tasembeker and "The Great Healer" all reference the 1965 film The Loved One.
This story was director Graeme Harper's second Doctor Who story, (the first being the Fifth Doctor story The Caves of Androzani). He has also directed four episodes from the 2006 series ("Rise of the Cybermen", "The Age of Steel", "Army of Ghosts" and "Doomsday"), two from the 2007 series ("42" and "Utopia") and five from the 2008 series "Planet of the Ood", "The Unicorn and the Wasp", "Turn Left", "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End", as well as the 2009 special "The Waters of Mars".
Portions of the story were filmed at the IBM UK headquarters in Cosham, Portsmouth ^[5]
Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant appear entirely on film in Part One and have no interaction with the actors portrayed in the video segments.
Eric Saward thought up the idea of blue 'mourning' suits for Necros in order to cover up Colin Baker's costume, which he considered inappropriate for a drama series, for as long as possible.
This was the final serial to use Peter Howell's arrangement of the "Doctor Who Theme" that had been introduced in 1980.
This was the final Doctor Who serial to be produced using film for outdoor sequences and video for interior scenes. Beginning with The Trial of a Time Lord and continuing to the end of the original series, production moved to all-video.
Following the broadcast of this serial, the BBC suspended work on the series for 18 months; production resumed a year later with the next new episode airing in September 1986.
This story was first aired in the U.S.A. and some other countries in four 25 minute episodes. The first cliffhanger sees Natasha and Grigory hiding in the catacombs as Takis and Lilt are wheeling a body through the tunnels, while the cliffhanger in "Part Three" features either the Doctor telling Peri that she's' in great danger, or, in some edits of the story, Davros ordering his Daleks to kill the DJ. All VHS and DVD releases of the story have been in its original two-part form.

In print

The unofficial novelisation by Jon Preddle

This is one of five Doctor Who serials that were never novelised by Target Books, as they were unable to come to an agreement with Eric Saward and Daleks creator Terry Nation that would have allowed Saward or another writer to adapt the script. Virgin Books (the successor to Target) did announce plans to publish a novelisation by Saward in the early 1990s, but this ultimately did not occur. A fan group in New Zealand published an unofficial novelisation of the story in 1992, later republishing it online as an eBook titled Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks.

Broadcast, VHS and DVD releases

The story was repeated on BBC 2 in March/April 1993 on consecutive Fridays (19/3/1993 to 9/4/1993) in its 4-part version (sold for overseas transmissions) to represent the Colin Baker years in a series of repeats featuring the original seven Doctors.
This story was released in 1999 on VHS together with Planet of the Daleks in a special Dalek tin set, and again in 2000 as part of another box set. The stories were released on VHS individually in North America.
The story was released on Region 2 DVD on 11 July 2005. The DVD release included the documentary Revelation Exhumed, produced by John Kelly and featuring interviews with Eric Saward, Graeme Harper, Alan Spalding, John Brace (Visual Effects), Roger Limb, Pat Godfrey (costumer designer), plus cast members Trevor Cooper, Clive Swift, Roy Skelton, Terry Molloy, William Gaunt, Hugh Walters and Colin Spaull.
The DVD also includes a commentary with Eric Saward, Nicola Bryant, Terry Molloy and Graeme Harper, with an option to view the story with CGI enhanced special effects sequences. It is available as a stand alone DVD or as part of the Davros box set, which includes Genesis of the Daleks, Destiny of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks.

References

^ From the Doctor Who Magazine series overview, in issue 407 (pp26-29). The Discontinuity Guide, which counts the unbroadcast serial Shada, lists this as story number 143. Region 1 DVD releases follow The Discontinuity Guide numbering system.
^ Shaun Lyon et al. (2007-03-31). "Revelation of the Daleks". Outpost Gallifrey. http://gallifreyone.com/episode.php?id=vv. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
^ "Revelation of the Daleks". Doctor Who Reference Guide. http://www.drwhoguide.com/who_6z.htm. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
^ Sullivan, Shannon (2007-08-07). "Revelation of the Daleks". A Brief History of Time Travel. http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/6z.html. Retrieved 2008-08-30.
^ ^a ^b Revelation of the Daleks at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)

External links

Reviews

Revelation of the Daleks reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
Revelation of the Daleks reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide

Fan novelisation

Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks eBook

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