I said yesterday that this story has a special place in my
heart and todays episode is the one that started it all for me. I have a fuzzy
memory of my early years but around the time that this story was on TV I was
living in Doncaster and for reasons that I will never know, we ended up
watching episode two of Remembrance of the Daleks at school. I loved it and
because the school I attended was similar to the one in the story, I immediately
went out into the playground and pretended there were Daleks everywhere.
Never in all the time that I have been doing this marathon have
I enjoyed watching a cliffhanger replay so much. It still works superbly and
how its solved is quite good because Ace recovers enough to attack the head
teacher. The subsequent explosion of the basement door is another of the superb
explosions.
The scene where the Doctor and Ace destroy the Dalek from
the basement is a great scene as its short and intense. We go from a busy scene
like that to a lovely quite slow scene with the Doctor and the new person
running the café played Joseph Marcell. Marcell would go on to play the butler
in the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. The discussion between them takes on a rather
racial and philosophical tone which isn’t something that you would expect from
Doctor Who.
Gilmore is a very good blueprint of the Brigadier. He’s
reluctant to believe the Doctor because he doesn’t understand what’s going on
and is willing to let military intelligence to do all the talking. This
approach doesn’t come across as annoying because its balanced with Rachel and
Alison who are more ready to believe (but just as confused).
The Doctor encounters the Hand of Omega and there is another
nice scene where the Doctor goes to the undertaker and he is talking to a guy
on the phone (the governor) who talks about the Doctor being “an old guy with
white hair” a reference to William Hartnell. The effect of the Hand of Omega
moving is very good and does still up a bit.
Michael Sheard is very good in this episode although he
meets a rather sad ending when he gets into a scrap with Mike and is seemingly
killed by the Daleks and his final resting place is in the cemetery. Peter
Halliday is another old face that returns playing a blind vicar. It’s a brief
role but one that is quite nice and I am reminded of all the previous
appearances that he has made in the show.
There is a great scene where Ace is turning on a TV and
whilst waiting for it to warm up. While she’s waiting for it to warm up there
is a “No Coloureds” sign in the window which is an extraordinary thing to
appear in Doctor Who because race had never really be a subject matter in the
show before and this is another sign that the show is trying to come across as
current by acknowledging these sort of issues.
There is a little joke when the TV warms up and the TV
announcer introduces a new show called “Do” which is supposed to be Doctor Who
but obviously doesn’t. I think that this is a joke that the story gets away
with because there isn’t time to really think about it because the next scene
does a great job in getting my attention.
Ace has decided to go back to the school to pick up her tapedeck
(long before Ipods and MP3 players were invented) and this introduces a whole
world of trouble for her. There is one shot where a Dalek appears round a
corner and appears at the bottom of the stairs. Another great shot is the one
where Ace batters a Dalek with a baseball bat. It is followed by her jumping
through windows. It’s nice that Ace gets the cliffhanger this time as she is
being approached by three Daleks who shout ‘Exterminate’ but don’t do it. It’s
been another outstanding episode with some great performances and some
wonderful directing. Bring on the next episode.
Before I finish for today, I never mentioned the colour
scheme of the Daleks. I love the gold and white scheme and wished that it would
be used from now on. Compared to the grey and black of the Dalek we saw in the
previous episode, the new livery looks like breath of fresh air.
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