Holistic Review: The second of Eric Saward's all-action bloodbath stories has an overabundance of deaths but very little plot, making it a grim but forgettable tale.

Resurrection of the Daleks is one of the first stories I completely missed on TV as a child. You'd think, in the VCR age, that sort of thing wouldn't happen, but VCRs (and my memory for programming them) were fallible, so at least one airing of this story — and possibly more, though I don't recall for sure — passed me by. On one of those occasions, unless the memory cheats, I was away visiting my grandmother (and Gray) in Bluefield WV, where the local PBS station aired a completely different set of Doctor Who stories. So I couldn't have been older than 12 at the time. I vaguely recall lying awake in her guest-room bed, being annoyed at myself for having missed Resurrection of the Daleks again. Years later, when I eventually managed to catch a repeat (though, for that matter, it might not have been until it was released on VHS in the US in 1994), I was so excited to finally get to watch a brand-new (to me) story, and fill in a frustratingly long-lasting gap in my Doctor Who viewing... which only magnified my disappointment when I realized how very little I liked it.

To date, Resurrection remains one of my all-time least-favorite classic Who stories, to the point that I hadn’t even opened the special-edition DVD (which was released in 2012) until now, as I got ready to review the story six years later. As ever, I hoped that perhaps turning a critical eye on the story would give me a greater appreciation for it; but in this case, I’m afraid that my opinion was mostly cemented.

Resurrection of the Daleks makes a good case that Eric Saward fundamentally misunderstands Doctor Who. I think that most of us would argue that Doctor Who is, at its heart, an optimistic and uplifting show, in which the Doctor triumphs over evil monsters by using his wits and cunning, fighting with words rather than weapons. If we wanted to watch bloody shoot-em-ups, we would turn on something else. Doctor Who has a message, it isn’t just “slaughter for entertainment”. And yet that’s the angle that Saward always seems to pursue.

For starters, there’s the story’s bodycount. Now, I have zero automatic objections to a story with a high bodycount. Look at Horror of Fang Rock, for goodness’ sake; everyone in that story, bar the TARDIS crew, dies a horrible death. That’s about as grim as it gets, yet the story as a whole is extremely entertaining. I think part of the reason why the death in Fang Rock isn’t as objectionable is that it’s clearly fantasy violence: practically everyone who dies, save the capsized ship’s crew, is murdered at the electrically-charged tentacles of an invading Rutan. Even in Resurrection, some of the deaths are fantastical — take the (Dalek) deaths from Movellan virus, and even the plague-aerosol victims — which makes them seem more dramatic, especially when contrasted against the story's realistically gritty backdrop. Even though audiences at the time objected to the two close-up shots of melted-off faces — understandably so, given that the effects are rather gruesome — it’s also not the sort of thing one expects to happen in Norwich city centre.

But nearly every other death in the story is the result of a gunfight. In the story’s opening scene alone, 8 or 9 people, including one innocent bystander, are brutally gunned down by a trio of impassive policemen, which immediately sets the tone for the entire story. (After the fiasco from Terror of the Autons, you’d think the production team would be a bit more wary of depicting evil policemen, but evidently not.) This is followed by scene after interminable scene of firearm battles, between sides that are sometimes hard to distinguish, in which nearly every person, sympathetic or not, eventually falls beneath a hail of bullets (or, occasionally, Dalek blasts).

All this death would be more palatable if the plotline warranted it. Sadly, this plotline does nothing of the sort. Resurrection of the Daleks is a classic example of a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. In terms of what actually matters to the story, the plotline is basically that the Daleks, having acquired a stash of Movellan virus, break Davros out of prison in the hopes that he’ll help them research a cure (after which they’ll exterminate him), but Davros detects their treachery and beats them to the punch. Seriously, that’s it. Everything else that happens in this story is extraneous to that simple plot, which is why Resurrection of the Daleks feels so jam-packed with dead-end plotlines that don’t go anywhere. Saward insists on padding out the storyline with random side-plots that promise to derail the Daleks’ plans; but since he obviously can’t allow that to happen, every single one of these side-plots eventually fizzles out. Which means that the audience spends an awful lot of time watching people launch completely unsuccessful missions that accomplish nothing: think of Osborn’s attempt to destroy Davros, Styles’ attempt to self-destruct the station, Tegan’s attempt to flee the warehouse and find help, and the Doctor’s attempt to kill Davros. Failed, failed, failed, failed. The most hilari-pitiful of all is Laird’s decision not to escape with Tegan, because: “This isn’t gonna deceive anyone for long, not unless there’s someone here to help it along with a little bluff.” Ultimately, this ‘bluff’ buys Tegan approximately 4 whopping seconds (way to go, Laird! good thing you stayed behind!), but the abject failure of Laird's stratagem doesn’t really matter because the army clones don’t bother pursuing Tegan anyway.

And in the midst of all these dead-end plotlines are swathes of people getting mowed down in the crossfire for no particularly good reason. Compare again to Horror of Fang Rock: a couple of characters are killed off for nothing more than shock value, but most of the deaths serve some narrative function. In Resurrection, most of the deaths are superfluous, and even “shock value” loses its shock when dozens of nameless guest characters are gunned down.

Then we have the Doctor, who accepts Archer's gun without protest, readily picks up a gun to shoot a Dalek mutant full of bullets (when there’s a soldier right next to him, fully equipped to do the same), grabs a trooper’s gun with the evident intention of defending himself on the Dalek ship, holds a gun on another trooper, then declares his intention to murder Davros. Admittedly, it’s an understandable decision, especially on the heels of Genesis of the Daleks — though it is perhaps regrettable that since the events of that story, the Doctor has decided that his noble reluctance to wipe out the Daleks was a mistake — and it’s the sort of decision that any action hero would feel duty-bound to make, in the interests of protecting the universe. But the Doctor is not “any action hero”, he’s supposed to be a better man. And so even though I’m sympathetic to his decision, and I’m not necessarily opposed to every instance of the Doctor using a weapon, it still feels rather like a betrayal of his character. Had the Doctor's decision to murder Davros been an isolated example in this story, and his only moment handling a gun been when he gingerly used his fingertips to pass one to Laird, I'd look on this aspect of the story a lot more favorably.

Dialogue is a major problem with the story, too. There are only a few lines that are memorable on their own, and only a handful more that are made memorable through the actors’ performances. To balance those out, Saward also writes a quite a few clunkers, and a whole lot of uninteresting “here’s what needs to happen in the plot next” lines — one of my ‘favorites’ being Lytton’s “Raise the force-shield. All troopers to battle stations. Battle speed!” when we don’t have the faintest clue what he’s going on about. At this early point in the story, we don't know who he is, where he is, or where he's going, so despite the dramatic direction and music, the line is utterly meaningless. Frustratingly, this tendency to jump straight into jargon without any setup begins in the very first dialogue-heavy scene, which is a great way to turn the audience off. One of my pet peeves is when a story thinks it doesn’t have to do any work to engage us, and that's exactly what happens here.

Unfortunately, that's not even the biggest of my pet peeves that Resurrection of the Daleks commits. I feel strongly that any Doctor Who writer worth their salt should be able to figure out a way for the companion(s) to contribute meaningfully to the plotline, ideally in a way that utilizes their backstory to good advantage. In Turlough’s case, the only possible moment that qualifies is when he eggs Mercer on to kill various people (because, I guess, he still has some of that darkness inside him that the Black Guardian preyed upon). Otherwise, he does absolutely nothing, merely wandering aimlessly around various sets until he finally encounters the surviving station crew, then tagging along after them, until he and Tegan get left behind in the TARDIS for much of the final episode. He gets literally only 42 lines in the entire story. That’s roughly 10 lines per episode, if we consider the story’s original 4-episode breakdown, though most of his lines come in the story’s second half. And it does his character no favors that in one of his few "proactive" scenes, he's singularly unhelpful when Tegan attempts to purloin a cylinder of Movellan virus; instead of pitching in, he drags his feet the entire time. But I like Strickson's tender delivery of "It's Tegan, you fool. She's a friend."

In Tegan’s case, her very moving departure scene is a perfect example of how to tie in a character’s backstory, with her reference to dearly-departed Aunt Vanessa’s advice. But aside from that scene — along with her aborted escape attempt (during which she’s shrewd enough to almost immediately realize that the policemen are not her friends), and her attempts to devise plans that make use of the Movellan virus cylinders — she too is extremely underutilized. Poor Tegan may get slightly more to do than Turlough, but “slightly more” is an indignity when this is her last story. For goodness’ sake, Saward has her confined to bed for no good reason during most of the first episode! At least she gets to wear my favorite of her outfits for the second story in a row. And Fielding gives a gut-wrenching delivery of “No!!!” as the policemen murder an innocent old man on the beach.

Owing to Saward’s handling of the companions, it should come as no surprise that characters are another of the story’s failings. Thank goodness the casting director chose excellent actors to fill the majority of the guest roles, because almost none of the parts are scripted to be very interesting. And there's a very good reason for that. In the basic plotline I outlined above, did you notice which characters were essential to the story? Davros, and only Davros. Everyone else is basically filler.

I get the impression that Saward believes that exciting battle action is the only thing we need to get involved in a story; but personally, I need characters that have interesting and understandable backstories and motivations, and that seems to be something that interests Saward very little. Of the entire guest cast, only three are given backstories, and even those character details are basically limited to a line or two. Nor does it help that his characters are almost never referred to by name, so it’s very hard to figure out who anyone is. Mercer is only called by name twice (once posthumously), Archer twice (right around the time that original!Archer is killed), Calder once, Laird and Styles not at all. Yet crewmember Zena, who isn’t even credited as such, gets a shout-out once. This only contributes to the impression that they're all a faceless bunch about whom Saward cares very little, so neither should we.

At the start of the story, we meet cowardly Stien and his compatriot Galloway, who are being hunted down by the Daleks’ clone servants. (In hindsight, Stien — a clone servant himself — was obviously perfectly safe, and we’re never given any hint as to what his mission here might have been.) Galloway (William Sleigh) is evidently a soldier, who wants to use the Daleks’ time corridor to return and warn his people about... something... but that’s all we learn, because he’s shortly thereafter killed. Underdeveloped character in mystifying plot thread: check, check. Sleigh’s acting isn’t necessarily the greatest either; witness the way he delivers the line “A rodent”, when Stien wonders about the noise he’s just heard, as if he’s just spotted one up to no good. (And when Galloway decides this “rodent” is a threat, why does he send Stien away rather than leaving with him? And why does he just stand there gawping when he gets shot?)

Stien (Rodney Bewes) is a much better character, and one of a handful of successful elements in Resurrection. In among all the impenetrable dialogue and unengaging scenes at the start of the story, the only plotline that initially arouses any interest is Stien’s. His evolution from likeable stuttering coward to cold Dalek servant is pleasantly unexpected, especially since his earlier characterization laid the foundation for the audience to find him sympathetic. Indeed, even after this twist, he remains somewhat sympathetic, as it transpires that the Daleks’ cloning technology has suppressed some of the original’s personality and memories, in order to fashion him into a better Dalek servant. As the Doctor encourages Stien to break down those mental barriers, the more sympathetic version re-emerges. Aside from one atrociously flat delivery — “I can’t control my mind. I’m not safe. I caused Mercer’s death. I’ve gotta get away from here... Don’t try to follow me, I may cause your death.” — Bewes’ performance is stellar, making Stien one of the few fun parts of Resurrection to watch.

The station crew comes off surprisingly well, too. New transfer Mercer (Jim Findley) hasn’t yet lost his idealism enough to become jaded, so he has a nice bit of character background, and soon Mercer is thrust into the acting captain role when the Daleks’ attack kills the senior crew offscreen. (Why a brand-new transfer is in charge of the bridge in the first place is never satisfactorily explained, but never mind.) Unfortunately, Mercer then loses what personality he’s been scripted, coming across as little more than a man desperate to save his remaining crewmembers, but Findley’s appealing performance holds the character together.

His verbal sparring partner, the very much jaded Doctor Styles (Rula Lenska), is delightfully morose. That sort of character ought to fit into this type of storyline a little too well, sucking every possible remaining morsel of joy out of her scenes and dragging the storyline down into a morass of futility and despair, but somehow Lenska absolutely nails the character, making her entertaining to watch rather than just a boring killjoy. I think it’s her range as an actress that makes the difference, because she’s able to hint at a lighthearted side behind Styles’ frustration and sarcasm. I loved the way Lenska impatiently kicks the slow laboratory door, and her delivery of “Guess!” (when Turlough asks what she’s going to do), and her superb delivery of “Nearly there! ...Why am I so excited? This’ll be the last thing I ever do.”

Osborn (Sneh Gupta) is extremely bland as scripted, with no backstory and not much of a personality aside from an irreverent streak. But Gupta absolutely breathes life into the character, delivering every line with an interesting inflection. Take for example: "Ohh, the captain normally allows new arrivals to settle in before subjecting them to the tedium of officer of the watch. What did you do?", "It's not working!", and the way she shushes Mercer in the middle of “Engineering report... Engineering report damage to the generating plant.” which demonstrates that Gupta can make even dull-as-dishwater lines interesting. (Plus badly-written ones like "You fear an attack?!" Honestly, I can't with this dialogue. These poor actors! It must be like swimming upstream, trying to deliver these lines well.) Also, I like her metallic green nail polish. Even though I knew it was coming — how could it not be coming, in a Saward story? — I was gutted when she was killed off so early.

John Adam Baker acquits himself well as the unnamed crewmember who accompanies Osborn to Davros’ cell, as does Linsey Turner as Zina, who helps Styles with the station self-destruct. And I want to give the casting department particular praise for filling several of these key roles, along with background parts, with actors of color; it makes the futuristic station seem pleasingly, and appropriately, diverse.

Likewise, I appreciate that both of the story’s guest scientists are women. As sweet, meek Professor Laird, Chloe Ashcroft is by far the brightest point in the Earth scenes, and a welcome reprieve from all the aggressive masculinity on display. Her caring nature, her befriending of Tegan, and her unexpected knack for subterfuge all make her one of the story’s more interesting characters. I strongly approved of her shrewd realization that she could grab the gun but she’d better not do it because she was probably being watched, followed by this well-delivered reveal that she had been ready to hatch a backup plan all along: “Pity he didn’t want any tea. He’d have slept for hours.” Ashcroft's relatable performance makes Professor Laird seem like a real person rather than a character, which is an impressive feat when even the other excellent guest actors aren't quite able to fully overcome this limitation of the script. The only downside is that her wild shrieking is a bit alarming (as it makes her sound slightly unhinged rather than scared), but hey, who am I to criticize how someone screams.

Unfortunately, she’s surrounded by extremely bland supporting characters in Colonel Archer (Del Henney), Sergeant Calder (Philip McGough), and a gaggle of nameless soldiers who do little else but shoot guns and die. Henney and McGough act the parts well, with McGough in particular managing to make Calder seem pleasant and sympathetic through the sheer force of his performance alone, but there’s very little of interest about either character.

To my surprise, another of the story’s bright spots is Davros. Terry Molloy, making his début in the role, gives such a magnetic performance. It’s hard to beat Michael Wisher, but wow, Molloy absolutely inhabits the character. Among my favorite moments: his spluttering reaction when he learns that the Daleks lost the Movellan war, the way he shakily grips the hypno-syringe with his middle phalanges rather than his fingertips, and his very successful delivery of the stereotypical zero-to-sixty-in-ten-seconds Davros rants. He's so skilled at modulating the intensity of his performance, which varies from screaming rage to quiet scheming even from one line to the next, as befits Davros' mercurial temperament. It must be said, though, that Davros was really quite stupid not to realize that the Movellan virus would attack his Dalek parts.

His servant Kiston (Les Grantham) is unsurprisingly bereft of characterization, but Grantham somehow manages to imbue his lines (like "Sorry, sir." and "I caught my hand.") with personality, and much to his credit, he delivers the line "Then you must be equally humane in your revenge" with more subtlety than the script would seem to encourage.

And then there’s Lytton (Maurice Colbourne). Why on earth Saward thought he was a popular enough character to bring back, I may never understand. He has barely any function at all in this story, except to be the unnecessary middleman between the Daleks and their clone soldiers.

Admittedly, the Daleks add a modicum of interest to the story when it transpires that they only revived Davros out of self-interest, and rather than having any particular loyalty to him, would really prefer to see him dead. The eventual emergence of a new faction of Daleks, loyal to Davros, introduces an interesting element of conflict that sets up Revelation of the Daleks nicely. (The downside, though, is that it’s very hard to distinguish the two factions visually; as a result, it’s difficult to keep track of which side is winning, which makes the later battle scenes extremely confusing.)

Otherwise, their plot is a bit, well, all over the place. I like the idea that they’ve revived Davros because they need his help to find a cure for the Movellan virus that’s so badly damaged their plans for conquest. Had the story stuck to this idea alone, it would’ve been better for it. The addition of clones is... confusing. For one thing, it’s rather difficult to understand how they’re produced. Making a duplicate of the Doctor (who is, admittedly, a complex being with a massive brain) involves a long mind-copying procedure for which the Doctor emphatically must be alive. Yet the Daleks are also able to duplicate Tegan and Turlough, who they've barely even seen, much less captured and scanned. (They haven’t had Turlough even slightly in their custody!) Is it possible that these are just physical copies that haven’t yet been imprinted with the hosts’ memories or personality? But this wouldn’t explain their precise copy of Calder, whom they’ve evidently just exterminated, nor why their duplicate of Archer still has his gun belt.

Nor can the Daleks decide how to take the best advantage of their new cloning technology. Mostly they seem to use the clones for strategic defense, as when they replace the entire army contingent in order to be able to guard the canisters of Movellan virus without arousing suspicion, which makes sense. But then there’s a tacked-on suggestion that they’ve lured the Doctor into their trap specifically so that they can create clones of him and his companions, in order to invade Gallifrey and assassinate the High Council?! Um? Isn’t that the kind of devious epic plan that should maybe wait until you’re, you know, not being wiped out by Movellan virus?

As if that wasn’t bad enough, at the story’s end, we learn that the Daleks have also been playing a long game by slowly replacing key figures around the planet Earth with loyal Dalek clones!!! At first, I thought, how weird that the series never again follows up on this clear setup for a future storyline... but barely two minutes later, we learn why, as the Doctor offhandedly reveals that the Dalek duplicates are unstable, and they’ll all keel over on their own before long anyway, so they aren’t really a threat that anyone needs to worry about. So if they're not going to feature in this story, and they're not being set up for a future story, then what's the point of bringing them up at all?!

I remembered the Dalek mutant scenes being a highlight of the story, and in truth they are one of the more interesting parts, as a murderous blob stalks the dark corners of the warehouse, leaping out at the soldiers to mutilate their exposed necks. And yet, aside from the moments when it attacks someone, this plotline soon turns into a transparent way to stall for time. It doesn’t help that the entire story slows down at this point: Turlough’s wandering around the Dalek ship, the remaining station crew are wandering around the prison, the Doctor and the soldiers are wandering around looking for the Dalek mutant, and Lytton is giving Davros a history lesson. It’s not really until 40 minutes into the story that the plot actually starts advancing.

I haven't had much to say about Davison, aside from the Doctor's new fetish for firearms, but I feel I should highlight a couple of particularly well-delivered lines: "Tell me!" to Colonel Archer, and "However you respond is seen as an act of provocation." The fact that I don't have more to say about him is no reflection on Davison's performance, but rather on the Doctor's minimal involvement in the storyline.

Malcolm Clarke’s music is atmospheric; it feels largely like a retread of Earthshock, but it was a great score then and it’s a fine score now, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. I particularly like the ominous music as the station crew prepare to be boarded by the Daleks, the score as Davros is reawoken, and as Davros' new scientist servant slips on gloves to analyze the canister of Movellan virus.

Effects throughout are pretty solid. We could have used a few more of them (for example, some earlier establishing shots of the Dalek attack on the station would’ve been really helpful) but I like the ones we got. The Dalek spaceship looks great as it flies through space, the Dalek mutant glistens revoltingly, and the stunt of the Doctor blowing up a Dalek by pushing it out of a second-storey window is justifiably memorable. The foam, when the Movellan virus attacks the Daleks, seems rather simplistic — it makes the Daleks resemble spraycans of shaving cream — yet as a sanitized depiction of terminal alien illness, it’s surprisingly effective. And the virus’ after-effects, which we see from the two melted-looking Daleks in Davros’ lab, are striking and almost gruesome.

The makeup is decent as well. The first melted-face makeup isn’t bad; it’s not great either, but it’s certainly scary enough to traumatize children (which, evidently, it did). The effect is much more successful when Baker’s nameless crewmember finally succumbs to the gas, losing not just half his face but several fingers as well. Brrrr. (Osborn’s dialogue along the lines of “What’s that smell?” are a chillingly horrific setup for this reveal.) On the downside, Davros’ new mask is not one of the story’s selling points. It’s lost a lot of subtlety since Destiny of the Daleks; in his first two stories, his face looked rather realistically wizened and skeletal, but in this one, it looks more melted and lumpy. It’s a striking mask, to be sure, but I wouldn’t call it realistic.

I feel I should have more to say about the sets, but none of them really grab me. There are elements that I really like — the bright-white palette of the Dalek spaceship, the slightly creepy glimpse of figures sleeping behind the frosted panelling of the berths in their duplication room, the self-destruct console, and Davros' spacious tank of a cell — but otherwise the sets seem a bit simplistic. And I’m going to ding the set designers on their second bubble-wrap bed of the season. (This one audibly pops as the Doctor lies down on it!)

Matthew Robinson’s direction is perfectly fine, if not strikingly artistic. I wonder if that's partly because the sets, which are mostly corridors or wide open rooms without much inherent depth of field, aren't really constructed to allow for interesting camera angles, or if it's because the script doesn't provide many opportunities for creative flair. While I suspect that these are both factors, I don't want to be overly critical of the set design. Even given their limitations, I suspect Robinson could've found ways to make greater use of the sets if he had been inclined to generate more stylish visuals. The camerawork in the opening sequence is off-puttingly shaky, too, and I can’t see any reason why he chose to film it as a handheld shot. But there are a couple of memorable sequences, like the shot through a broken windowpane of Tegan trying to escape through an exterior window, and the shot of Tegan running away from the policemen.

Resurrection of the Daleks is, of course, also noteworthy for being the first Doctor Who story to feature 45-minute episodes, though it was originally planned to be a typical four-parter. Reading over the original episode endings made me realize that I don’t believe I ever saw the US edits of this or any other story on TV. In fact, I don’t think it was until the summer 2018 stream of classic Doctor Who on Twitch that I finally saw some of the bizarre and hilarious Colin Baker mid-episode cliffhangers. (You will understand, I’m sure, that I didn’t tune in for the Twitch showing of Resurrection.) Where I lived, Doctor Who wasn’t shown episodically but rather a complete story at a time, which certainly makes for a different viewing experience of the show. Maybe that’s why I have such a deep love of cliffhangers now.

Minor points:

• What exactly is the opening scene about? Who are these "specimens" (also referred to as "prisoners" from different time periods), and why are they "escaping" from Lytton and his policemen? We never see anyone else like them on the Dalek ship, unless they're clones — ineffective ones for infiltration, in that futuristic getup — rebelling against the Daleks for some unspecified reason.

• After surviving the massacre, why does Galloway lead Stien back into the warehouse? Aren't they meant to be escaping? Well, evidently Galloway's changed his mind about that, and is now planning to take the time corridor back to the Dalek ship to "warn our own people", but what on earth about? What good will it do? To put it another way: what could possibly have motivated him to escape from the Dalek ship (or what could possibly have happened to him since their escape) that "his people" back on the ship wouldn't already know about?

• If Stien is a Dalek agent, why does he sound genuinely remorseful at Galloway's death?

• Our last-ever Janet Fielding patented brow-lift! After the TARDIS is rocked by the Daleks’ time corridor:

  Doctor: “Are you all right?”
  Tegan: “Yes, I think so.” (brow-lift!)

• What futuristic engineer designed the doors on this station? They're a health-and-safety nightmare! I wonder how often crewmembers trip over the threshold and face-plant on the floor.

• The story indicting itself? A classic example of its uninspired dialogue? Or perhaps both simultaneously?

  Styles: “More killing?!”
  Mercer: “Your bile would be better directed against the enemy, doctor!”

• "Should we be boarded," Mercer instructs Osborn, "destroy the prisoner." Is Davros really the only prisoner on the entire station? It's true that we never see any others. Or maybe he's just so infamous, being the only prisoner who has their own self-destruct button, that Mercer can assume Osborn knows who he means.

• What are the odds that, of all the warehouses in the Shad Thames area, the Doctor just happens to beeline to the one containing the time corridor, and where Stien (despite Galloway's murder) is cowering? He's not carrying a tracking device! As a Time Lord, can he somehow sense the time corridor?

• I love how the Doctor and Tegan not once, not twice, but three times completely ignore Stien's request for food!

• When the station is boarded, why are only four of the eight crewmembers equipped with gas masks? I feel sure this is not best practice!

• Lytton scolds the Supreme Dalek, "Your battle tactics won't work! Their position is too strong!" Yeeeees, their position which consists of eight people hiding behind a flimsy barricade, and no fallback plan? ("We're finished!" Mercer tells Osborn, after the surviving four have fled the scene. "It's every man for himself!" Well, gosh, you tried real hard.)

• When did the crewmember with Osborn fall victim to the Daleks' flesh-melting gas? He was on the bridge with Osborn when they released it. (Did Mercer bring some of it wafting in his wake when he rushed onto the bridge?! He does later say "There could still be gas around!", but neither he nor Osborn falls ill.)

• Not sure I’m clear why this story is called “Resurrection of the Daleks”. The Daleks aren’t dead? If anything, surely it should’ve been called The Resurrection of Davros. (But then, he wasn’t dead either!)

• I love how Tegan apparently knocks over a pole or something that gives her away, despite being crouched completely still behind a crate in the middle of the room.

• Kudos to the actor portraying the first soldier that the Dalek exterminates after arriving in the warehouse. He gives some very impressive death throes as he collapses. Actually, background actors in this story are of a very high calibre in general, including the prisoners who are gunned down, the woman who nods to our unnamed crewman on the station bridge, the two soldiers who are attacked by the Dalek mutant, and the trooper whom Stien shoots. (They all outclass the wild gyrations of the soldiers who are exterminated in the climactic battle scene!)

• I keep mishearing this line! (Calder actually says "Tea, sir?" and it's Archer who responds!)

  Doctor: (re: Tegan) "How is she?"
  Laird: "She's sleeping naturally."
  Calder: "Seize her?"
  Doctor: (agreeing) "Thank you."

• I’m not sure I understand why Davros is so adamant about remaining on the station to work. He claims that he doesn’t want to work on the Dalek ship for fear of contaminating it, though it eventually transpires that he wants to be far enough away from the Daleks that he can kill them from afar and then easily escape. (There's no indication yet that he's aware the Daleks are planning to double-cross him, but I guess Davros is the type of guy who plans for all eventualities.) But that still doesn’t explain why, if there’s a risk of outside attack (or inside sabotage), he couldn’t ask the Daleks to relocate him to some other safer laboratory?

• As much as I've ragged on this script, I do like the very subtle implication when Archer says, re: the policeman's radio, "It's dead!", followed by the other policeman levelling a gun at Archer's head.

• Robinson lets us into the secret of where the mutant is hiding, when we see something breathing very heavily under a burlap sack. It’s just about believable that this is the Dalek mutant, if it’s been running around an awful lot and is taking great big heaving breaths that cause its giant brain pan to bob up and down, but then the Doctor nudges aside the sack to reveal... a cat, standing on all fours. “Meow! Meow! Meow!” says the kitty, adorably, under no evident respiratory distress. Even if it had been, there is no way that a cat was breathing that heavily. To make the sack move like that, it would’ve had to be jumping up and down. You know, as cats do.

• Three Daleks go into the time corridor... and four come out? ...THEY ARE BREEDING!!!

• How come the Daleks evidently haven't made a duplicate of Laird?

• Are you saying there are still crewmembers around still?!

  Lytton: “There are still members of the crew still at large!”

• Great job with the stealth, Doctor. The moment he materializes onboard the Dalek ship, he starts hollering, “Turlough? Turlough!”

• "Foolish boy!" gripes the Doctor of Turlough, who accidentally stumbled into the time corridor and then had the gall not to hang around the main thoroughfare of the Dalek ship waiting for the TARDIS to arrive.

• Why did they relocate the cliffhanger from its original ending — a gang of Daleks preparing to exterminate the Doctor — to seconds before, just after Stien rather-less-terrifyingly announces himself to be "a Dalek agent"? Did those extra seven seconds really make that much difference?

• Gasp! I always used to tell my international graduate students that you couldn't pluralize this word. (Then again, I guess Daleks are non-native speakers of English too.)

  Dalek: “It is vital you complete your researches as soon as possible.”

• Tegan! Should you really be tossing and shaking the maybe-bomb??

• Ohh Tegan, now you gonna get those sheets all filthy. Don't you wanna wash the dirt off the cylinder before you tuck it into your bed? Hygiene is two-thirds of health, you know!

• Oh sure, one cylinder in your cot looks REALLY convincing as a sleeping person. I am not impressed by this woeful plan. (Thankfully, neither is Tegan.)

• New favorite Dalek line:

  Dalek: “You must cooperate! You must lie down!”

• When the Doctor first enters the duplication room, the two berths directly behind the machinery are occupied by people who are roughly the same height, though the one in the top berth is lying closer to the far end. But just before the Daleks unveil the occupants, revealing them to be duplicates of Tegan and Turlough, suddenly the one on the bottom (Turlough) is both taller and shifted furthest to the end. (I mean, not that it matters in the slightest! But one does love one's nitpicks.)

• Speaking of nitpicks: we hear the Daleks' time corridor activate twice, but they apparently only transport back one cylinder of Movellan virus. (And how come the noise is suddenly so piercing that it sends Laird reeling in pain?)

• In her third Precognitive Companion Moment of this story (after realizing that a Dalek was about to materialize, and that the policeman was about to reveal a gun), Tegan somehow intuits that the policemen are going to shoot the man on the beach instead of her.

• When Mercer agonizes that he shouldn't have left his crewmates, Turlough assures him that "You did the right thing!" despite the fact that if Mercer had been there, he surely could have bought Styles the precious few seconds she needed to, you know, stop hesitating and pull the self-destruct lever already.

• Ahhh, I see that Dalek reel-to-reel tape technology has barely advanced since Genesis.

• Waugh! No Leela. Bad editors. (Interesting, too, that Ian Levine picked footage of Jamie and Victoria from The Enemy of the World! How nice that we’ve had the entire story returned since then!)

• Why are there no Daleks waiting to welcome / capture Tegan when she arrives at their end of the time corridor?

• And who could forget this classic Saward line, which so aptly describes this story:

  Stien: “Aaaahhh! I can’t stand the confusion in my mind!”

• The Doctor’s confrontation with Davros is one of the few truly electrifying moments in the story, assuming of course you can get past the idea that the Doctor is determined to murder Davros. Which leads to this memorable line:

  Doctor: “I’m not here as your prisoner, Davros, but as your executioner.”

• The Doctor sees two troopers approaching Davros’ laboratory, so he tells Stien and Mercer, “Outside! Deal with them!” Which sounds to me (and, evidently, to them as well) an awful lot like “kill them for me”.

• Why does the Doctor let Stien leave the TARDIS, if he knows that Stien is only safe from his Dalek conditioning when he’s inside it?

• Well now, this is weird. Not long after the Supreme Dalek declares that "Lytton grows too arrogant! His mind resists our control! He must be exterminated as soon as it is convenient to the Daleks!", Lytton receives an order: "Davros has gained control of two Daleks. They are in the reception area, attempting to enter the Doctor's TARDIS. You must exterminate them." Given that Davros is, at that moment, in his laboratory — and has not moved from there in some time — I felt sure this was a ruse by the Supreme Dalek, and an execution squad would be waiting to dispatch Lytton when he arrived. However, I was utterly wrong. When Lytton arrives in the reception area, which is completely devoid of both Davros (no surprise) and Dalek execution squads (total shock!), he's now informed: "Your troopers have failed! Davros still lives! You must destroy the Daleks of Davros! You must follow them to Earth! You must exterminate them!" Soooooo was that whole "reception area" thing just a holdover from an earlier draft of the script? Or are the Daleks setting Lytton up for failure to make him look like a screwup? As if they need a reason to exterminate anyone!

• Why does Stien fling aside his weapon before entering the self-destruct room? He's killed the guards outside the door, but isn't it possible there are more guards inside?

• I’m rather surprised that the station self-destruct is apparently as difficult to turn off as it was to turn on. Surely they should have shut it down by now? (Or maybe they did? We can still hear its pulsating noise, but it seems to have stopped flashing red until Stien primes it again.)

• How does simply hanging an explosive on a Dalek cause it to blow up? The Doctor didn't have a detonator or a timer or anything.

• Just before exiting the battle, Lytton pauses, and uses his sleeve to polish the badge on his cap. He seems to believe that this move makes him look extra-suave. Actually, it makes him look like a total tool.

• I love the way Stien is flung back against the wall when blasted by a Dalek, then uses his momentum to hurl himself forward onto the self-destruct lever. Now that’s a hero move!

• The regeneration effect from Androzani makes an early appearance here, when the station explodes. (...is Stien a Time Lord???)

• Why does the Doctor lead Tegan and Turlough out of the TARDIS, take a quick glance around the warehouse for less than ten seconds, then tell them to go back inside?

• As much death as there is in this story, Tegan is actually shielded from much of it, aside from the metal-detector man, Laird, and a few murderous Daleks. (Watching them die is "horrible", apparently. She also has to walk through the room of corpses on the Dalek ship, if that counts.) So why now does she suddenly feel the trauma of her travels with the Doctor? It’s a really lovely scene, and it’s understandable that the death toll of travelling with the Doctor would start to weigh heavily, especially in this particular story. But still, it feels abrupt, especially since just moments ago, she was perkily helping with the Movellan virus canister in the TARDIS. What was it about these specific deaths that suddenly pushed her over the edge, when even Adric’s death didn’t?

• Great delivery from Fielding here (and throughout this scene):

  Doctor: “And you think I wanted it this way?”
  Tegan: “No.”

• This is another of Resurrection’s few great lines, with a stellar emotional performance by Fielding:

  Tegan: “My Aunt Vanessa said, when I became an air stewardess, ‘If you stop enjoying it, give it up.’ ”
  Doctor: “Tegan...”
  Tegan: “It’s stopped being fun, Doctor!”

• As the Doctor reflects on how all this death and destruction has driven Tegan away, he sighs sadly to Turlough, “It seems I must mend my ways.” And then we get season 22.

• We’ll miss you too, Janet!

  Tegan: (to herself) “Brave heart, Tegan. Doctor, I will miss you.”

So much of the story — from the confusing and dead-end plotlines, to Saward’s handling of the companions, to the indiscriminate death on such a scale that we become numb to it — is senseless. With so little plot beyond the idea of an emerging Dalek civil war, the story feels as if it’s comprised of very little beyond a series of gunfights, which does not an interesting Doctor Who story make. Bravo to the cast for elevating their characters beyond the script, but it’s a shame that so little of the story was salvageable.