Is that just not the coolest Dalek ever! The special weapons Dalek!
So the 25th season of Doctor Who kicked off with probably one of my favourite seventh Doctor stories. The Doctor returns to the Coal Hill School in 1963 which just happens to be where we first met him way back in the very first episode when the two school teachers, Ian and Barbara, stumbled into the TARDIS.
This story attempts to explain what the Doctor was doing on Earth in the first place. He was attempting to his the "hand of Omega" which is a rather over the top name given to the remote stellar manipulator used in the old days by the Time Lords in order to create the power needed to travel through time. Unfortunately the Doctor has not done a very good job of hiding it and now two separate factions of Daleks are on the hunt for it.
There is an absolutely fantastic scene in the middle of the story when the Doctor retires to an empty cafe and reflects upon his actions and the impact that they have had.
The Doctor: "Every great decision creates ripples. Like a huge boulder dropped into a lake, the ripples merge and rebound off the banks in unforeseeable ways. The heavier the decision, the larger the waves, the more uncertain the consequences"
It's also clear in this story that the new script edition Andrew Cartmel has begun his so called master plan which was to introduce more mystery back into the character of the Doctor. When we first met the Doctor we knew nothing about him. For example we didn't find out he was a Time Lord for six years! At this point in the show's history some of that mystery had been removed and therefore Cartmel was trying to inject more of it back in. The Doctor occasionally lets slip little bits that imply that he more than just an ordinary Time Lord and may in fact have been one of the very early pioneers in the creation of time travel on Gallifrey.
Ace is great in this story too. Her love of explosives is a little strange but it does help the Doctor get out of a few scrapes. I also liked the scene when she is finishing her breakfast in the boarding house they are stopping at and casually turns over a banner in the window which shockingly says "No Coloureds". The story is set in 1963 and therefore shows how far we have come since then but also it's a nice link to the Dalek ideology of racial purity. It is pretty much saying we are not so different ourselves.
As I reach the last years of the classic series it feels like this challenge is reaching a big turning point. For example I have now seen my last Dalek in the classic run. The next time I see one will be with the ninth Doctor, Christopher Eccleston. Also I have seen Davros for the last time until he returns to face the tenth Doctor, David Tennant. The quest has just over 7 months left to go but as the end of the classic run approaches I realise I'm going to feel a little sad to leave these stories behind.
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