Rememberance of the Daleks

Intro/Overview

After my last review, I essentially spent a lot of time watching The Justice League and puttering about on the interwebs. Tonight, however, I watched Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks for the first time. So this evening, I have a sort of mish-mash of initial reaction and review for that.

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not seen Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks please leave the blog and return later. I'm horrible at keeping spoilers out of my reviews. However, I'm not too worried about it this time because this particular story was originally shown in the eighties.

Doctor Who - Remembrance of the Daleks - Review

First off, I'm not a fan of the Daleks. Consequently, I didn't really pay all that much attention to them while they were on screen. That said, most of what they did on screen was shoot at various humans and at each other. Also, as a fan of "New Who" I was unimpressed by the Daleks being able to float up the stairs. I know that this was the first story in which they did so, but after seeing lots of Daleks floating around menacingly it gets rather old.

I was also unimpressed by Davros. Mind you, I knew he was going to be in this story so I spent most of the time waiting for him to show up. I originally thought that the seated figure hanging out with Ratcliffe was Davros, but that was debunked when the little blond girl turned out to be the one in the chair. I was floored by that particular moment, by the way. However, the fact that Davros actually turned out to be the "Emperor Dalek" was odd. I hadn't been expecting it, but I also wasn't particularly surprised. Like I said, it was odd.

I did not find any of the military people interesting or particularly competent. I didn't at all like Sgt. Mike. He felt to me like a rather wet blanket and then like a desperate man who wasn't very good at being desperate. I did, however, quite enjoy the female cast members. Ace was awesome, as usual. Her smarts coupled with her brashness made me grin a lot. I liked Professor Rachel. She reminded me a bit of Liz Shaw. I thought Allison was just there to be window dressing, but at least she didn't scream obnoxiously.

I quite enjoyed The Doctor tricking everyone left right and center. I'm not sure exactly what he did to Ace's bat, but I enjoyed the aftermath of him leading the Hand of Omega out of the funeral parlor. I thought his deception of Davros was particularly clever. Of course he'd go ahead and blow up Skaro this time around. That Davros actually thought The Doctor was just going to let him get away with such a powerful weapon was amusing, to say the least.

Overall, I found Remembrance of the Daleks to be incredibly long and drawn out. Maybe that's just my "New Who" sensibilities speaking, but by the end of the second episode I was glancing at the clock above my TV. There was just a lot of running around almost aimlessly at times. Even the Daleks seemed to have nowhere to go. There just wasn't the kind of expediency I would have expected from an "action movie" as Stephen Moffat likened it to in the intro. 

Housekeeping

I've added a countdown to the page. It's for the beginning of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Season 4. Interestingly enough, the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special is on the same day. I'm excited.

I would like to tell anyone who's just now found the blog that I'm on a sort of semi-hiatus until September when the actual TV shows start up again. I'm going for quality posts over quantity here so... yeah. You'll hear from me when you hear from me.

Love ya, Jessie.