Resurrection of the Daleks is pointless. They gathered a
bunch of Daleks and men with guns in a warehouse and a spaceship and just said
have at it, every man for himself. They set Turlough up with one of these paint
ball guns and let him loose in the game, gave Tegan a conk on the head to sideline
her, and told the Doctor to just try to sort things out as best he could. Oh,
and they gave him a playmate in Davros.
They did provide a couple of objectives to secure so the
players weren’t quite running willy nilly about the place. Once in a while a
group does make it as far as one of the objectives, but only to be slaughtered
by a rival gang. Then the gangs start to break down and they all turn on each
other, those that are left that is. UNIT members shooting humans; Daleks
shooting Daleks; it all gets mighty confusing.
I guess it is appropriate that the Daleks are the
instigators of this plot; the name of the game after all is ‘Exterminate.’ Some
of the players have cheats though, able to turn opponents from one side to
another. The Daleks are able to duplicate people, so I guess technically they
are not turning them. I assume they are exterminating the originals and substituting
their own. I’m not sure why they don’t just exterminate and be done with it,
but then that wouldn’t be much fun. As a result, the UNIT members who are
helping the Doctor end up trying to kill him.
Not to be outdone, Davros has a handy little green thing
that he pokes people with and they instantly become his minions. This even
works on Daleks, so soon we have Dalek against Dalek. Because Davros isn’t on
anyone’s side but his own. He’s not working for the Daleks, he’s not working
for Lytton and his crew of mercenaries, and he certainly is not working for the
Doctor, UNIT, or the members of his prison ship.
Davros, in fact, is one of the objectives of this little war
game, only no one can decide what to do with him once secured. Initially the
Daleks need him to come up with an antidote for the virus that the Movellans
have been using against them, but then they start waffling, let Davros start
calling some shots, and finally decide to kill him, but not before Davros has created
his own little army and determines to eradicate the Daleks and start from
scratch. Even the Doctor, when finally confronting Davros, can’t commit to
executing him, for which Davros mocks him, “If I were you, I would be dead.”
Lytton is obviously annoyed by the vacillating Dalek orders;
I’m not really sure why Lytton is working for them, or indeed why they are
employing him. But then not much makes sense in Resurrection of the Daleks.
Ultimately Lytton has enough of the confusion and takes his own minion killer
cops and walks away from it all.
Perhaps one of the reasons the Daleks can’t make up their
mind is because they simply have bitten off more than they can chew. They not
only are overseeing this romper room war game and trying to get Davros into a
lab to divine a cure to the virus only to switch course and seek his
extermination, they are also operating a time corridor between themselves and
1984 Earth, producing duplicate humans to take over key positions within Earth’s
government, and kidnapping the Doctor in order to send a Doctor clone, complete
with cloned companions, to Gallifrey to eliminate the High Council. No wonder
they can’t decide on their next move.
The Dalek controlled Stein is the personification of this
indecision. Stuttering and sputtering his way through Resurrection of the
Daleks, Stein yo-yos between helping the Doctor and torturing him. This does
lead to a nice little flash back of past Doctors and companions (sadly sans
Leela), but is as gallingly pointless as the rest of the story. Stein’s only
redemption is in stumbling in death to fall upon the prison ship self-destruct
button, which was another one of the objectives set forth in this game of bloodletting.
The Doctor, meantime, after getting up off the torture table
and failing to kill Davros, escapes through the Dalek time corridor back to the
warehouse where for some random reason canisters of the Movellan virus are
housed. The Doctor and Davros are on the same wavelength here, both releasing
the virus to kill the Daleks. In a strange little twist, the virus works
against Davros as well since he also starts bleeding shaving cream like the
rest of them.
In the end the Doctor, Tegan, and Turlough are the last ones
standing, so I guess they are the winners; Lytton and his killer cops having become
fed up and conceded victory by walking off into the sunset.
Tegan doesn’t want any part of it anymore either. “It’s
stopped being fun, Doctor.” Now Tegan has spent most of her time during
Resurrection of the Daleks in bed and has not been witness to the majority of
the killing. She has seen more death in other serials, so I don’t swallow her
argument about the casualty count. The “stopped being fun” angle, however, I
can buy.
And I have to say, Gary, that the Doctor has had his share
of irresponsible TARDIS take offs with others on board, but this is possibly
the most irresponsible take off he does leaving someone behind. At least the
last time he ran off on Tegan she was at Heathrow where she was always
hectoring to go. In Resurrection of the Daleks, however, he leaves her in the middle
of an abandoned warehouse littered with the corpses of the recent carnage and
with three killer cops still on the loose; she’s wearing a leather mini skirt
and high heels, suffering from a concussion, and has no money or identification
on her person. I know she is leaving of her own accord (although that bang on
the head might have something to do with it), but even still the Doctor could
at least escort her to a place of safety. I can imagine, though, that he ducked
into the TARDIS as fast as he could saying to Turlough, ‘quick, close the doors
before she changes her mind!’ Oh well, I suppose Tegan has been in worse
situations during her tenure with the Doctor.
And so it is goodbye to Tegan. “Brave heart, Tegan;” but oh,
Gary, I’m cringing at the thought of the torture that is to come . . .
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