Remembrance of the Daleks is the first serial of the 25th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The serial was first broadcast in four weekly episodes from 5 to 26 October 1988. It was written by Ben Aaronovitch and directed by Andrew Morgan. The serial contains many references to the history of the show, featuring settings from the first Doctor Who episode, An Unearthly Child, such as Coal Hill School and the junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane.
In the serial, alien time traveller the Doctor and his companion Ace travel back to 1963 to retrieve the Hand of Omega, a powerful device created by the Time Lords, and keep it from the Daleks. The serial is the final appearance of the Daleks in the original run and the only occasion in which the Seventh Doctor encountered them on television.
In reader polls conducted by Doctor Who Magazine from 1998 onwards, Remembrance of the Daleks has consistently been voted as one of the greatest Doctor Who stories.
Plot
The Seventh Doctor and Ace arrive in Shoreditch in 1963. They meet a military unit led by Group Captain Gilmore and Sergeant Smith, tracking abnormal local magnetic fluctuations, originating mainly from Coal Hill School where a transmat device in its basement is tied to a Dalek ship in geostationary orbit. A second, weaker fluctuation is emitted by a nearby Dalek. There are two Dalek factions: Imperial Daleks on the orbiting mothership, controlling the school, and Renegade Daleks, who reject the Emperor's authority, controlling the junkyard. Both sides seek the Hand of Omega, a Time Lord device the Doctor left on Earth during his first visit to 1963.
Smith is a secret associate of Ratcliffe, leader of a group of fascists, reporting to a Renegade battle computer, which uses a schoolgirl as its eyes and ears. The Doctor has the Hand buried in a local cemetery, but Ratcliffe finds it, tipped off by Smith. Imperial Daleks arrive to seize it from the Renegades, but the Doctor and Ace defeat them and destroy their transmat. Anticipating a siege, the Doctor has Gilmore fortify the school while he disables the Renegade "time controller", fleeing with Daleks in pursuit, returning to the school just as the Imperial Daleks land. The Imperials eventually defeat the Renegades after deploying a Special Weapons Dalek, wiping out all but the Supreme Dalek, allowing Ratcliffe and Smith to escape with the controller, pursued by the schoolgirl, who kills Ratcliffe.
The Imperial Daleks take the Hand to the mothership, leaving for their home planet, Skaro. Ace follows Smith to recover the controller. The Doctor establishes communication with the Dalek Emperor, who is really their creator, Davros, who means to destroy the Time Lords with the Hand. The Doctor mocks him but then feigns fear. Davros launches the Hand, Skaro's sun goes supernova, and Skaro is destroyed, the force of the explosion also destroying the mothership. The Hand returns to Gallifrey, and Davros flees in an escape pod.
Smith captures Ace, but the schoolgirl finds them and kills Smith. The Doctor convinces the Supreme Dalek that it is the last of its species and it has no purpose anymore. The Supreme Dalek self-destructs, and the girl screams and faints, but is still alive. At Smith's funeral, The Doctor and Ace slip away contemplating that time will tell if they "did good".
Continuity An undertaker says that he thought the Doctor was supposed to be an "old geezer with white hair," referring to his first incarnation.
Production
Conception and writing
Producer John Nathan-Turner wanted to start Doctor Who twenty-fifth anniversary season "with a bang", a story with the Doctor's most famous adversaries, the Daleks. Nathan-Turner and script editor Andrew Cartmel hired 25 year old Ben Aaronovitch to write the story, who had not written for television before. He initially developed a story idea which later became Battlefield (1989), before Cartmel then commissioned Aaronovitch to write the Dalek story, originally titled Nemesis of the Doctor. According to deals made with Terry Nation, the creator of the Daleks, he had to approve a Dalek story if he was not writing it. Despite initial concerns, the storyline was approved. One of Cartmel's goals with the story was to have the Doctor be a commanding centre, rather than being "pushed and pulled" by the story as he felt had been happening recently. As such, Aaronovitch wanted there to be a spirit of the Doctor just wanting to tackle the Daleks. Two of the first things Aaronovitch thought of when creating the story was the 1963 setting and a Dalek climbing up stairs. He decided to reveal the Daleks in the middle of the first episode instead of as its cliffhanger, and then have a Dalek levitating up stairs to surprise viewers. The inability of Daleks to climb stairs was an urban myth and a joke, with the Doctor even joking about it in Destiny of the Daleks (1979). Remembrance was intended to put it to rest, though Cartmel noted that the joke was still prevalent. The Dalek civil war seen in Remembrance was intended to be an outcome of the previous Dalek story, Revelation of the Daleks (1985). Aaronovitch felt that destroying Skaro at the end seemed like a logical conclusion, but he noted that it might not be the best decision in the long run.
Remembrance of the Daleks, the first story in Doctor Who twenty-fifth anniversary season, contains many references to the series' past, something Aaronovitch felt was fun. It is set in the same time and place as the programme's first episode, "An Unearthly Child", where Coal Hill School employed original companions Ian and Barbara and the Doctor's granddaughter Susan was enrolled. The Totter's Lane junkyard also reappears, as it had in season 22's Attack of the Cybermen, though "I.M. Foreman" is misspelled "I.M. Forman". It originally read "L.M.", though that was changeable in production. In one of the classrooms, Ace picks up a book on the French Revolution just as Susan had in "An Unearthly Child"; Aldred studied the original to try to mimic Carole Ann Ford's stature. The Doctor references the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), Genesis of the Daleks (1975), Terror of the Zygons (1975), and The Web of Fear (1968), as well as likening a device to something he used in Planet of the Daleks (1973). The Doctor mistakenly calls Group Captain Gilmore "Brigadier", a reference to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who had headed UNIT, an organisation similar to Gilmore's. Rachel, a scientific advisor from Cambridge, is similar to Liz Shaw, and she shares a conversation with Gilmore that is reminiscent of a conversation between the Brigadier and Liz in Spearhead from Space (1970). Rachel also bears a physical resemblance to Barbara. Remembrance of the Daleks is also contains a meta-reference; a television continuity announcer says, "This is BBC television, the time is quarter past five and Saturday viewing continues with an adventure in the new science fiction series Doc—", but is cut off by a scene change before completing the title. Aaronovitch "couldn't resist" the reference, and clarified that it was meant as a joke and was not to be taken seriously. Originally, it was intended that the show that was introduced would be called Professor X. Alison and Rachel make mention of a "Bernard" from the "British Rocket Group". This is a reference to Bernard Quatermass and his British Experimental Rocket Group, of the Nigel Kneale-penned Quatermass science-fiction television serials. Several scenes from Remembrance of the Daleks were cut or edited in production. McCoy's favourite scene, in which the Doctor muses to a worker at a café, was cut by about half. As originally shot, Ace defused the tension between her and the Doctor when he left her at the boarding house. Also cut was the Doctor curing Ace's leg at the beginning of the third episode, and the issuing of instructions from the Dalek controller through an earpiece. In a notable deleted line, the Doctor tells Davros that he is "far more than just another Time Lord". This, along with the Doctor's hints that he was present at the creation of the Hand of Omega, was part of the so-called "Cartmel Masterplan" by script editor Andrew Cartmel to restore some of the mystery to the Doctor's origins. However, as the programme ceased production in 1989, the intended revelations never came to pass. The original script also had the Doctor blowing up a Dalek with the anti-tank missile in episode two, but McCoy felt this was out of character and suggested Ace should do it instead.
Casting
To protect the secret of Davros' presence in the story, Terry Molloy was credited in part three under an anagram, "Roy Tromelly". Ian Ogilvy was approached for the role of Gilmore, but did not accept; Neil Stacy was also considered. The role went to Simon Williams, who was known for his role as James Bellamy in Upstairs, Downstairs. Sophie Aldred and Karen Gledhil, who had watched the programme when they were younger, were awed to work with him. Williams had trouble handling the character's gun and also misunderstood a stage direction in the script describing it, which earned him the nickname of "Chunky". This nickname was carried on into the character, with McCoy adding the line, "...why his men call him 'Chunky' I've no idea."
The computer was voiced by John Leeson, who previously played K-9. Leeson was asked to make his voice sound like Davros', to trick viewers into thinking the computer was Davros, and watched past episodes for reference. Michael Sheard was chosen to play the headmaster as he would be familiar to children. Sheard had to be released from his work on Grange Hill to participate; Peter Tilbury was briefly considered for the role if Sheard could not make it. Sheard had previously appeared in The Ark (1966), The Mind of Evil (1971), Pyramids of Mars (1975), The Invisible Enemy (1977), and Castrovalva (1982). Peter Halliday, who played the blind Vicar, had also appeared in various Doctor Who stories. Stratford Johns, who had previously appeared in Four to Doomsday, was originally considered for Ratcliffe. Mark McGann, the brother of Eighth Doctor actor Paul McGann, was originally considered for the role of Mike Smith. Pamela Salem had roles in two Fourth Doctor serials, as one of the Xoanon voices in The Face of Evil, and as Toos in The Robots of Death (1977). Simon Williams, Karen Gledhill, and Pamela Salem reprised their roles in this serial in an audio spin-off series for Big Finish titled Counter-Measures, which details the adventures of the group after this story.
Remembrance of the Daleks was the first story in which Ace was a regular companion, having joined at the end of Dragonfire. Cartmel worked with Aldred to make Ace different from most companions: less of a "screamer" and more tomboyish. Aldred recalled that taking on the Daleks made her feel like a "real assistant". Aldred did many of her own stunts, bonding with the new stunt coordinator, Tip Tipping. She found the experience "terrifying" at first. Aldred has said that she is proud of the scene where Ace beats up a Dalek with a baseball bat, calling it one of the best things she has done in her life. Aldred was also trained in firing guns for the scene where she shoots a Dalek.
Filming and effects