troperville

tools

toys

SubpagesLaconic
Quotes
Recap

main index

Narrative

Genre

Media

Topical Tropes

Other Categories

TV Tropes Org
random
Recap: Doctor Who S25 E1 "Remembrance of the Daleks"
You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies.
—The Doctor

Written by Ben Aaronovitch, who went on to write the Rivers Of London series.

Despite being aired in the show's 25th anniversary year and featuring many links to Doctor Who's very first serial, "An Unearthly Child", this is not the official 25th anniversary special. That was "Silver Nemesis", the first episode of which aired on the actual anniversary.
The Doctor and Ace arrive at Coal Hill School, perhaps a month after the First Doctor and company left. It doesn't take long before they're mixed up in trouble of the Dalek kind — two separate Dalek factions, the Renegades (Grey) and Imperials (White), respectively opposed and loyal to Davros (as seen in "Revelation of the Daleks"), wage war on each other for possession of the Hand of Omega, a Time Lord superweapon. And unfortunately for both groups, the Doctor has laid a trap for them; he just has to make the right conditions to spring it and ensure that Group Captain Gilmore and his men don't get diced in the crossfire.


Tropes

  • Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Used by the Doctor to mock Davros: "Crush the lesser races! Conquer the galaxy! Unimaginable power! Unlimited rice pudding! Et cetera! Et cetera!"
  • Asshole Victim: Mike and Ratcliffe. Mike, when confronted by Ace about his racism, doesn't even understand why she's furious.
    • Deliberate Values Dissonance on that one. His racism was pretty much acceptable public opinion (or at least not far off) at the time.
      • He's still bad even in the Values Dissonance context. Even back then people didn't cohort with Nazis and Daleks and carry a Platinum Master Race Card. His fellow servicemen, presumably a bit Values Dissonance themselves, weren't very impressed with him after they found out, to say the least.
  • Attack Its Weak Point: The Doctor mentions that the Daleks are weakest in the eyepiece. So that's where Ace shoots one of them. With a rocket launcher.
  • Batter Up: Giving us the original Moment of Awesome .
    Dalek: Small human female sighted on Level 3.
    • Without wanting to diminish the awesomeness of the moment in question, it should be noted that the Battering Up is done with a baseball bat that has been super-charged by an alien super-weapon to make it a more or less fair fight.
  • Bavarian Fire Drill: The Doctor just waltzes in to Rachel's van and starts asking a lot of technical questions, and at first she doesn't bat an eye. It takes her about a minute to start cottoning on and asking just who he is.
  • Berserk Button: See Batter Up, above.
  • BFG: The Special Weapons Dalek.
    • Ace's anti-tank missile might be a less extreme example
  • Briar Patching: How the Doctor makes the Daleks lose hardest of all.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: You know the quote under the picture at the top? Said by the 7th Doctor to the audience at the end of part three.
  • Broken Pedestal: Mike Smith comes to realize that Ratcliffe isn't the untarnished, infallible hero he saw him as.
    • Ace, in turn, is left feeling pretty betrayed by Mike when she realizes that he's not quite as heroic as she'd built him up to be. That, and he's a Nazi.
  • Casting Gag: Michael Sheard, who plays the Dalek-controlled school headmaster, also played Mr. Bronson, the mean-spirited Latin teacher at Grange Hill.
  • The Chessmaster: The Seventh Doctor gets manipulative. Wow.
  • Civil War
  • Cold Open: A zoom out on Earth, with the Dalek mothership entering shot above the camera.
  • Continuity Nod: Mostly with sets such as the Foreman junkyard and Ian's classroom at the Coal Hill School (which still has the book on the French Revolution that Barbara gave Susan in it).
  • Creepy Child
  • Creepy Children Singing
    Five, six, seven, eight
    It's the doctor at the gate...
  • Darker and Edgier: Of a sort; from this story on, the Seventh Doctor begins to be presented as a darker, more brooding and manipulative character than the amiable prat-falling metaphor-mixing bumbler of the previous season.
  • Death Is Cheap
  • Did You Actually Believe? I would let you have The Hand of Omega?
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Fantastic Racism of the Daleks is directly compared with the more prosaic unpleasantness of Nazi sympathiser Ratcliffe and his organisation.
  • Driving Stick: A variant; Ace doesn't have any problem with the van's gearbox, but doesn't seem to have encountered a manual choke before.
  • Earth-Shattering Kaboom: Actually, Skaro-Shattering, but it's the same idea.
  • Elite Mooks: Special Weapons Dalek (Pictured)
  • Enemy Civil War
  • Enfant Terrible
  • Evil Is Hammy: Davros has completely lost his shit in this one.
  • Exact Words: In their confrontation, the Doctor tells Davros not to use the Hand of Omega, that it's something that's not to be trifled with, and that he's making a grave mistake in doing so — all of which is true, but he doesn't mention why.
  • Fantastic Racism: The Daleks are in the story, so that's a given. But here we see for the first time just how fanatical they can get: they declared all out civil war just because the Imperial Daleks are a tiny bit different genetically. This is an Ironic Echo to the all-too-real racism present in 1963.
  • Foreshadowing: An unintentional variant from the Seventh Doctor in Part 2 concerning defeating the Daleks: "I mean, what do you expect to do, talk to them sternly?"
  • Fish Out of Temporal Water
  • Five Rounds Rapid: Played straight early on, then subverted when the military gets better weapons.
  • Grand Finale: To the Doctor vs the Daleks story arc for the Original Series.
  • Guile Hero: This episode is the first real showing of the Seventh Doctor's manipulative side.
  • Go for the Eye: Ace + rocket launcher + this trope = Epic Win.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: The little girl is released from the Daleks' mind control! But a later short story shows that she was driven irreversibly mad by the experience.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!:
    • The guy in the cafe is Geoffrey the butler.
    • Mr. Bronson has been promoted to Headmaster. He's also mind-controlled by Daleks. Which explains quite a lot, actually.
  • Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: The Imperial Daleks, of course.
    • The Renegades aren't much better. When the two factions are lined up across from one another and firing, there is one Imperial casualty to the zero Renegade ones.
  • I Never Said It Was Poison: The mole gives himself away by asking the Doctor an honestly-curious question about the Daleks that reveals he already knows something about them that the Doctor never told him.
  • Ironic Nickname / Non-Indicative Name: Group Captain "Chunky" Gillmore, who's 6'4" and looks like he weighs about 110 pounds. However, on the DVD Commentary, Sylvester McCoy revealed that it came from Gilmore's nickname for his revolver (owing to its "chunky" shape), and the name stuck.
  • Ironic Nursery Tune: ...five six, seven eight, it's a Doctor at the gate...
  • I Shall Taunt You
  • Karmic Death:
    • Ratcliffe
    • Mike.
  • Last of His Kind
  • Light Is Not Good: The Imperial Daleks have rather neat-looking white-and-gold colorings this time.
  • Logic Bomb
  • Missing Backblast: Averted.
  • The Mole
  • My Card
  • Mythology Gag: The telly is cut off before it can announce the new show that is premiering that's called Doc-.
  • No Swastikas: Ratcliffe and his groupies are hinted to be a miniature Hitler Youth, though they could just as easily represent the National Front or some other nativist movement.
  • Non-Indicative Name: The Hand of Omega looks nothing like a hand. The Doctor claims the name came about due to the Time Lords' "infinite capacity for pretention".
  • Nothing Even Remotely Human Could've Survived That: But that's the point! It isn't even rrremotely human!
  • Not That Kind of Doctor: "Is he all right?" "No idea—I'm a physicist."
  • Off-the-Shelf FX: The Time Controller
  • Oh Crap: The Doctor's expression when, having escaped from a Dalek up a flight of stairs, he hears it powering up its antigravs.
  • Pin-Pulling Teeth: In a possible allusion to this trope, the Doctor pops the cap off one of Ace's nitro-nine cannisters with his teeth.
  • Politically Correct History: Averted, for one of the few times in the history of Doctor Who. Most noticeably with Ace discovering a "no coloureds allowed" sign. Mike Smith also makes reference to "[keeping] the outsiders out"note .
    • Not only that, but the black cafe worker who serves the Doctor notes that the existence of sugar is the reason why his grandfather was kidnapped from Africa to become a slave, and his family subsequently became English.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: Literally.
  • Rebuilt Set: The entrance to Foreman's Yard, as seen in "An Unearthly Child" (when it was a set) is recreated on location. Unfortunately "Foreman" is misspelt as "Forman".
  • The Remnant
  • The Reveal: Two successive audience-teasing ones: first when it's revealed that the Renegade Daleks' battle computer isn't Davros, which most people were assuming when the show was first broadcast, and then when it's revealed that the Imperial Dalek Emperor is.
  • Samus Is a Girl: The Renegade Dalek Battle Computer.
  • Schmuck Bait: Launching something into the sun to increase its power? What did you think would happen, Davros?
  • Shock and Awe: The DBC's power.
  • Shout Out:
    "Bernie's rocket group's got its own problems."
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!
  • Skip of Innocence: The little girl skips around town when she's not plugged into the Dalek battle computer. She's not exactly "innocent", though.
  • Smug Snake: Ratcliffe spends most of the story strutting around acting like a little tinpot general. When the Renegade Daleks get the Hand of Omega and no longer need his services, however, it quickly becomes apparent that he's completely out of his depth.
  • Somebody Set Up Us The Bomb
  • Star Killing: The Hand of Omega is designed to do this, to provide the massive power source required for time travel. The Doctor uses it to destroy the solar system where the main Dalek force is located, to prevent the Daleks using it on anyone else.
  • Talking the Monster to Death: The Doctor tells the last of the Renegade Daleks that it's got no kin left at all since its home world was blown up. It refuses to believe him at first but, unable to contact anyone, is brought to so much despair that it disintegrates itself.
  • Tele Frag: The Doctor manages to make this happen to a Dalek on itself, by fiddling with the machine so that half of the Dalek materializes where the other half would be.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: The Abomination Special Weapons Dalek. When the white Daleks can't gain the upper hand, they wheel out this thing. No plunger, no egg whisk, no eyestalk — just a single massive cannon. When it opens up on the grey Daleks, there's nothing left except little patches of smouldering ash.
  • This Cannot Be!
  • Those Wacky Nazis: Ratcliffe holds that Britain "fought for the wrong side" in the last war, and aims to correct that mistake.
  • Took a Level in Badass: The Daleks, who had been suffering from Villain Decay since Destiny of the Daleks, finally decided to kick ass and take names. However, greater badassery is yet to come...
  • Villainous Breakdown: Davros and the last Renegade Dalek.
    • Ratcliffe pulls the Moff Tarkin variety, deceiving himself into thinking he can still come out on top.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Finally, all the "Daleks vs. stairs" jokes are obviated by showing Daleks levitating on screen.
  • Xanatos Speed Chess: The first episode to properly show off the Seventh Doctor's manipulative side. Unforseen events do crop up, but they don't seem to slow him down any.
  • The X of Y
  • X-Ray Sparks: the Dalek extermination effect used in this story was so cool and memorable that it was revived almost twenty years later, despite only appearing this once.
  • Your Other Left
  • You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Renegade Daleks do this to Ratcliffe's organisation, and are about to do it to Ratcliffe and Mike when the Imperial Daleks attack.

Doctor Who S24 E4 'Dragonfire"Recap/Doctor WhoDoctor Who S25 E2 'The Happiness Patrol"

random
TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org.
Privacy Policy
34060
4