YMMV / Doctor Who 2021 NYS "Revolution of the Daleks"

• Anvilicious: Jo Patterson is an obvious take on Theresa May, who seems to almost have a fetish for the word "security" and ends up blasted by her own Defence Drones Daleks.
• Awesome Music: Segun Akinola manages to outdo himself once again, with a new, much creepier, variation of his Dalek theme from "Resolution", as well as moving variations of Graham and Ryan's themes during their final farewell.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Mentioning a scandal had stopped Robertson's political hopes can be this due to the fact that later in 2021, Chris Noth was accused of sexual assault by multiple women.
• He's Just Hiding: The Recon Scout clone was exterminated by the Death Squad Daleks... or were they? We've seen that the Recon Scout is resourceful and persistent. There's no overt Sequel Hook in the episode, but there's still a chance it could return in some form.
• Inferred Holocaust: Although the Doctor quickly lures the Death Squad Daleks to Earth to eradicate the Defence Drones Daleks, given the numbers involved in the uprising, the amount of time they had to rampage unchecked, and the general invulnerability of Dalek technology, there still must have been a large worldwide (or at least UK-wide) death toll even before the two alien sides started tearing each other apart.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The plot involves two versions of the fascist, genocidal Daleks, one of which kills multiple people on-screen, including Prime Minister Jo Patterson. Yet the characters who come off looking the worst are Jack Robertson, a greedy businessman who ignorantly rebuilt the Dalek shells, and proved willing to sell out the Doctor and the human race, only to get away scot-free, and Jo Patterson herself, who enabled Robertson in order to boost her election chances.
• Memetic Mutation: Short Dalek/Funko Pop Dalek.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Jack Robertson was much better received by fans in this episode, as the script focused less on the Trump-parody aspect of his character and more on the Corrupt Corporate Executive aspect, as well as giving him some genuinely funny dialogue.
• Take That, Scrappy!: An indirect one towards the New Dalek Paradigm. In a reversal of what happened with the Paradigm, this episode's Defence Drones Dalek design is destroyed by the Russell T Davies-era Daleks for being "impure".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many fans thought that Chris Chibnall wasted the chance to reintroduce Shada into New Who as the prison where the Doctor was. Others thought she should have been sent to Stormcage, where River Song was imprisoned. However, the absence of both does make sense — Shada was run by the Time Lords, and Stormcage is usually implied to be a Cardboard Prison.
  • Some fans thought that last season's cliffhanger of the Doctor being imprisoned by the Judoon was resolved in such a quick and easy way as to be anticlimactic. It doesn't help that Jack did everything himself, all while the Doctor apparently spent nineteen years plus moping about with no indication she tried to escape and reunite with her companions or had formed any plan at all.
  • The special was promoted as Team TARDIS trying to hold back a Dalek invasion without the help of the Doctor — but while they do work on their own in the early going and even briefly confront Robertson, the Doctor shows up shortly afterwards as the main action begins in earnest.
  • The concept of the Dalek civil war happened four times in the classic series ("The Evil of the Daleks", "Resurrection of the Daleks", "Revelation of the Daleks" and "Remembrance of the Daleks"). This episode had a real chance to depict two rival Dalek factions fighting over the Earth in full 21st century glory. Instead, only the initial encounter between the Defence Drones Daleks and the Death Squad Daleks is shown, with the rest of the battle taking place offscreen, and quickly ending in victory for the latter.
  • The Doctor has just discovered that years of her life were taken away from her, while Jack revealed in his first episode that years of his life were stolen by the Time Agency. This would be an interesting talking point for both of them, but it's never brought up.
  • Much is said about Captain Jack's resurrection abilities. However, not once does he actually die in this episode, which leaves his immortality as an Informed Attribute for new viewers who are unfamiliar with the character.
  • The Doctor having a spare TARDIS lying around could have been ripe fodder for stories. Instead, she sacrifices it to destroy the Daleks and it's never seen again.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The episode presents the Doctor as being in the wrong for arriving ten months late after leaving her companions thinking she was dead, even though her arriving late was a complete accident on her part. Worse than that, while the companions were spending those ten months living in the freedoms of their homes and everyday lives, the Doctor was spending up to twenty years in a Judoon prison on dubious charges while left to dwell in her misery alone, which is never brought up by anyone.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Despite being made during the COVID-19 Pandemic, the visuals in the episode are beautiful, the standouts being the flying Daleks looking better than ever, especially when the Doctor goes up to confront them, and the spare TARDIS crumpling in on itself.

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