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Classic Season 12 Doctor Who

Genesis of the Daleks

Doctor WhoThe Doctor, Sarah and Harry are waylaid by a secret arm of the Time Lords en route back to space station Nerva. A Time Lord has diverted them to Skaro, the Daleks’ homeworld, on the eve of their creation, and the Doctor is under orders to prevent the creation of the Daleks in order to avoid future in which they could conquer the entire universe. An atomic war between the Kaleds and the Thals has reduced both of Skaro’s superpowers from the nuclear age to the stone age, with the exception of the radiation-deformed Kaled genius Davros, who not only anticipates the mutation of his people that the war will cause, but embraces it as their future. Davros has devised armored life support systems to encase the shriveled mutants that the Kaleds will become after centuries of atomic bombardment – and he christens these devices Daleks. The Doctor, Harry and Sarah stumble into the Kaled city, and find that Davros has fanatical sympathizers as well as horrified opponents among his own people. And when the moment comes, despite the evil and hatred that Davros is preprogramming into his creations, the Doctor finds that there may be a just reason to allow the Daleks to run their destructive course through history.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Terry Nation
directed by David Maloney
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Michael Wisher (Davros), John Scott Martin, Max Faulkner, Keith Ashley, Cy Town (Daleks), Roy Skelton (Dalek voices), Peter Miles (Nyder), Guy Siner (Ravon), Dennis Chinnery (Gharman), Richard Reeves (Kaled Leader), John Franklyn-Robbins (Time Lord), Stephen Yardley (Sevrin), James Garbutt (Ronson), Drew Wood (Tane), Jeremy Chandler (Gerrill), Pat Gorman, Hilary Minster, John Gleeson (Thal soldiers), Andrew Johns (Kravos), Peter Mantle (Kaled guard), Harriet Philpin (Bettan), Max Faulkner (Thal guard), Michael Lynch (Thal politician), Ivor Roberts (Mogren), Tom Georgeson (Kavell)

Broadcast from March 8 through April 12, 1975

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 17 Doctor Who

Destiny Of The Daleks

Doctor WhoThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and Romana to a desolate wasteland of a planet, one whose atmosphere is so radioactive that it can be toxic even to Time Lords without proper precautions – the post-atomic-war Skaro, home world of the Daleks. When the two are separated, Romana is trailed by a disheveled human. Convinced that he means her harm, she runs right into a barely-buried chute that deposits her underground in the waiting arms of the Daleks themselves. The Doctor meets the attractive humanoid crew of a nearby space vessel, who call themselves Movellans. At war with the spacefaring Daleks for centuries, the Movellans have followed their enemies back to Skaro to prevent them from unearthing a “secret weapon”: Davros, whose life support system was damaged but not disabled, has apparently survived in a dormant state. His more emotional, cunning strategies could give the Daleks the edge. The Movellans hope that the Doctor and Romana can give them the same edge – and worst of all, the two Time Lords aren’t exactly being given a choice about replacing the Movellans’ battle computers.

Season 17 Regular Cast: Tom Baker (The Doctor), Lalla Ward (Romana), David Brierly (voice of K9)

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Terry Nation
directed by Ken Grieve
music by Dudley Simpson

Guest Cast: Tim Barlow (Tyssan), Peter Straker (Commander Sharrel), Suzanne Danielle (Agella), Tony Osoba (Lan), David Gooderson (Davros), Roy Skelton, David Gooderson (Dalek voices), Cy Town, Mike Mungarvan, Toby Byrne, Tony Starr (Daleks), Penny Casdagla (Jall), David Yip (Veldan)

Broadcast from September 1 through 22, 1979

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

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Classic Season 21 Doctor Who

Resurrection Of The Daleks

Doctor WhoWith the TARDIS caught in a time corridor at the end of the previous story, the Doctor is surprised to find that he is being taken to some rather unremarkable London docks. His investigation into the origins of the time corridor lead him to a meeting with a group of hapless 20th century soldiers who can’t even begin to imagine the traces of technology they’ve discovered in a nearby warehouse. The Doctor’s arrival has been expected – in fact, carefully orchestrated – by the Daleks, who are in the midst of a plot that involves clones, biological warfare, and the rescue and revival of their mad creator, Davros.

Order the DVDwritten by Eric Saward
directed by Matthew Robinson
music by Malcolm Clarke

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Terry Molloy (Davros), Maurice Colbourne (Lytton), Rodney Bewes (Stien), Rula Lenska (Styles), Del Henney (Colonel Archer), Chloe Ashcroft (Professor Laird), Philip McGough (Sergeant Calder), Jim Findley (Mercer), Leslie Grantham (Kiston), Sneh Gupta (Osborn), Roger Davenport (Trooper), John Adam Baker, Linsey Turner (Crew members), William Sleigh (Galloway), Brian Miller, Royce Mills (Dalek voices), John Scott Martin, Cy Town, Tony Starr, Toby Byrne (Daleks), Nicholas Curry (Chemist), Michael Jeffries, Mike Braben (Policemen), Mike Mungarven, Simon Crane (Soldiers), Pat Judge (Man with metal detector)

Broadcast from February 8 through 15, 1984

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 22 Doctor Who

Revelation of the Daleks

Doctor WhoThe Doctor arrives on the planet Necros, whose chief industry is funeral services, to pay his final respects to an old friend. But Necros isn’t what it used to be. It’s now run by The Great Healer – in reality, Davros, creator of the malevolent Daleks – who is using Necros as cover for his experiments to convert human beings into mindless Dalek operators. The head of the funeral industry, Kara, has hired an assassin to dispose of Davros, but her hired gun quickly realizes that he’s being paid to act as cannon fodder. The Doctor discovers that his arrival has been anticipated, but he doesn’t suspect that the Daleks are involved until he falls into their clutches.

Order the DVDwritten by Eric Saward
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Roger Limb

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Terry Molloy (Davros), Eleanor Bron (Kara), Clive Swift (Jobel), Alexei Sayle (DJ), Jenny Tomasin (Tasambeker), William Gaunt (Orcini), John Ogwen (Bostock), Stephen Flynn (Grigory), Bridget Lynch-Blosse (Natasha), Trevor Cooper (Takis), Colin Spaull (Lilt), Hugh Walters (Vogel), Alec Linstead (head of Stengos), Ken Barker (Mutant), Royce Mills, Roy Skelton (Dalek voices), Penelope Lee (Computer voice), John Scott Martin, Cy Town, Tony Starr, Toby Byrne (Daleks)

Broadcast from March 23 through 30, 1985

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Classic Season 25 Doctor Who

Remembrance Of The Daleks

Doctor WhoDaleks have converged on a junkyard in 1963 London, hot on the trail of a renegade Time Lord who possesses an amazingly powerful weapon from ancient Gallifrey. The Daleks’ quarry has left Earth after being discovered by a pair of curious humans, but unknown to the aliens, that same Time Lord has returned to conclude his business, six lives hence. The Doctor and Ace quickly throw their lot in with Group Captain Gilmore and his team of soldiers and scientists, who have discovered the Daleks and are trying to flush them out of hiding. Gilmore begins accepting the Doctor’s strategic advice, which is devised largely to keep the human race out of trouble – but the Daleks have already found like-minded allies on Earth, in the form of a group of fascist sympathizers led by Mr. Ratcliffe. The Daleks themselves are divided along a line of loyalty or disloyalty to the Emperor Daleks – who, as the Doctor discovers, has changed a little bit over the years too. The Doctor is actually playing a dangerous game, trying to ensure that the Hand of Omega does fall into the wrong hands – but which faction of the Daleks is actually worthy of this kind of power?

Order the DVDwritten by Ben Aaronovitch
directed by Andrew Morgan
music by Keff McCulloch

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Simon Williams (Gilmore), George Sewell (Ratcliffe), Dursley McLinden (Mike), Pamela Salem (Rachel), Karen Gledhill (Allison), Michael Sheard (Headmaster), Harry Fowler (Harry), Joseph Marcell (John), William Thomas (Martin), Jasmine Breaks (The Girl), Peter Hamilton Dyer (Embery), Peter Halliday (Vicar), Derek Keller (Kaufman), Terry Molloy (Emperor Dalek/Davros), John Scott Martin, Cy Town, Tony Starr, Hugh Spright, David Harrison, Norman Bacon, Nigel Wild (Daleks), Royce Mills, Roy Skelton, Brian Miller, John Leeson (Dalek voices), Kathleen Bidmead (Mrs. Smith), John Evans (Undertaker), Richie Kennedy (Mailman), Ron Berry (Gravedigger)

Broadcast from October 5 through 26, 1988

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who

Davros

Doctor Who: DavrosThe Doctor stumbles upon a plot to revive Davros, thought to be long dead, but this time the Daleks aren’t behind it. This attempt to tap into Davros’ evil genius is a purely commercial concern, funded by a shady Earth corporation whose CEO wants Davros to work for him. Horrified by the implications of this, the Doctor counters with an offer to provide his own services in exchange for keeping Davros under lock and key. The company’s chief executive, realizing that he has two geniuses on his hands, instead strikes a bargain that both parties find even more terrifying – he will hire the Doctor and Davros, and they will share lab and office space. But what the corporation wants is someone who’s not afraid to set ethics aside for the sake of profit – and the Doctor soon becomes ripe for termination. Or, if Davros has his way, extermination.

Order this CDwritten by Lance Parkin
directed by Gary Russell
music by Jane Elphinstone

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Terry Molloy (Davros), Bernard Horsfall (Arnold Baynes), Wendy Padbury (Lorraine Baynes), David Bickerstaff (Scientist Ral), Eddie De Oliviera (Willis), Louise Falkner (Kaled Medic), Karl Hansen (Kaled Medic), Katarina Olsson (Shan), Ruth Sillers (Kimberly Todd), Andrew Westfield (Pilot)

Timeline: between The Two Doctors and Timelash

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

The Next Life

Doctor Who: The Next LifeA planet appears in the path of the TARDIS, moving so fast that a collision is unavoidable. Charley and C’rizz each awaken in a virtual reality of their past lives, but they each quickly figure out that the Kro’Ka is behind the illusions and are freed. When they awaken, they find not only the Kro’Ka, but Rassilon as well, who claims that he has nursed them back to health after the destruction of the TARDIS. But he shows them that the Doctor has survived as well, and he appears to have found company – a woman who has found him wandering through the jungle of the planet’s sole land mass. Charley and C’rizz both demand to be set free, but before he releases them Rassilon tries to put doubts in their minds about the Doctor – and each other. He’s at least partially successful, as the two TARDIS travelers go their own way in the jungle.

The Doctor, meanwhile, has been captured by a feisty woman who calls herself Perfection, the wife of wealthy, self-proclaimed missionary Daqar Keep. Keep is an egomaniac on a hunt for some lost relic in the same jungle, and he barely tolerates – and is barely tolerated by – one of C’rizz’s people, a leader of the Church of the Foundation known simply as Guidance. He also happens to be C’rizz’s father. The accidental death of one of Keep’s porters leads Keep to blame the Doctor, which entitles the rest of the locals in Keep’s employ to hunt the Doctor down. Perfection, who seems to tolerate her own husband even less than Guidance does, protests and finds herself added to the quarry of the hunt. The Doctor and Perfection soon find Charley, and together they find Charley in a bit of a bind. Soon the Doctor and all of his friends are reunited – but Keep, Guidance, the Kro’Ka and Rassilon soon follow. The end of the Divergents’ universe is drawing near, the TARDIS is the only way back to the universe as the Doctor and Charley know it, and not everyone will be aboard for its next trip. The beginning of the Divergents’ universe will follow, and none will survive it.

Order this CDwritten by Alan Barnes and Gary Russell
directed by Gary Russell
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Don Warrington (Rassilon), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka), Stephane Cornicard (Daqar Keep), Daphne Ashbrook (Perfection), Paul Darrow (Guidance), Jane Hills (L’Da), Anneke Wills (Lady Louisa Pollard), Stephen Mansfield (Simon Murchford), Jane Goddard (Mother of Jembere-Bud), Terry Molloy (Davros)

Timeline: after Caerdroia and before Terror Firma

Original Title: Rassilon

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
6th Doctor Doctor Who

The Juggernauts

Doctor Who: The JuggernautsAn attack on a space cruiser they’re visiting forces the Doctor and Melanie to evacuate by any means necessary. Mel manages to make her way to an escape pod, which takes her to a research colony on the planet Lethe. The Doctor and the TARDIS, however, are captured by the Daleks, who offer to send the Doctor to Lethe too…so long as he reports back on what their creator, Davros, is doing there. When the Doctor arrives, he finds that Davros has managed to conceal his appearance and is calling himself Professor Vaso – and worse yet, he has unearthed specimens of one of the Daleks’ worst enemies, the Mechonoids. Davros has quietly set up self-replication facilities for the Mechonoids, aware of their potential for battling the Daleks, claiming that he hopes to atone for his past by ridding the universe of his creations. But even with this claim of a noble mission, the Doctor sees Davros up to his old tricks, leaving a trail of death in his wake. But when the Doctor fulfills his end of the bargain and alerts the Daleks, who still want to capture Davros and try him for crimes against them, things only get worse, with an entire colony of innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire of a new Dalek-Mechonoid war.

Order this CDwritten by Scott Alan Woodard
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), Bonnie Langford (Melanie), Terry Molloy (Davros), Bindya Solanki (Sonali), Klaus White (Geoff), Peter Forbe (Kryson), Paul Grunert (Brauer), Julia Houghton (Loewen), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek and Mechonoid voices)

Timeline: after The Trial Of A Time Lord and before Catch-1782

Notes: The Doctor mentions Evelyn in the past tense here. If one follows the generally accepted view from the novels that the Doctor dropped Melanie – a future companion he hadn’t met yet – off in her own post-seventh-Doctor timeline after The Trial Of A Time Lord, only to encounter her and begin their travels together at a later date, it’s reasonable to assume that the stories with Evelyn Smythe take place in the interim.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
8th Doctor Doctor Who

Terror Firma

Doctor Who: Terror FirmaGreeted by Davros and the Daleks after their escape from the Divergent universe, the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz are separated from each other. Davros is suffering from a split personality as he begins to lose himself in the identity of the Emperor Dalek. Charley and C’rizz flee the Daleks with members of a local resistance cell, but they too are separated from each other; Charley joins up with a woman who talks frequently about how her daughter was killed by the Daleks, while C’rizz ends up on the run from the Daleks with a young woman who could very well be that daughter. But the Doctor discovers that she could also be a former TARDIS traveler – even though he has no memory of her. And worse yet, Charley finds out that this planet, the new Dalek homeworld, is also known as Earth – and that its resistance movement is run by the Daleks themselves.

Order this CD written by Joseph Lidster
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Terry Molloy (Davros), Julia Deakin (Harriet Griffin), Lee Ingleby (Samson Griffin), Lizzie Hopley (Gemma Griffin), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voices)

Timeline: after The Next Life and before Scaredy Cat

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who I, Davros The Audio Dramas

Innocence

I, Davros: InnocenceWar rages on Skaro, as it has for centuries, between the Kaleds and the Thals. Born to a mother who is an ambitious senator and a father whole military career is coming to an ignoble halt due to illness, young Davros leads a life of privelege, but is fascinated by the patterns of life and nature around him, almost to the exclusion of all else. His mother hires a tutor, Magrantine, whose scientific experiments on the effects of radiation on living tissue fascinate Davros. When Magrantine turns out to be out for revenge against Davros’ father – the soldier whose actions resulted in the death of Magrantine’s son – Davros traps his tutor in his own radiation experiment chamber – a torturous experience that he survives, but it leaves him horribly mutated. But his mother, far from admonishing him, sees something of her own ruthless ambition in her son – and quietly gives her approval.

Order this CDwritten by Gary Hopkins
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Rory Jennings (Davros), Terry Molloy (Davros), Carolyn Jones (Lady Calcula), Richard Franklin (Colonel Nasgard), Lizzie Hopley (Yarvell), John Stahl (The Supremo), Peter Sowerbutts (Magrantine), Sean Connolly (Councillor Quested), Sean Carlsen (Councillor Valron), Daniel Hogarth (Section Leader Fenn), Richard Grieve (Major Brogan), James Parsons (Major Brint), Lisa Bowerman (Colonel Murash), Rita Davies (Tashek), Nicholas Briggs (Baran), Lucy Beresford (Renna), Scott Handcock (Saboteur), Andrew Wisher (Tech-Ops Reston), Jenifer Croxton (Tech-Ops Ludella)

Notes: Davros’ sister, Yarvell, has a name inspired by very early Doctor Who fiction: according to “The Dalek Book” by Terry Nation, released in 1966, the Daleks were created by a twisted genius named Yarvelling; Nation himself later rewrote the record, introducing Davros in Genesis Of The Daleks in 1975.

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who I, Davros The Audio Dramas

Purity

I, Davros: PurityNearing his 30th birthday, Davros is boiling with frustration that he’s a low-ranking tech officer testing weapons for the Kaled military, rather than a member of the elite Scientific Corps. But one meeting with the Kaled Supremo changes all that: if Davros will undertake a dangerous secret mission that takes him behind Thal lines to gather intelligence on a new weapons facility, his entry into the Scientific Corps is guaranteed. Davros eagerly agrees, but when he, a fellow tech officer, and a squad of Kaled commandos embark on their journey, he realizes it’s a suicide mission. Worse yet, the soldier leading the mission is weak-willed and proceeds to get most of his commando platoon killed before the Thal facility is even within sight. Davros insists on countermanding his orders and manages to breach the facility, discovering a vast automated weapons factory requiring no slave labor…but Thal soldiers are waiting there too, and they know Davros by name. The Kaleds manage to escape, and Davros once again assumes command, ordering the remaining Kaleds to make their escape via the wastelands between the Kaled and Thal borders. While this does prevent the Thals from giving chase, it also costs Davros the rest of his team – he’s the only survivor to make it back to the safety of Kaled territory, and is instantly declared a hero for completing his mission against terrible odds. But his first order of business is not to bask in the praise lavished upon him – he instead turns his attention to finding out who told the Thals he was coming, and the answer lies painfully close to home.

Order this CDwritten by James Parsons & Andrew Stirling-Brown
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Terry Molloy (Davros), Carolyn Jones (Lady Calcula), Lizzie Hopley (Yarvell), John Stahl (The Supremo), Peter Sowerbutts (Magrantine), Daniel Hogarth (Section Leader Fenn), Richard Grieve (Major Brogan), James Parsons (Major Brint), Nicholas Briggs (Baran), Lucy Beresford (Renna), Scott Handcock (Saboteur), Andrew Wisher (Tech-Ops Reston)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who I, Davros The Audio Dramas

Corruption

I, Davros: CorruptionOlder and a little wiser to the ways of the political world, Davros walks a knife’s edge as an increasingly senior member of the Kaled Scientific Corps: his government expects him to tend to research that will deliver devastating weapons for use in the war against the Thals, but Davros himself sees a higher goal: nothing less than ensuring the survival of the Kaled people in the radioactive aftermath of the war. As Davros sees it, leaving the Kaleds’ fate to evolution will produce too random a result, with little hope of surviving the merciless postwar ecosystem; he advocates research that will help direct the mutations that will carry the Kaled legacy forward. Davros’ mother, Calcula, sees far more immediate concerns, namely that Davros and his research are accumulating some political opponents, and she feels that he’s naive about politics in general. But when Davros’ mother is murdered, and the attack on her is found to be an inside job – the work of fellow Kaleds rather than enemy Thals – he proves just how well he learned the game of political maneuvering from her while she was alive, sweeping aside some of her enemies and putting others on notice as he consolidates his newly inherited power base. Mere weeks later, though, a Thal attack on the home base of the Kaleds’ Scientific Corps changes Davros – and his ambitions – forever.

Order this CDwritten by Lance Parkin
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Terry Molloy (Davros), Carolyn Jones (Lady Calcula), John Stahl (The Supremo), Katarina Olsson (Scientist Shan), Daniel Hogarth (Section Leader Fenn), David Bickerstaff (Scientist Ral), Sean Carlsen (Councillor Valron), Daniel Hogarth (Section Leader Fenn), Lucy Beresford (Renna), Scott Handcock (Saboteur), Andrew Wisher (Tech-Ops Reston)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who I, Davros The Audio Dramas

Guilt

I, Davros: GuiltAs always, war rages on, ravaging the surface and the people of Skaro. The emphasis turns to espionage as a technological stalemate takes hold; so long as neither the Kaleds nor the Thals gain a decisive technological advantage, the war remains on a knife’s-edge detente that leaves the combatants with surgical strikes via conventional weapons. Davros is naturally working on new technology, but to the Kaled Supremo’s distaste, Davros is focusing solely on genetic engineering instead of devastating new weapons. Obsessed with the future of the Kaled race in the increasingly toxic and radioactive atmosphere, Davros – despite his debilitating injuries and being restricted to a mobile (but still very limited) life support base – is working toward providing a tank-like travel shell that will protect what he predicts the Kaleds will become, as well as allowing its occupant to defend itself. But the Thals are keenly aware that the best chance the Kaleds have of gaining an advantage in the war is Davros, and a commando unit raids the Kaled science dome to kidnap him. Separated from his life support chair, Davros is dying, but refuses to surrender any information, except the truth that he is not developing new weapons at this time. A Kaled strike team, led by the ambitious young Lt. Nyder, rescues Davros and brings him back to the Kaled capitol. Once recovered from his ordeal, Davros is finally ready to complete his rise to power…and all his people have to do is surrender their future to his great plans.

Order this CDwritten by Lance Parkin
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon

Cast: Terry Molloy (Davros), Carolyn Jones (Lady Calcula), Lizzie Hopley (Yarvell), John Stahl (The Supremo), Peter Miles (Lt. Nyder), David Bickerstaff (Scientist Ral), Richard Grieve (Major Brogan), Lisa Bowerman (Colonel Murash), Nicholas Briggs (Baran), Lucy Beresford (Renna), Scott Handcock (Saboteur), Andrew Wisher (Tech-Ops Reston), Jennifer Croxton (Tech-Ops Ludella)

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Big Finish Spinoffs Doctor Who I, Davros The Audio Dramas

The Davros Mission

The Davros MissionAs he is sped toward his trial on Skaro, Davros is locked up in solitary confinement by his Daleks. But he’s not quite alone. He’s appalled to see the Daleks employing slave laborers – especially ones who don’t seem to live petrified in fear by their masters – and then there’s the other voice he hears. A woman, claiming to be a Thal, somehow gets into his cell undetected, using some sort of stealth suit that renders her invisible to the Daleks’ sensors (and therefore to Davros’ as well). She tries to make Davros realize that his “children” no longer need him and consider him not only disposable, but a threat. But even more terrifyingly, she begins talking to Davros about what is necessary for his redemption, giving him a way to destroy the Daleks before they destroy him. But has she just given a loaded weapon to precisely the wrong person?

Order this CD written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by David Darlington

Cast: Terry Molloy (Davros), Miranda Raison (Lareen), Sean Connolly (Alydon / Guz), Gregg Newton (Computer / Raz), Nicholas Briggs (Daleks)

Timeline: shortly after the TV story Revelation Of The Daleks and before the audio story Terror Firma and the TV story Remembrance Of The Daleks

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who New Series Season 04

The Stolen Earth

Doctor WhoConfronted with the imminent arrival of Rose from the alternate universe, the Doctor and Donna make a quick jump to modern-day Earth, finding that everything is all right and returning to the TARDIS. But a sudden displacement of time and space leaves the TARDIS floating in space – without Earth. The Doctor flies into action to try to track the planet down, even going so far as to pay an unannounced visit to the Shadow Proclamation, an intergalactic law enforcement body, where he talks his way past Judoon guards and discovers that Earth isn’t the only planet missing: the Shadow Proclamation has placed the entire universe on alert. Taking note of the mass and properties of the missing worlds, the Doctor hypothesizes that the planets may have been stolen to become components of a massive engine, generating energy on a scale not seen since the creation of the universe. The representatives of the Shadow Proclamation are prepared to go into battle, but only if the Doctor surrenders his TARDIS; he opts to go it alone instead.

On Earth, chaos has broken out. Night has fallen around the world, and the sky is now teeming with unfamiliar planets. At UNIT HQ in New York City, at Torchwood in Cardiff and at Sarah Jane Smith’s home in Ealing, former companions of the Doctor are among the first to hear a message transmitted from an oncoming barrage of spacecraft: a Dalek voice endlessly repeating the word “exterminate”. The Daleks attack the planet, concentrating their firepower on military installations or entities that have prior knowledge of the Daleks: Torchwood and UNIT are among the first targets. An unlikely ally unites Martha, Torchwood and Sarah, using a technology invented for an emergency in which the Doctor hasn’t arrived to save the day. But the TARDIS does indeed make its way to Earth, finding the stolen planets time-shifted within the Medusa Cascade. The Doctor discovers that Davros, creator of the Daleks, has survived the Time War and bred a new race of Daleks to do his bidding. As the Doctor’s former companions race to join up with him, Torchwood comes under Dalek attack and Gwen and Ianto are left to fend for themselves. Sarah finds herself at the mercy of the Daleks, and even when Rose finds the TARDIS, it may not be enough to save the Doctor when he finds himself in a Dalek’s gunsights.

Order the DVDDownload this episodewritten by Russell T. Davies
directed by Graeme Harper
music by Murray Gold

Cast: David Tennant (The Doctor), Catherine Tate (Donna Noble), Billie Piper (Rose Tyler), Freema Agyeman (Martha Jones), John Barrowman (Captain Jack Harkness), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Penelope Wilton (Harriet Jones), Adjoa Andoh (Francine Jones), Gareth David-Lloyd (Ianto Jones), Eve Myles (Gwen Cooper), Thomas Knight (Luke Smith), Bernard Cribbins (Wilfred Mott), Jacqueline King (Sylvia Noble), Julian Bleach (Davros), Michael Brandon (General Sanchez), Andrea Harris (Suzanne), Lachele Carl (Trinity Wells), Richard Dawkins (himself), Paul O’Grady (himself), Marcus Cunningham (Drunk Man), Jason Mohammad (Newsreader), Paul Kasey (Judoon), Kelly Hunter (Shadow Architect), Amy Beth Hayes (Albino Servant), Gary Milner (Scared Man), Barney Edwards, Nick Pegg, David Hankinson, Anthony Spargo (Dalek Operators), Nicholas Briggs (Dalek voice), Alexander Armstrong (voice of Mr. Smith)

The Stolen EarthNotes: Davros first appeared in 1975’s Genesis Of The Daleks, and returned to terrorize each of the Doctor’s successive incarnations until his final appearance in 1988’s Remembrance Of The Daleks. Even the cancellation of the original series didn’t slow him down, as he returned to do battle twice more with the sixth Doctor, and then with Paul McGann as the eighth Doctor in Terror Firma, and even appeared in his own audio spinoff series, I, Davros. Apparently he’s been missing since a battle during the first year of the Time War, which – just to drive fans crazy – remains unrecorded in either novel or audio form. Actor Julian Bleach becomes the fourth actor to play Davros, having played the Ghost Maker in an episode of Torchwood’s second season. Bernard Cribbins, as Donna’s grandfather, has come up against the Daleks before – 42 years before this episode’s premiere, in the 1966 feature film Daleks: Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. starring Peter Cushing as Doctor Who. Penelope Wilton returns as former Prime Minister Harriet Jones, not seen since the then-newly-regenerated Doctor uttered six fateful words in The Christmas Invasion. Appearing as himself, evolutionary science advocate Richard Dawkins is the husband of former Doctor Who co-star Lalla “Romana” Ward; coincidentally, they were introduced by former Doctor Who writer and script editor – and Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy author – Douglas Adams.

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green