Things I like about this story: Romana's costume The Dalek-bomber-jacket look It sets up Resurrection Of The Daleks I have City Of Death to look forward to during a chronological marathon. Yeah, that's about it.
The first time, as a teenager, I saw that short scene of Tom Baker opening the TARDIS window, proclaiming, "Oh look! Rocks!" And shutting the window immediately struck me as so funny for some reason it sent me into one of the longest fits of laughter I've yet experienced in life. No idea why, but that was a good fifteen minutes or so of constant gaffawing before I calmed down
'Destiny' is kind of the epitome of what people think Doctor Who is (at least in my experience). You have the most popular Doctor with the most popular Daleks, some funny bits, lots of weird bits, and the Daleks all look like they're all gonna fall apart if you look at them the wrong way
This story gets even weirder with extended canon, this was retconed into not being Skaro and there was another book where Romana apparently got locked in a wardrobe while the TARDIS impersonated her during this episode.
@@crimsondynamo615 Eighth Doctor Books are my favourite era in all of Doctor Who.... But War of the Daleks is one of the shittiest Who stories and it's the only EDA I don't consider canon at all. Doesn't help that John Peel had a massive 7th Doctor Hate Boner throughout the book as well.
@@crimsondynamo615 In War of the Daleks, it's revealed that the 7th Doctor never hit and destroyed Skaro in Remembrance. Turns out that he hit another planet and killed it's civilians... by accident. This is also the same writer who wrote Timewryn: Genyses, where 7 castrates Ace and tells her that being sexually assaulted is part of the time that they were in (in the BC Times with Gilgamesh), and she should just get used to it. Yeah, John Peel will go out of his way to destroy 7 as much as possible.
A few things to notice: (1) The Movellans apparently use microfilm, as they have a number of microfilm readers stacked on shelves in their ship. (2) The distinctive basket the slave miners use to carry rocks appears to be the famous wire side chair designed by Harry Bertoia for Knoll, with its legs removed. Fans of modern furniture are sighing, knowing how expensive these are. (3) The Movellans are also modern design fans, having furnished their ship with Don Chadwick's modular sectional sofa from Herman Miller. How considerate for a race of robots to furnish a comfortable little seating nook, complete with coffee table.
The other reason people remember this one is how cheap it looks. David Gooderson, who plays Davros, is wearing Michael Wisher's mask and it does not fit at all, the Daleks look battered and broken and could do with a paint job, the sets look like cardboard and I swear David Gooderson is operating the Davros Chair by running in it. It's hilarious how rubbish this episode looks.
It was the era of the 'That will do' attitude towards the programme. The BBC didn't have any money to spend on it (or any other programme for that matter), and Tom was getting out of control both in front and behind the camera. It wasn't until JNT took over as producer in 1980, that he managed to secure a little more money and try and steer the programme back to a more serious tone and look. And then of course, it all went down the toilet, but that's another story...
This one is actually one of my guilty-pleasure favourites, probably because it was one of the first ever classic who stories I watched and I really like the movellans, especially their design. Is it good? Not really. Do I still love it and feel nostalgic about it? Hell yeah!
"We want to do another Dalek serial" was the mantra of 70s Who. Louis Marks story became "Day" after producers asked him to do a rewrite. "Planet" was a rehash of episodes 5-7 of "The Daleks," that also had no connection to the previous serial "Frontier in Space" despite how that story ended. And that's before mentioning how "Frontier" had all the political elements, fascists in government, nationalism and warmongering that could send both empires to war, and a human political party having members imprisoned for life on the moon for nebulous reasons. (The fact that Malcolm Hulke was never asked to do a Dalek story himself was a mistake on the part of producers.) But back to Daleks, "Death to" clearly didn't give a shit as even the musical cues painted the Daleks as silly and bumbling. "Destiny" is there, and at least attempts via rehash, humor, and some camp. And "Genesis" was supposedly made after Letts asked Nation to do something different with the Daleks. Considering how "Genesis" turned out, it really shows how much the Daleks were only in stories at this point just because someone wanted to use them, not because they wanted to do anything with them.
This story suffers from having Douglas Adams, who was not a good script editor, Graham Williams who was a serviceable producer with some grander ideas (The Key to Time) but didn't know how to realize them and Tom Baker who by this time was kinda bored by it all which ended up in the constant undermining of the seriousness and integrity of basically every story in the season. He rewrote dialogue, directors gave up and let him have his way. Basically a directionless series that was at this point a shell of itself. It took a new producer and script editor who told Baker to stop arsing off. Which he mostly did (they let him have his way sometimes) in S18. Despite it's flaws this same story the next season would have been distinctly better because when dealing with poorer material the answer is not "Let's get silly!" It's " Let's take it seriously and make it work." When the you let the actor playing the Doctor not be bothered then why should anyone?
Spokey thing is I just finished MrTARDIS's Destiny review, (binging Dalekcember, again) I thought I'd be free from it's grasp and move onto Resurrection, but I guess it's infected the very fabric of RU-vid... Alright don't disappoint, tare this mother down!
Ah, I love Dalekcember. I also quoted Stubagful on the Resurrection video: "Let me remind you of a little decade called the 1980s which gave us _gems_ like Resurrection of the Daleks. 'Agh, I can't stand the confusion in my mind' "
Believe me, Destiny seemed like a retread of old ideas even if you hadn't seen Dalek Invasion of Earth (there were the movies). i was just appalled at how shoddy the Daleks were (particularly the ones wearing foam skirts). And they forgot to modulate Davros's voice.Some of it was fun - the space ship digging into the planet, Romana's costume being a pink and white version of the Doctor's. But it killed off any desire to see the Daleks again for a long old time.
If you notice in one scene a dalek operator accidentally lifts up the top section of a Dalek before moving and Davros is so obviously moving his legs bobbing around like an apple in a water basket and he even bumps a corner at one point
Older boy me (45). Rest assurred that the kids in 1979 had seen the older shows without the aid of video. They used to repeat them often on BBC2. The feature length ones were TV staples on bank holidays in the afternoon. The BBC hammered them.
4:47 - Child of the Seventies here. Yes, we were deeply, perhaps even intimately, familiar with Dalek Invasion of Earth, or should I say "Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150AD" because the Peter Cushing film was repeated every summer on ITV, which during the long wait between seasons that had to provide us sustenance, and we had no videos or DVDs so aside from Target novelisations this was the nearest thing you could get to old Doctor Who, and for some reason the earlier film "Dr Who and the Daleks" was hardly ever shown; it was always "Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150AD". We now know that Dalek Invasion of Earth 2150 fits into canon because it's actually Donna's grandad is in a coma and dreaming he's a policeman.~ A bit like Life on Mars except in Life on Mars it's The Master who's in a coma dreaming he's a policeman who's in another coma dreaming he's still a policeman only earlier.
I love Douglas Adams more than almost any other writer who ever existed... but he REALLY wasn't suited to editing this serial, the humour and light-weight vibe he added just didn't jive with Nation's grim vision. Of course, Nation's story wasn't exactly great to begin with, but we essentially went from a mediocre script, to a mediocre script with a completely uneven tone.
@@HereComesPopoBawa I would say a significant upgrade would've been either a script editor who could've improved upon the story while respecting the tone Nation was going for, or a script editor who could've truly made the story their own. I feel like Adams left in quite a few grim moments while still trying to include his usual comedy, and it just left a very awkward serial that mixes in one-liners and meta humour with heavy holocaust metaphors, in a way that's a bit uncomfortable.
I think one of the only reasons people keep crafting theories about the Romana regeneration bit is because its literally the only thing of interest in the entire episode and (sadly enough for a sequel to Genesis of the Daleks) is the one part that actually raises any fascinating questions.
No real input here, just my head cannon for Romana's regeneration. It's established in New Who that for 15 hours after the initial change a Timelord is brimming with that much regeneration energy that they are basically indestructible. Now while The Doctor might be godlike to us, as Timelords go he's actually quite a rubbish one. Every time he regenerates it nearly kills him! Where Romana is a prodigy, she's such a good Timelord that when she regenerates not only does she recover immediately, but by properly utilizing the excess energy she can cycle through several different bodies before solidifying one as her new incarnation.
@@eddherring4972 hahaha and this is why people hate the new series because it just disregards the shows history whilst pretending it doesn't. Romana and Rani mention how regeneration works differently and better for women and then the Timeless child creates another major flaw because it was the sisterhood of Kaan who have the "elixir of life" which was what gave Timelords regenerations and I'm pretty sure Omega played a role in obtaining it long before the doctor was born.
@@Cyber_Smoke Originally before Chibs came along, the ability to regenerate was one of the "gifts" earned by passing the trials and tests to become a Timelord. Its not from the sisterhood. The elixir of life was used by the Timelords to help ease difficult regeneration, or ones that went wrong like with 5 and 10. They should have had it, but regeneration doesn't come from it. Which is why you have to take Night Of The Doctor with a pinch of salt. On one hand YEAH MORE 8!!!! But on the other come on Moffat we know you don't care about continuity other wise you wouldn't have made The War Doctor. But really? "Timelord science is elevated on Kaan"? Last time we saw the sisters they couldn't work a bloody chimney and now they can Timelord better than the Timelords? Hmm no.
@@iamtheecho your mostly right I know it's the Gallifreyans who passed the academy are given the title of timelord/timelady( until retcon for reasons...)right to regenerate twelve times but it came from the sisterhood of Kaan rewatch the brain of morbius if you don't believe me.
I think a lot of that is because New Who fans were previously conditioned to see Daleks as the end all be all threat to the universe, not knowing that they spent many Classic appearances being totally incompetent. There's also Classic fans who complain based on nostalgia instead of what they actually saw on screen when they were kids.
To be fair, the shot of the rotating/drilling spaceship landing was pretty good considering the budget, ditto the ground shaking beneath the Doctor and Romana's feet. I also like the design of the Movellan spaceship interior, and the look of the Movellans themselves - cheap but effective. On the down-side, we also get wobbly Davros and his amazing disintegrating face ;)
Also the robot thing is genius: The Movellans are robots trying to be humanoids whereas the mechanisation of the Daleks is a natural outgrowth from Genesis and ties in to Charlie Chaplin's famous "machine men, with machine hearts and machine minds" condemnation of fascism.
My favourite part has to be when the Doctor climbs back up the chute and laughs at the Daleks for not being able to catch him! ... That is all 😬 - Corey
This was MY first Classic Serial, after watching every single episode from the Russell era, and all of the Moffatt episodes around at the time. It was ordered from Lovefilm, even though I'd ordered Genesis of the Daleks. They sent me this instead. They also somehow sent me Remembrance of the Daleks instead of The Rebel Flesh and The Almost People. Yep. What a good place to start.
@@mgthestrange9098 Bang on. As much as I loved Lovefilm, they made mistakes quite often. How they mixed up Remembrance of the Daleks with The Rebel Flesh I'll never know.
I love Destiny. Not entirely sure why. I think episode 1 is pretty atmospheric despite the humour and Gooderson really isn't as bad as many make out. The cliffhanger to episode 2 is fantastic and, overall, the story is very well directed. The Target novelisation also sports one of my favourite covers. The story undoubtedly has quite a few faults but I'm not ashamed to proudly say I love Destiny of the Daleks!!
ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9LaOoZ25kfM.html this is proof Gooderson could have been great the clip is a modulation of davros voice when the doctor first interacts with him.
It's pretty much a law of Doctor Who that anything popular or iconic will be brought back no matter how dead/destroyed it apparently is. This is fine for something like the Master, but I guess the problem with applying this rule to Davros is that his main gimmick is "creator of the Daleks," therefore once the Daleks are created he's kind of redundant. Offhand, the only post-Genesis TV story I can think of that even _attempts_ to do something with Davros that wouldn't work with just the Daleks is the series 9 opener.
Well, I personally really enjoyed Destiny of the Daleks. It was fun, light, really enjoyable with a really great vibe. So, yes, this _is_ riding almost entirely on nostalgia for me. Perhaps that’s because this was my very first Classic Who story, only I didn’t enjoy it at the time. I _really_ liked it after watching all of the preceding episodes, though.
Hey Stubagful, I know you're sick of big finish now, but can I reccomend if you haven't already you try out Daughter of Gods? I love it; When the 2nd Doctor and 1st Doctor's TARDIS accidentally bump into each other, it makes it so that the 1st Doctor never arrives on Kembel, and creates an alternate reality where Katarina is still travelling with them... and the Daleks succeed in building the time destructor. I like it because it goes out of it's way to develop Katarina of all characters- I dunno, I just think it's worth a listen. :)
I could totally see the argument that Genesis and I, Davros should be the only story for Davros as his story gets wrapped up by the end of Genesis, but then they drag him right back in
Yes he was brutally murdered! From the brutal murderers' point of view. It simply turned out, totally in character, that he had built a defence against that possibility into his life-support. Makes perfect sense, and reestablishes Davros to be a regular.
People have tried to explain the scene where Ramona changes form several times in her regeneration what they failed to forget or they don't know is that in the mark of rani she mentions that she can change her appearance but the doctor is stuck with what he gets that implies that female timelords a better able to control the Regeneration on what they want to look like!!!
I don’t think Destiny is a bad story but it’s not a good story either. It’s exactly a meh, which is a shame because every other Dalek story in the Classic Series, I can call good. Destiny is the only Classic Dalek story which isn’t good (for me at least. I know some people don’t like The Chase, Planet of the Daleks or Death to the Daleks but I still enjoy them)
1) Red Paradigm Dalek, drone. Drone implies no organic components. The Daleks are attempting to conquer the universe. There are not enough Daleks to achieve this. Dalek drones are used in some areas. Some species may never have come across cyborg Daleks and assume all Daleks are robots. The Doctor merely goes along with expectation, not having time for an irrelevant Dalek history lesson. The Dalek position regarding self sacrifice being impossible would suggest a robotic logic being applied. 2) Battered Daleks: The Daleks are mining very quickly in an unstable area It is highly likely that they have been hit by falling rocks, maybe even blasted out of immobility. It’s also possible they have been battle damaged. Regarding the Dalek with the backwards base, in the episode Dalek it is seen that the mid and head can rotate independently. 3) Dodgy Davros: Davros has been in emergency suspended animation, evidently his creations didn’t even bother to dispose of him. He could have suffered any kind of medical trauma either by being shot or in life support for so long. I wouldn’t be surprised if Davros hadn’t had some kind of stroke, affecting his mouth. Also his coordination. I can’t justify David furiously pedalling or Dalek casings opening or Daleks ‘walking’ over sand but I’ve justified a lot of what people call errors. The Davros cobweb hand cliffhanger is one of my early childhood Dr Who memories. It’s easy to slate programmes from decades ago. Try convincing yourself you’ve never seen anything better, emerge yourself in the acting, script and the story. Enjoy classic Who for what it is, for the most part, excellent writing, good acting (usually) and a budget working against it. For what they had it is excellent value for money. Destiny Of The Daleks gets a solid 6/10 from me. I can believe in it.
When I first got into Dr Who, a friend gave me his Target novelization of this one. And I have to admit, my imagination did a better job with this story than the televised version does.
"It doesn't tell you that this is Skaro" Didn't they take anti-radiation drugs in the TARDIS before leaving it, hinting that they landed on Skaro? I could have completely missed out if they did or didn't, it's Destiny of the Daleks, it's not a story that is high on my rewatch list.
They did but the environment doesn't look much like a barren wasteland so there's no visual indication... on the topic of visuals, am I the only one who thinks that the interior corridors look like Tom and Lalla were just pushing the Davros prop through the back of the sets of random rooms at the BBC headquarters?
@@Jedi_Spartan "We're passing the Blake's 7 set, Davros, soon we'll get passed the Goodies set and the Grange Hill set and then we'll get to your Daleks"
Though I enjoy this one, the huge weakness that the Movellans have of; putting their power-source/battery on their sleeves, seems pretty unforgivable, story-wise. I do enjoy that they kept the Daleks busy for as long as they did (heard the Movellans eventually won the war, but not sure) as I find the Daleks to be nowhere near as impressive as they are touted to be... anyone who can screw with them, I'd side with.
Destiny was my first classic DW serial I watched in full so I have the weird appreciation for it, despite it being wank. Best part is David Gooderson's bizarrely Eastern European accent in parts, "Davros lives!" - Connor
Honestly this story makes a joke of davros and the daleks P.S. Stuart may I request that you make a review on the caves of androzani because that's my favourite story of all time 😃
Romana's pointless regeneration scene actually gets an explanation in the "Gallifrey" series. It was because her first incarnation was corrupted by a thing called Pandora. Pandora wanted to use Romana's body as a vessel but ended up becoming trapped in her subconscious. When Romana came into close proximity of the Key to Time it caused Pandora to re-manifest, so Romana had to regenerate in order to keep Pandora sealed away.
See I prefer this to Genesis because unlike Genesis it doesn't make the Daleks and Dave out to be a threat that they're not. Hell they get the shit beaten out of them by disco robots.
Destiny of the Daleks, going by the way you're describing it, sounds like it suffers the same problem that a lot of Dalek stories have in the modern series - released on begrudging obligation rather than because there is a good story to tell. It just feels like there is an unspoken rule that the Daleks HAVE to appear, which is probably the only reason why we get an episode, or, in some cases, just a cameo. Satisfying Dalek episodes have to feel earned, rather than just adhering to formula. That's why Genesis of the Daleks feels so good, because it takes its time before revealing the monster. Revelation feels earned, because we had bad episodes like Destiny and Resurrection. Dalek feels earned, because the episode almost didn't exist, due to conflicts between the BBC and the Terry Nation estate, who owned the Daleks, meaning we almost didn't see the iconic monster return. Even Resolution, for as flawed an episode as it was, feels earned, because it waited till the end of the series before being released, and by then we had grown used to the new cast, and actually wanted to see them respond to a Dalek.
I remember been so excited when Destiny was released on DVD and I could finally watch the last Davros story that I hadn't seen. I had seen people shitting on it online but I was optimistic and thought that I would like it. Oh how wrong I was. Still, the DVD cover artwork is cool.
Got a great laugh to the point of coughing from watching this review...you aren't wrong in your analysis. Like others have also said, you had a phoned in script by Terry Nation that got made palatable by infusion of Douglas Adams' strange humor along with an actor who was over the whole thing at this point and producer Graham Williams wasn't going to challenge the star who was at least developing good chemistry with his new co-star. So dead on and hilarious!
Oh it is always a fun romp down Memory Lane hearing twerps talk about How Hard it was to find Dr.Who Stuff back in the early days....of Internet....HA HA!
Wouldn't changing the Daleks to match the story's plot twist be more a bad thing? Especially by the person who created them with a lot more effort and intricacy in 1963? The show's makers definitely made a joke of the script. Not sure when one side's boredom turns into contempt by the other when sending everything up. A lot of season 17 felt that way.
I've always just assumed that time lords can just regenerate whenever they like and the doctor just doesn't and the 12 Actual regeneration limit is only for regenerating fatal injury / something else that would cause to die
Didn't go ta wedding cos I would miss dr who destiny of the dalek no vcrs then I was 10 at the time.still a good story having my fish and chips and watching dr who dalek stand off and Suzanne Danielle never mind the daleks.
This is one of my least favorite Tom Baker stories, and I like/love most of his tenure! This isn't my least favorite 4th Doctor story, but it's close, really close.
Thing is I've always had a soft spot for Destiny as it was my first ever classic story and really got me into the show. I guess that does prove the point of watching it in 1979 when you can't watch Invasion of Earth or Genesis, like I hadn't seen them even though this was 2007 or something. But I do think it is the weakest Classic Dalek story (but still better than almost all modern dalek stories with a few exceptions)
This story is just... laughable to me. It's really hard to watch, mostly thanks to David Goodison and the Daleks, but nothing else is good either (besides Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, of course). I really hate the Movellans, too. This one reminds me a lot of Revenge of the Cybermen.
A thing that I like about destiny is well the daleks, sure they look shit but the amount of them looks absolutely cool, having like 10 daleks in an entire battle field and you’ve got a fan favourite right there. But the story is really just a set up to resurrection intentional or not, yet destiny still has a good concept. In my opinion destiny is a meh and a oh god what is this.
Destiny wasn't horrible but its flaws are legendary. Gooderson fails miserably as Davros with a stale and non menacing performance with very obvious differences in the voice and fitment of the original mask not working as well. Then you have the scenes where he is trundling around in the chair as if he is swimming in water weaving and bobbing all over the place! Then we have badly scarred Daleks that are literally falling apart in scenes with bottoms misaligned from tops. They are also annoying with there screeching repetitive dialog basically announcing where they are and what they are doing out and about. The Daleks being purely robots is rubbish and the fact you could defeat a Movellan by simply lifting away the flashlight device from there side holster is ludicrous and takes away any menace they could have had. Then you have the Romana trying out different bodies scene as if she were changing clothes. This was done for laughs instead of making any sense and fails miserably. Meanwhile the location scenes and atmosphere of this story are decent and the initial reveal of Davros was kind of neat. The Daleks were a bit menacing in spots but don't really do much otherwise. The Lala Ward version of Romana is quite good here and Baker and her work well in this episode together.
Agreed. The worst Classic Who Dalek story. What an awful way to bring back Davros too, so uncreative. If the Daleks can eventually find the secrets to time travel - why didn't they invent the idea of the Daleks creating a botched Davros clone and make that a reason as to why Davros reappears and why his face/voice is so bad and why his character is mostly useless in this story? It could have been the start of different Dalek alliances. But oh well. The Chase is a masterpiece compared to Destiny. I couldn't have cared less about the Movellans either and making the Daleks more robot like, all bad ideas in a bad story.
I actually LOVE this story. Yea, it's not 'Genesis of the Daleks' -- but nothing is. (Also, I think 'Genesis' is kinda overrated. It's good; but not the end all be all.) However, it's still LOTSA fun.
A sequel to Genesis of the Daleks should have not been awful. Destiny of the Daleks is a rushed annoying cheap piece of shit. With how good Genesis of the Daleks and City of Death are there are no excuses for this bullshit story.
