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Davros |
Reviews
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Davros |
"You're like a deranged child!" by Thomas Cookson 26/5/19
Kim Newman argues that among the show's many post-1977 missteps was making Davros a recurring villain. His diminishing returns leading to increasingly uninspired Dalek stories rendering him an albatross around the Daleks' necks. Furthermore, undoing his death cheapened Genesis' poetic end.
The reason Davros worked in Genesis is the story's a morality play in the purest sense. Its characters aren't so much people as particular moral philosophies embodied. Skaro presents a hellish vision of our worst historical periods anachronistically brought together at each other's throats. Showing the Third Reich sending futuristic lazer-armed tanks slaughtering through Rome's temples. A vision of hell. The perfect setting to depict the spawning of evil.
Had Gharman really lived this war-hardened life of indoctrination, is it likely he'd be a polite pacifist do-gooder who'd survived this long? As a person no. But as an idea, what Gharman represents can never die. Each character represents a figure-point on a Darwinian chart, marking stages in evolution or degeneration from man to Dalek, highlighting how strangely a bit of Dalek aggression's necessary for our survival. Go too far toward Gharman's pacifism or Davros' overreaching mad-dog aggression and the likelihood of survival diminishes, with a marked question over what 'deserving' to survive means.
The Doctor exists somewhere middle, alongside Bettan. He adamantly refuses being debased in Davros' pecking order. He acknowledges Davros will shape the universe's destiny and isn't above asking Davros to consider reimagining the Daleks as a force for good. But when reason fails, the Doctor attacks Davros with a ferocity none of his subordinates would dare. Terminating Davros' life support to force his hand. That moment singly trumps the NA's darker-Doctor pretensions.
Davros embodies the part of Hitler that never died. His philosophy. Everything Davros says and does is a sharp, quotable encapsulation of fascism bordering on fetishization. Making fascism sound clever, clean and unsullied in how it clarifies. But it tolerates no other voice or opinion.
Enoch Powell was often erroneously branded a 'fascist' for his 'rivers of blood' speech. In truth, Enoch loved parliaments and democracy. The very things true fascists hate and vehemently destroy. Likewise, Davros destroys his own city to purge the more conservative council and slaughters Gharman's men for the sedition of voting wrongly. Seeing humans complicit with the Daleks' evil, throwing fleeing escapees to their deaths, particularly haunted me.
You might argue Davros' fatal flaw was ultimately that he wasn't Dalek enough. Ultimately, the Daleks survive, perhaps as an immortal idea, unbound by human mortality. What if Hitler's nightmare vision of superior iron men crushing all weakness came true and survived him? Much like Saudi Arabia's begun moving to destroy its own psychotic al-Qaeda/ISIS proxies now they're a threat, Genesis ends with Davros destroyed by his own nightmare creation and questions of the universe's future unanswered.
Hinchcliffe didn't capitalize on this rejuvenation of the Daleks, remaining uninterested in commissioning further Dalek stories. Consequently, the neglected Daleks returned slightly worse for wear in Destiny of the Daleks, where their reign of galactic destruction's been conveniently halted by a greater foe.
Terry Nation's insistence on reviving Davros was possibly emboldened by Hinchcliffe's prior rejections. Allegedly that the Daleks are excavating the Kaled city to find Davros represents a continuity error. However, Sevrin had mentioned a direct tunnelway through the city to Davros' bunker. Perhaps they intended accessing that. But it's a poor return for Davros. Any inspiration left from Genesis dries up the moment Davros awakes, spouting cartoon villain dialogue.
Fan historians would cynically suggest Davros was equally, if not more, a Robert Holmes creation, and maybe without Holmes' amendments, Destiny shows what Nation's Davros could've been like from the start.
I think this degeneration of the once-vivid, conscious Davros into something less real or believable was for fandom a major deal-breaker. Nonetheless, Davros is presented as a harbinger of dangerous warfare knowledge, to the point Tom's prepared to blow him up to prevent him falling into Dalek hands.
Fandom heralded 1984's Resurrection of the Daleks a triumphant return, where Williams' comedy influence was ruthlessly backlashed against and supposedly exorcised by Eric Saward's overkill. Unfortunately for casual viewers, Resurrection's such a backlash against the previous era, it never feels it's 'for' anything. Resurrection's premise could've involved the Daleks' endangered status leaving Davison questioning whether it's his right to render them extinct. Whether they're even a galactic threat anymore.
I first saw Resurrection, aged 15, when it was a lucky find on video. I remember expecting it'd be worth the hunt. Instead it proved a vulgar, violent, plotless onslaught of appallingly acted deaths that briefly made me turncoat to Star Trek. DWM's photos of Davros unleashing the virus on two Daleks as punishment looked like the story's defining horrific moment, conveying Davros' cruelty. The irony of him being their sought saviour. Instead Resurrection proved a desensitizing, violent messy blur where ironically nothing stands out.
Rula Lenska shared a sweet, understated romantic chemistry with Arthur in Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. I remember dreading she'd be killed off, like Trillian. Comparatively, when Saward killed Styles, I didn't care. As Game of Thrones demonstrates, sometimes writers have to write dark events to get out of their system those evil horrors they know humanity's capable of. The 1980s saw massacres in Salvador and Beirut that horrified the world. Yet it's hard crediting Saward with being touched by that when, under him, the Doctor's characterized closer to the Israeli forces who stood back and let the Beirut massacres happen.
Likewise, Styles immediately blames Mercer for the ongoing massacre, for not immediately surrendering to the enemy. When Saward's writing about the slaughtered, it's usually snidely insinuated they brought it on themselves or should've respected their enemy more. It's merely Boys' Own indulgence taken too far, whilst simultaneously trying to make a heavy-handed, repetitious statement about war's horrors, unsubtly trying to rub in viewers' faces 'See, this is a grim, shocking, violent story!' It feels charmless and irresponsibly childish. You don't trust the writer knows what he's doing, so your sympathy turns away.
Defenders often point to Tegan's sickened goodbye as supposedly justifying the story's point. The problem is, Resurrection was a delayed production, never originally written with Tegan's tacked-on departure in mind. It's essentially treating her, and us, as unimaginative philistines, unable to appreciate this story's horror unless shown every last death forced down their throat.
It's all about the death and gore, without understanding what makes horror genuinely exciting or cathartic. There's no emotional connection to these characters, nor any cognitive sense behind their suicidal actions that'd allow us to put ourselves in their place.
It's bottom-feeding trash on a loop. Blowing so many possible escape attempts, chances to show writing innovation and show these characters as thinking survivalists rather than puppeteering them to act suicidal for the same depressing repetitious fate.
The crewman whose face starts melting outside Davros' cryo-prison despite having been nowhere near the airlock attack. The teleport signal's sonic noise making Professor Laird collapse onto Tegan's mock bed when it's never caused that before. Then making a stupid suicidal break for it, knowing she's guaranteed to get shot.
In Genesis, Davros' articulation of fascism was relentlessly quotable, but it remained the Doctor's show. In their one conversation together, Davros proved a lunatic no one should follow. In Resurrection, Davros is practically the smartest voice. He has no noble purpose, but he asserts with unchallenged credibility that no one in this universe does, except the Doctor, for whom it's his weakness, as it was Gharman's.
Admittedly, there's something compellingly existential about Davison's "I'm not here as your prisoner Davros, but your executioner!". He undergoes interesting emotions and internal wrestles. "I foolishly thought you'd changed enough for me not to have to do this".
He doesn't trust himself. When Davros mentions reconditioning Daleks to recognise compassion, he feels himself lose gumption, then quickly second guesses himself. Remembering Davros still wants the perfect conquerors. But it cements Saward's misanthropic view that deep down, mankind's no better than the Daleks, and perhaps worse because we commit evil by choice. Why's that a problem? Because when Davison chickens out, he's seemingly become moronically stumped for reasons humanity deserves defending anymore. Saward seemingly believes whether the Doctor should be an impotent pacifist or psychotic killer is an either/or question and somehow also profound.
But the profoundity was always understated and sustained. Genesis and Planet of Evil presented a dangerous, haunting universe, with a clever, formidable hero whose abstinence from weapons created its own stakes of suspenseful mystery of how he'll overcome these terrifying odds or, concerning Genesis, whether he'll fail. Having a gun-ready Doctor (the desperate man's refuge) demystifies him, exposing his hand as otherwise empty, with nothing up his sleeve.
Eric doesn't grasp the Doctor's thinking with any lucid consistency. Davison's assassination attempt on Davros is just Saward's usual moronic padding, making Davison pursue irrational causes of action before getting cold feet, whilst people die around his time-wasting. Here Davison chickens out, proving Davros right. When Tom Baker nearly terminates Davros' life support in Genesis, he didn't seem incapable nor bluffing. Resurrection retcons that he always was.
Even this binary opposition is spoilt by having Davison and Davros both simultaneously plague-bomb an already endangered Dalek species. Saward could've had Davison accept Davros' promise to reengineer Dalek nature. Incentivising him to preserve Davros for the greater good. Interesting things could've followed.
Revelation of the Daleks conveys Davros' invincibility brilliantly, defining him as the devil you can't kill. Faking his death only to emerge untouched over his would-be assassins. Orcini and Bostock's defiant last shots still don't kill him.
Interestingly, Davros claims he's acting philanthropically for the terminally ill, abandoned by corrupt corporations. Although here comically emphasising the absurdity of our mass-murdering psychopath claiming a moral high ground to condemn our health-care failures. But this Davros-centric focus allows Saward to pursue yet more exceptionally sadistic vignettes. Davros surveys Tasambeker with sick-minded intent. He stalks, manipulates and corrupts her, then kills her for becoming damaged goods. Then's the unexplained moment Orcini spitefully sets Natasha and Grigory up to die pointlessly and defencelessly (because torturing them wasn't enough) by giving them an empty blaster. All whilst Colin's marginalised from the action, unable to prevent their extermination.
Terry Nation loved entertaining viewers with imaginative stories, recreating his childhood sci-fi cinema favourites. He loved world-building, telling page-turners about heroes fighting for human dignity, pitting their formidable intellects against vindictive harbingers of soulless conformity. Stories where anything's possible. Molten ice, metal crocodiles, giant clams. But, more importantly, our Doctor can triumph over cosmic wars and invincible metallic space Nazis so effortlessly, we briefly believe even we could be that brave. An optimism smeared by Saward's pent-up, raging workplace frustration and defeatism. Frustrations with JNT's impositions of invincible recurring villains ultimately manifested in him blowing Davros' hand off.
I understand now why Resurrection made me briefly stop being a fan. Because it wasn't the Doctor's show anymore. He was a footprint on the beach before an incoming filthy tide.