The Doctor: But did you bother to tell anyone that they might be eating their own relatives?
Davros: Certainly not! That would have created what I believe is termed... "consumer resistance".
Eric Saward. Colin Baker. John Nathan-Turner. These are the names of three people (Script Editor, Doctor, and Producer, respectively) who get a great deal of the blame when the question "Who killed Doctor Who?" gets raised. Certainly Nathan-Turner and Saward overstayed their welcome, but the same cannot be said of Colin Baker.
See, it's confession time. I like the Sixth Doctor. I'm certainly glad that Colin never got his wish to tear open a Dalek casing and eat the goop inside (no, apparently he really said that), but I didn't mind the violence and the flippant disdain for practically everything and everybody. To be sure, The Twin Dilemma was utter crap, but oh yeah this isn't that. See, the Doctor's essentially a god. The only things that are certainly more powerful than him are the Eternals and the Black and White Guardians. The Sixth Doctor (until the Ninth and Tenth came around and nobody minded) was the only one who acted like it. Yes, One and Three were sanctimonious, yes Two and Seven were dastardly schemers...
But Four and Five... as much as I like Tom Baker (and I'll say it again: he's my favorite), he turned the Doctor into a goofy lunatic. And Peter Davison underplayed the role, making the Doctor seem weaker and at times completely overwhelmed by the proceedings.
Anyway, Six. He's the guy who's saved the Universe countless times over, and he's not going to let you forget it. He's bombastic. He's loud. He has a very questionable fashion sense:
(er, I'd upload a picture of Six in his absurd technicolor coat, but that would probably violate some sort of copyright and thus Blogger's terms of service. Just go here instead.)
Anyways, this is a Dalek story (duh. With that title, you'd have to be a moron not to expect that the first cliffhanger is a Dalek menacing the Doctor. And oh yeah you'd be wrong, because a giant statue of himself does the menacing instead. I kid you not).
Actually, the statue's really the serial's only major letdown. Considering how generally awful most of that era of Doctor Who is, Revelation stands out as not only not-bad, but actually quite good. By far the most rockin' guest character is the bounty hunter Orcini, who, because Eric Saward has an obsession with mercenaries, gets to save the day.
The script's got about as much black humor as Doctor Strangelove, and just happens to feature a wheelchair-bound genius with only one functioning hand. Interesting.
Oh, and the DJ is pure comic gold. Hell, the whole script is somewhat absurd. There's a mortuary. The Doctor's been summoned to the mortuary to pay his final respects to somebody we've never met before, and who, as it turns out, is only mostly dead (at the moment; his own daughter will fry him before the first episode ends). The mortuary is overseen by Jobel, a general sarcastic bastard who cares as much for his dead clients as Scrubs's Doctor Cox appears to care for his living ones. The staff includes Tasambeker, who lusts after him, a Laurel-and-Hardy-esque security team, and a DJ who plays music at the dead.
Yes, you read that right. A DJ who plays music at the dead. Also a head in a tank. Who is breaking down the bodies and turning them into either Daleks or food. And supplying the food to the villainous Kara, who just sent Orcini the assassin to kill him.
Confused yet? Did I mention the not-dead-yet-guy's daughter and her drunken associate? ("If I open that door too soon, the molecular structure of the body will break down. Poor old Stengos will turn into a pool of high-protein water! Even if I were confident that I could reconstitute him, we do not have a suitable vessel into which he could be ladled.") This is a script that is bursting at the seams before you even throw the Doctor in. Which is probably why Colin has jack squat to do in the first episode except climb over a fence and get a statue of himself dropped on him.
-James
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