7th Doctor
Remembrance of the Daleks
Serial 7H
Logo
 
 

Producer
John Nathan-Turner

Script Editor
Andrew Cartmel

Designer
Martin Collins

Stunt Arranger
Tip Tipping

Written by Ben Aaronovitch
Directed by Andrew Morgan
Incidental Music by Keff McCulloch

Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Simon Williams (Gilmore), Dursley McLinden (Mike), Pamela Salem (Rachel), Karen Gledhill (Allison), George Sewell (Ratcliffe), Michael Sheard (Headmaster) [1-2], Harry Fowler (Harry) [1,3], Jasmine Breaks (The Girl), Peter Hamilton Dyer (Embery) [1]; Hugh Spight [1-3], John Scott Martin [2-4], Tony Starr [2-4], Cy Town [2-4] (Dalek Operators); John Leeson [1-3] (Voice); Peter Halliday (Vicar) [2]; Joseph Marcell (John) [2], William Thomas (Martin) [2], Derek Keller (Kaufman) [2], Roy Tromelly* (Emperor Dalek) [3], Hugh Spight (Black Dalek Operator) [4]; Roy Skelton, Royce Mills [2-4], Brian Miller [2-4] (Voices/Dalek Voices) [2-4]; Terry Molloy (Davros) [4].


* Pseudonym used for Terry Molloy to conceal the fact that Davros was the Emperor Dalek.


London, 1963. The seventh Doctor returns - with his new companion Ace - to tackle some unfinished business.

Once again, unusual events are unfolding at Coal Hill School and Totters, Lane junkyard. The Doctor discovers that his oldest foes, the Daleks, are on the trail of hidden Time Lord technology - technology that he himself left behind on Earth all those years ago. The Daleks are planning to perfect their own time-travel capability in order to unleash themselves across all of time and space. Can the Doctor, even with the help of the local military, stop the Daleks from stealing Gallifreyan secrets? Or are things even more complicated?

Two opposing Dalek factions meet in an explosive confrontation with the fate of the entire Universe at stake!


Original Broadcast (UK)
Part One		      5th October, 1988		7h35pm - 8h00pm
Part Two		      12th October, 1988		7h35pm - 8h00pm
Part Three		      19th October, 1988		7h35pm - 8h00pm
Part Four		      26th October, 1988		7h35pm - 8h00pm
Notes:
  • Released on video and DVD in episodic format. [+/-]

    U.S. Release U.K. Release

  1. THE DALEKS BOX SET
    • U.K. Release: September 1993 / U.S. Release: October 1993
      PAL - BBC video BBCV5005  (2 tapes)
      NTSC - CBS/FOX Video 4795  (2 tapes)
      NTSC - Warner Video E1145  (2 tapes)
      This 2-tape set includes The Chase and Remembrance of the Daleks.

      In the U.K., the tapes were packaged individually with a booklet inside a tin box but were not sold separately.

      The tape was also re-released in the U.K. in September 2001 as part of The Davros Box Set [BBCV7241].



    U.S. DVD Release

  2. REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS
    • U.K. Release: February 2001 / U.S. Release: April 2002
      PAL Region 2 - BBCDVD1040
      NTSC Region 1 - Warner DVD E1608

      DVD FEATURES:
      • Commentary by Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred.
      • Deleted Scenes.
      • Out-takes.
      • Multi-Angle Sequences. U.K. DVD Release
      • Original TV Trailers.
      • Photo Gallery.
      • Production Information Subtitles.
      • Isolated Soundtrack.
      • Who’s Who (Region 1 only).

      The DVD was also released in the U.K. in October 2003 as part of The Daleks Box Set [BBCDVD1384].

      LINK: The Restoration Team work for Remembrance of the Daleks DVD.

  • Novelised as Doctor Who - Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch. [+/-]

    Virgin Edition

    • Paperback Edition - Virgin Publishing Ltd.
      First Edition: June 1990.
      ISBN: 0 426 20337 2.
      Cover by Alister Pearson.
      Price: £2.50.
  • Doctor Who Magazine Archive: Summer Special 1993.
 
 
 
 
“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet...”
London, 1963. The peoples of Earth attempt to deal with their own problems of racial
intolerance, unaware that an alien spacecraft is orbiting unnoticed over their world...
Part One
(drn: 24'33")

The Doctor and Ace approach Coal Hill School, observed by a curious young girl. The Doctor assumes that the girl’s attention has been drawn by Ace’s anachronistic ghetto blaster; he’s more concerned with an unmarked black van parked outside the school, and he remains to examine it while Ace heads for the nearby cafe to eat. The Doctor determines that the van is monitoring transmissions from within the school, and pops into the schoolyard, where he finds strange scorch marks on the asphalt. Unaware that the girl is still watching him -- and seems to know who he is -- the Doctor returns to the van, where he surprises the van’s occupant, Professor Rachel Jensen, by climbing in and immediately determining that the van is monitoring artificial energy signatures from within the school. Before she can ask who he is exactly, she receives a call from the Group Captain...

Ace meets a young man, Mike Smith, who is intrigued by her ghetto blaster and helps her out when she finds that all of the money she’s carrying is extra-terrestrial. As they return to the van, Rachel calls Mike “Sergeant” and tells him that the Group Captain has run into trouble at Totter’s Lane. The Doctor and Ace accompany them to a junkyard which the Doctor finds quite familiar, and Rachel, sensing that the Doctor knows more than he’s telling, tells Group Captain Gilmore that he’s with her. Somebody or something has already killed the young soldier Matthews, and it opens fire on the group again, killing another soldier trying to remove Matthews’ body.

The Doctor advises Gilmore to retreat, but he refuses to do so and has his men fire three high-explosive rocket grenades into the lean-to shed where the hostile is hiding. But even after this the hostile keeps firing, and it moves out of the shelter of the shed to reveal that it’s a grey Dalek. The Doctor uses Ace’s nitro-9 to destroy it, and then commandeers Rachel’s van to take him back to the school. On the way, he explains to Ace that the Daleks have come to Earth for something called the Hand of Omega.

Gilmore arranges for the Dalek to be placed under guard, and decides to send a truck with anti-tank rockets to Coal Hill School when he learns the Doctor has been seen in that area. Mike’s friend Mr Ratcliffe offers to provide manpower from his construction group, the Association; but when they arrive at the junkyard Ratcliffe’s men kill the soldiers on guard and take the shattered Dalek back to Ratcliffe’s office. Alien computers are connected to a chair, in which a figure with its back to Ratcliffe assures him that the Dalek is a tool, nothing more...

The Doctor and Ace return to the school, where the Doctor finds it oddly easy to convince the Headmaster that there’s evil at work there. Ace accidentally leaves her ghetto blaster in the science lab while looking out the window at the scorch marks in the playground. The Doctor explains that the Daleks have been chasing him, seeking the Hand of Omega, something he left behind the last time he was here. Something very dangerous... Unaware that the Headmaster is watching them, the Doctor and Ace enter the cellar, where they find an alien transmat which activates itself as the Doctor’s examining it. A cream-and-gold Dalek starts to materialize, but the Doctor rewires the transmat and causes it to dephase, putting it out of action and destroying the Dalek. But another Dalek is already in the cellar on guard, and it pursues the Doctor and Ace back to the stairs. Ace reaches the top first, but she is knocked out by the Headmaster, who locks the Doctor in the cellar -- and the Doctor realizes that the Dalek is floating up the stairs in pursuit of him...

Part Two
(drn: 24'31")

Ace recovers, overpowers the Headmaster and rescues the Doctor. The Dalek sends the Headmaster to the cellar to repair the transmat and sets off in pursuit of the Doctor and Ace, but they’ve just picked up the anti-tank rockets sent to the school by Gilmore, and Ace uses one to destroy the Dalek. The Doctor, who’s beginning to wish he’d never started this, warns Gilmore that there are two hostile Dalek factions present on Earth and advises him to evacuate the area. He then takes Ace’s aluminum baseball bat and sets off to “bury the past”, while waiting for word from Gilmore on the evacuation. Ace spends the night at the boarding house run by Mike Smith’s mother, while the Doctor pops into the nearby cafe to wait for dawn and muses over the weight of the decision he has to make.

As dawn breaks, the Doctor visits a nearby undertaker’s to collect an odd casket which hums with power and does something odd with Ace’s baseball bat at the Doctor’s request. The Doctor walks out of the undertaker’s with the casket floating behind him, seriously startling the unfortunate undertaker, and takes the casket to a local cemetery to be buried. But Mike Smith is watching him -- and reporting back to Ratcliffe. As Mike watches the burial he is attacked by the Headmaster, who demands to know the location of the renegade Dalek base so the Imperial faction can wipe out the rebels, but Mike overpowers him and the Headmaster drops dead before Mike can question him.

The Doctor returns to the boarding house, where he returns the augmented baseball bat to Ace and advises her to remain there for the day while he tries to deal with Gilmore. She reluctantly agrees to do so, but notices a “NO COLOUREDS” sign in the window and angrily storms out to collect her ghetto blaster from the school. But the Imperial Daleks have repaired the transmat and a taskforce is materializing in the school cellars...

Gilmore has arranged for an evacuation of the area and a cover story has been prepared for the press. The Doctor enlists Rachel and her assistant Allison, who contact local and international radar stations and eventually determine that a Dalek mothership is in geostationary orbit above London. The Doctor prepares a device which will temporarily disable any Daleks within its range, and warns Gilmore to keep the military presence low-key; if the Daleks detect a military build-up they may simply decide to sterilise the entire area. He then learns that Ace has left the boarding house...

Ace finds her ghetto blaster in the science lab, but when she turns it on it picks up Dalek transmissions and she discovers that they are preparing to take over the school. She is discovered by a patrolling Imperial Dalek but manages to seriously incapacitate it with the baseball bat, which now releases energy bolts into whatever it hits. The Dalek pursues her downstairs, where more Daleks have killed the soldiers guarding the school; Ace manages to grab an anti-tank rocket from one of the bodies but before she can load it she is stopped and surrounded by angry Daleks...

Part Three
(drn: 24'30")

The Doctor arrives and operates his Dalek-disabling device, and the military destroy the confused Daleks. While Mike and his men set off to retake the school, the Doctor studies the shattered remains of the Daleks and is attacked by one which isn’t quite dead; Allison beats it to death with Ace’s baseball bat. The Doctor and Rachel study the body and notice several differences from the Grey Dalek at Totters’ Lane; this one appears to be a more advanced mutated form. The Doctor sees to Ace’s injured leg, telling her that it’s a good thing her ghetto blaster was destroyed; if it had fallen into the wrong hands it would have caused the microchip revolution to happen too early, and even the Daleks, who are capable of destroying this entire planet, would think twice before changing history to that extent... The Doctor goes to the cellar, smashes the transmat to bits with Ace’s baseball bat, and decides to go to lunch.

Ratcliffe follows Mike’s instructions and finds the Hand of Omega where the Doctor buried it; his attempt to investigate triggers a power surge which is detected in the Imperial Dalek mothership, and since the transmat has been disabled the Daleks prepare a shuttlecraft. Ratcliffe’s men dig up the Hand of Omega while the young girl who was watching the Doctor and Ace earlier observes them; they then return it to Ratcliffe’s warehouse, where a squad of Grey Daleks led by a Black Dalek emerges from the shadows and exterminate Ratcliffe’s men. The figure in the alien chair turns out to be the girl, who activates a time controller and sends the Daleks out on patrol until the pathway has charged up.

The Doctor tells Gilmore to fortify the school and prepare for an assault by Daleks, but admits to Ace that this is a deception; the main action will be taking place elsewhere, and he just wants to keep the military out of the way. He finally explains that the Hand of Omega is the stellar manipulator which the legendary Time Lord Omega used to provide the power for the Time Lords’ initial time travel experiments. The Daleks want that power -- and the Doctor wants them to have it. But his plan has gone awry; he wasn’t expecting two opposing Dalek factions to begin fighting over it, and now he must ensure that the right Daleks get the Hand without slaughtering humans in the crossfire.

The Doctor and Ace leave Gilmore to his work at the school and head out into the streets, where they find a Dalek patrol and follow it back to Ratcliffe’s warehouse. There, the Doctor disables the time controller while explaining to Ace that the “chair” is a battle computer in which a young human’s imagination and creativity can be tapped to replace the emotions and instincts the Daleks have lost. He and Ace are spotted fleeing the warehouse and are pursued back to the school by Daleks, where a pitched battle breaks out between the Daleks and the human soldiers. Mike wonders why they don’t just go now they’ve got the Hand of Omega -- and realizes too late that he wasn’t supposed to know about that. Ace is furious when she realizes he’s betrayed them.

The renegade Daleks detect the approach of the Imperial shuttlecraft and retreat to protect the Hand of Omega. As the humans regroup, the Doctor assures them that the shuttlecraft won’t be landing here... but as the shuttlecraft touches down in the school playground, he’s forced to admit he may have miscalculated.

Part Four
(drn: 24'33")

The Imperial Daleks set off in pursuit of the renegades while the Doctor plans his next move. Mike tries to justify himself to Ace, saying he just wanted to help Ratcliffe keep outsiders out so his own people could have their fair share; he doesn’t understand why Ace is so disgusted with him. Gilmore places him under arrest. The Doctor breaks into the Imperial Dalek shuttlecraft, destroys the guard and hacks into their navigational computer, determining that the Imperial Daleks have come from Skaro -- as he’d hoped.

The renegade Daleks put up a spirited defense, but the Emperor Dalek calls in a Special Weapons Dalek which is basically a single powerful mobile weapon. Mike escapes and heads for Ratcliffe’s warehouse, seeking answers, but he is captured by the renegade Daleks. The time controller is repaired and the Daleks prepare to exterminate their hostages and leave, but at that moment the Imperial Daleks arrive. In the confusion Ratcliffe and Mike try to steal the time controller, but Ratcliffe is killed by the young girl and Mike flees alone with the controller.

The Doctor rewires the transmat into a communications unit, while Ace explains to Rachel and Allison that the Daleks they’ve seen are engaged in a war over racial purity. She and the Doctor then head out into the streets to see how the battle is progressing, and watch as the Imperial Daleks seize the Hand of Omega, destroying all renegades but the Black Dalek, who retreats back into the warehouse. The Imperial Daleks return to their shuttlecraft, and the Doctor tells Ace to follow Mike and recover the time controller. But Ace is followed by the young girl.

The Doctor waits for the Dalek shuttlecraft to return to the mothership and then contacts it on the communications unit, demanding to speak with the Emperor. The Emperor is now revealed to be Davros, and he gloats over his victory; soon he will transform Skaro’s sun into a source of unimaginable power and the Daleks will achieve true mastery of Time. The Doctor provokes Davros into launching the Hand, which enters Skaro’s time zone, approaches its sun... and blows it up. The energy feedback destroys the Dalek mothership, although Davros manages to flee in an escape pod before the end. The Doctor dismantles the communicator, explaining to the stunned Gilmore, Rachel and Allison that he’d already pre-programmed the Hand to turn Skaro’s sun supernova, destroying the heart of the Dalek empire.

Ace tracks Mike down at his mother’s boarding house, but as he holds her at gunpoint, desperately trying to think what to do next, the young girl arrives, kills him and begins stalking Ace. Meanwhile, the Doctor returns to the warehouse, where he coldly informs the Black Dalek that it’s the only one of its kind remaining; the Dalek, unable to cope, destroys itself, freeing the suddenly traumatised young girl from its influence.

Later, the Doctor and Ace slip away quietly from Mike’s funeral. Ace wants to know if they’ve done good, but the Doctor has no easy answer for her this time.

Source: Cameron Dixon


Continuity Notes:
  • It’s unclear exactly what happens to Davros after this story; it’s possible that his subsequent appearances take place in separate timelines and cannot be reconciled. His next appearance is either in War of the Daleks, in which is is revealed that the Daleks managed to save Skaro despite appearances to the contrary; or Terror Firma, in which Davros wreaks a terrible revenge on the Doctor for the events of this story.
  • When Ace says she would have heard about these events in the future, the Doctor mentions that she doesn’t know about the Yeti attack on London (The Web of Fear) or the Zygon attack (Terror of the Zygons).
  • Ace’s anger towards Mike’s racism and the ‘NO COLOUREDS’ sign is partly explained by a scene in Ghost Light, which was itself inspired by a scene in the novelisation of this episode.
  • It is revealed in Legacy that Ace keeps a stuffed bear with Mike Smith’s name on it and sometimes beats it with a baseball bat.
  • Blowing up their homeworld is one thing, but the Doctor later has a far more devastating effect on the Dalek race in the events leading up to the new series episode Dalek.
 
 
[Back to Main Page]