"Resurrection of the Daleks" has a lot in common with Saward's previous story, "Earthshock". It has soldiers, time-travel, the Doctor wandering around with a gun, a confused traitor and lots of explosions and death. However, partly due to the excellent direction from Matthew Robinson, it's a lot more fun.

Davros is a big part of this. Despite some continuity-bothering amnesia, the character is well defined, and Terry Molloy's more manic take on the role is quite entrancing. The meeting between the Doctor and Davros crackles, summing both characters up well. This time round, the Doctor pointing a gun is actually more justifiable. He seems to be aware that not killing Davros was a mistake, but he gives him a chance to show he's changed. He hasn't, and therefore the Doctor must follow though and get blood on his hands for the good of all. However, the wily Davros is able to keep him talking long enough for backup to save him. It's one of the best scenes of the era. Davison himself is on absolutely top form, despite the Doctor once again being something of a passenger to the story.

As in "Warriors of the Deep", Turlough is basically assimilated into the prison's crew for the story, though Strickson remains hugely watchable. Tegan gets nothing to do, though, spending most of the story injured. Janet Fielding makes the best of the lines that come her way, including a superb leaving scene - though the fact she's barely involved and meets so few people does undermine this somewhat. Why didn't she feel so appalled at the death at the Seabase in "Warriors of the Deep", which she was in the thick of?

The Daleks themselves are rather effective, too. That they have to employ mercenaries fits in with their routed state following the Movellan war, and while quite a few get blown up, they're certainly back on form following the utterly dreadful "Destiny of the Daleks". Indeed, like "Earthshock", there are lots of good set-pieces in "Resurrection of the Daleks" - the first confrontation between the soldiers and a Dalek, the hunt for the Dalek mutant in the warehouse, the mine sequence (complete with amazing make-up from the gas attack) and the shoot-out in the self-destruct chamber are all well-shot action scenes.

The script itself is a bit muddled. What exactly the Daleks are up to is a little complicated. The basic storyline of them springing Davros from the prison ship with the help of the troopers, and then Davros stalling them while trying to convert Daleks to serve him rather than the Supreme Dalek, while the Doctor and company try to stop them all would have been adequate. However, we've got canisters of the Movellan virus on Earth, which the Daleks are planning to invade with clones at the same time, and they also want to clone the Doctor to invade Gallifrey as well. This means there's a lot to tidy up at the end, and Saward's script is found wanting here.

The Gallifrey invasion just disappears from the itinerary, while the invading clones get a glib explanation along the lines that they will break their programming just as Stien did. Aside from the moral problem of all these important figures being killed and replaced by duplicates, there's the fact they could do a lot of damage in the meantime - and it took Stein a lot of effort, with help from the Doctor, to break his programming, and even then he was prone to lapses. The cloning process itself has a few problems. For a start, there's the old problem of the obvious clone (cf. "The Android Invasion"), where the Daleks have gone to huge lengths to make nearly-accurate clones of the Bomb Disposal Squad, and decide to mess up a few obvious details - why give Archer his gun? Why mess with all the uniforms? They'd obviously be useless for subterfuge. I suppose the logic is that if Tegan and Laird do notice anything, they can be killed easily by the troops. But in that case, why bother with a new batch of clones? Why not just send a few Dalek troopers to watch them? Why keep them alive at all? They already have a clone of Tegan.

That's another thing - both Tegan and Turlough are cloned easily without the Daleks even seeing them, and yet the Doctor has to be strapped down to a table and played clips of companions for ten minutes...

The guest cast are a mixed bunch. Rodney Bewes excels as Stein, managing to convey the character's confusion and cowardice convincingly. Maurice Colbourne, a fine actor, is rather wasted as Lytton, who's required to do little more than deliver clichés with a clipped lack of passion. As mentioned above, Molloy is a good choice for the ranting Davros, firmly putting his own stamp on the role. Aside from these, the guest cast are more hit and miss. Philip McGough manages a certain amount of Sergeant-y bonhomie as Sgt. Calder, while Rula Lenska does what she can with the totally generic Doctor Styles. Both come off better than Jim Findley as Mercer, a standard Saward macho tosser who's somehow simply meant to be likeable because he's against the baddies. Of course, if I was Findley and I was meant to say things like "Your bile would be better directed against the enemy, Doctor" and keep a straight face, I wouldn't try that hard either. Del Henney's performance as Colonel Archer deserves a notice, too. For the large part, Henney's simply wooden, but later when the cloned Archer is gunned down by a Dalek, he feels the need to milk his moment with a hilariously OTT death scene. The rest of the station's crew are faceless, while Chloe Ashcroft does nothing to make the pointless Professor Laird memorable.

The big shame with "Resurrection", as with "Earthshock", is that if this had been submitted to a script editor rather than written by one, it could have been a great story. If someone had been there to say "Eric, we'll lose the Gallifrey subplot as it's just complicating things", or to tie the ending together better, it could have been a real classic. It's credit to Matthew Robinson that this story, despite all these misgivings, it hangs together as a good action romp. It's best watched with a section of your brain shut down... Try not to keep a track of the bigger picture of the plot, or too offended by the largely crass characters, and the pace keeps the holes from being too obvious unless you rewatch it too many times.

Review written: Spring 05
"Resurrection of the Daleks" DVD @ Amazon.co.uk