Episode analysis – Doctor Who: Revolution of the Daleks
Okay, so I’m an unabashed Doctor Who fan. It’s got everything – plot-driven stories, science fiction and historical drama and everything in between, and just bonkers enough that when it chooses to be funny it can be hilarious. This is not a review blog, but there are often things we can learn about storytelling by looking at other stories. So what do we learn from Revolution of the Daleks?
Obviously, spoilers follow.
So another Christmas and another Doctor Who festive special. After the fandom-shattering revelations of series 12’s Fugitive of the Judoon and The Timeless Children, after almost a year of absence from our screens, how does Revolution of the Daleks stack up?
Not well, unfortunately, and the reason comes down to one word: Agency.
In storytelling, agency is the ability of the character to make purposeful choices. That is, the character must want something, and they must make active choices in service of that want. Agency doesn’t mean that everything has to go right – the choices might be bad ones, or the effects might not be as desired. So long as the character is trying to achieve something, we’ll be happy to watch their story.
At every turn, Chris Chibnall (showrunner for Doctor Who and scriptwriter for this episode) removes the Doctor’s agency.
In Revolution of the Daleks we don’t see the Doctor immediately. The episode opens well, with an appropriately ominous sequence where the destroyed Dalek casing from 2019’s Resolution is stolen by person or persons unknown. We knew this would be a Dalek story, and now we have a clear understanding of where they’re coming from. This episode is off to a flying start.
And this is where the wheels come off.
First off, we have Captain Jack and his magical rescue of the Doctor. We learn that the Doctor has been locked up for decades (of her time). She’s in the most secure ‘space jail’ in the universe, a prison with no guards to suborn, with customised security designed for the requirements of each prisoner. Yet somehow, Captain Jack is able to get himself captured, sentenced and placed inside this super-jail. He somehow smuggles in magic technology that will be vital for defeating the jail’s defenses. He gets into one cell and hides some technology there, then gets into another cell, waits there until he can meet the Doctor, then uses another magic device to run through the barriers…
This is convoluted. This all beggars disbelief. It make no sense – if Jack has all this technology, why not simply break in, snatch the Doctor and get out? Okay, never mind – I’m acutely aware that I opened this review celebrating how bonkers the show can be, and Jack has a history of literally pulling things out of his arse, so perhaps we need to let the absurdity of all this lie. But absurdity does not give the episode license to ignore the basics of storytelling.
Most importantly, Jack’s rescue disempowers the Doctor. The Doctor’s rescue from jail requires no thought, no action, not even an active decision from the Doctor. There are no purposeful choices here. It’s Jack who brings in the tools, Jack who instigates the escape, Jack who becomes the hero. He might as well have chucked the Doctor into a canvas bag and hoisted her over his shoulder, because in this instance the Doctor is reduced to the plot significance of a sack of potatoes.
This is neither the first nor the last time Chibnall has removed agency from the Doctor, nor is it the most egregious case, but it’s a decent example to examine. What might Chibnall have done differently?
Alongside the Doctor in this jail are a host of villainous creatures. She has been imprisoned for years and, apparently, wants out. Why hasn’t she spent that time forging an alliance of foes, a combination of abilities to defeat the jail’s security? That could be a complete episode of its own. It would be an entirely different story to the one we got, and I’m not arguing that Chibnall needed to tell a different story. If he doesn’t want to show a feature-length episode of the Doctor engineering her way out of the universe’s most escape-proof space jail while bereft of sonic screwdriver, TARDIS, companions or any other resources, that’s up to him (although that’s an episode I’d like to see). I am saying that if he’s giving her five minutes of screen time in the jail before she escapes to get back to the action, show us in those five minutes that she’s capable of saving herself. She evidently wants to – at various points she tries to pep herself up with thoughts of getting out of jail (“people waiting for you”) and once Jack shows up she leaps on the opportunity.
Some reviewers have commented that Chibnall’s not actually interested in the prison or the rescue. He just wants to give the Doctor some time for introspection, while she broods about the revelations of The Timeless Children.
Having the Doctor sitting in a two-decade funk about who she “really is” is lazy for a different reason. In the previous episode she learned about a secret history, a past that’s been excised from her own memory. At the end of that episode she was incarcerated in an inescapable jail and unsure whether she even wanted to get out. She was struggling with who she was, what these revelations meant for her. With the help of a trusted companion she came to the realisation that it’s not her past that defines her, it’s her current actions. Buoyed by this realisation she emerged from the trap in time to save the day.
Revolution retreads this ground, beat-for-beat. And it’s not even given time to breathe, to develop. Like it or hate it, at least in The Timeless Children we witnessed the Doctor react to the revelations of her past. Here in Revolution, we don’t even get that. Understanding the Doctor’s existential dilemma requires the audience to have already seen The Timeless Children, and if they’ve already seen The Timeless Children then they’ve watched the Doctor wrestle with these demons and win. Revolution of the Daleks is a regression.
Chibnall evidently wants to retell that character beat for the audience who only watch Doctor Who at Christmas. But if this is the intention, it’s an abject failure. At several points the Doctor complains that she was incarcerated just when she was struggling to understand ‘who she is’. We don’t see this struggle happen on screen. How hard would it have been in one or two of the prison scenes to show the Doctor presented with an opportunity to do something Doctor-y and decline, preferring to sit down and be introspective? A choice not to act is still a choice. Agency. Instead of a roll call of past villains provided for fan service, a simple conversation with another prisoner – “You’re the Doctor! Can’t you get us out?” would let the Doctor respond with something like “I’ve got a weeping angel, some Ood, a Pting – and don’t forget the Silence. Together, we could get out of here like that! And maybe I would. Another me…”
That might show us that the Doctor is struggling. It could demonstrate that she’s not escaping because she’s just not trying. Instead, Chibnall shows us literally nothing of plot or character value until she’s rescued by outside forces.
Tell you what, maybe that “other prisoner” could be Captain Jack. If Chibnall really needed Captain Jack in this story – and he probably didn’t – he didn’t need to make him the magical deus ex machina. By all means, have Jack locked up. Instead of having him smuggle anti-jail technology into the universe’s most secure jail, give him the role of snapping the Doctor out of her funk. “I’ve found you, Doctor! I spent decades looking for you. Now, even if you don’t want to get out of here for yourself, do it for me.”
(Incidentally, the thought of Jack deliberately committing enough, and serious enough, crimes to get himself into space jail is an interesting idea, but also a disturbing one. Considering the number of other jails available in the universe and the kind of inmates “space jail” holds, it’s kind of hard to imagine that in the service of rescuing the Doctor he hasn’t needed to kill people. Potentially, a lot of people. The Doctor never lifts an eyebrow at this, never queries, and we’re not supposed to either.)
The “space jail” failings of this episode are indicative of an unfortunate aspect of Chibnall’s vision for the thirteenth Doctor. Perhaps overreacting against Steven Moffat’s vision of the Mythic Doctor – the Doctor who engineers universes, who always has the answers – Chibnall gives us a Doctor who rarely has the answers, who makes mistakes, who often comes across as powerless. That’s a valid dramatic choice and one the character probably needed, to get back to a general audience who’s not looking for superhero stories in their Doctor Who. But under Chibnall it arguably goes too far, and it’s hugely disappointing that it has to be Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor – the first female Doctor Who – who is given so little agency in her own stories.
The confrontation in the Osaka factory between the Dalek-possessed researcher and the Doctor (and friends) is another example. The Dalek spends minutes bragging about its plan. Fine, Daleks are prone to a bit of bragging. But this little speech reveals back-story: it tells us, instead of showing us, what the Dalek has been doing, how it’s engineered this factory from afar. This is another example of the Doctor not getting to do what she ought.
We, the audience, have already been told everything we need to guess at the answers. The Dalek has been plugged into Robertson’s computer systems. It’s been left to its own devices for weeks. The audience can put two and two together. Why doesn’t the Doctor? Dramatically it ought to have been the Doctor who reveals this. It should be her dialogue, not just a Dalek soliloquy. Instead, we get another example of a bad guy bragging his entire plan so the audience, the scriptwriter and the Doctor don’t have to go to all the effort of discovering it.
Keeping the Doctor absent for a year while Robertson and the new Prime Minister roll out Dalek casings through the country is a potent setup. You could draw a comparison, showing Daleks being used peacefully: these tools of destruction are made with the best of intentions and harmless when used correctly. Then the Dalek creatures populate them and start exterminating. Under the wrong control, putting these systems in place allows subjugation! To be fair, the episode sort of heads in this direction, but there’s no attention paid to the thematic elements except by accident.
Under Davies or Moffatt, the Doctor would swing into action to prevent the wholesale extermination of Britain’s population. Then again, the Daleks would not be content with just lasering everyone. There would be a plan to subjugate humans, rather than destroy them, turn them into more Daleks for world domination. The Doctor would have time to come up with a clever solution before the mass exterminating began. Chibnall is more interested in putting exterminations on the screen than in letting the Doctor prevent them. All good Christmas fun.
The section towards the climax where Robertson betrays the Doctor, only not really, but yes really, but now he just needs rescuing – is literally incoherent. Robertson’s motives, intentions and actions seem designed solely to a) be evil, b) change his mind again, and c) have literally no consequence for him. They achieve one thing only: to reveal the Doctor’s presence / involvement. But she could as easily have done that herself, again giving her the agency rather than being driven by someone else’s (inconsistent) decision. Robertson seems to decide that he is a) indestructible and b) going to profit from his decision to help the Daleks. His evil notions last only just long enough to give the vital piece of information to the Daleks before he, for no discernable reason, decides he’s not indestructible and not going to profit from these actions, so he changes his mind.
Robertson’s character arc is problematic. From being a ruthless, amoral businessman in Arachnids of the UK, he’s developed into a literal murderer and a potential traitor to the human race. Acquiring the burnt Dalek shell went well beyond ruthlessness, resulting in the death of the contractor transporting it. After this, Robertson is presented as a law-abiding businessman: the construction of defense drones for use in crowd control is not an inherently evil position, and his motives (to make Britain “more secure” and profit in the process) are arguably righteous. He argues with the Doctor that he’s doing nothing wrong in his “drone factory”. The Doctor knows better – even if he wants nothing more than to sell drones for profit, the original Dalek casing went missing along with the contractor, so she ought to have questions. From being a guileless dupe of the lone Dalek, he then becomes willing to sell out the Doctor and the human race to buy his own survival. After all that, he goes back to his life and intimations of another foray into politics. Not only should the Doctor care about bringing him his comeuppance, she knows enough to be able to do so!
The episode never makes commentary on using robots to secure/control the population, never comments on authoritarianism. If there’s any message here (in an era of Doctor Who constantly criticised for its political messaging) it’s a tangential one: “make Britain more secure!” is cast as a bad thing because they’re using the Daleks, not because authoritarianism is bad. In fact, it’s just the mere thought of Daleks that’s bad. If the drones had been a different design, would the Doctor have been concerned in the slightest at the thought of using robots to pepper-spray crowds of protesters?
But no, the drones look like Daleks and that’s what lets the Doctor know they’re bad. If the episode were interested in being more focussed, or if Chibnall was interested in giving the Doctor more agency, she might start raising objections. “Controlling people using strict rules and robots never works!” … or “If one cell of the Dalek survived – just one cell – then you’re playing with fire!” or even, “This technology is way ahead of its time, you shouldn’t have it, and that’s my fault… do you even understand how half of this works?” There could be a setup: “If they’re just robots, if there’s no Dalek occupants, we might be okay – but I dread that there’s something we’re not seeing.” Cut to Yaz and Jack standing in the factory: “OMG, they’re breeding Daleks.” Drama and foreshadowing, the Doctor being insightful and having an ethical standpoint – that would be infitely more satisfying than merely “Daleks = Bad”. But perhaps I’m expecting too much from a festive season special. It might not be screened at Christmas but you’ve still got to cater for Uncle Barry sitting in the corner under the influence of too much eggnog.
I thought the episode might be about to do something new and interesting by having Yaz and Jack Dalek-possessed. We’ve seen, in Resolution, that Dalek control is instant and total. Later in the episode the Dalek controller, having accomplished its purpose and bragged the whole dastardly plan (while twirling its metaphorical moustaches) kills its host without mercy. This shows us that Daleks are BadTM. But how much more effective would it be if we knew that Yaz and Jack were also controlled? That their Dalek passengers could kill them with a thought? That sounds like a challenge worthy of the Doctor.
But no. This episode isn’t interested in doing anything new and it doesn’t want to provide the Doctor a challenge only she can resolve. So Jack is able, somehow, to throw away his Dalek creature like a facehugger. Even worse, Yaz has one on her back. In every other instance we have been shown the Dalek has instant control of their host, but Jack is able to shoot it off her back without so much as a scratch on her.
Instant spectacle, no ramifications. Once again Jack gets to be the hero, not the Doctor.
Why does he do this? What does Chibnall have against the Doctor being – well – the Doctor? At literally every turn he chooses to tell us something happened, rather than showing it. To present us a magic door rather than have the Doctor make a key. To let other characters do things, tell things, discover things that any other showrunner’s Doctor would do for herself.
Some writers have given important actions and discoveries to the companions, and that’s fair. But the Doctor remains the one to connect the important facts and think up the plan of attack. Chibnall is more keen to let the villains dictate the action. The Doctor rarely gets to react in a way any typical human wouldn’t. Perhaps he doesn’t want to make the Doctor all-powerful, but she’s always been the ‘smartest person in the room’ and it wouldn’t hurt the story for the Doctor to occasionally be the one who works it out before being told. Other writers in seasons 11 and 12 have shown that this can be done.
So why doesn’t Chibnall? I’m starting to tend towards the thought that perhaps he’s not that good a writer. Or perhaps he doesn’t have the time or inclination to work harder on his scripts, to find ways to present the Doctor with intriguing challenges and let her solve them. Or perhaps it’s a conscious intention: keep the stories as simple and straightforward as possible, which means reducing the amount of thinking to a minimum. If you have your villain talk to the camera to explain exactly what they’ve done, what they intend and where the weaknesses in their plan are, even the simplest of viewers can understand that. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make satisfying television for the rest of us.
This is Doctor Who. Jodie Whittaker is the Doctor. So please – Chris Chibnall, please let the Doctor do what she does best: let her be the one to give us the answers. Give her some agency. Purposeful choices that, for good or bad, make the Doctor the star of the story.
Revolution of the Daleks: 4/10
The Future and Other Fictions 