Doctor Who: Davros
Starring: Colin Baker as the Doctor and Terry Molloy as Davros
Format: Two CD-length episodes.
Silly? Yes.
Standalone? Yes.
Recommended? If you are comfortable with the idea of a story that is briefly an office comedy starring the Doctor and Davros, highly recommended.
My reactions to this story contain spoilers for it.
Before listening
I forget how many times I've listened to this one. I am guessing twice.I had praised Davros highly in my reaction to The Juggernauts. This is a story in which Davros serves as the Doctor's recurring foil much as he did on television. The Doctor expects Davros's resurrection from seeming death as part of the way the universe works and is barely surprised to encounter him. Davros has been picked up by a corporation and put to work as a scientist, and the Doctor takes a job there to keep an eye on him. For a brief but funny period, it seems like Davros may have reformed to some degree, but this state of affairs does not last, and if I recall correctly Davros takes over the company in a bloodbath. I remember one oddly meandering part of the plot in which the Doctor was just sort of randomly lost in a cave for a while so Davros would have time to carry out some plans, but that's the only negative I can recall, assuming a lack of sufficient reverence to the television source material isn't negative for you. I am certainly looking forward to another listen-through.
After listening to episode 1 of 2
To my surprise, Davros is in two episodes rather than four. It's a bit nonspecific about when this is happening for the sixth Doctor, and if Peri's just been dropped off somewhere for a while it's conceivable it could be during the season of long episodes. As for when it's happening for Davros, I'm pretty sure it's unambiguous but I didn't bother parsing the exact words setting up his position. As far as Davros's state of mind goes, he is thinking more about his early days on Skaro, not his most recent defeat.This is part of a very loose tetralogy also including Omega, Master, and Zagreus. Zagreus was a big deal for Big Finish, being the climax of their first major arc with the then-current Doctor, and they built it up a little by having it follow three other stories with one-word titles focusing on a villain. Omega, Davros, and the Master were iconic villains; Zagreus really had no chance of becoming one, but Big Finish tried to build hype as though he had that potential. Like Omega and Master, Davros is companionless and involves some character study of the titular villain, using the villain in some ways that a companion might normally be used.
The main human villain of the piece, CEO Arnold Baynes played by Bernard Horsfall, is a murderous thug when no one is looking and a pushy but not openly criminal captain of industry in public. The cartoonishness of his villainy seems to be there to ensure that people who are in favor of giant oligopolies with enormous social and physical power will still root against him.
Davros has many flashbacks to his past on Skaro, particularly the events surrounding the attack that crippled him but not limited to those. I don't think I was aware on my earlier listens that this was actually new territory writer Lance Parkin was carving out, rather than a new angle on already established facts from television. I, Davros a few years later explored this past in much more depth; Lance Parkin wrote the third of I, Davros's four episodes, which I haven't heard yet.
In the present, Davros plays heavily on the vanity of CEO Baynes, his wife, and the Doctor, appealing to each of them separately. By the end of this episode, he hasn't gained the trust of anyone but Baynes's wife, but he is on his way to gaining the CEO's and he is very successfully manipulating the Doctor into not taking any drastic steps against him.
The cliffhanger is seemingly non-Davros-related: Baynes's corporation has been making some sort of secret, potentially murderous robots for a while now, well before Davros's involvement. I don't remember how this relates to anything else in the story, so I'm looking forward to hearing episode 2 pick it up.
After listening to episode 2 of 2
It's normal in Doctor Who for science to work differently than it does in real life. This isn't limited to writers making up new scientific laws on a whim; the practice of science, as a socioeconomic activity, works differently. In televised Doctor Who, it makes perfect sense for Davros to be "the creator" of the Daleks. Davros doesn't portray science much more accurately than televised Doctor Who, but it does emphasize science as a collaborative activity. In this story, we learn of a Kaled scientist named Shan who Davros stole ideas from and betrayed. I, Davros revisits this character. It's not a major part of the story's running time, but it is a notable element of texture.We never find out exactly why Baynes was keeping the advanced robots secret; the factory is physically connected to a hangar he was using for criminal activity, but there's no indication of any specific nefarious intent for the robots, and the cliffhanger from the end of episode 1 ends up being effectively a red herring.
Davros continues to play on peoples' vanity, not through direct flattery but by arranging his plans so that they can make themselves look good by helping him. When he makes his move, it is sudden, duplicitous, and involves potentially murdering millions with radioactive fallout. There is less comedy than in the first episode, but the new corporate slogan Davros introduces is very funny.
The concept of destiny is mentioned several times in Davros. It seems that for the purposes of this story Davros and the Doctor are destined to oppose each other throughout time, Davros never defeating the Doctor and the Doctor never making Davros's defeats final. The Doctor accepts this and Davros does not. This is perhaps slightly grandiose, but it fits the story nicely into the thematic tetralogy it was released within.
The timeline placement of Davros is pinned down very slightly in episode 2: Peri was in the middle of attending at a botany conference when the Doctor received the message that brought him into the plot.
I had expressed concern about the cave part of the story, but it was shorter and more plot-critical than I had remembered it. Davros is generally quite well-paced, mixing Doctor scenes, present-day Davros scenes, and flashback Davros scenes in an effective fashion.
Davros is absolutely worth listening to, although the parts where Davros is used as a comedic foil might be off-putting to certain listeners.
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