The Daleks' Revenge!

Intro: this was written BEFORE I had to have my dog put down. Fancy that.

Oooh, that's a very pathetic blog post title, even if I do say so myself. You need to have read a TV Comic strip to even get the reference! My less-than-worthy topic is a review of a DWAD from the distant year of 1984. While Peter Davison was fighting the metallic gits on TV in his most poorly-script-edited story in all of human history, a handful of American fans were piss-farting about in front of their microphones and Revenge of the Daleks has been uploaded, available for first time since... how should I know?

Well, the opening episode has and I might as well check it out.

Our story begins with a terrifyingly young and nasal Dave Segal Doctor talking to himself... I do beg your pardon, he's actually talking to K9, also voiced by Segal and the robot dog sounds more like his televisual incarnation than the Doctor does. You can tell this thing wasn't ever meant for public consumption. Hearing someone you know doing a rather dodgy double act as the Doctor and K9 try to fix the TARDIS might have some appeal, but I doubt it is widespread. The sound quality is pretty poor, lost under a redubbed 'irritatingly chirpy' Dudley Simpson tune, but we're not missing much unless your world NEEDS another "Right, K9, I'll ignore you and fiddle with this until it goes bang and then sheepishly pretend to be your best friend so you can help me fix it" type scene that typifies the gutless and childish incarnation we all know and - if we gave enough thought to - might hate.

Meanwhile... er... stuff is happening. Some guy is showing his girlfriend around his home town of Sillyname New York, and judging by the Sandra Dickenson soundalike's use of the word "quadrant", the girlfriend is not from around these parts. Is, perhaps, this couple some of the TARDIS crew taking a vacation while the Doctor and his amusing talking dog fix the time machine? Honest question there. Oh, they're on a beach and the guy wants 'Sara' to marry him, and some odd thing distracts him. Sara, clearly not being the brightest knife in the picnic hamper, is unable to extrapolate the word "marry" from Awkward Guy's interrupted sentence. Did she just tune out as he took this vacation to bitch about (presumably) the other TARDIS travellers?

Eitherway, Akward Guy (who I shall now refer to as Tarrant till he is named) is more interested in the distraction than getting Sara to marry him. I'd say this was a narrow escape, but Tarrant is being played by a half-asleep actor that doesn't give a damn. I yearn for Chip Jamison who at least had enthusiasm. Tarrant sounds like he's babysitting a particularly tiresome 8-year-old girl who wants to play house, which is ironic as that's exactly what Sara sounds like. But let us away, something that Tarrant has never ever seen before in his life is doing something similarly incomparable, and niether of our heroes sounds like they give a shit! Sara's warm apple sauce for a brain recognizes the odd thing as something she saw, but she forgot, and even if she did remember, it couldn't be. Very helpful, babe, why don't you just pitch about having to carry a picnic hamper while us menfolk use our mighty frontal lobes?

Meanwhile, two other guys are in a cave. And one of them is also not from around here, judging by his disdainful opinion of "Earth". The other guy has "an eerie feeling" but, like the others, doesn't sound remotely interested. His pal definitely isn't, and after some dramatic pauses, move on with their lives. The two guys (similarly unnamed, so I will call them Dr. Spoon and Chamber) are exploring the cave and find... a dead end! Why the hell are they in the cave anyway? WHO are they? They stumble across a button and Dr. Spoon declares it a booby trap. Chamber points out that booby-trapping a button at the back of a cave on a beach no one goes to is a tad unlikely.

So Dr. Spoon suggests, with no basis whatsoever, it MIGHT be the Daleks. Chamber pisses himself laughing at the very suggestion and calls into question the veracity of Dr. Spoon's parentage, suggesting that his mum and dad were at least first cousins. No, wait, I'm transfering in place of waiting for the slightest clue of what's going on. Anyway, Chamber ridicules the idea of Daleks being on Earth.

But, gazooks! We cut straight to some Dalek base where our gargling-voiced robo-mutants are ordering underlings to tell them things they already know - which is very curteous. If only the other people in this story would shout, "REPORT!" to each other, huh? Detecting unauthorized movement, the Daleks sound out Daleks to investigate. Why their detectors don't actually tell them what they're looking for, I dunno, just as I dunno why such simple Dalek dialogue needed to be nicked from Destiny of the Daleks. Even Helen Raynor can manage original dialogue for them! But, no, they're already wretching "SEEK-LOCATE-EXTERMINATE!" around the place even though they don't know if there's anything to exterminate.

Meanwhile, Dr. Spoon has steadfastly refused to explain why Daleks would be on Earth, how he knows they're there or why he was looking for them and instead insults Chamber and throws him onto some bamboo shoots. Well, that's what it sounds like. This is somehow able to let them avoid the Daleks and escape the cave. Ah, bamboo shoots - is there ANYTHING they can't do? Apart from explaining the plot. I'm starting to wonder if Dr. Spoon is actually the Doctor and I've gotten confused with all the similar voices...

Our unnamed heroes are now inside the Dalek base... I think... and continue to wonder what the hell the plot is about. Just then Chamber screams loudly that they're surrounded by Daleks, who not only speak in quotes from Destiny of the Daleks, it's actually soundbites from Destiny of the Daleks! Why not do this earlier? Dr. Spoon and Chamber then run away, and somehow survive without being exterminated... only to get lost. Dr. Spoon decides to use "eenie meenie minie moe" to get them out of this fix, unaware that the Dalek Leader has been going "You will exterminate them. You will exterminate them not." as it counts its cornflakes and finally decided to go with the "exterminate" option. This moment is truly damning as one of the Daleks has forgotten to put on their ring modulator and sounds like a 12-year-old trying to sound sarcastic.

Nine minutes into the story and still without a single concrete idea about what the hell is going on, Dr. Spoon decides they must conquer K9 and hope that the smug metal mutt can convince New York there are Daleks in an underground base... somewhere nearby. Chamber finds this deeply pathetic, a step away from texting Torchwood, but Dr. Spoon is simply inspired and thus goes for getting K9 to contact the Brigadier instead. K9 seems to think Dr. Spoon is his master... but it doesn't SOUND like Dave Segal. And I know what he sounds like.

Nevertheless, the Doctor seems to be Dr. Spoon, so. Right. He tells K9 (how? I have no idea. Maybe he is telepathically linked with K9... or maybe K9 has been with them all along... oh, wait he has a two-way radio rebuilt into the robot dog... OK...) to 'get the car ready'. It seems that the guy I THOUGHT was the Doctor is someone else and has been trying to fix the TARDIS with K9 with limited results. This loser shall be referred to as Vila until further notice. Despite having seemingly wrecked "the car", Vila and K9 are under orders to take the time machine to cave by the beach, while the Doctor and Chamber... uh... well, I dunno. Avoid Daleks?

Chamber points out that ringing up K9 has probably attracted every Dalek on the base and they are twelve kinds of screwed. Grimly, the Doctor decides that more running up and down corridors is required. They somehow find their way back to the beach where the 'car' is waiting for them (why they are giving the TARDIS this odd nickname, I dunno... in fact, it might be some kind of real car), and half way through expositing this, the Doctor and Chamber are bushwhacked by a Dalek, now speaking its own dialogue albeit dialogue that could have been nicked from Destiny of the Daleks soundtrack if required. So they run away. The Dalek has a confidence attack and rings its boss to ask for further instructions, which turn out to be "just SHOOT them, dipstick!"

A way of soundbite Daleks sweep out of the base and the Doctor and Chamber get into the car (which seems to be an actual car... somehow) and after a blizzard of stock sound effects, escape. I think it's The Whomobile, but its existence is shortlived as, in a scene nicked from Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150AD, a passing UFO blows it to smithereen in an even longer blizzard of stock sound effects. The Doctor bitches this is the third car he's lost and Chamber tells him to fucking grow up. The Doctor takes this on the chin and decides to flee to the TARDIS and head to Skaro to complain. Chamber dubs the Doctor beyond stupid and the strange scarfed nutter runs off. Quickly coming the conclusion he'll be more involved in the plot if he stays with the Doctor, Chamber follows...

"I dunno know you talk me into these things..."
"It's very easy when you know how."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah."

I dunno, but for some reason that exchange is genuinely amusing.

My grip on the plot starts to slip at this point as the time machine reappears in "Downtown Hades" with Tarrant and Sara along with the Doctor and Chamber (one of them is referred to as "Tom", but I dunno which is which). Sara, for her part, is rather annoyed at the slagging off Skaro gets. Apparently, she was born there. Which pretty much demolishes Tarrant's feeble arguments. Um, OK. The Doctor (who sounds uncannily like Chang Lee rather than, say, Dave Segal) explains he has brought Sara here because she knows about Skaro and the Daleks than anything and anyone else. Odd how she kept scratching her head and getting deja vu when she struggled to name one of the buggers...

The TARDIS crew set off across the quarry in the rain, towards a trench which the Doctor instantly puts down to Dalek activity. And, gazooks, the Doctor immediately steps on a landmine... just like that bit from Genesis of the Daleks... "Again?!" exclaims Sara, clearly annoyed of the plot recycling as I am. Surely after 8000 years, most of the mines would be a tad defunct? Nevertheless, Tarrant and Chamber's attempts to save the Doctor are about as useless as you'd expect as they get their hands stuck, set off timers, break the sonic screwdriver, exchange insults and generally do everything possible to blow them all up.

And then it turns out the mine WAS broken anyway!

With only three minutes for the rest of the episode, Tarrant puts his foot in a slimy Dalek mutant... just like that bit from Destiny of the Daleks. They reach the end of the trench which ends in a storage room and our incompetent protagonists explore, while Sara their font of all knowledge... does not say a damn thing. I'd suspect they forgot to bring her with them, the bunch of twits.

Meanwhile, some Daleks bitch at each other that there's someone at the front door and throw a gas bomb down the air vent to get rid of the irritating central cast, who immediately argue, complain and manifestly fail to hold their breath as told. Soon, all four are completely overwhelmed by the fumes... just like that bit from Underworld.

And cue cliffhanger! The titles reveal that... Chamber doesn't exist! At all! Somehow Chamber AND Tarrant were the same person... called Tom Anderson. Which of course, makes complete and total sense...

And now, a rather lame justification for that post title, like I promised...