This series (or first half of one series split over two years, apparently) of Twelfth Doctor adventures comes to a close with “The Second Death of the Daleks”, a sort-of retelling of the first story in the set but with added Dalek stuff. After the easy 5/5 the previous story got I have to say this was a bit of a letdown, but it still has some merit and once again ends with a really interesting cliffhanger…
The story starts off with the exact same scenes and dialogue as the series opener “The Second Death”, only with briefly hearing other people talk about what’s happening as if they’re viewing it. Eventually though Ash (Gwithian Evans) meets The Doctor (Jon Culshaw) again and he restores Ash’s memory of their adventures together and reveals they’re caught in the time loop. Ash is excited because he thinks he can now do things differently and potentially save some of the people who they’d let die but The Doctor isn’t convinced it will work that way. Soon the issue of the Desolates in the wasteland is dealt with by their new heroes: The Daleks, or more specifically, the Eternal Dalek from the colourful Lego-looking set of Daleks from the early Eleventh Doctor run (and apparently the highly regarded Eleventh Doctor run of audios by the same series-runner as this, which I really have to check out now after this run!)
The cover looking the same as “The Second Death” only with a Dalek in it makes sense but doesn’t help the already samey feel of the covers!
At the same time Breen (Clare Bloomer) who had once again died in Ash’s care suddenly springs to life in front of him and her son Alan (Robert Whitelock) who is oddly less than pleased that she’s still alive. Meanwhile The Doctor chats with the Dalek Eternal, who mentions he was the last living thing at the end of the universe and therefore The Daleks win in the end as they were the supreme beings by virtue of being the only ones, which made me laugh. The Doctor then meets Kris (Peter Dukes) who is responsible for the time loop they’re stuck in, and he reveals that he is from another universe entirely and that the Daleks are unstoppable there, so he needs to defeat the last Dalek here…
The Continuity:
Here’s the overall cover for the collected six stories. I was going to put it in all the reviews but I figured I’d run out of things to say pretty quickly…
The Dalek Eternal and his fellow chubby and brightly coloured Daleks appeared in the Eleventh Doctor TV story “Victory of the Daleks” but went down so badly that they never really appeared again. They did appear in the Eleventh Doctor audio story “Victory of the Doctor”, which I have yet to listen to but it’s definitely on my mental list after the strength of this run of stories!
Beyond that and the obvious direct connection to “The Second Death”, the story that kicked off this run, that’s about it!
Overall Thoughts:
“The Second Death of the Daleks” was fine, it had some fun twists and some good dialogue, but I can’t help feel it was a bit of a let down after such a strong run of stories. The repeat setting and dialogue at the start and some of the returning character’s actions and motivations were a bit thin as well. Oh well, can’t win them all, and at least the cliffhanger reveal sets up some interesting stuff going forward!
Breen turns out to be a bit of a hard-nosed woman who then shoots her own son dead, only for him to get up with a Dalek stalk in his forehead, revealing he was a Dalek spy. Breen then tries to rally the people against their so-called hero the Eternal. The Doctor and Kris meanwhile use the fact that the latter can’t die to distract the Eternal for long enough for the Doctor to hack into the Dalek pathweb and alter its programming, as the Eternal is only eternal due to a new Dalek mutant being generated and reprogrammed once the previous one is killed, allowing The Doctor to create a Dalek Eternal who is actually nice. Breen’s uprising is then brought to a halt and the Dalek Eternal promises to look after the planet until the end (I was going to mention previous examples of good Daleks in the continuity, before realising that would be a spoiler, so… yeah)
We then get the reveal that Kris’ universe is actually the Land of Fiction, and the reason the Daleks there were unstoppable was because people at the end of the universe had only heard of Daleks from old stories and legends, and therefore fictional versions of them started appearing in the Land of Fiction, complete with their fictional unstoppable powers, so Kris had to invade the regular universe and defeat it to show the people at the end of the universe that they were fallible so as to stop them from spreading the stories of their invulnerability. Kind of confusing, but hey-ho. That wasn’t the only reveal though as Ash is informed that he’s not the real Ash as the actual Ash died a while ago. He heads off against The Doctor’s wishes and finds his grave, The Doctor then revealing that the actual Ash made such a good impression on people that they started telling stories of him, leading to a fictional version of Ash being created in the Land of Fiction, this Ash. How this will play into the second half of the “series” will be interesting, after this run of stories I have no doubt it will be good (plus the thought of the Twelfth Doctor arguing and berating royalty free fictional characters sounds like a good laugh!)