The Monthly Adventures #92 - “Renaissance of the Daleks” by Christopher H. Bidmead

Christopher Bidmead, for me, represents the failings of Classic Who’s second half, being the progenitor of the hard sci-fi elements and tonal disparities that would eventually tank the show in the 80s. Whilst I think there is a lot to love in Season 18 and even in some Bidmead scripts (I unironically think Castrovalva is good fun), he’s still become a figurehead for Doctor Who’s failings in my opinion, and nowhere does that feel more evident than Renaissance of the Daleks. From a turbulent production to a thoroughly weak script, I find Bidmead’s only contribution to the Main Range to be a distillation of his worst qualities and, unless my opinion softens on this with hindsight, one of my least favourite Dalek stories ever.

A ripple in time and the emergence of a bizarre toy line lead the Doctor and Nyssa on a trans-temporal adventure, where a plan of epic proportions is being set into motion by one of the Doctor’s oldest enemies.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

The reason this story is credited as “based on a story by Christopher H. Bidmead” is because apparently, there were some behind the scenes issues and Briggs had to come in and rewrite a lot of the story, to the point where Bidmead disowned it. Now, when I first learned this, I thought I had found out why Renaissance of the Daleks is such a mess, hasty rewrites often being the death knell of otherwise healthy scripts. But then I found out just why it was changed, and I realised this was doomed from the beginning.

Easily, Bidmead’s best quality is his ability as a sci-fi writer. The alien worlds and concepts he uses are all pretty damn good and even quite charming. I loved the scenery of the new Dalek homeworld, especially the city literally made out of Dalek casings shaped into walls, that’s a super fun idea I haven’t seen before. And even in places I didn’t like, I can admire the ambition. The Daleks turning themselves into toys to secretly invade Earth is an idea that should’ve been explored so much more than it was. Same thing with the nano-Dalek stuff, these could be relatively quaint plot points but they’re all presented in really haphazard ways. If this script had been a little cleaner, I could even say it felt similar to some speculative 60s fiction but unfortunately, the rest is too much of a let down for me to really think that.

But why does the script not work exactly? Well, I think its biggest problem is that it's cumbersome. There are a lot of ideas in this one and practically none are well explored. Not to mention the huge cast of nobodies that we’re constantly having to juggle. So, we have a general from an alternate Earth where the Daleks didn’t invade, his nephew, a Knight’s templar, a former slave and a Vietnam veteran all running around and Bidmead does a really bad job at fleshing them out. Apparently, there were going to be more characters before the impromptu rewrites, so I can only imagine how clumsy that would’ve been. Also doesn’t help that our cast is pretty awful; I really struggled to buy into a lot of the characters, especially when they’re speaking in god awful fake American accents. Even Sarah Sutton is doing pretty badly here with a lot of Nyssa’s lines being delivered very flatly.

The story really isn’t much better either. The first half is like a worse version of Castrovalva’s TARDIS tag, with our cast chasing after dumb little toy Daleks and picking up random side characters every now and again. It’s mind numbing by the halfway point and it’s an absolute godsend when we finally get to the actual, full sized Daleks. But then it’s at this point that Renaissance of the Daleks completely loses the plot because Bidmead starts trying to manage all of his different narrative threads at once and it utterly crushes the story. I will say, I liked the pace a lot better in the final part and there were a few moments I really liked, such as General Tillington and his nephew Will being wiped out of history by the Doctor stopping the Daleks; it was a great moment delivered with appropriate gravitas. Unfortunately, there’s very little else about this climax I’d complement, mostly because I barely remember it. There’s a lot going on and by this point I had mostly checked out, utterly destroyed by the first hour and half of aimless running about.

Just to give you an idea about how overbloated this third act is, you have: the alternate timeline, the nano-Daleks, the Dalek hybrid thing called the Greylish, the TARDIS getting weaponised, time anomalies everywhere, about half a dozen little details that came and went in seconds, it’s incredibly difficult to keep up and I’m still not entirely sure how everything wrapped up. It also doesn’t help that I was distinctly uninvested for a majority of the story. Sure, it feels cinematic and I can buy into the stakes of the episode but the pacing is abysmal and the Daleks feel lifeless. It’s one of those stories where they turn into a miscellaneous ton of robots instead of being genuinely threatening and their weird “seed Dalek” takes precedent for the climax, further nullifying their involvement. Tonal issues also affect my rating because it acts like it wants to be some dramatic, tense epic with the whole world at stake but then has such goofy ideas like the miniature Daleks or the array of cartoon characters we have as a side cast. If Renaissance had tried to be a little more like The Chase in tone, it might’ve been a lot better.

As it stands however, this is just the absolute lowest lows of Bidmead. An indecipherable, overbloated chore with too much going on and no way to handle it all. Everything from the barren cover to the miserable cast makes it feel like nobody wanted to do this story, resulting in a toneless, unimpressive and miserable experience. This is an audio I am in no way enthusiastic for, either positively or negatively, it’s just a bit crap.

3/10

Pros:

+ Some really unique and interesting imagery

+ The scope feels very large and cinematic

+ The climax picks up the pace a little

Cons:

- Both incredibly dense and lacking in depth

- The entire sidecast is made up of poorly-acted caricatures

- The structure and pacing is haphazardly thrown together

- The Daleks are a non-threat

- Mind-numbingly dull for most of its runtime