The Sixth Doctor and Davros are just a fantastic match for each other. This is the third meeting I've heard on audio and all three have been great stories. Terry Molloy is such a good actor, and infuses Davros with the right amount of evil and morals. Davros stands as the definitive work on the character, but this is another excellent showing. (A tiny note on the Davros redesign controversy - the Doctor does say once you see how hideous Davros is on the outside Mel will realize he's evil...not ideal).

Mel features prominently here as she is given a love interest and also gets to put her computer programming skills to work. Davros has stumbled upon Mechanoids and is putting dead human parts in them to create the titular Juggernauts. He's also disguised himself as a doddering professor. Mel is so horrified at him by the end of the story she leaves the Mechanoids to kill him, but naturally Davros survives (only to self-destruct even though we know he survives - weird call).

All around great and fun performances and character development for largely Mel and a bit for Davros too. Good stuff!

This is part of a series of reviews of Doctor Who in chronological timeline order.

Previous Story: The One Doctor

A solid story, though it did drag a bit in the middle. That was definitely made up for by an excellent beginning and end though. This is a great story for Mel, the characterisation she gets is really great and she’s a very fun character to listen to overall.

Terry Molloy is a fantastic actor. I say this in just about every story he’s in but that’s because it’s so evident in every story he’s in. In this, he gets to play a warm, lovable professor at the start and it took me a bit to even recognise it was him just because of how polar opposite it was to Davros.

The Mechanoids being in this story is really funny to me, but they’re used very well. The idea of Davros also being their “creator” (although it’s not exactly like that) is a great one and parallels their real life intention of being a counterpart/successor to the Daleks. It’s also great that they get a chance to shine and the twist regarding them was horrifying.

Speaking of twists, the moment at the very end where Mel orders the Mechanoids to kill Davros was genuinely incredible and really shocking. Bonnie Langford’s performance was nothing short of amazing and that moment alone bumped up this story’s rating in my books. I do hope the consequences of this are addressed in later stories, but only time can tell on that one.

Overall, another banger for 6 and Mel.

Next Story: Catch-1782

Uma explosão acaba separando o Doutor de sua Companion fazendo com que os dois fiquem meses distantes um do outro. Agora sozinha, Mel vive e trabalha em uma colônia no planeta “Lethe” junto a cientistas e programadores – Seu chefe usa uma identidade falsa se passando por um tal de “Professor Vaso” (eu acho que você já adivinhou quem é), o tal cientista está trabalhando em um projeto que diz ser inovador envolvendo os “Mechanoids” o mesmo robôs vistos anteriormente no arco do 1° Doutor “The Chase”, suas motivações são todos aqueles clichês de sempre prometendo um avanço tecnológico e blá blá blá. Falando no Doutor, o Time Lord foi sequestrado pelos Daleks renegados que pedem sua ajuda para impedir o projeto e sequestrar o cientista – Bom, contado a base inicial da história, agora deixa eu te dizer o que acontece no resto da parte 1 e parte 2...Nada...Tudo me pareceu como uma grande enrolação que estendida até a parte 3 onde maior parte do tempo é gasta com o Doutor e o cientista tendo aquele clássico papo. Até esse certo ponto não tivemos um desenvolvimento significativo, simplesmente tudo parado na estaca zero deixando a “empolgação” para o fim...Uma empolgação que se resume a, o Doutor e a Mel correndo dos Mechanoids lentos kkkkk
Mesmo com isso, ao todo “The Juggernauts” está longe de ser uma história Dalek descartável – Novamente temos a Mel sendo salva pelos escritores da BIG FINISH, de nova a companion mostra uma utilidade e um foco notável. O experimento escondido por de baixo do tapete pelo cientista até que chama muito atenção por ser algo bem macabro, matar as pessoas para retirar todo o sistema nervoso delas e implantar nos Mechanoids...PESADO!

Davros is suitably sneaky in this one. Hypnotising a large number of victims into thinking he is a lovely man, manipulating them into helping his cause whilst making them feel lucky for being able to do this.

Davros competes with the Daleks for The Doctor’s cooperation, claiming to want to destroy the daleks before fading into obscurity and dismantling the mechanoids. Of course - the doctor can’t trust anyone...!

If there is one small criticism of this play, it is that it is very similar to Genesis of the Daleks (just swap out Daleks for Mechanoids and Thals for Daleks). The way Davros is able to manipulate and control people in positions of power is similar and of course the fact that the doctor is sent on a mission (but by the Daleks instead of the Time Lords).

Regardless, Genesis is an amazing story and I appreciate it’s re-telling. The joy is in hearing Terry Malloy nail the part of Davros and his interactions with Mel and The Doctor. Shortly after its release BF amp things up considerably with I, Davros.

MR 065: The Juggernauts
Ironic that Next Life ended with a Davros cameo and here we are with a story about Davros. With a different Doctor.

The Doctor and Mel get seperated in the middle of an attack on a ship. I'm not sure why the Doctor thought it was a good idea to seperate them, but sure. It's arbitrary to start the story. The Doctor gets kidnapped by Daleks while Mel gets put into an escape pod and ends up on a colony working on a computer programming project until the Doctor rescuses her.

I do appreciate that we've really started using Mel's computer programming abilities, not that the show ever really used it. These audios have done a fairly decent attempt at making the companions from the tv show more distinct and giving them personality of their own. Hell, even Nyssa has gotten more of a personality through audio. This one does a decent job of doing that for Mel.

Mel's boss is a scientist named Professor Vaso. He's working on something called the Juggernauts, which are really just Mechanoids that he found somewhere. He also survived a crash landing that destroyed much of the facilities where he's working. Of course, Vaso is just Davros in disguise, but there's some interesting stuff for him here. I wonder how much of his personality as Vaso is genuine. There's a moment where he muses on the fact that he survived the crash while a lot of people died because of his crash.

Davros is on the outs with the Daleks and is now trying to use his new Juggernauts as Dalek killers. It's kind of funny to see Davros divorced from the Daleks. We see that in the audio "Davros," but now he's actively working against them. They are working for a corporation called Outreach which is investing in the Juggernaut project, but Outreach wants to shut them out and take over, which Davros can not allow.

Despite working against the Daleks, Davros has a few Daleks working with him which he uses to kill everyone in the corporate party that wants to take control of the project. This all makes sense. Of course he's willing to go to such lengths to protect his project. Especially since the Juggernauts are now dead humans inside of the mechanoid frame, which is bizzare. I'm not sure why Davros was doing this, other than to have an arbitrary reason to say that the Mechanoids were bad. It seems pointless to the story. It certainly tracks with the effort to demonize them broadly. The Mechanoids don't really do anything bad in their appearance on the show, just kill Daleks (and imprison Steven, but who's counting).

Regardless, the Daleks manage to beat Davros and blow up his base. There's a moment where Mel effectively kills Davros which was pretty intense. She tells the Doctor to stay out of it as she takes control of the Juggernauts she helped create and has them kill him. That was pretty wild. Otherwise the ending is just them escaping after Mel's friend Geoff sacrificies himself. I'm not a big fan of the sacrificing himself as a hero bit, mostly because Zagreus and Scherzo have conditioned me to dislike that trait, but it's all fine.

There's definitely some interesting stuff here, but it's mostly forgettable. Davros dies AGAIN for the fiftieth time so I'm sure he'll be back again later. It felt like someone wanted to use the mechanoids and just created a functional story with them. It doesn't have much to say, but it's not trying to be anything more than it is.