The Monthly Adventures #065 - “The Juggernauts" by Scott Alan Woodard

Is there a greater task for a Doctor Who writer than writing an interesting Dalek story? Possibly not. If I’m being honest, the show needs to retire these things, send them out with a bang, not a one season absence gimmick. But why? These things are the literal reason the show still runs today, why would I want rid of them? Because at this point, every Dalek story has been written. Short of some dreadfully dull twist such as “It’s the Daleks, but in Groundhog Day!” or “It’s the Daleks, but in Fantastic Voyage!”, we’ve pretty much seen every facet of these things and their creator. Now, what we're left with is a sea of identical beings, every Dalek-centric episode stagnating in just-alright territory with little to set them apart. This was my main problem with The Juggernauts because, once I’d finished it, all I could think of was why there was any reason to listen to it.

Stranded after a crash, Mel takes up work in remote scientific colony, Lethe, whilst she waits for the Doctor to rescue her. However, the Time Lord has his own agenda; forced to work with the Daleks, the Doctor arrives on Lethe with the intention of facing down Mel’s new boss: Davros.

(CONTAINS SPOILERS)

The Juggernauts is one of those stories that I find endlessly annoying to review because what I have to say on it isn’t much. It falls through the cracks and I could probably sum up the majority of my thoughts in a sentence. However, I will try to spin something out of this, beginning with perhaps my biggest takeaway - Terry Molloy. Molloy is always fantastic, Davros (the story, not the character) can attest to that, but he’s absolutely carrying this story on his shoulders. Great both as the cruel and twisted Davros and the kindly Professor Vaso, you can tell exactly how ranged Molloy is here and every scene between him and Baker was a delight. I also love stories that don’t skimp on his cruelty and the scene where he murders an entire room of executives in order to aid his master plan was fantastic.

As for the story itself, I’ll get onto why it’s nothing to write home about but I should mention Woodard’s style here, which I found highly enjoyable. For as much as I think this story is nothing special, Woodard injects an energetic, quick-witted and altogether very mature stylishness into the story that at least makes it not as great a chore as it could’ve been. However, this is mostly carried by our lead performers Bonnie Langford, who’s always a delight, and the forever indomitable Colin Baker. They’re both fantastic here but especially Mel, who gets some, if not exemplary, decent character work done that I did appreciate, along with the amount of agency she had in the story.

However, the script itself is where the audio begins to struggle because I am simply not impressed by what I’ve got. The thing that jumps out to me immediately is just how awfully paced this thing is. It began somewhat strongly, with a small timeskip and Mel having integrated herself into this colony - it was an interesting set up the story could’ve masterfully built off of, especially with the reveal that her boss is a disguised Davros. Think about it: the tension as Davros tries not to be revealed, Mel struggling with having to let go of the friendships she made, that horrible feeling of a good life falling apart the inevitable become inevitable. And that is what we get, for the first half at least before the story goes from 0 to 100, this is all mostly dropped and we’re left with subpar Dalek shenanigans instead. There’s very little build up to this change in tone and it honestly feels like two different stories. Once the Doctor shows up, Davros doesn’t even try to hide who he is and everything begins all at once in a truly unsatisfying way.

It also doesn’t help that the sidecast is this dull - there is an attempt at playing off of the relationships Mel has formed in the three months she’s been away from the Doctor but unfortunately that relationship is with Geoff, who has uncharacteristically terrible dialogue for this story and is lumped with a very stilted performance. Other than that, the other character came and went; there was some interesting stuff with substance-abusing, cowardly suit Kryson but his storyline didn’t really go anywhere. For a story so reliant on its characters, it really struggles to give anybody for our main duo to play off besides Davros.

But that’s not why I think The Juggernauts is something to sleep on, no, my biggest problem with The Juggernauts is that it is categorically, unequivocally, astoundingly generic. It is formula to the max, everything here is in other, better Dalek stories. We literally just had a Davros/Six story that is a thousand times better and we’re about to get an Eight/Davros story that is a million times better, so really, what was the point of this audio? The Daleks feel like a generic robotic bad guy, the mechanoids are interchangeable and used purely as plot devices, the Daleks working with the Doctor are not followed through on, Davros wanting to change has already been done. The Juggernauts falls into the common trap of just rewriting better Dalek stories into something more derivative and for that, I can not bring myself to recommend this story.

I feel sorry for The Juggernauts. It was doomed from the beginning by its nature,  a fool’s errand that resulted in exactly what it was. It’s not offensive, it’s not embarrassing, hell, it’s not that boring, but when you get a story that feels like a worse version of other episodes, I find little point to it all.

6/10

Pros:

+ Yet another fantastic performance from Terry Molloy

+ The style is quick and witty

+ Brilliant performances from Langford and Baker

+ Gave Mel some great characterisation

Cons:

- Horribly paced

- Generic and derivative story that didn’t expand on the ideas it had

- Dull and often irritating sidecast

I do think about this story a lot actually it has SO many wonderful character moments for Mel and it used Davros in a very interesting way. It puts all the characters in very interesting predicaments and it's so fun to listen to.

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

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.

This really is one of the best Big Finish audios. Mel gets a lot to do, and even makes some questionable choices at the end. Colin is on fine form, from hilarious to serious within the same scene. Terry, as Davros, is incredible as always.

Turning the Mechanoids into something nightmarish. Some of the language around wheelchairs feels a bit outdated though, definitely brings to mind why RTD was big on removing that context for Davros.

Definitely recommend to those wanting to hear some Mel!!