Blood of the Daleks review [Steve Lyons]

An asteroid hit Red Rocket Rising, causing mass destruction and panic across the humans living there. The politicians are blamed, but never fear. A kindly race offer charity. They too have suffered struggles during their time, and they are here to help. They're called the Daleks.

Where and When?: This story takes place on Red Rocket Rising. For the Doctor, this is after Running Out of Time and before Horror of Glam Rock.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "People of Red Rocket Rising, my fellow citizens. Our long night is over. I've been contacted by a benevolent people. They too have known great trials, but they have overcome them and made it their mission to help others do the same. They have offered us refuge, and passage to the nearest human worlds. They have the resources, and the patience and compassion, to evacuate every one of us. My fellow citizens, my friends, rescue is at hand!"
• "Yeah, bye, bored now."
• By the time Christopher Eccleston graced our screens as the Ninth Doctor, the Eighth Doctor's main range stories were deep into its Charley arc. The BBC wanted to have Doctor Who on the radio for the new audience of people introduced by the new TV series, leading Big Finish to cut the Divergent Universe arc short and begin the Eighth Doctor Adventures with a clean slate. The Doctor is travelling alone, Lucie is introduced and there are no references to his previous companions or Big Finish adventures, deliberately making Blood of the Daleks a great starting point for new listeners.
• Just as Donna Noble later would, Lucie Miller appears in the TARDIS console room without explanation. Why, in 2006, did both the show and Big Finish introduce companions this way? Because it's a great idea. The Doctor travels time and space, dropping in and out of people's lives and sometimes taking people away with him as his travelling companion, and it's about time that someone was dropped in on him. The original idea was to have a Time Lord appear to explain the situation to the Doctor but fortunately this snooze of a scene was jettisoned for a more explosive entrance and to inject a bit of mystery. Rather than introducing another Charley, Big Finish does an anti-Storm Warning. Whereas the Doctor and Charley were magnetic, the Doctor and Lucie don't very much like one another, although this isn't unbearable like the Sixth Doctor and Peri. 
• It might be considered somewhat uncharacteristic of the Eighth Doctor to act how he does towards her, but one should remember that this takes place not long after C'rizz's death and Charley's departure. He's a moodier man than he was with Charley and is certainly a different man from the carefree man we were reintroduced to in Storm Warning. It's an interesting choice for Big Finish to make - they seem to have chosen to go in the vein of Christopher Eccleston's dark side. 
  
• The politicians aren't necessarily portrayed as the nicest of people (which is nothing new), but the mob are seen to be up in arms against politicians just because it's nice to have someone to blame and politicians are always the first. The Doctor says with irony to the crowd that they should have been able to predict the crashing of the asteroid, which the crowd seem to think on for the briefest of moments before deciding to carry on with their hunt. This is an angle we don't often see given how much politicians are vilified in the real world.
• There are some ideas which seem so obvious that you wonder why they haven't been done before. Here, we have Martez creating his (or her) own Daleks from damaged ones that she found. The scene where one of them dies with Martez assuring it that it is a superior being because of its human blood is strangely touching and sad.
• A car being totalled after crashing into the TARDIS, which stands resolute and unscratched, is a great visual that it's a shame we have to use our imagination for.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "This is not a date!"
• To introduce a new companion and reintroduce the Eighth Doctor (again) to a new audience, and to then have the two bicker for the first fifteen minutes and then spend most of the story apart isn't the best idea. Storm Warning (which keeps coming up; you can tell which story I've listened to recently) doesn't have a great plot or a great villain, but it works because of the wonderful interactions between the Doctor and Charley. The Doctor and Lucie don't like each other but it would have been a better idea to have them stay together and show at least some respect develop between the two. It means that we leave the story not feeling particularly warmed to either of them. At least it's not Sixth and Peri, though.
• The reason that Martez thinks that her Daleks are the future for humankind isn't explained. Finding a Dalek wreckage and then deciding that humans becoming this creature would be the best option for her species is something of a leap in logic.

Witness Protection: Lucie has been dropped into the TARDIS by the Time Lords as part of a witness protection program. A Mr Hulbert has hired a bounty hunter called the Headhunter to track her down and take her into her custody for reasons unknown.

His Constant Companion: The driver of the solar-powered car dies after hitting the TARDIS. Martez is killed by her own Daleks after she stops producing them, and her Daleks are exterminated by true Daleks.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor tells Lucie off for leaving the TARDIS before he had time to check the readings. Has he even done that since his first incarnation? It's certainly not been second nature to him in a few centuries.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor mentions being there at the Daleks' very beginning (Genesis of the Daleks) and fighting against them in various wars (The Daleks' Master Plan, etc.)
• The Doctor wishes that Daleks could be good, a hope that the Twelfth Doctor has in Into the Dalek.
• Davros made Daleks out of humans in Revelation of the Daleks and the Emperor did it in Bad Wolf, resulting in self-hating Daleks. The New Dalek Paradigm in Victory of the Daleks are similarly disgusted by the Daleks made from Davros's cells and destroy them.
• The Doctor says that the Daleks are always in a war, asking if they have recently been fighting the Mechonoids (from The Chase), the Movellans (from Destiny of the Daleks) or each other (like in The Evil of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, The Juggernauts and Remembrance of the Daleks).
• Red Rocket Rising have more help arriving, this time from Telos, the post-Mondas world of the Cybermen seen in The Tomb of the Cybermen and Attack of the Cybermen.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Blood of the Daleks is a good start to the Eighth Doctor Adventures and a jumping on point for the Modern Who fan who prefers their stories at a snappy 50 minutes rather than the considerably longer Main Range releases. Neither Lucie nor the Doctor are at their friendliest here and the two spend quite some time apart, which is a shame and keeps us from instantly falling in love with the pair as is so easy with Ninth and Rose, Eighth and Charley or Sixth and Evelyn. Overall, however, Blood of the Daleks is a very good story, earning it an A.

Eighth Doctor Adventures

Blood of the Daleks  |  Horror of Glam Rock

The Eighth Doctor's Timeline
Running Out of Time  |  Blood of the Daleks  |  Horror of Glam Rock