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Doctor Who - Remembrance of the Daleks

Doctor Who - Remembrance of the Daleks

List Price: $24.98
Your Price: $22.48
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of the Better Dalek titles
Review: Thank goodness for DVD. Well, sort of, I guess. When Remembrance of the Daleks was released on video, it was packaged with the awful The Chase from the William Hartnell era. I could have done without it, but I purchased it, wanting the classic Remembrance. Now, with DVD, I can collect only those episodes I want and not have to deal with goofy marketing packaging. (I hope.) Remembrance was far and away one of the the best Dalek stories ever, ranking with the original Daleks and the Invasion Earth story. The extras alone make it worth the price of admission with two seperate trailers, audio commentary, deleted scenes and multi-angle shots of Ace in the climatic firefight scene at the end of episode two. If you're a raving fan or even a casual one, pick this DVD up. You can always thank me later.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Strong story, great DVD.
Review: The Doctor's 25th anniversary season starts off with a bang with the instant classic, "Remembrance of the Daleks." If you're a Who fan, this is where the McCoy years go from mediocre to great and never look back.

The story takes Who back to it's roots--and the junkyard of Totter's Lane where we first met the Doctor. This time around, the Daleks are there, having pursued the Doctor to gain access to the Hand of Omega, a stellar manipulator the Doctor "borrowed" when he left his home world. But what the Doctor didn't count on was that two factions of Daleks would show up in 1963 London to claim this prize. Or did he?

The Doctor/companion team of Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred really gels here into one of the best the show has seen. The script by Ben Aaronovich is smart, fast-paced and puts a new spin on the "typical" Dalek storyline. All that and after 25 years, the Daleks finally get the ablity to go up stairs (in one of the BEST cliffhangers in all Who history).

But it's the extras on a DVD that make it worth the price of admission and, once again, the BBC is up to the task. Remembrance features a good commentary by Aldred and McCoy, a couple of deleted scenes (they're nice but you can see why they were left out) and some bloopers. All in all, the extras are good, though not as strong as Caves of Androzani.

That said, Remembrance of the Daleks is yet another stellar Who entry on DVD and one that fans should consider a must-have. New fans will enjoy it as well, though you may be thrown by the Dalek history referenced throughtout the show.

Highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Strong story, great DVD.
Review: The Doctor's 25th anniversary season starts off with a bang with the instant classic, "Remembrance of the Daleks." If you're a Who fan, this is where the McCoy years go from mediocre to great and never look back.

The story takes Who back to it's roots--and the junkyard of Totter's Lane where we first met the Doctor. This time around, the Daleks are there, having pursued the Doctor to gain access to the Hand of Omega, a stellar manipulator the Doctor "borrowed" when he left his home world. But what the Doctor didn't count on was that two factions of Daleks would show up in 1963 London to claim this prize. Or did he?

The Doctor/companion team of Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred really gels here into one of the best the show has seen. The script by Ben Aaronovich is smart, fast-paced and puts a new spin on the "typical" Dalek storyline. All that and after 25 years, the Daleks finally get the ablity to go up stairs (in one of the BEST cliffhangers in all Who history).

But it's the extras on a DVD that make it worth the price of admission and, once again, the BBC is up to the task. Remembrance features a good commentary by Aldred and McCoy, a couple of deleted scenes (they're nice but you can see why they were left out) and some bloopers. All in all, the extras are good, though not as strong as Caves of Androzani.

That said, Remembrance of the Daleks is yet another stellar Who entry on DVD and one that fans should consider a must-have. New fans will enjoy it as well, though you may be thrown by the Dalek history referenced throughtout the show.

Highly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Fantstic
Review: The story is absolutely excellant, and has an epic feel to it, depicting large-scale plot details, such as the Hand of Omega etc.
The Daleks themselves look superb. Their guns are very convincing. They are smooth and shiny on the outside, but green, slimy, and wonderfully icky on the inside.
One of my favourite scenes is where the casing has been destroyed, but a dark green claw lunges out...Wonderfull.
The scenes near the beginning, when the Dalek is looking at the soldiers through its gun seem to be influenced by Predator (a great idea), and the music here is deliciously ominous.
Aaronovitch seems to have deliberately tried to make this story something monumental, because not only does he depict the Doctor trying to wipe out the Daleks once and for all, but he also proves that DALEKS CAN CLIMB STAIRS! SO STOP THAT FLIPPING STUPID JOKE!!! AAAAARRRRRGGGHH!!!!
McCoy is simply fantastic as the Doctor. He is sometimes grossly underrated. One person on the internet actually said he was the worst actor to take the part. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE! AND I WILL HAVE MY VENGEANCE! AARRGHH!
It's a bit of a cliche, but his Doctor closely resembles Patrick Troughton's in his humour, and his manipulative ways. Alright, it's a masive cliche, but I digress.
All of the acting is very good.
The cover art on this this American release of the DVD is lush. It isn't on the British one.
I can't really say much more that hasn't been said already. Ben Aaronovitch's story reveals Doctor Who at its very best, the extras are sumptously bountiful, the comentary by McCoy and Aldred being the best extra, and just about everything about the whole disk is excellant.
Now go and read the other reviews.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The best Sylvester McCoy episode
Review: This 4 part adventure is the last good episode made.

Even with Daleks it wasn't possible to increase the viewing figures and save the series from the dead end...

Best episode for introducing people to the 7th Doctor era!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Picking it up again after the lost years
Review: This is a Doctor Who adventure I thought that I would never buy.

After the departure of Tom Baker, I along with many others, waited to see what the new Doctor would turn out to be like. Peter Davison, was a nice enough chap but never quite made it as the Doctor. When Colin Baker took over, that was it for me. I was not impressed by Sylvestor McCoy at first either and resumed other activities.

With this story I received a call from a friend urging me to give him a second chance as Remembrance of the Daleks looked like a pretty good story and it was set in the original junkyard. Oh yes, he said, and you will like Ace.

This was to be the turning point and I became an avid viewer once more. There is not much I can add to the content of the other reviews here (aside from the fact that I liked the Chase) but I am in agreement that this is certainly an excellent McCoy story and one of the best Dalek stories to be transmitted.

Not too long after this, I took a party of students to visit Longleat where there just happened to be a Doctor Who exhibition on.

The extras on the DVD are pretty nifty too.

Originally transmitted 5 October 1988 through 26 October 1988.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful McCoy Story!
Review: This is one of the better Dalek stories to watch; much better than Colin Baker's Revelation of the Daleks. Davros is up to no good, and the good old Doctor has to stop the Daleks, both the dark Daleks and the White and gold Daleks.

This is Sophie Aldred's (Ace) first full story with Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, and she plays such a wonderful new companion. The chemistry between Sophie and Sylvester is great, and you can see they picked the right person to play Ace.

The Daleks have more powers than they had before, but you'd be impressed to see what they can do now, that they couldn't do in Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker/Peter Davison and Colin Baker eras.

Remarkable episode, with great special features...a must-have for any dr who fan!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Doctor on a shoe string
Review: This is the best dalek story with the exception of genesis of the daleks.The McCoy era got off to a pretty shaky start with stories like Time and the Rani and Dragon fire,but Remembrance marked the start of Who actually getting watchable again.
McCoy shines in what should have been the 25th anniversary story,with explosions,death,destruction and more daleks than McCoy could shake his umbrella at this is entertaining from beginning to end and features possibly the best cliffhanger of the series 26 year run.
The effects in this are probably the best the series ever produced (the technician responsible for all those shoddy effects must have been off with a sprained wrist).The dalek weapons look menacing and the explosions are unreal.The only let down would be some of the shuttle and mothership effects which could have been so much better.But on a special effects budget of about £5000 per episode,what more do we expect?
The extra features were ok,the commentary was pretty good,but the "multiple camera angles" were actually two different camera shots for about two different scenes,so that was a bit of a let down.But otherwise this is one of McCoys best outings as the doctor with the exceptions of The curse of fenric and survival.
If you are a who fan then this DVD is a must,even if you aren't a big fan of the McCoy era.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: ONE OF THE BEST 7TH DOCTOR EPISODES
Review: This review is based on the VHS release. The region 1 DVD includes extras such as commentry and deleted scenes.

By the time Sylvester McCoy took over the role of the Doctor, the BBC had practically killed the series by imposing restrictions on the producers with regards to what type of scripts they could use, what level of violence they could display, what target audience they should aim at and a reduced budget to boot. It was commented in a lot of newspapers that the most evil villan the doctor had to face was not the Daleks or Cybermen, but rather the controller of BBC 1!!!

The first few McCoy episodes were awful and it seemed as if there was no hope for the series, but Rememberance of the Daleks proved that McCoy's Doctor could have some truely "classic" episodes along with "Ghostlight" and "Curse of Fendrick".

The Doctor takes Ace back in time to Earth in the early 1960's and seems to stumble across a lone Dalek in a junk yard (looking for cleap parts for it's spaceship perhaps?). He assists the military in destroying it and, with the help of their scientific adviser from the British Rocket Group (does the name "Professor Quatermass" mean anything to you?), he tracks another souce of alien activity to the local school - Coal Hill School.
As the plot unfolds we discover that the Doctor has been planning these events for some time and wants to use a secret Time Lord device called the Hand of Omega as bait to attract and destroy the Daleks. Unfortunately, two rival groups of Daleks show up looking for the device and a war breaks out between the Imperial and Regular Dalek forces...

A good storyline, breath-taking cliffhangers and excellent effects help to turn this story into one of the all-time greats and should have been the tenplate for all further episodes. We see the return of the "white" Dalek design from "Revelation of the Daleks", along with a new "Special Weapons Dalek" and the "Emperor Dalek". The Dalek shuttlecraft is looks convincing when landing, the Dalek weapons now fire "bolts" that pass through objects rather than the old "static line", and when a bolt hits someone we get a decent "kill" effect instead of that awful "negative" effect of the past. Even better is the visual proof that Daleks CAN go up and down stairs!!!

Doctor Who fans will have a blast as they notice subtile links and references to first Doctor Who story. For those who havn't followed the series from the beginning, Coal Hill school is where Susan, the Doctor's granddaughter attended classes and where Ian and Barbara (his first companions) taught English and Science. The classroom where Ace battles a Dalek is Ian's science classroom and the copy of the French Revolution that Ace picks up is the one that Barbara loaned Susan and which Susan was horrified to discover was full of errors. The junk yard where the lone Dalek is destroyed is the same junkyard where we first see the TARDIS... I could go on, but see how many you can find ;)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Quick! The stairs!
Review: This story is terrific fun. It is amongst the all time greats of Doctor Who. I would probably give the story 4 stars, but overall the package rates 5 stars.
First, the commentary with Sylvester McCoy & Sophie Aldred is quite good. They seem to remember a great deal about the production and reveal some facts about the story that I didn't know.
Second, the deleted scenes section is quite extensive. Most of the scenes are very good, and it's too bad that some of the scenes weren't in the story that was broadcast. There are, of course, a few bits that would have slowed down the story if they had been left in. The extended version of the scene with the Doctor having a mug of tea in the cafe is particularly good. There are also a few 'bloopers' which are pretty amusing, as well as a trailer for part 1 of the story.
Third, The production subtltles feature that I enjoyed very much on 'Spearhead from Space' returns on this release, as well as on the other new North American release, 'Caves of Androzani'. It's a bit like 'Pop Up Video' Doctor Who style. It would be nice to see more US feature releases would use this feature. New Line's Infinifilm line uses a similar feature, which is nice. The production subtitles are full of neat little facts, some of which I knew, but many which I didn't.
'Remembrance of the Daleks' is a terrific Doctor Who adventure. The visual effects are top notch and will knock the socks off of those folks who think of Doctor Who as 'cheap'. The story isn't terribly deep and meaningful, although it does touch on such issues as racial prejudice and how the little decisions we make can make a huge difference on the future.
In my opinion, this is the best Dalek story since 'Genesis of the Daleks' and really adds some new twists to the Daleks' continuity. I particularly like the revelation about Davros in episode 4. And that Episode 1 cliffhanger is a beauty.
Terrific performances by Sylv and Sophie, along with Simon Williams of Upstairs Downstairs fame and George Sewell, who was in Gerry Anderson's UFO series.


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