The Destroyers is a Dalek pilot made when Terry Nation was trying to launch the Daleks in America. The story forms part of the Second Doctor Boxset which seems odd because we got two first Doctor stories in the First Doctor Boxset and yet we only get one second Doctor story and one Dalek story in this release. This pilot never got made because Terry Nation, this was due to the fact that the BBC (who was going to pay half of the costs for the pilot) pulled out and this left Nation without anyone willing to finance the show. So this is how this becomes a Lost Story. It stars Sara Kingdom who is on a meteor that is being overrun by Daleks. The problem with this story is that it’s not exciting. It lacks any of the drama and tension that you get with a normal Dalek story or with the Dalek Empire series. In both of those instances the Daleks had a character or group that could provide the drama and be threatened by the Daleks. In this there is Sara who seems a less aggressive character than what we knew in the Daleks Masterplan. Also in this story there are two characters who join her called Mark 7 and Jason who quite frankly might as well have not being there. It’s nothing to do with Alan Cox (Mark 7) or Chris Porter (Jason) but more with the actual story. I just felt that the characters weren’t heroic enough. I did like the character of David Kingdom as played by Alex Mallinson. I didn’t know (or cant remember) that Sara had another brother, I thought that by introducing this element that it added some drama and a purpose to the story even though it wasn’t really enough to last the whole play. I’m normally a big fan of Jean Marsh and her performances are always top rate (especially in Home Truths) but to be honest I found her performance in this to be slightly below par. I know its suppose to be a younger Sara and there’s none of the aggression and cyniscm that we get to witness in The Daleks Master Plan but it seems almost too toned down.
The end of the release was the only time that I really got excited. It’s a shame that this was the only thing written because it sees David being taken by the Daleks and it made me wonder what the series would have been like. The Destroyers is a weird story because it’s clearly meant to the first in a series of stories however we only get it as a single story and so it’s a little bit disjointed. Worth a listen though if not for the theme tune which is the finest that I have heard for quite sometime, credit to either David Darlington and/or Jamie Robertson for coming up with that.
The end of the release was the only time that I really got excited. It’s a shame that this was the only thing written because it sees David being taken by the Daleks and it made me wonder what the series would have been like. The Destroyers is a weird story because it’s clearly meant to the first in a series of stories however we only get it as a single story and so it’s a little bit disjointed. Worth a listen though if not for the theme tune which is the finest that I have heard for quite sometime, credit to either David Darlington and/or Jamie Robertson for coming up with that.
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