The Davros Mission (2007)

The reasons as to how I ended up buying 'The Davros Mission' is worthy of mentioning. There was a page on the Big Finish forum which was querying the price tag given to this release which was in the region of £10,000,000 which is slightly out of my price range. Thankfully it was reduced to a more reasonable price and so I quickly bought it before it changed and it was part of the Davros DVD box set released back in 2007. It is set immediately after the events of Revelation of the Daleks and features Miranda Raison. I honestly thought that her appearance in the Toms Tardis Award winning story ‘The Wreck of the Titan’ back in 2010 was her first foray into Big Finish so I was pleasantly surprised to hear her in this release. I was curious to see how this would end because if it did indeed fall between Revelation and Remembrance then Davros obviously wouldn’t be killed. So with the in my mind I just let myself get involved in the story and it’s a very interesting one because it mirrors in effect the Doctor’s quest in Genesis where he has the chance to destroy the Daleks. In this Miranda Raison’s character Lareen has the chance to kill Davros who is been taken to Skaro for trial and then execution. Instead of doing what she set out to do what she does is engage in a series of scenes where they discuss things and whilst this would normally be very dull its due in a large part to both Raison and Molloy that make these scenes the highlight of this story. The story doesn’t just work because of Raison and Molloy but there were Gus and Raz who were played by Sean Connolly and Gregg Newton respectively. They seemed to be added to brighten things up because after a very tense and downbeat scene between Lareen and Davros, what was needed was some comedy or lighter scenes. Both Connolly and Newton this this job very well and the characters served their purposes very well. There was a sense that this story was loosly linked to the I,Davros series which would have been released the year before. I realised whilst listening to it that the series was during a trial so its reasonable to assume that this may be set before I,Davros. There was also a lovely moment when he was talking about pressing his fingers down to break a capsule which seemed like a nod to Genesis of the Daleks. It’s something that long time fans would get but new fans wouldn’t and it just comes and goes and doesn’t impact on the story which is probably for the best but I certainly liked it. I am really glad that I bought this release as it manages to make it worth while without over-complicating things. The central performances are solid and the story is typically Nick Briggs. The ending was tied up in a satisfactory way that meant it managed to do what the TV series never did and that was come up with a nice story as to how Davros went from having his hand blown off in Revelation to being in the White casing. Good stuff.