On virtually every television show nowadays, the head writer and producer are the same person. This makes a lot of sense because it gives the show a unified heading and has been true of the modern series of Doctor Who with Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffatt and Chris Chibnall in the future. But this wasn't how the show worked in the era spanning between 1963-89. Instead, the job was divided between two people. The producer was the big boss, the one who oversaw all elements of the production and had the final say, while the script editor/head writer was only in charge of the scripts coming in.
And its true to say that those stories written by the script editor are those that capture the spirit of the show perfectly. After all, they should know the series inside and out. That is very true of the modern series as both Davies and Moffatt have handled the series finales and important episodes themselves. And in the original series, Robert Holmes wrote The Deadly Assassin and Douglas Adams, City of Death, arguably two of the best stories the original series ever created.

That might seem like a really harsh assessment but I do hold Resurrection of the Daleks in higher regard than the writer does. Saward once called it the worst Doctor Who story ever written. Now, too me, this isn't the worst story from that series, considering that this story shared that year with Warriors of the Deep and The Twin Dilemma, two stories that did some real damage to the respect of the show afterwards. The flaws in this story aren't so fatal, making it a lot easier to watch.

One thing I like about Resurrection, is how it tackles the inherent conflict between the Daleks and their creator that Destiny missed. It propels the Daleks back into being a real threat and playing a real part of the narrative, rather than just being robots happy to be extensions of Davros's will. Saward manages to get them right, their brash, hostile and aggresive as well as sneaky, cunning, conniving and willing to back-stab their allies when the fancy takes them. While they might look like robots on the outside, they aren't robots on the inside. No other appearence for the Daleks does such a good job as getting to the true heart of the horrid little blobs, than this one, showing us why they are and always will be the Doctor's greatest enemy.

And then we have the Daleks time corridor between 1984 and the future. What do they really need this for? If their primary goal is to rescue Davros then he is already in the future where they are. Instead, this is just used a checklist of things the Daleks can do and is a constant reminder of the continuity facination they had in the eighties. The Daleks had time travelled in The Chase and Day of the Daleks and so they do here, they mind-controlled humans in The Daleks' Invasion of Earth, so they do it here too. Resurrection spends so much time stealing from the past, it forgets to create something of a choerant story itself. But it isn't really satisfied ripping off past Dalek stories either as the cowardly Stien seems very reminisant of Fewsham in The Seeds of Death.

The one scene between the Doctor and Davros highlights Saward's flaws in his approach in making the hero weak just because he didn't want to kill anyone. The characters that Saward seemed to prefer were Lenska's unrelenting bitchy and horrible prison doctor and the antiheroic Lytton, a mercenary and killer with no redeeming qualities. Saward even brought him back for Attack of the Cybermen, a year later. After agonizing over whether he should kill him, the Doctor backs down, Davros tells him that killing someone requires courage, something that the Doctor doesn't have. He then locks the Doctor out of his room, thus winning the argument. It is a really sad attempt to recreate the scene between the Fourth Doctor and Davros in Genesis of the Daleks, over whether he has the right to commit genocide against the Daleks if it would prevent their waging of war. Saward fails to realise that the Doctors not doing so is decency, not weakness, because only crazy people like Davros have no problem with killing others.
But in the end, the lines Saward writes for Tegan's farewell provide the must succinct description of everything wrong with his era of the show. Tegan tells the Doctor she isn't joining him on anymore adventures because she is sick and tired of seeing people die needlessly. "It's stopped being fun Doctor," she says and runs away in tears. The Doctor comments that he needs to change his ways and it is hard not to see this as a critique of the show itself. If it wasn't it was inadvertant but Doctor Who would only get grimmer, more violent and less and less fun for the remainder of the time Saward spent on the show. His view of the Doctor was as flawed and ineffectual only grew with the debut of the Sixth Doctor at the end of this season. This approach continued for the next two years until The Trial of a Time Lord where there was a behind the scene's body count, higher than anything Saward had ever done on screen...
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