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Fan opinion is strongly divided on the tenure of Graham Williams as a producer of Doctor Who. Williams’ three years on the show (1977 – 1980) were marked by a more lighthearted tone (in fairness, Williams had been ordered by the BBC to scale back the violence, which had come to the fore with the prior producer, Philip Hinchcliffe), gaudy set designs, outlandish scripts, and the increasingly comedic performances of leading man Tom Baker, who was at the height of his popularity and star power. While many enjoy the freewheeling vibe of these three seasons, others see them as a power-dive into the childish and lowbrow. Doctor Who had always been ostensibly a children’s program that had enormous appeal for adults, but in the opinion of many, in the Williams years, it became a show only for children. In any event, there’s no denying that some of the worst stories of the Baker years came on Graham’s watch.

Arguably the nadir of the Williams years was his final season, the seventeenth for the venerable science fiction series. Rife with horrific production values, shabby sets, stupid scripts, and unfunny “humor,” Season 17 – ironically the only one script-edited by certified genius Douglas (Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) Adams – is a tawdry and often embarrassing collection of stories that do this wonderful series no credit (some would argue that the mostly-Adams-written “City of Death” is the exception, but frankly I’ve never considered it more than just above-average). And this dreadful season begins with “Destiny of the Daleks.”

The final Who script written by Dalek creator Terry Nation (though, according to the audio commentary, he didn’t write much of it), “Destiny” (originally aired in September, 1979) finds the Doctor (Baker) and his newly-regenerated Time Lady companion Romana (Lalla Ward) landing on a strangely familiar planet. They witness the landing of a spaceship, and soon encounter the sleek, austere Movellans, who are at war with the Daleks. With both sides bound by strict logic, the struggle has come to an impasse; the Daleks have returned to their home planet of Skaro to retrieve their creator, Davros (David Gooderson), buried there since the events of Season 12’s “Genesis of the Daleks.” The Daleks hope that Davros, who is not programmed for pure logic as they are, will help them break the impasse and win the war against the Movellans.

Generally held to be one of the worst Dalek stories ever, “Destiny” abounds with problems: Nation (or whoever was re-writing him, be it Adams or someone else) seems to have forgotten that the Daleks are actually living creatures who use metal casings to move around; they are constantly referred to here as “robots,” and treated as though they have no free will of their own, a direct contradiction to seventeen years of continuity. In the first episode, there is much hand-wringing about the planet’s radiation, and how the Doctor and Romana must take anti-radiation pills at regular intervals, ere they die, and yet this is completely forgotten after the first episode. The Movellans are supposed to be super-sleek and shiny-white, but mostly they just look ridiculous with their braided-silver hair and goth eye makeup. This is also the story which infamously points out the Daleks shortcomings, in the moment where the Doctor scrambles up into an airshaft and then taunts a Dalek, “If you’re supposed to be the supreme race of the galaxy, why don’t you climb up this rope after us?” It’s one thing to make jokes like this in the press, but quite another to point it out to the audience within the show itself. The Dalek props themselves look tatty and run-down, with visible cello-tape and paint chips, all especially noticeable in the razor-sharp DVD format. Even Tom Baker seems bored.

“Destiny of the Daleks”’s greatest sin, however, is the insulting sequence at the beginning of episode one in which Romana, having regenerated from Season 16’s lovely Mary Tamm, “tries on” several different bodies (very tall, very short, drag queen, etc.), each rejected by the Doctor, before deciding to adapt the body of Princess Astra from the prior story “The Armageddon Factor,” played, obviously, by Lalla Ward. In past stories, regeneration has always been seen as a traumatic and life-altering event, and yet here it’s reduced to a sight gag. I can’t even contemplate the amount of feverish, fanboy-wankery that has been posted on various Who chat boards (as well as in various Who reference books) trying to somehow “justify” this sequence within sane Who continuity, but really all it is is a production team too lazy or too dismissive of seventeen years of tradition to resist such a crass and disrespectful joke. It’s pretty tough to take an adventure story seriously when those making it have such obvious derision for the material.

Saving graces? Well, Lalla Ward’s “girlie” copy of the Doctor’s costume (all done in pink with a long white scarf) is lovely, and should have been brought back for other episodes. David Gooderson can’t match the superb performance of Michael Wisher in “Genesis,” but he makes a perfectly acceptable substitute, though it’s a bit sad to watch him jitter the Davros chair clumsily along (it was apparently quite heavy and difficult for him to move). This was the first Who story to employ a Steadicam, and it’s used to good effect throughout. Ken Grieve’s direction is actually fairly crisp, and the story moves well enough from dumb plot point to dumb plot point. It doesn’t make a darn bit of sense, but it’s not grievously boring. And to be honest, this story does hold a small bit of nostalgia value for me personally, as it was the very first Doctor Who story that I taped off PBS with my brand-new VCR, way back in 1983, and thus was the first Who story I could re-watch as much as I wanted. But that’s not really a good enough reason to recommend it to anyone else.

The special features are a bit of mixed bag, but fairly satisfying overall, given the dreariness of the main feature. “Terror Nation” is a rather superficial documentary about Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks; the feature tends to make the same points over and over again (Nation enjoyed the high life, apparently), and features almost no on-camera interview footage with Nation (though excerpts from a radio interview are heard). “Directing Who” is a brief-ish interview with director Ken Grieve, who comes off as quite intelligent and interesting. “Trailers and Continuities” have become a mainstay of the Who DVD releases, but this one at least has a priceless promo where Baker is lured out of the TARDIS by a mysterious voice who warns him that the Daleks are coming, once the new BBC season begins. Best of the supplements are four adverts for Prime Computers, which feature Baker and Ward in character, pimping for the computer company; in one, the Doctor actually proposed to Romana – great goofy fun. As for the add-ons to the actual program, the commentary track features Lalla Ward, Ken Grieve, and David Gooderson, and is reasonably lively, though Ward does tend to get on her soapbox about how the series should be made for children, blah blah blah. The production subtitles are serviceable at best, and there is an option to play the story with a few newly-created CG effects, mostly laser-blasts and such, though the Movellan ship has been augmented with some very odd Flash Gordon-esque sparks. Oh, and that’s a model kit of Davros pictured on the front cover.

“Destiny of the Daleks” sadly represents a low point in Doctor Who’s history, as well as for the immensely popular villains. It is Doctor Who at its most conventional, it’s most pedestrian (well, at least until the new series came along) and it’s most dismissible. When people make fun of Doctor Who, this is the era they are most likely imagining, and unfortunately there’s not much that can be said to defend it.

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