Wednesday 5 August 2020

Inspirations - Revelation of the Daleks



Revelation of the Daleks was written by Eric Saward during another of his breaks between contracts. A script editor commissioning themselves was frowned upon, especially by the Writers Guild, as it denied other writers work.
Saward spent his holiday on the island of Rhodes, and elements of this trip fed into the story.
The main inspiration is the Evelyn Waugh novelette The Loved One, first published in 1948, which tells of the Hollywood funeral parlour business. Waugh had been invited there to discuss adapting his novel Brideshead Revisited for the big screen, and he was inspired on his return to write about the Hollywood culture he had encountered, and about the ex-pat British contingent he met there. The funerary setting came from a visit to the Forest Lawn cemetery where he chatted to some of the morticians. Forest Lawn is the final resting place of hundreds of celebrities from the entertainment business.
The Loved One is a dark comedy, which tells the story of an Englishman named Dennis Barlow, who gets a job at the Happier Hunting Ground pet cemetery. A friend kills himself after being sacked by his studio, and Barlow is tasked with arranging his funeral, which takes him to the Whispering Glades funeral service, where he comes into contact with employee Aimee Thanatogenos, and her senior Mr Joyboy. There then follows a love triangle as Thanatogenos was in love with Joyboy until Barlow came along. However, Barlow has not been honest with her about what he does, and when she finds out this ultimately leads to her committing suicide, which she does by injecting herself with embalming fluid. Joyboy has Barlow help him conceal this by cremating her and interring the ashes at Happier Hunting Ground. Concerned about Barlow damaging the British community in Hollywood, his friends pay for him to return to England, and a rumour is started that he and Aimee have run away together.
The story was filmed in 1965, with Rod Steiger playing Joyboy.


So, elements which come from the novelette include the funeral parlour setting, the dark comedy this setting inspires, the similarly named senior mortician Mr Joyboy / Mr Jobel, and a death by embalming fluid. 
Thanatos was the Greek god of non-violent death, (brother of Hypnos, god of sleep), and Thanatogenos is a mixed Greek / Latin name meaning roughly "beloved of the race of death". The parallel character in Revelation of the Daleks is Miss Tasambeker, whose name comes from a monastery - Tsambika - which Saward found on Rhodes. This is where he also got the name Stengos.
Whilst on the island, Saward also came upon the Knights of Rhodes, who were the inspiration for the assassin Orcini and his Grand Order of Oberon (named after the Faerie King in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream).
The Knights of Rhodes originated as the Knights Hospitaller, founded around 1099 in Jerusalem to provide support for pilgrims going to the Holy Land. Their patron saint was John the Baptist. After the fall of the city to the Saracens they relocated to Rhodes around 1310, after briefly setting up their base on Cyprus. On Rhodes, the organisation became more of a military one, fighting against the Ottomans. They were eventually forced to leave Rhodes and set up a permanent base on Malta around 1530.
They are nothing to do with the Knights Templar, who were a rival organisation set up with similar aims - to protect pilgrims - and who were suppressed  in 1312.


Orcini's name derives from Orsini, one of the oldest Roman noble families, which has furnished a number of Popes (Celestine III, Nicholas III and Benedict XIII). They also furnished a Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes. The name comes from ursinus, meaning "bear-like".
Orcini's relationship with his squire, Bostock, is inspired by that between Cervantes' knight Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza. The character of Baldrick in the Blackadder series is also an inspiration for Bostock, certainly in terms of personal hygiene. As well as being a village in Cheshire, Bostock is also the name of a sweet pastry.
As with a lot of stories being script edited by Saward at this time, he obviously cares far more about the guest characters and their stories than he does about the regulars. Once again, we have to wait until the halfway mark before the Doctor and companion get even close to the main plot. Instead of being stuck in the TARDIS, as with Vengeance on Varos or Timelash, we have them on a lengthy diversion towards the action, as with Attack of the Cybermen or The Two Doctors. This might be because the script editor does not actually like this particular Doctor / companion pairing.


The other main inspiration for this story is the fact that it is the latest sequel to Genesis of the Daleks, in that Dalek stories now are following Davros' timeline rather than randomly jumping around the Dalek Empire. The story title carries on the biblical theme.
Last time we saw him, Davros was apparently victim to the same Movellan virus which was attacking his Daleks (the Movellan war first being mentioned in Destiny of the Daleks). He has been antagonistic towards his creations ever since they turned on him in the Kaled bunker. In the previous two stories he hated the whole concept of a Dalek Supreme, believing that was his role. He had begun to turn some Daleks and humanoids against the Supreme by use of some sort of injection which made them susceptible to his will. He escaped death on the Supreme's spaceship by using an escape pod. This was picked up by a freighter on route to the frozen planet Necros (Greek for "Death"), which houses a vast funerary complex - Tranquil Repose. Davros has taken over, and set himself up as its head (quite literally, as we're initially led to believe that is all that remains of him) as it offers plenty of genetic material to create a whole new race of Daleks which will be totally loyal to him. What he doesn't need, he sells to local businesswoman Kara for processing into a cheap foodstuff - thus raising funds for his real work.


Two funeral attendants - Takis and Lilt - have shopped Davros to the Dalek Supreme as they're not happy with what he has done to Tranquil Repose. This sets up a potential Dalek civil war - just as we saw in The Evil of the Daleks.
The notion of a glass Dalek first appeared in the novelisation of The Daleks in 1964, where David Whitaker had the leader Dalek in a glass casing. Designer Ray Cusick had originally wanted the Daleks to have a transparent outer surface under which would be placed lights and circuitry, but this was too expensive for his budget.
If the catacomb sets look impressive, it's because they were built for an appearance by Culture Club on the Kenny Everett TV show.
The Doctor finding his own tombstone was an idea thrown in by JNT. The location shooting was determined by its proximity to Southampton, where Baker and Bryant were performing in JNT's pantomime. There was a great deal of unexpected snow, which put paid to a planned stunt where a Dalek prop was to be propelled through the air - allowing our first sight of a flying / hovering Dalek. An in-studio attempt at a hovering Dalek failed due to dodgy camera angles and editing.
The Doctor is about to say something beginning with "B" before he is cut off at the end by a freeze-frame. This word was to have been "Blackpool" - the location of the story then planned for the start of Season 23. By the time of broadcast, however, that season had already been put on hiatus.
Next time: the show's on trial, so the Doctor goes on trial...

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