Inspirations - Resurrection of the Daleks

Resurrection of the Daleks started life as "The Return" or "Warhead", which was planned as the final story of Season 20. The Cybermen had been successfully relaunched in Season 19, and now it was the Daleks' turn. The writer was Eric Saward, taking a break from Script Editor duties, and he wanted to do for the Daleks what he had earlier done for the Cybermen. A director was hired - Peter Grimwade. You can see that the intention was to replicate the success of Earthshock. Terry Nation now lived and worked in Los Angeles, and had to remind John Nathan Turner that he had to give consent for any Dalek story to be produced, and that he had already stipulated that Davros should feature in all new Dalek stories. Saward was okay with this, as the Daleks were notoriously difficult to write for, and Davros was a much more interesting character to give voice to, and interact with. Grimwade started putting his team together, and was pleased to hear that Michael Wisher would be available to play the Dalek creator once more.
Season 20 then hit problems. Industrial action plus studio overruns conspired to push back production on many of the stories. JNT was faced with a dilemma. He could either abandon one of the stories already partly made, or he could forego the season finale and use the time and studio space to finish what he already had. The decision to opt with the second choice proved to be an easy one, as three of the stories in the middle of the season formed a narrative arc (Turlough and the Black Guardian) and so couldn't be changed anyway.
Grimwade was informed that the story he had been planning would now be held back, probably to Season 21. The director decided to take his team out for a meal, to thank them for everything they had done up to this point. He did not invite JNT, expecting to take him out separately. However, JNT went into a rage when he learned that Grimwade had taken his team, which included Saward, out for a meal without inviting him. This poisoned the relationship between the two men, and Grimwade would never direct another Doctor Who story, though he would contribute one further script as a writer.

Knowing that there would be a Dalek story coming up next season, JNT was initially resistant to them appearing in the anniversary story - The Five Doctors - but Terrance Dicks insisted that you couldn't have an anniversary and not include them in some way - hence the lone Dalek cameo.
The new version of Resurrection of the Daleks, as it was renamed, was now to be directed by Matthew Robinson, and one of his first tasks was to find a new Davros. Wisher was now committed to work in Australia and was therefore no longer available. Robinson opted for an actor with a lot of radio experience, as he would be wearing a restrictive mask. This was Terry Molloy.
The change of story title can be put down to the titles of the previous two Davros / Dalek stories - Genesis and Destiny, lending them a sort of Biblical feel.
This story is also a direct sequel to Destiny of the Daleks. That story featured a war between the Daleks and the robotic Movellans, and had ended with Davros being taken back to Earth to stand trial, frozen in a cryogenic chamber. Resurrection is set some 90 years later, with Davros now imprisoned on a space-station, refrozen, and the war with the Movellans has taken a turn for the worse as far as the Daleks are concerned. They've created a virus which attacks Dalek systems. Like Destiny, the Daleks are motivated to come and rescue their creator in the hope that he can sort out their problems.
The seeds of future conflict are sown, as Davros doesn't trust the Daleks, and they don't trust him.

Saward himself has since stated that he threw far too much plot into this story. Not content with the Daleks wanting to resurrect their creator to help them find a cure for the Movellan virus, the Dalek Supreme has a secondary scheme - to deliberately ensnare the Doctor and his companions so that they can be duplicated. These replicants will then be sent to Gallifrey to assassinate the High Council of the Time Lords. Once the Doctor is captured, we get this season's fan-pleasing flashback sequence.
In Season 18, the Doctor had seen images of his companions, plus some recent foes, and in Season 19 the Cybermen had reviewed some of their past encounters with the Doctor. Season 20 had then featured a sequence where the Brigadier had his memories of the Doctor restored. In this story, the Doctor's memories are being recorded to feed into his replicant, so we see all of his companions and all of his previous incarnations. Well, nearly all, for Leela is missing. A simple production error, or part of the plot? Is the Doctor deliberately omitting her so that she won't be recognised by the replicant Doctor when he goes to Gallifrey, and she might notice that something's wrong with him? That's the fan theory to explain Leela's omission. Replicants are new for the Daleks though they have been seen to employ others in the past. We have seen Robomen, a killer robot Doctor, human traitors and Ogrons all "working" for the Daleks. Yet another part of the Dalek Supreme's scheme is to have replicants of key world leaders, to undermine governments and so make it easier for them to take over the Earth. The Doctor points out that the replicants are unstable and will be easily spotted - which is probably Saward's dig at the calibre of world leaders we had in 1984.

On top of the Dalek schemes we have a lot of subsidiary characters and sub-plots to cram in.
There's Commander Lytton, a sadistic mercenary, who leads the human Dalek troopers. It's never made clear if they are all replicants like Stien. Lytton likes to dress as a police officer when he's in contemporary London, for that's where the Daleks have hidden samples of the Movellan gas. These are kept in a warehouse in Shad Thames, though the script originally called for Wapping, which in the opposite side of the Thames. Quite why the Daleks should consider the heart of a major city to be a good place to hide these, we don't know - for they are found fairly quickly and a bomb disposal team from the army is called in.
The days when police officers were always presented in a positive light in British films and on TV were long gone. You'll recall Barry Letts getting into trouble for having an Auton disguise itself as a policeman - because it might stop children approaching the police for help. Since the 1970's, however, TV crime drama had begun showing the police in a more negative light - with even the good guys resorting to rule breaking to defeat the villains (in series like The Sweeney and Target). Showing a uniformed policeman gunning down innocent bystanders was no longer shocking.

Neither was it shocking to see this iteration of the Doctor point a gun at someone's head. Since he arrived, we've seen the Fifth Doctor wield a weapon on a few occasions. Of all the photographs taken on set for Earthshock, they selected one of the Doctor brandishing a gun for the cover of its novelisation. The Doctor only refrains from killing Davros because he gets distracted by a commotion outside the laboratory. No Doctor prior to this could be imagined carrying out an execution-style killing (and this incarnation is often accused of being a bit "wet").
One other thing which this story had to do was to write out the character of Tegan. Janet Fielding had been planing to make this her last season, and when she learned that Davison was bowing out as well she requested that Tegan leave before the end of the season (otherwise her departure would be overshadowed by that of the star). As it was Mark Strickson had also decided to leave, unhappy that his character was somewhat redundant after some initial promise. The departures of the three regulars would therefore be spread over three consecutive stories.
last, but by no means least, two of the characters in this story have the same names as characters from earlier Dalek stories - suggesting that Saward had done his homework looking back at old episodes.
We have Styles, who's a medic here, named after the diplomat from Day of the Daleks, and Galloway, a Dalek slave worker, named after the devious Marine Space Corps officer in Death to the Daleks. And Les Grantham's character, Kiston, sounds like a conflation of Kirksen and Karlton from The Daleks' Master Plan.
Next time: the Master finally gets cut down to size. There are arrivals and departures, and everyone gets hot under the collar, first on a volcanic island, then on a volcanic planet...