Story 287: Resolution

In which archaeologists discover a long buried threat, deep beneath the city of Sheffield. It is New Year's Day 2019, and Lin and Mitch have found the skeleton of a man dating back to pre-Norman times in an excavation below the Victorian City Hall. There is a leather satchel amongst his belongings. Ultra-violet light causes the contents of the bag to come to life and a large tentacled creature emerges and conceals itself in the darkened chamber.

At the same moment, across the globe, a number of people stationed in remote areas are shocked to find that a hidden object they have been guarding has suddenly vanished.

The TARDIS materialises beside the excavation and the Doctor and her friends learn of what has happened. Lin and Mitch describe the creature they glimpsed, but it has now disappeared.

The archaeologists depart, Lin declining any celebrations with Mitch. He secretly carries a torch for her.

The reason for her wishing to be alone becomes apparent once she gets back home - as the creature has attached itself to her back and is controlling her mind.

It is a Dalek - one of the special reconnaissance Daleks which paved the way for invasions of other worlds. This one had come to Earth in the 9th Century. After a fierce battle, a combined force eventually defeated it. Its casing was destroyed whilst it was hacked into pieces - each part buried separately in a remote location across the planet. Custodians were established to watch over the pieces over the generations, to ensure the creature remained dead and buried. The Custodian carrying the piece in Yorkshire had been murdered on his way to its burial site, so no protection was ever set up.

Exposure to UV light has reactivated the piece, and it had the power to teleport its other parts to it - reconstituting itself. It now plans to create a new casing for itself and complete its mission - to bring a Dalek invasion force to Earth.

As yet, the Doctor is unaware of all this until she identifies some DNA found at the excavation - and Mitch then gets in touch to warn that Lin has disappeared after acting strangely. 

Graham, Ryan have taken the opportunity to go home, and both are unsettled by the appearance of Ryan's estranged father, Aaron. He had failed to show up for Grace's funeral. He is in Sheffield trying to make money from a new microwave oven.

On learning of the Dalek and Lin's disappearance, the Doctor comes for her friends, and Aaron finds himself caught up in events.

He and Mitch and taken in the TARDIS to a remote farm after tracing Lin's movements. Under the Dalek's influence, she has raided a top security government compound where alien technology was stored - including Dalek components.

The creature intends to build its new casing at this remote site using whatever materials it can find.

The Doctor challenges it, but it escapes. It has, however, released Lin now that it has created its new shell.

The army attempt to  stop the creature, but it has considerable weaponry and quickly deals with them.

It becomes clear that the Dalek is making for CCHQ - the government's spy centre which has advanced communications technology. It is going to broadcast its presence into deep space to attract the attention of its invasion forces.

The TARDIS arrives, and the Doctor has a plan to stop it. This involves using Aaron's microwave device to destroy the new casing.

This works, but the creature escapes and latches onto Ryan's father. Having taken to the TARDIS with him, it is sucked out into space on the edge of a supernova. Ryan saves his father, and the pair later agree to try to reconcile - whilst Mitch and Lin will celebrate the New Year together after all.

Resolution was written by Chris Chibnall, and was first broadcast on January 1st 2020.

As well as a move away from Saturday evening broadcasts, Chibnall had also decided to bring the now traditional Christmas Special to an end - arguing that ratings for these had been falling, and it was impossible to come up with festive trappings for inclusion that hadn't already been used before.

This was Chibnall's first story to feature a returning monster, and he goes for the Daleks. 

However, he  tries to do something different with them and comes up with a new type of Dalek - the Reconnaissance Scout - which offers a greater level of threat. Deprived of its casing, it resorts to using scrap metal to come up with an interesting new design - though one which can only ever be a one-off due to the context. (He will use the basic design again, but this will grow naturally out of this story as it will be a sequel of sorts).

Ryan and Yaz have been woefully under-developed through Series 11, with Graham rightly dominating as the stronger character, but here we get some development for Ryan as his absentee father is introduced. Unfortunately, his inclusion tends to get in the way of what might be an exciting Special - especially the sequence when the action just stops whilst they have a heart-to-heart conversation.

Had this been worked differently into the narrative, it would have come across better.

It's a story that is not without its problems. We have a gay character introduced just to be quickly killed off - a nasty example of the "bury your gays" trope. He volunteers his sexuality in a quite unrealistic manner, and seems to have been included purely as a diversity tick-box exercise.

We're supposed to believe that after the upturn in alien invasions of recent years, UNIT has been suspended for budgetary reasons. Chibnall doesn't want them being used as a quick fix for the Dalek problem, but a cleverer way of keeping them out of the episode would have been more satisfying.

Something that really stood out for me on first viewing was the idea of archaeologists working on New Year's Day. Sorry - but real archaeologists would be in the pub like everyone else.

Three guest artists feature. As Lin we have Charlotte Ritchie. An extra on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, she has appeared in Siblings, Call the Midwife, Grantchester and the hugely popular Ghosts.

Mitch is Nikesh Patel. He is currently appearing in the BBC sitcom Starstruck.

Playing Ryan's dad Aaron is Daniel Adegboyega. Film roles for him include appearances in the Bond movie Skyfall and Transformers: The Last Knight.

Overall, a refreshing take on the Daleks, in Chibnall's best story up until this point. With the underwhelming series finale only a couple of weeks previously, this story is seen by most fans as the more satisfying series conclusion.

Things you might like to know:

• This isn't the first time a Dalek story has been broadcast on New Year's Day. DMP 8: Volcano and the opening instalment of Day of the Daleks made their debut on 1st January.
• This story marks the first use of a director from the Moffat era - Wayne Yip. As well as helming some Moffat episodes, he had also directed episodes of spin-off Class.
• As well as her acting roles, Charlotte Ritchie was also a member of a pop-classical group called All Angels.
• This Dalek was designed to be purely robotic - remote controlled with no human operator.
• A thing which doesn't make sense (1): the corpse of the man carrying the Dalek piece is found in 2019 in exactly the same position as when he was murdered - despite the fact that he was left lying beside a road. In the unlikely event that the corpse would have been left unmolested beside this route, there would have been animal predation, or passers-by would have looked for valuables and disturbed it. Someone would at least have wanted to look in the satchel. Apparently it wasn't disturbed at all by the Victorian sewer builders. And who killed him, and why, anyway?
• A thing which doesn't make sense (2): the notion that a creature hacked to bits 1100 years ago can come back to life thanks to a bit of UV light, and magically teleport its hidden bits across thousands of miles then put itself back together again, all without any form of technological assistance.
• And what made the Custodians think that the hacked up mutant might have posed an on-going threat in the first place?
• Lin wishes that it was the body of a king which they had excavated - mentioning Alfred the Great. This was inspired by the recent finding of the remains of King Richard III, found beneath a Leicester carpark. She ought to have known that Alfred was interred at Hyde Abbey in Winchester.
• To conceal the inclusion of the Dalek, Nick Briggs was uncredited in Radio Times, and the Dalek itself was codenamed "Kevin" in documentation.
• The real GCHQ jokingly posted that it was running as normal after this episode aired.