After the most popular story of Season 24, we get the most popular of Season 25, and some would argue the best of all the McCoy stories.
It tries to tie in with the earliest history of the series, but in doing so it creates problems.
The story is set in the Coal Hill district of Shoreditch in 1963, a short time after the events of An Unearthly Child. The Doctor has left the Hand of Omega there, secreted at a local funeral parlour, in the expectation that the Daleks will come looking for it, use it without fully understanding it, and destroy themselves.
Two of the settings are the junkyard and the school, both if which featured in the opening episode back on 23rd November 1963.
Ace even finds a book about the French Revolution in the science lab.
Trouble is, none of this really matches with that original episode, or with the first Dalek story.
We never saw the school exterior in An Unearthly Child, but what we did see was pupils wearing their own clothes. Here we only see pupils in school uniform, with one wearing jeans - which I don't think would be acceptable in 1963.
The junkyard is nothing of the sort - clearly recorded in a builders merchant yard which is something different entirely. The gates, as is well known, have the wrong spelling of "Foreman" on them. Apparently they were originally painted with the right spelling, but this was changed. (You'll note that this looks nothing like the yard we saw in Attack of the Cybermen either).
The biggest issue is with the idea that the Doctor took the Hand of Omega with him when he and Susan left Gallifrey - and he was already plotting the destruction of the Daleks even then.
It is pretty clear from The Daleks that the Doctor hasn't encountered the creatures before, and thinks he has seen their extinction by the end of that story anyway.
We were always led to believe, also, that he was nothing special amongst Time Lords when he elected to steal the TARDIS and run away from home with his granddaughter. That he had access to an immensely powerful stellar manipulator device, which no-one seemed to ask for back in any of his subsequent encounters with his own people, just doesn't make sense. It might fit with Cartmel's alleged "masterplan" but bears little relation to anything we saw previously. Both The War Games and The Deadly Assassin would have played out differently if he was some sort of Super Time Lord who could be trusted with such powerful devices.
What exactly is Davros' plan? The Hand detonates suns, providing an immense power source. That's fine, but I'm pretty sure the Gallifreyans never detonated their own sun, in their own backyard.
And just having that power doesn't necessarily lead to mastery over time travel. I'm sure there was a bit more to it than that. Has he done all the other things which Omega and Rassilon had set up back home which would harness that power?
It might have been a smarter idea if Davros had perhaps tested the device somewhere safer first. Why not detonate the Earth's sun as a test, and get rid of the human race - and the Doctor into the bargain?
The book Ace finds cannot be the one Barbara gave to Susan, as that was with her in the TARDIS when it left the junkyard. It doesn't look the same anyway. Neither does the room Ace finds it in, if this is supposed to be Ian Chesterton's science lab.
The other issue everyone notices is the TV scene. We hear an announcer state that a new science fiction series is about to begin, but it's 5.15pm and it's broad daylight outside - impossible for November.
Also, Ace has only just had breakfast and we get a lot more subsequent scenes - again in daylight.
You don't have to look too closely to see modern 1980's buildings in the background of a few shots.
It is evident that the Dalek shuttle had landed in the playground before - we see the scorch marks on the ground. But none of the neighbours seem to have noticed this. When we see it land, it blows in all the classroom windows. The janitor must have done a very good job of repairing all the windows the last time the shuttle landed.
Why does the Doctor get everyone to make the hazardous slide down the rope into the shuttle when they could simply have walked down the stairs?
The transmat has a Dalek on guard, but it takes ages to show itself when the Doctor and Ace first go down to the basement.
Why pick the school as a base in the first place, when it's during term time and therefore in constant use Monday to Friday?
Finally, the Daleks wobble badly when out of location, and whilst we can imagine a blind vicar failing to realise that the Hand is floating by itself, it's hard to believe no-one else noticed this as it is transported through public thoroughfares between the funeral parlour and the cemetery, and all before Group Captain Gilmore has the district evacuated.
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