You've got to feel sorry for David Goodison. He's given someone else's legendary part(Davros), a poorly fitted second hand mask and none existant script to perform; which is a sequel to the greatest ever Doctor Who story. It's a wonder he turned up to perform the part in the first place.
For any Who production team to bring back the Daleks is a big deal, but for Producer Graham Williams and Script editor Douglas Adams it proved the height of foolishness.
Following the much praised Hinchcliff era Doctor Who went through some major changes. The BBC reduced the budget for the series and rulled that horror and violence was to be removed. This left new boy Williams going down the route of introducing more comedy elements to the mix. He hired comedy sci fi wunderkind Douglas Adams as script editor at the end of the Key to Time season. Adams who's Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy was just being commisioned for radio as a series just at this time and it meant that his time was… more »

You've got to feel sorry for David Goodison. He's given someone else's legendary part(Davros), a poorly fitted second hand mask and none existant script to perform; which is a sequel to the greatest ever Doctor Who story. It's a wonder he turned up to perform the part in the first place.
For any Who production team to bring back the Daleks is a big deal, but for Producer Graham Williams and Script editor Douglas Adams it proved the height of foolishness.
Following the much praised Hinchcliff era Doctor Who went through some major changes. The BBC reduced the budget for the series and rulled that horror and violence was to be removed. This left new boy Williams going down the route of introducing more comedy elements to the mix. He hired comedy sci fi wunderkind Douglas Adams as script editor at the end of the Key to Time season. Adams who's Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy was just being commisioned for radio as a series just at this time and it meant that his time was devided between the two jobs. And he was to discover that writing comedy and not drama was his strong suit.

The idea to bringing the Daleks back to kick off the 79 season must of seemed sensible to draw an audience to the series. Williams had cast Lalla Ward for the now vacant part of Romanna after Mary Tamm departed the series. Ward had previously played Princess Astra in the previous story and so the change was explained as a regeneration of the Time lady.
All of this might of been good but for the fact that Dalek creator Terry Nation's script arrived as only a outline and story breakdown. Which would require Adams and Williams to virtually creat the script themselves.
As they and we were to find out Daleks and comedy do not mix. First they wrote out K9 the Doctors robotic pet dog(he could wipe out the daleks alone), then included a comedy regeneration scene for Romana.
For fans and regular viewers alike the previous appearance of the Doctors oldest enermies had been in Genesis of the Daleks(widely regarded as Who's greatest ever story) some four years previously.
It must of come as a hell of a shock to come face to face with this less than comedic farce of a story.
In almost everyway this four parter was a pantomime of a story(a fore runner of JNT's late 80's disaster's),trying to match the most evil creatures in the universe against a load of reject disco diva's in tight jumpsuits, and with mop heads for hair-the Movellans.

Tom Baker was going through one of his-I will adlib my own dialogue faze's, and obviously thought mocking the chief series enermies would add to the story; which of course it didn't.
And the production designer obviously thought his meagre budget would be better spent on buying old car and truck parts to scatter about the set.
It's really difficult to find anything of value within this story and it's only really of interest because it contains the Daleks; and the introduction of a new companion Romana mark II. Lalla Ward herself really has very little in the way of good dialogue or even of usefullness within the story. Romana's capture and escape merely kill time in an uninteresting and deeply flawed run around story.

It only show's the vast casasm of devide in quality that the show had developed in only four years since the previous Dalek encounter the classic Genesis of the Daleks. I know which one I'd really want to watch.