As he is sped toward his trial on Skaro, Davros is locked up in solitary confinement by his Daleks. But he’s not quite alone. He’s appalled to see the Daleks employing slave laborers – especially ones who don’t seem to live petrified in fear by their masters – and then there’s the other voice he hears. A woman, claiming to be a Thal, somehow gets into his cell undetected, using some sort of stealth suit that renders her invisible to the Daleks’ sensors (and therefore to Davros’ as well). She tries to make Davros realize that his “children” no longer need him and consider him not only disposable, but a threat. But even more terrifyingly, she begins talking to Davros about what is necessary for his redemption, giving him a way to destroy the Daleks before they destroy him. But has she just given a loaded weapon to precisely the wrong person?
written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by David DarlingtonCast: Terry Molloy (Davros), Miranda Raison (Lareen), Sean Connolly (Alydon / Guz), Gregg Newton (Computer / Raz), Nicholas Briggs (Daleks)
Timeline: shortly after the TV story Revelation Of The Daleks and before the audio story Terror Firma and the TV story Remembrance Of The Daleks
LogBook entry & review by Earl Green
Review: Devised and produced exclusively for the BBC’s Doctor Who: Davros box set of TV and audio stories featurig that character, The Davros Mission is a standalone Big Finish production, with tendrils reaching into both their I, Davros and Dalek Empire series featuring those characters without the Doctor’s presence. There’s no indication that it will be released separately, so it’s exclusive to the DVD of Davros audio stories included with that set. For the second time in Big Finish’s nearly ten years of doing Doctor Who audio drama, we have yet another story trying to fill in the blanks between two TV stories in which Davros miraculously went from being a condemned prisoner to the new Emperor of the Daleks. But does this one make any more sense?
Well, yes and no. We’re given a kinda-sorta explanation for Davros’ rise to power, but that really happens in the closing moments of the story. The meat of the story is Davros’ repeated encounters with a Thal, who professes to be a psychoanalyst, trying to use the heightened circumstances of his imminent extermination to convince Davros to turn to good. Now…yeah, this means that the listener will spend the entire running time of the story shaking his or her head and saying “This isn’t going to work”, so go ahead and get ready. Davros’ mindset is even more immutable than that of the Doctor himself, so slipping new stories into Davros’ timeline just isn’t quite as thrilling. Indeed, even the Big Finish audio stories have been hit-and-miss in that regard.
Interestingly, for continuity buffs, the Thal analyst seems to be reporting to Alydon (the Thal leader from 1963’s TV story The Daleks, and disturbingly for those who are adept at picturing these stories in their mind’s eye, we get Davros lifted bodily out of his Dalek-like life support chair and suspended in mid-air. But things begin and end more or less where you’d expect them to. Still, it’s an interesting experiment for a product that seems to embrace the Big Finish audios to an unprecedented degree; other documentaries and elements of the Davros box set seem to be saying that the audio stories are as official as TV episodes – a really bold move, and one that’s sure to leave some fans’ blood pressure rising. It’ll be interesting to see if something like this box set, and The Davros Mission, happens again in he future.
Additional Note: Even though this title is categorized as one of the I, Davros audio dramas, it was technically not released as such. It was simply the easiest way to categorize it for the purposes of this site.