*A few spoilers.*
This isn’t a serial that sticks with me very well. Even though it has some interesting stuff going on, I’ve found my attention wandering whenever I’ve watched it. But I tend to have a hard time with series 22 in general—the double-length episodes just weren’t a good fit for classic Who. Nowadays, I love hour-long Who episodes, but the original series does much better with more bite-sized installments.
On the planet Necros, the wealthy are placed in cryogenic sleep until the Great Healer can find cures for their ailments. It sounds classist and almost too good to be true, and naturally, it is. The Sixth Doctor and Peri come to visit a scientist friend of the Doctor’s, but they’re soon drawn into the mystery at the heart of Necros.
As you can tell from the title of the serial, this is a Dalek story, so that’s of course a major element that looms large here. They’re up to something beyond just the usual extermination, which makes for a nice change of pace. Daleks can definitely have diminishing returns as villains, so it’s good whenever they shake things up a little.
But while they’re the major baddies, they’re not all the Doctor and Peri have to contend with in this serial. There’s also some conspiracy involving an unscrupulous businesswoman, an assassination, and a mysterious statue carved in tribute to the Doctor.
Throw in some old-fashioned body horror and a DJ whose role is to keep the atmosphere light in the dystopian setting, and there’s actually a lot of appealing stuff here. Under other circumstances, I’d probably like it a lot. But when we’re dealing with my least-favorite classic Doctor and the wonky pacing of the series 22 supersized episodes, the serial just makes less of an impression on me than it otherwise would.
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