The Doctor Who New Year’s Day special holiday featured two new types of Daleks, who go to war with each other.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the Doctor who Special New Year Holiday, “Revolution of the Daleks”, which premiered on January 1 on BBC America.
Doctor whoSeason 12 ended in March 2020 with the Doctor being taken to a high security cosmic prison, and his three companions on Earth, unaware that the Time Lord would not be returning anytime soon. But even without the Doctor, Graham, Yaz and Ryan run into trouble on the New Year holiday special, “Revolution of the Daleks”, when their old acquaintance, Jack Robertson, leads a new project to deploy security drones across the Great Britain. However, they are not simple drones; they are based on the design of the Recon Dalek that attacked Earth in the 2019 holiday special, “Resolution”.
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Of course, these Daleks unsurprisingly turn on their creator and attack the world. But they are not the only new Daleks featured in this holiday special: “Revolution of the Daleks” debuts an even more lethal version of the classic Doctor who enemies, the Daleks of the Death Squad.
The Drone Daleks designed by Jack Robertson and his team are a sleek new black and silver model with streaks of light that resemble something out of Tron. But while they are designed to be nothing more than Roberts, Robertson’s chief scientist discovers alien DNA in the destroyed shell of the original Recon Dalek. He is then able to clone these cells and create his own Dalek, not knowing what the squid-like alien is really capable of.
Without the scientist’s knowledge, this Dalek is able to take control of some of Robertson’s company assets and turn a facility into a Dalek farm. As a result, thousands of these new Daleks are cloned; when they are finally transported to their robotic shells, the Drone Daleks are born – and they waste no time in attacking the world and killing as many humans as possible.
The situation looks hopeless. Fortunately, however, the Doctor returns to Earth with the help of Captain Jack Harkness. After reuniting with her companions, she devises a plan to defeat the new Daleks using what she describes as a nuclear option: send a signal through the Time Vortex that will be picked up by a special race of Daleks, the Death Squad, which she refers to as SAS Daleks.
The Daleks are scary creatures determined to wipe out anything in their path – but still, there is an entire squad known as the elite Death Squad. These Daleks look more like the traditional modern version of the monsters, just More efficient in extermination.
The Death Squad Dalek follows the signal and arrives on Earth these days to find the planet under attack from the cloned Daleks, who they see as impure. Therefore, the Dalek Death Squad makes its mission to destroy all Drone Daleks to eliminate this impurity. Even the original Recon Dalek, brought back to life by the Roberston scientist, is considered defective and therefore eliminated by the Death Squad.
The result is a total war between Daleks over Britain’s skies, which was eventually won by the Daleks Death Squad. And when this problem is finally resolved, all that remains for the Doctor is to arrest the Daleks of the Death Squad and send them into the Void.
These two new types of Daleks join the larger ranks of the classic Doctor Whthe monsters in a year that has already featured several new Daleks at the Time Lord Victorious crossover event. The Drone Daleks are destroyed, but the Death Squad Daleks are merely trapped in the Void – and they can always return to take revenge on the Doctor.
“Revolution of the Daleks” stars Jodie Whittaker, Bradley Walsh, Mandip Gill, Tosin Cole, John Barrowman, Chris Noth, Harriet Walter and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. The Doctor Who holiday special will air on BBC America on Friday, January 1, 2021 at 8:00 pm ET / PT.
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