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PRODUCTION INFO

Name

Destination: Skaro

Children in Need

Special

First Transmitted

17 November 2023

Final Ratings

N/A

BOXSET RELEASE

DVD RELEASE

GALLERY

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Destination: Skaro

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Destination: Skaro

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CAST

Regular Cast

David Tennant (The Doctor), Mawaan Rizwan (Mr Castavillian), Julian Bleach (Davros), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of the Daleks/Nyder), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek Operator)

CREW

Written by	Russell T. Davies
Directed by	Jamie Donoghue
Produced by	Scott Handcock

SYPNOSIS

In this special Children in Need episode, The Doctor hurtles through space and time to a crucial point in The Daleks’ history.

PLOT

A pre-disfigured Davros and his assistant, Mr Castavillian, are building the first iteration of a mutant-housing Mark III Travel Machine. The assistant tries coming up with a new name for this machine, using different anagrams of Kaled, none of which Davros likes. Hearing a request from Nyder, Davros leaves. There is an inexplicable wheezing, groaning sound.

Suddenly, the TARDIS crashes into the room, smashing into a wall. The Fourteenth Doctor opens the door and says “Hello!”. He mentions that he regenerated from a “really brilliant woman” an hour ago and has somehow ended with an old face. He realises his violent landing has accidentally smashed off a part of the Machine, a multi-dextrous claw, and apologises. Then he sees the machine, and says in terror, “That’s a Dalek.” The assistant notes down this name approvingly. He notes that he was lucky that he wasn’t “exterminated” before realising that he must have accidentally travelled to the “genesis of the Daleks“. Hurriedly, he legs it back to the TARDIS, retrieves a plunger, and throws it to Castavillian. The Doctor runs back into the TARDIS and tells the assistant he was “Never here”. The TARDIS dematerialises. Panicking, the assistant sticks the plunger on to the machine in place of the claw.

NOTES

The title “Destination: Skaro” was only given by Russell T Davies on a post on his Instagram.

This is the first time an adult Davros is seen prior to his disfigurement in live action, as this time of his life had previously been heard in Big Finish Productions’ I, Davros audio dramas Davros, Purity and Corruption. He had previously been shown as a child in The Magician’s Apprentice and The Witch’s Familiar. Russell T Davies stated on Doctor Who: Unleashed that he did not want to depict Davros as he looked in the past to avoid associating a disfigured wheelchair user with evil.

According to Doctor Who: Unleashed, the special was filmed on David Tennant’s birthday a year after he had wrapped production on the 60th anniversary specials.

The view of Skaro from space closely resembles its appearance in The TV Movie

Daleks casings being created from polycarbide was established in Remembrance of the Daleks

One of the anagrams Castavillian proposes is “Klade”; the Klade, as seen in several BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novels such as Father Time, were often hinted at being the future evolutions of the Daleks.

The Doctor mentions the concept of canonicity as a concept similar to a timeline; many sources have also referenced canonicity in this way, such as the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Blue Angel establishing that the Time Lords have a Tower of Canonicity.

Davros mentions that the war caused the Kaleds to mutate.

Davros identifies the bonded polycarbide shell, multi-dextrous claw and ruby ray blaster as part of the Travel Machine’s arsenal.