Dark Prince Of Skaro.

One of the truly unexpected( For me anyway.) delights of Saturday nights Doctor Who episode the Magician's Apprentice was the return of Davros played brilliantly by the remarkable Julian Bleach. He is just such a presence on screen that when he appears I find the scene moves towards him and away from anyone sharing the same space. Buried under layers of damaged , ravaged and scared Kaled tissue he is never more menacing than when speaking gently with that hissing almost reptilian sibilant speech form he issues as the genius creator of the Daleks. For me it is a mix of Michael Fassbender and Boris Karloff with just a trace of fallen angel. The way he taunted and mocked the Doctor who seemed actually rattled by just being in the same room. Just wonderful.
               I have seen him before in other things. He has been in Torchwood as well as The Sarah Jane Adventures as well as playing the magnetic Niccolo Machiavelli in the television series The Borgias. He also performed in the live stage production of Shock Headed Peter. A musical written and performed by Martin Jaques and the genius Tiger Lillies( honestly, treat yourself.) he played "that great long-legged scissor man" and it was as though he stepped from a nightmare "snip,snip.".
               He is that rare thing; a sensitive intuitive actor capable of playing soft spoken monsters.
               Which we all know are the worst of all.
               The return of Skaro to the Doctor who canon is something to be celebrated and relished. Despite its destruction so long ago now in Remembrance Of The Daleks.The destruction of whole worlds seems like such an overcooked epic first response in so many stories.It seems as much a cliche  now as alien worlds seemingly having only one climate or region where life exists. Since Alderann went boom in 1977 it seems the expected thing in science fiction movies or television series which is surely one of the reasons it be avoided as a source of tension.
                 Skaro.
                 Even the name evokes a sense of dark mystery.  In my imagination I have roamed its ghostly petrified forests beneath the light of its moons Falkus and Omega Mysterium. I have scoured its fetid and dangerous swamps in search of clean drinking water with only the map from an old Dalek annual to guide me.
Its vast wastelands teeming with all manner of mutant life and genetically altered botanical atrocities.
                 And whatever walks the wastelands of Skaro walks there alone.