"...this
technology has been falling to Earth |
for
centuries. The advancements I have made from |
alien
junk. You have no idea, Doctor..." |
PLOTLINE
Somewhere
in the United States of America, a solitary Dalek needs stimulation. Festering
on Earth without command from its superiors, it must seek help from the Doctor
to regain its true purpose.
Will
the Doctor become turncoat and help his greatest enemy?
EPISODE SIX REVIEW Spoilers
ahead
Here we are at Episode Six and
the big guns are finally brought to bear, the episode title demanding viewer
attention. This story features a Dalek but with hindsight I wondered if it really
could be called a Dalek story?
By way of a teaser, the Doctor and Rose
arrive back on Earth drawn by a distress signal and find themselves at gun-point
in a museum of alien artifacts. I initially found this worrying for a few seconds
because this is very familiar territory for a WHO fan;
but placing what I think was a Tom Baker era cyberman head ("An
old friend.... The stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit") among
the trophies was a nice touch. This moment set the tone for me: we do not get
a 'classic' Dalek tale -- which I would define in terms of depicting them as
a driven collective force -- but rather something that turns into a chamber piece
about two beings poisoned by hate.
One of the acid tests for this 21st century version
of DOCTOR WHO for me as a fan from the outset was: how will the Doctors greatest
foes be presented in the setting of what is very much a stylish revamping of
the format, taking it away from JNTs beloved LE coding? Will the iconic image
be abandoned on the altar of reinvention for a mass audience? Physically, this
is very much one of our old chums, but it's the little chap inside the travel
machine that's the issue here.
The solitary Dalek on offer is not presented
as a representative of a massive invading force. Rather, it's the lone survivor
of what we are told was the final "Time
War" between Gallifrey (Home planet of the Time Lords) and the Daleks. Like
the Japanese soldier left stranded for years on a desert island after WWII, it's
awaiting orders that will not come. In a way, the Dalek is worse off because
(as the Doctor announces with wild-eyed malice) its species is extinct by the
hand of the last surviving Time Lord standing right in front of it ("I
watched it happen! I made it happen!"):
in other words, when it really counted, the Doctor was a damn sight better at
genocide than the chained-up pepperpot now at his mercy!
We are introduced to the Dalek in what struck
me as a powerful tableau: it looks practical, utilitarian (no pretty primary
colours here), but in chains, imprisoned 54 floors under ground and tortured
by Van Statten, a super rich, powerful, ruthless American businessman (think
of a cross between Bill Gates and Donald Trump) whose fortune is based on retro-engineering
alien artifacts.
In another nice touch, its gaolers, having
failed to get it to talk, have opted to refer too the Dalek as a "metaltron" ,
which I think would have made for a more appropriate title for this episode because
this is not 'about' Daleks or even 'a' Dalek, but rather it is about something
which used to be a Dalek: something which has lost its reason for living (given
the extinction of its species) and then loses its racial identity after absorbing
Rose's DNA. At the end, all it has left is primal instinct: it wants to feel
the sun on its skin. Whereas the Doctor wants very much to blast it straight
to Hell...
I can easily see how this episode would
divide die-hard fans because it is neither fish nor fowl: it is no GENESIS
OF THE DALEKS (arguably the best Dalek story of all time), offering a
brisk step forward in the evolution of the realization of the classic baddie,
but nor does it suffer from plot-heavy flatulence (like THE
DALEK MASTERPLAN).
I enjoyed it primarily for the production values,
the speed with which the story was told (pace is not a strength associated with
classic British telly science fiction) and Eccleston's frankly hateful depiction
of the Doctor as an hysterical, gun-toting thug temporarily devoid of humanity,
reminiscent of the character as portrayed by Davison and Baker C. This is no
criticism of Eccleston, who does a great job here: when the Dalek says, "You would have made a good Dalek",
I had no problem in agreeing with it. The Dalek is not being sarcastic, it is
a sincere compliment from one antagonist to another. Eccleston's Doctor is very
much a loose cannon in this series, there are no Time Lords on the horizon primed
to step in if he gets too naughty (who thought we'd ever hear the Doctor ever
say - and mean it - "Lock and load!"). Given that this series is named
after the lead character and that the main antagonist is never at its best (the
Dalek in this episode wipes out many human beings but never seems to be a serious
foe worthy of the Doctors's mettle because it is psychologically and genetically
crippled by its very regeneration), perhaps the focus should have been less about
the Dalek coping with survivors guilt ("This is not life. This is sickness.")
and more about the Doctor coming to terms with what fighting a devastating war
has done to his soul. As Rose says, on being told that the Dalek is mutating, "It's
changing. What about you, Doctor? What are you changing into?" And when
the Doctor defines the Dalek as "The ultimate in racial cleansing",
I doubt I was alone in noting the irony implicit in the line.
I loved this episode. There were too many highpoints
to allow me to feel that I had been short-changed overall. The Dalek battles
with Van Statten's guards were realised with a technical flare worthy of STARGATE
SG1: when it was bracketed in a corridor (its heat shield represented
in MATRIX-style slow motion melting
bullets) and methodically switching its mid-section back and forth, systematically
blasting its enemies before and behind it, was a fans dream; this Dalek really
looked dangerous! So many elements worked for me that identifying flaws is mere
nit-picking in the face of the overall satisfaction I felt at having witnessed
a job well-done.
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