Doctor Who - Victory Of The Daleks

Written by Paul Cryer Sunday, 18 April 2010 19:54

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"Would you care for some tea?"

The Daleks. A creature interwoven into the fabric of Doctor Who as much as the Doctor and the TARDIS itself. We're always going to have Dalek stories (and Cyberman ones) but someone really needs to work out how to write them well. Since season 1s 'Dalek', we've had numerous ones already in the new show, parts of which have been extremely good, the overall sum of which have generally been below average, with each time the Daleks 'wiped from history' only to return, miraculously 5 or 6 episodes later. So, how can the new writing team handle the Doctors big bads?

About as well as RTDs team to be honest. This episode was all over the place.

It starts off with the Doctor arriving in the War Rooms beneath London in WW2, having been called at the end of The Beast Below by Winston Churchill. When he arrives he quickly finds out that Churchill has a new weapon to use against the Nazis, Ironsides, aka Daleks, invented by Professor Bracewell. After trying to convince Churchill they are evil aliens, without success and strangely, without Amy remembering anything about the fact they stole Earth, he finally gets the Daleks to admit what they are. However, this was their plan all along, they needed the arch enemy of the Daleks to activate a Progenitor device and spawn a new Dalek hord. We also find out that the Daleks created Bracewell, he is an android.

Up on the Dalek ship the Doctor tries to stop them threatening to self destruct the TARDIS and blow them all up. The Daleks though plan to have humans wipe themselves out and turn on all the lights in London for the Luftwaffe to easily target and bomb them. Back in the war rooms, Amy and Churchill decide to use a little Dalek technology against them and fit some Spitfires with gravity bubbles and lasers. As the new Dalek army is spawned, the Spitfires attack the Dalek saucer and destroy the beam keeping all the lights on, thus saving London.

The Daleks tell the Doctor that he has a choice now, destroy them or save the Earth, as Bracewell is a giant bomb. The Doctor of course has to save the Earth and the Daleks escape. Back on the planet, he and Amy manage to talk Bracewell into feeling he is a human, which deactivates the bomb. Earth saved! The Doctor and Amy leave, allowing Bracewell to stay behind. As the TARDIS dematerializes we see the crack that has been following the Doctor and Amy around in the wall behind where the TARDIS was.

The episode starts out really well too. The Daleks in WW2 is such a great concept, green allied Daleks, To Victory posters, awesome stuff! And they are back to their tricky best, allying with Churchill, knowing the Doctor will turn up sometime as they are friends and tricking him into activating the Progenitor. Oh and offering to make tea, possibly the best Dalek line ever!

We jump up to the Dalek ship, which is pretty cool I have to say. It has fallen through time and is pretty battered and bruised and the production team did a good job with the design. But then come the new look Daleks. Large, imposing, deeper voices, but the colours. What the hell! We've had multi-coloured Daleks before, but these look far too bright and also what is up with the back of them, just doesn't look right at all! I've seen so much criticism of the colour scheme, I wonder if the BBC will repaint them for the new episodes with them in. Black or White would look great on them, Silver/Grey too. Or at least make them look not quite so lego coloured bright. And what is up with the massive grey panel on the back, does it house Dalek USB ports or something?

Pretty cool space battle, I really can't complain about Spitfires with freeking lasers. However it seems, like other parts of the episode, that the whole build up to this was left on the cutting room floor. We've 10 minutes before the bombers arrive and in this time they come up with the idea, fit the devices to 3 planes and away they go.

The Daleks escape, victory! Please Stephen, when they come back, keep it to smaller numbers and more intimate battles with the Doctor, they are meant to be highly intelligent creatures, and scary, make it that way.

Now, the disarming of the bomb. What, were, they, thinking. The power of love saves the day! Please. Then, the Doctor leaves this bit of Dalek technology who is a massive bomb on Earth to look for his long lost and non-existent love!

I'm really interested to find out why Amy doesn't know about the Dalek though ... but less of the smacking us over the head with the crack in time/space ...

So, overall, not great. It felt like they had a good first section, a good second section then the Daleks escaped and they ran out of story. Not only that, it is never allowed to breath and develop the plots with everything happening way to quick, just as it starts to get good. The WW2 segment should have been played out much longer. I'd have loved to seen the Daleks really turn everyone into thinking the Doctor was mad before they revealed the ultimate plan. Then there were missing linking scenes I felt, like the previously mentioned retro fitting of the Spitfires with Dalek tech and the woman who lost her husband/lover that gets 1 line then we see her crying, was she meant to be a bigger part? It just really felt uneven and this is the second episode in a row to suffer pacing problems and in my opinion need an hour runtime like the first episode had.

Rating - 4/10 : Some inspired moments at the start and some other good moments but overall the sum of the its parts don't add up.

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