What happened?
The Doctor and Martha are transported to Depression-era New York, with construction of the Empire State Building almost finished. Investigating the disappearances of people, they discover that the Daleks have been taking humans and conducting experiments upon them. The majority of people have been turned into these slave, pig-like creatures, but the masterplan is to mould human flesh with the material Dalek form to create new human-Dalek hybrid creatures to allow their race to adapt and survive.
Thoughts
The revived Doctor Who has, I’ve thought, made a good fist of trying to remain faithful to the staples of old Doctor Who whilst bringing fresh things to a new generation. Sometimes I think they’ve been too slavish to the old material, and for me the continued re-appearance of the Daleks as the most formidable foe for The Doctor remains problematic.
The show can’t really dispense with them easily, of course. This is the race that wiped out all of the Timelords and have cropped up in some form or other in every series. The trouble is that the Daleks aren’t the terrifying force for audiences like they used to be and, in truth, they look and sound ridiculous. The moment they are on-screen it’s like the whole show is being dragged backwards, being taken down several notches in both sophistication and credibility.
Like the part in this episode where the Daleks were scanning people to determine if they were intelligent or not. It might have played out like a tense selection process. Instead it was just a line of people reacting to having a toilet plunger waved in their faces.
And, yes, the ending to the episode was also ridiculous. With the human-Dalek hybrid stepping out of the robot shell to announce itself, full on to camera – I just could not take it seriously. Fundamentally I think I was supposed to take it all really seriously, like this was a shocking new development in Doctor Who but the whole thing just felt overcooked and lacking in dramatic effect.
The idea that Martha has developed strong feelings for The Doctor was also being casually pushed along here, too. This is certainly something we’re being told about rather than shown, this time with Tallulah the dancer saying it was obvious from the way Martha looked at him there was something there. Only Martha’s retort about how he didn’t notice her sold the current state of affairs between them for me.
The construction work on the Empire State Building, with the top spire piece needing urgent completion, being coated with distinctly Dalek-like panelling. Outlandish as it seems, I can’t help but wonder if the plan isn’t to make the entire building into one enormous Dalek-shell and thereby convert all the people inside the building into Dalek-human hybrids. It’ll surely be something on a large scale for the Daleks to achieve their goals of domination.
Maybe, in fact, the Empire State will serve as some kind of generator pulsing out something across great distances that achieves the same conversion effect to produce Dalek-human hybrids?
Anyway, this was definitely one of the weakest episodes I’ve seen. It’s a shame, really, because absurd as they are anything to do with Daleks ought to see Doctor Who firing on all cylinders at the top of its game. Maybe the second half of this two-parter will deliver the punch that was lacking here.
What was the best part?
Curiously, the introduction to Hooverville as The Doctor gave Martha a quick history lesson over the plight of Americans stricken with poverty was really good. I’d never known anything about this before so I found that rather interesting. In fact I’d rather have seen the episode remain there and deal with the forgotten people living in the shadow of the looming Empire State as that appeared to be far meatier subject matter.
What do I think will happen next?
As stated, the Daleks will have some kind of plan for perfecting their evolutionary process onto a wider scale which, surely, must involve the ‘renovations’ they are undertaking on the Empire State building. The Doctor will surely thwart their grand plan. However, the Daleks here are the last few remaining so I’d be very surprised of The Doctor beat and destroyed them here, effectively wiping them out of the universe (again!). So, on some level, perhaps in their evolved form, at least some of the Daleks should escape to fight another day.
The Doctor and Martha are transported to Depression-era New York, with construction of the Empire State Building almost finished. Investigating the disappearances of people, they discover that the Daleks have been taking humans and conducting experiments upon them. The majority of people have been turned into these slave, pig-like creatures, but the masterplan is to mould human flesh with the material Dalek form to create new human-Dalek hybrid creatures to allow their race to adapt and survive.
Thoughts
The revived Doctor Who has, I’ve thought, made a good fist of trying to remain faithful to the staples of old Doctor Who whilst bringing fresh things to a new generation. Sometimes I think they’ve been too slavish to the old material, and for me the continued re-appearance of the Daleks as the most formidable foe for The Doctor remains problematic.
The show can’t really dispense with them easily, of course. This is the race that wiped out all of the Timelords and have cropped up in some form or other in every series. The trouble is that the Daleks aren’t the terrifying force for audiences like they used to be and, in truth, they look and sound ridiculous. The moment they are on-screen it’s like the whole show is being dragged backwards, being taken down several notches in both sophistication and credibility.
Like the part in this episode where the Daleks were scanning people to determine if they were intelligent or not. It might have played out like a tense selection process. Instead it was just a line of people reacting to having a toilet plunger waved in their faces.
And, yes, the ending to the episode was also ridiculous. With the human-Dalek hybrid stepping out of the robot shell to announce itself, full on to camera – I just could not take it seriously. Fundamentally I think I was supposed to take it all really seriously, like this was a shocking new development in Doctor Who but the whole thing just felt overcooked and lacking in dramatic effect.
The idea that Martha has developed strong feelings for The Doctor was also being casually pushed along here, too. This is certainly something we’re being told about rather than shown, this time with Tallulah the dancer saying it was obvious from the way Martha looked at him there was something there. Only Martha’s retort about how he didn’t notice her sold the current state of affairs between them for me.
The construction work on the Empire State Building, with the top spire piece needing urgent completion, being coated with distinctly Dalek-like panelling. Outlandish as it seems, I can’t help but wonder if the plan isn’t to make the entire building into one enormous Dalek-shell and thereby convert all the people inside the building into Dalek-human hybrids. It’ll surely be something on a large scale for the Daleks to achieve their goals of domination.
Maybe, in fact, the Empire State will serve as some kind of generator pulsing out something across great distances that achieves the same conversion effect to produce Dalek-human hybrids?
Anyway, this was definitely one of the weakest episodes I’ve seen. It’s a shame, really, because absurd as they are anything to do with Daleks ought to see Doctor Who firing on all cylinders at the top of its game. Maybe the second half of this two-parter will deliver the punch that was lacking here.
What was the best part?
Curiously, the introduction to Hooverville as The Doctor gave Martha a quick history lesson over the plight of Americans stricken with poverty was really good. I’d never known anything about this before so I found that rather interesting. In fact I’d rather have seen the episode remain there and deal with the forgotten people living in the shadow of the looming Empire State as that appeared to be far meatier subject matter.
What do I think will happen next?
As stated, the Daleks will have some kind of plan for perfecting their evolutionary process onto a wider scale which, surely, must involve the ‘renovations’ they are undertaking on the Empire State building. The Doctor will surely thwart their grand plan. However, the Daleks here are the last few remaining so I’d be very surprised of The Doctor beat and destroyed them here, effectively wiping them out of the universe (again!). So, on some level, perhaps in their evolved form, at least some of the Daleks should escape to fight another day.
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