Doctor Who: The Daleks

EXTERMINATE!!!

Whenever I think about Doctor Who, I think about several things, but one of the things that flashes through my head is the Daleks. They're the oldest reoccurring villain on this show. This should be obvious because... This is the second serial and here they are!  These creatures are rather silly, but they appear everywhere whenever Doctor Who is mentioned or thought of.  Daleks are so part of British popular culture that they sort of just... pop up. I mean, check out this clip from the sitcom Coupling:

He's in the middle of the rant and Daleks just... Pop up!

It gets worse though. The other day, I was sitting in the front room while my mom was playing on her Kindle Fire. All seemed fine with the world. Really. There was nothing to worry about. She mentioned getting into Pinterest and I'm not interested in that at all, so I went back to playing a game on my IPhone. Then I heard this...

Yeah. She was watching that. My mother doesn't watch Doctor Who. In fact, she had no idea what was going on. She told me with a straight face that she thought she was watching a relaxation video, but she couldn't imagine how that voice could be seen as relaxing! I couldn't decide whether to laugh at the hilarity or cry because it was one more thing she didn't understand about me and my generation purely through her own free will. We used to watch all our television shows together and now... she doesn't even know what a Dalek is. What is this world coming to?

So, I'm actually really psyched to see the episode that started it all. I could barely wait to watch it, but I decided to limit myself to one serial a day just to keep me from going totally Whovian on anyone I talked to. That's what this blog is for.

So... Tally ho!

Three and a half hours later...

Wow... this was... not what I expected. Not at all...

I feel somewhat divided, mostly curious and a good part disappointed.

On one hand, the serial began pretty spectacularly. You started right where you left off in the first serial. They'd just landed on another planet. Ian and Barbara are quite put out that they can't... return to their home in their time. In fact, they kind of feel like they've been kidnapped and you can really sympathize with them. It doesn't help that the Doctor basically says point blank that there's no way to take them home, but his excuses seem paltry and half the time he sounds like he's making fun of them.

And then they decide to eat!

Now, I enjoyed the eating scene. I always like seeing alien foods in movies because to me, that's really the part where you can get the most creative or you can get down right boring. Doctor Who wasn't very exciting, but it was nice. They eat something like candy bars that are produced by a machine and you can program the flavors of the bar to be whatever you like. So Ian and Barbara had bacon-and-egg-flavored. Ian complained the bacon was too salty and the Doctor was properly affronted. It's a nice little scene and I actually watched it twice because it made me giggle.

They did have a nice explanation, but unlike the New Series's technobabble, the First Doctor simply explained that flavors are a different mixture of things like smell or texture. It's easy to take basic components and mix them together to get what you want. Nice, sensible, and didn't utterly sound like bullshit. I'm beginning to like this Doctor.

From there, they explore the planet a little and it seems dead with no organic matter anywhere. Certainly no human-like life forms. Then Susan gets a scare and they go back to the TARDIS. Everyone wants to leave, but the Doctor spotted a city and he wants to go explore it. For the second time, I get something I like about this original Doctor. He pretends that they're taking off, fakes breaking something, and forces them to go explore the city anyhow. This is shown to be a completely selfish, careless, and stupid action later.

BRILLIANT!!!

Why? Because he isn't perfect and he isn't always right. He's just like every other Superior Old Man. He wants his way and he's not afraid to resort to base trickery to do it!

I love it!

No bullshit technobabble, imperfect Doctor, and weird food stuffs! Do I get a pony too?

Well, from there, they explore the city and get captured by the Daleks. Now, here's the part where things get interesting. I know the Daleks are evil, but the main characters don't. They see overly-cautious aliens living in a world that seems to have been ravaged by some sort of bomb that destroyed all organic matter. So, they see disaster victims who barely survived.

They talk to the Daleks who immediately lock them up in a cell and question our troop of intergalactic explorers and you learn that the Daleks were at war with the Thals. The Thals set off this bomb that destroyed all the organic living things and petrified the forest the Doctor and company landed in. The Daleks warn that the Thals are out there and are probably severely deformed due to the radiation.

Well, the Doctor and company realize they're suffering from radiation poisoning and Susan is allowed (by the Daleks) to go get medicine. During this time, the Daleks debate on whether or not to allow their prisoners to use the medicine. This is the first time the viewer realizes something's up with the Daleks.

Eventually, the all get fixed up and escape their cell by throwing mud on a Dalek's eye-stalk and disabling it. Then they pull the Dalek out of the armor, and Ian climbs in. During this time, Susan (while getting the anti-radiation medicine), made contact with the second-in-command of the thals who originally left them the medicine for radiation. The Daleks use her connection to the Thals to stage and ambush. During their escape, Ian and the gang help save the Thals and they go back to the petrified forest where the TARDIS is located.

The Doctor and the gang are ready to go, but remember that piece the Doctor claimed was broken earlier? Well, Ian had it on him when they were captured by the Daleks who confiscated it. So the rest of the serial is about Ian and Barbara convincing the Thals to help them go get it back and make war with the Daleks. Meanwhile, the Daleks have discovered they need radiation, and so they plan to use their reactors to irradiate the whole planet.

In the end all's well that ends well and it's a pretty good serial that explores the nature of war, bravery, brains versus brawn and all that fun stuff.

Point one that confused me: the Dalek's weapons don't kill. They merely seem to injure, paralyze, or... I'm not even sure. All I can think is that maybe the Daleks upgrade later.

Point two that confused me: I know about the Daleks. I know Davros created them from the Kaleds to be a sort-of ultimate race. However, the Thals seemed to think that the Daleks were once superior creatures descended from the Dals, who specialized in science and (I think) art. I know retcons are frequent in Doctor Who, but this just made me sad. I liked the idea presented in this story. It seems a shame to just... flush it all away in later serials.

Point three that confused me: the Doctor was not a pacifist! I have to admit, after watching a bunch of David Tenant episodes where the Doctor is all self righteously indignant, I really loved this. He encourages Ian and Barbara to convince the Thals to take up arms. He helps to plan the fight with the Daleks as much as anyone else and even uses his TARDIS key to short out the electricity which allows the Daleks to move about in their pepper-pot armor. I loved this Doctor and his methods. Yes, he was against winning the war at all costs, but he felt he had a point to prove that cleverness could overpower whatever the Daleks threw at him and he did it. And in the end when it seemed all the Daleks were dead? He didn't mope about destroying a species. He gave the Thals some advice and moved on with Ian and Barbara, pretty as you please.

That. Was. Awesome.

I'm liking this Doctor more and more.

Point four that confused me: In the end, all the Daleks are dead. Do they even explain how any of them survived? Will we find out? I need to know!

So, I liked this episode. Yes, once again, the picture and imagining was a little... wonky. Some of the special affects were rather silly (whenever the Daleks shoot their lasers, the colors reverse for a moment shortly after a sound is made. Some of the actors collapsed before the color-reversal thing, but the effects were good for the early 1960s. The sound also went wonky in a few places for me, but I could easily overlook that. 

I just had fun with this episode. It was long which meant you got a longer review, but I enjoyed it immensely. Yeah, there are slow points (like exploring the caves under the city), but all-in-all it kept me entertained and that's all you can ask for. 

Next serial: The Edge of Destruction! Only two episodes so it should be a nice, quick adventure! I hope I get more things I like about this Doctor...