DW: Dalek and Jubilee compared
May. 20th, 2008 07:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakBecause several of the New Who scriptwriters were recruited among writers who had written in the Whoverse before, albeit in different media, you get the occasional case where a New Who episode is based on an earlier Old Who novel or audio. Such was the case for the third season two-parter Human Nature/Family of Blood, adapted by Paul Cornell from his own novel Human Nature, and such was the case for the first season episode Dalek, loosely adapted by Rob Shearman from his audioplay Jubilee. Since I've now heard Jubilee, I found it intriguing to compare the two.
The biggest change Shearman had to take into account when adapting a Sixth Doctor story for a Ninth Doctor episode was the biggest change New Who in general made to the Whoverse: the Time War. In fact, Dalek depends so much on the Time War context and both the Doctor and the titular Dalek being the last of their respective races (at that point in New Who) that what I was most curious about was how the original story had done without this, as obviously in the Sixth Doctor's era, Daleks and Time Lords are both thriving and about in masses in the universe. Well, the answer is that Jubilee creates its own epic context by the fact that was the story unfolds, we realize the Doctor and Evelyn have unwittingly created an alternate timeline in which they find themselves. In that timeline, after they helped Britain defeat the Daleks' attempted invasion in 1903, the result was Orwellian to the nth degree. Armed with the leftovers of Dalek technology, the imperialist Britain of 1903 went on to defeat all other nations on earth. Instead of two world wars, there was just one. The Doctor himself was imprisoned, like the last Dalek, while publically declared to be a (dead) hero. (There are two versions of the Doctor in this story - ordinary Six, who arrives with Evelyn in this timeline gone wrong, and the one who lived for a century in the Tower, crippled and tortured.) Britain is now a fascist state, with the Doctor and the Daleks both useful propaganda tools ("the two depend on each other, the Doctor and the Daleks", one of the villains declares helpfully).
There is some dark humour in the depiction of Alt!Britain - the very start of the audio, for example, is a movie trailer for a film about a Doctor versus Daleks story from the Alt!verse, in which the Doctor is an action hero, Evelyn, who in reality is a 55 years old historian, is his Bond girl, and the whole thing is obviously a parody of Indiana Jones, down to the line "Daleks - I hate those guys". But by and large, the depiction of Alt!Britain is unrelentingly black. I wasn't kidding with the Orwellian. In fact, I'd say 1984 is slightly more optimistic, because it does have sympathetic people in it, whereas the only sympathetic human in this story is Evelyn. Which I would say is one of its weaknesses. In Dalek, Adam or Henry Van Statten's female assistant might not be heroes but they're not just sadists, lunatics or fascist tools. One of the points of Jubilee is that the human society created by the victory of the Daleks is every bit as bad as the Daleks themselves, in fact, as the Doctor declares disgustedly near the end, worse, because Daleks were created by Davros to behave in a certain way, whereas humans do have a choice. But I think the idea that you don't need mutated pepperpots to create a horrible fascist society turning on itself because there is nothing else to conquer would have come across if there had been at least one or two human characters a bit more layered.
Of course, the character who gets to be layered is the Dalek, in both versions of the story. If you've already watched Dalek, the big surprise at the end of the first part, where the unnamed prisoner who gets tortured is revealed as a Dalek once the Doctor is locked up with him/it isn't one - the set up is nearly identical - but in both cases it's very effective storytelling. In Jubilee, the Dalek hasn't survived the Time War, but it has been imprisoned and tortured for a century. In both cases, the lack of orders, being wired for conquest in a situation where this is pointless and sheer Dalekian stubbornness have made it shut down until the Doctor shows up. In both cases, it is, however, the companion which truly triggers the change for the Dalek. Since Evelyn as opposed to Rose already knows what a Dalek is, there is no touching (and hence no genetic transfer, that very loved New Who plot device), but the fact she interacts with it despite her knowledge and feels compassion starts to make a difference. Given that the whole "Dalek is affected by Rose" storyline was somewhat controversial among Old School fans back when the episode was broadcast, I found it interesting that this precedent apparantly went by without such controversy, possibly because the audios don't nearly have the same audience. At any rate, the Dalek finding itself unable to kill Evelyn later on because it respects her is something you either buy or you don't, as with the Dalek unable to kill Rose in Dalek; I found it credible given the whole hundred-years-imprisonment scenario, plus the Dalek's realisation that this human society is indeed the ideal Dalek society, and the fact it turned onto itself means ultimate conquest spells doom for the Daleks as well.
In both Jubilee and Dalek, we get a three-fold confrontation between Doctor, Dalek and Companion, because the Doctor doesn't want to believe the Dalek could change, and then once the Dalek draws the ultimate conclusion from change by setting up its own death, is struck by this. This is where the tv version scores higher, because Six while having a long bad backstory with the Daleks isn't as desperate as post-Time War Nine, and so Evelyn asking "what makes you different?" doesn't have the same impact as Rose's "what have you become, Doctor?" The big emotional confrontation, as far as the character of the Doctor is concerned, isn't that one in the audio, it's an earlier one, between the Dalek and the Sixth Doctor who has been imprisoned for the same number of years, losing his legs and his sanity along the way, and that one is every bit as affecting as the Nine and Dalek "you'd make a good Dalek" scene from Dalek. Great vocal performance by Colin Baker.
Jubilee is mainly Evelyn's story, though, whereas I'd say Dalek is both Rose's and the Doctor's story. It's also chock-full of meta. Evelyn is a historian, and the way history is filtered through narration, can be used as propaganda or to justify one's own actions is a main theme. Early on, when Evelyn and the Doctor find out this version of Britain has Daleks not just as bogeymen but as cartoon villains in films, toys and decorations, I thought it was just a cheap pot calling kettle black shot, because after all the BBC profits considerably from its Dalek merchandise, but then when Evelyn expresses disgust the Doctor says something in reply which makes it something else. He points out to her that her society did the same thing - making an old enemy into ridiculous one dimensional caricatures - to the Nazis. (Of course, Terry Nation explicitly created the Daleks in 1963, with their racial purity doctrine, as a sci-fi echo of the Nazis, and in early Dalek stories such as "Invasion of the Daleks", and even later ones like "Genesis of the Daleks", the WWII parallels are very pointed.) Which makes it a swipe at what I usually call "operetta Nazis" (the ones in the Indiana Jones films are excellent examples) instead; as the Doctor says, villains you can safely hate without ever taking them as real as yourself. The irony is that in Jubilee, humans, down to crying "exterminate, exterminate" in the climactic scene where the last Dalek is supposed to be executed in public, are of course just those kind of one-dimensional fascists.
By contrast, by the time New Who and Dalek come along, the whole Nazi/WWII allegory thing had run itself to the ground. Instead, you have the evil and soullessness of unlimited capitalism (always a tried and true DW villain) as embodied via Henry Van Statten, and the Dalek itself more harking back to WWI than WWII with the "two traumatized war veterans meet" constellation it makes with the Doctor. In Jubilee, the fear factor comes from how low the human race can sink (the New Who episode who captures some of that is Last of the Time Lords, actually, with the revelation that the last humans from Malcassario are the Toclafane); in Dalek, while Henry Van Statten's greed is one of the evils of the episode, we also get the reintroduction of the Daleks played for all it's worth, as the sequence where the Dalek frees itself and proceeds to take out most of van Statten's guards is still, imo as always, the best and most efficient tv depiction of a Dalek as genuinenly frightening and a threat. Of course, it very much depends on the visual medium; I can't imagine an audio sequence having the same effect. (In fact, the Dalek in Jubilee does cause some deaths, but they don't work the same way.)
The Dalek in Dalek commits suicide; the one in Jubilee can't do that but asks Evelyn to kill it, which she does. I can see why they didn't do that with Rose; season 1 was rather heavy on Rose as a symbol of innocence and the means to help the Doctor heal emotionally. If this had been the episode where she kills for the first time, even as a means to a suicide, this would not have worked quite in that way. On the other hand, it feels right for Evelyn, who is both an adult, far older than Rose was and, while very much emotionally affected by everything, better equipped to handle something like this.
Jubilee ends with the Doctor and Evelyn encountering Rochester, who in Alt!Britain (now restored to its usual self) was the President/dictator, and in Real!verse apparantly has had a heart attack. As the Doctor revives him, Rochester recognizes him. In the later conversation between the Doctor and Evelyn, they wonder how many others will remember what they were in the Alt!verse and what they're capable of, and there is a strong hint the Doctor remembers what his 100-years-locked-in-the-Tower self experienced, at least partly, which leaves us on a dark note. Dalek ends on a somewhat more optimistic note - you get the impression Nine made step towards healing with Rose's help, while also having shown for the first time (in her presence, that is) that this Time War trauma goes pretty deep - though not for Mr. Van Statten, who ends up mindwiped as many of his previous victims did. (Rochester is somewhat better off, being alive again when he died in the Alt!verse.) Speaking of Henry Van Statten, one gets the impression Rob Shearman does not care too much for the colonial cousins. Jubilee might have fascist Brits instead of capitalist Americans as its human villains, but it also has a sequence where Rochester talks to the "Prime Minister" of the US in what is clearly intended as a parody of the Blair/Bush relationship, with the American ruler using the phrase "standing shoulder to shoulder" which, given that this audio hails from 2003, must have been directly from the headlines, and being exactly the kind of servile poodle which the public perception sees Blair as having been to Bush.
Lastly, and now a personal prejudice: while Dalek is one of my favourite first season of New Who episodes, it also has one of my least favourite lines, to wit: the Dalek describing Rose as "the woman you love" to the Doctor. I liked the relationship between them, but not when it was forced down my throat by such clunkers. (Adam's "everyone can see you two belong together" an episode later also falls into that category.) Jubilee is blessedly free of this, while also being strong on the Doctor/Evelyn friendship; the scene where Evelyn finds Incarcerated!Six is incredibly touching, especially since blustery Six in his normal state is more prone to spar with her, and here it's clear he's broken beyond repair.
The biggest change Shearman had to take into account when adapting a Sixth Doctor story for a Ninth Doctor episode was the biggest change New Who in general made to the Whoverse: the Time War. In fact, Dalek depends so much on the Time War context and both the Doctor and the titular Dalek being the last of their respective races (at that point in New Who) that what I was most curious about was how the original story had done without this, as obviously in the Sixth Doctor's era, Daleks and Time Lords are both thriving and about in masses in the universe. Well, the answer is that Jubilee creates its own epic context by the fact that was the story unfolds, we realize the Doctor and Evelyn have unwittingly created an alternate timeline in which they find themselves. In that timeline, after they helped Britain defeat the Daleks' attempted invasion in 1903, the result was Orwellian to the nth degree. Armed with the leftovers of Dalek technology, the imperialist Britain of 1903 went on to defeat all other nations on earth. Instead of two world wars, there was just one. The Doctor himself was imprisoned, like the last Dalek, while publically declared to be a (dead) hero. (There are two versions of the Doctor in this story - ordinary Six, who arrives with Evelyn in this timeline gone wrong, and the one who lived for a century in the Tower, crippled and tortured.) Britain is now a fascist state, with the Doctor and the Daleks both useful propaganda tools ("the two depend on each other, the Doctor and the Daleks", one of the villains declares helpfully).
There is some dark humour in the depiction of Alt!Britain - the very start of the audio, for example, is a movie trailer for a film about a Doctor versus Daleks story from the Alt!verse, in which the Doctor is an action hero, Evelyn, who in reality is a 55 years old historian, is his Bond girl, and the whole thing is obviously a parody of Indiana Jones, down to the line "Daleks - I hate those guys". But by and large, the depiction of Alt!Britain is unrelentingly black. I wasn't kidding with the Orwellian. In fact, I'd say 1984 is slightly more optimistic, because it does have sympathetic people in it, whereas the only sympathetic human in this story is Evelyn. Which I would say is one of its weaknesses. In Dalek, Adam or Henry Van Statten's female assistant might not be heroes but they're not just sadists, lunatics or fascist tools. One of the points of Jubilee is that the human society created by the victory of the Daleks is every bit as bad as the Daleks themselves, in fact, as the Doctor declares disgustedly near the end, worse, because Daleks were created by Davros to behave in a certain way, whereas humans do have a choice. But I think the idea that you don't need mutated pepperpots to create a horrible fascist society turning on itself because there is nothing else to conquer would have come across if there had been at least one or two human characters a bit more layered.
Of course, the character who gets to be layered is the Dalek, in both versions of the story. If you've already watched Dalek, the big surprise at the end of the first part, where the unnamed prisoner who gets tortured is revealed as a Dalek once the Doctor is locked up with him/it isn't one - the set up is nearly identical - but in both cases it's very effective storytelling. In Jubilee, the Dalek hasn't survived the Time War, but it has been imprisoned and tortured for a century. In both cases, the lack of orders, being wired for conquest in a situation where this is pointless and sheer Dalekian stubbornness have made it shut down until the Doctor shows up. In both cases, it is, however, the companion which truly triggers the change for the Dalek. Since Evelyn as opposed to Rose already knows what a Dalek is, there is no touching (and hence no genetic transfer, that very loved New Who plot device), but the fact she interacts with it despite her knowledge and feels compassion starts to make a difference. Given that the whole "Dalek is affected by Rose" storyline was somewhat controversial among Old School fans back when the episode was broadcast, I found it interesting that this precedent apparantly went by without such controversy, possibly because the audios don't nearly have the same audience. At any rate, the Dalek finding itself unable to kill Evelyn later on because it respects her is something you either buy or you don't, as with the Dalek unable to kill Rose in Dalek; I found it credible given the whole hundred-years-imprisonment scenario, plus the Dalek's realisation that this human society is indeed the ideal Dalek society, and the fact it turned onto itself means ultimate conquest spells doom for the Daleks as well.
In both Jubilee and Dalek, we get a three-fold confrontation between Doctor, Dalek and Companion, because the Doctor doesn't want to believe the Dalek could change, and then once the Dalek draws the ultimate conclusion from change by setting up its own death, is struck by this. This is where the tv version scores higher, because Six while having a long bad backstory with the Daleks isn't as desperate as post-Time War Nine, and so Evelyn asking "what makes you different?" doesn't have the same impact as Rose's "what have you become, Doctor?" The big emotional confrontation, as far as the character of the Doctor is concerned, isn't that one in the audio, it's an earlier one, between the Dalek and the Sixth Doctor who has been imprisoned for the same number of years, losing his legs and his sanity along the way, and that one is every bit as affecting as the Nine and Dalek "you'd make a good Dalek" scene from Dalek. Great vocal performance by Colin Baker.
Jubilee is mainly Evelyn's story, though, whereas I'd say Dalek is both Rose's and the Doctor's story. It's also chock-full of meta. Evelyn is a historian, and the way history is filtered through narration, can be used as propaganda or to justify one's own actions is a main theme. Early on, when Evelyn and the Doctor find out this version of Britain has Daleks not just as bogeymen but as cartoon villains in films, toys and decorations, I thought it was just a cheap pot calling kettle black shot, because after all the BBC profits considerably from its Dalek merchandise, but then when Evelyn expresses disgust the Doctor says something in reply which makes it something else. He points out to her that her society did the same thing - making an old enemy into ridiculous one dimensional caricatures - to the Nazis. (Of course, Terry Nation explicitly created the Daleks in 1963, with their racial purity doctrine, as a sci-fi echo of the Nazis, and in early Dalek stories such as "Invasion of the Daleks", and even later ones like "Genesis of the Daleks", the WWII parallels are very pointed.) Which makes it a swipe at what I usually call "operetta Nazis" (the ones in the Indiana Jones films are excellent examples) instead; as the Doctor says, villains you can safely hate without ever taking them as real as yourself. The irony is that in Jubilee, humans, down to crying "exterminate, exterminate" in the climactic scene where the last Dalek is supposed to be executed in public, are of course just those kind of one-dimensional fascists.
By contrast, by the time New Who and Dalek come along, the whole Nazi/WWII allegory thing had run itself to the ground. Instead, you have the evil and soullessness of unlimited capitalism (always a tried and true DW villain) as embodied via Henry Van Statten, and the Dalek itself more harking back to WWI than WWII with the "two traumatized war veterans meet" constellation it makes with the Doctor. In Jubilee, the fear factor comes from how low the human race can sink (the New Who episode who captures some of that is Last of the Time Lords, actually, with the revelation that the last humans from Malcassario are the Toclafane); in Dalek, while Henry Van Statten's greed is one of the evils of the episode, we also get the reintroduction of the Daleks played for all it's worth, as the sequence where the Dalek frees itself and proceeds to take out most of van Statten's guards is still, imo as always, the best and most efficient tv depiction of a Dalek as genuinenly frightening and a threat. Of course, it very much depends on the visual medium; I can't imagine an audio sequence having the same effect. (In fact, the Dalek in Jubilee does cause some deaths, but they don't work the same way.)
The Dalek in Dalek commits suicide; the one in Jubilee can't do that but asks Evelyn to kill it, which she does. I can see why they didn't do that with Rose; season 1 was rather heavy on Rose as a symbol of innocence and the means to help the Doctor heal emotionally. If this had been the episode where she kills for the first time, even as a means to a suicide, this would not have worked quite in that way. On the other hand, it feels right for Evelyn, who is both an adult, far older than Rose was and, while very much emotionally affected by everything, better equipped to handle something like this.
Jubilee ends with the Doctor and Evelyn encountering Rochester, who in Alt!Britain (now restored to its usual self) was the President/dictator, and in Real!verse apparantly has had a heart attack. As the Doctor revives him, Rochester recognizes him. In the later conversation between the Doctor and Evelyn, they wonder how many others will remember what they were in the Alt!verse and what they're capable of, and there is a strong hint the Doctor remembers what his 100-years-locked-in-the-Tower self experienced, at least partly, which leaves us on a dark note. Dalek ends on a somewhat more optimistic note - you get the impression Nine made step towards healing with Rose's help, while also having shown for the first time (in her presence, that is) that this Time War trauma goes pretty deep - though not for Mr. Van Statten, who ends up mindwiped as many of his previous victims did. (Rochester is somewhat better off, being alive again when he died in the Alt!verse.) Speaking of Henry Van Statten, one gets the impression Rob Shearman does not care too much for the colonial cousins. Jubilee might have fascist Brits instead of capitalist Americans as its human villains, but it also has a sequence where Rochester talks to the "Prime Minister" of the US in what is clearly intended as a parody of the Blair/Bush relationship, with the American ruler using the phrase "standing shoulder to shoulder" which, given that this audio hails from 2003, must have been directly from the headlines, and being exactly the kind of servile poodle which the public perception sees Blair as having been to Bush.
Lastly, and now a personal prejudice: while Dalek is one of my favourite first season of New Who episodes, it also has one of my least favourite lines, to wit: the Dalek describing Rose as "the woman you love" to the Doctor. I liked the relationship between them, but not when it was forced down my throat by such clunkers. (Adam's "everyone can see you two belong together" an episode later also falls into that category.) Jubilee is blessedly free of this, while also being strong on the Doctor/Evelyn friendship; the scene where Evelyn finds Incarcerated!Six is incredibly touching, especially since blustery Six in his normal state is more prone to spar with her, and here it's clear he's broken beyond repair.
