Doctor Who 31/5.03 Victory of the Daleks
Apr. 18th, 2010 06:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakIn which Mark Gattis does a run by the mill adventure, and selenak feels like shrugging, save for a few moments.
Seriously, there's nothing actively objectionable in this, but it felt very bland to me. And it needn't; as I said re: the trailer last week, the idea of Churchill & Co. and the Daleks teaming up to win the war has a fantastic moral dilemma potential for the Doctor and Amy. Which was given away in favour of the old moral dilemma for the Doctor, Daleks versus humans on Earth, and sorry, but RTD already did that with Nine in PotW, and I don't have to see it again, especially since there was no serious question which the Doctor would choose, and no dilemma for Amy. But then, this decision scene wasn't exactly the point of the episode. Apparantly Gatiss wanted to do a fun Blitz era adventure, complete with crusty, yet lovable Churchill and V sign. Which, fair enough, but you know - it could have been more. My favourite WWII era Doctor Who story isn't The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances. It's The Curse of Fenric, which takes place in the English countryside, far away from London, with ridiculous special effects (oh, those wannabe vampires!), but aside from being a fantastic hurt/comfort story for Ace and Seven, it also manages to never to indulge the viewer. One of the Macguffins of the story is that all the minor villains are repelled by faith - not necessarily religious faith, faith in a person or a cause (this story has sympathetic Communist Russians, whose belief in the revolution does just nicely, thanks) will do. The local Vicar, a sympathetic character, encounters several of the wannabe vampires. Your faith started to falter when the bombs fell, they say. He denies indignantly that the Blitz made him doubt. No, they say, not the German bombs. You just felt stronger then. But you started to doubt when the Allied bombs fell on German cities instead, and keep falling. It's such a quiet yet devastating moment, and one of the many reasons why Curse of Fenric rocks so much.
Now, Churchill was a complete product of the Empire. There could have been some great exploration of his ambiguities. After winning over the Nazis, would he have used Dalek tech to ensure there would be no independence of India? Just think of his opinion on Gandhi ("the naked fakir"). And would he have shared the Dalek tech with that profound humanitarian and ally, Stalin? What results then?
But no. What we get is cigars and the Union Jack. How very predictable. Blah.
Enough grumbling about what could have been. As to what was: the most interesting to come out of this episode is that even aside of yet another spotting of the crack, there is a mystery about Amy. Why does she not remember the Daleks? We've seen her as a child, so she can't be an android with artificial memories herself. Could she be from a parallel Earth? (Who says Pete's world is the only one? There is at the very least also the one from Inferno, well, there used to be, since Three saw it blow itself up...) I'm very intrigued.
Speaking of androids, I found the Professor very touching, especially as a BSG fan, but him defeating his Dalek programming via the power of love was a bit much on the nose, and the Doctor just handwaving the existence of a ticking time bomb 1940s Earth, trusting the Professor will keep it in check via love, is that that easy to believe, either. (Otoh, look at what Nine did with the tech in Adam's head in my least favourite New Who episode, The Long Game.) The scenes involving him were probably my favourites of the ep. Which, alas, is not saying much, because: blah.
Oh. Eleven's Dalek freak-out, confirming the Doctor's Dalek issues are alive and well. Yes, but we've seen it before. Repeatedly. And honestly, while I've really enjoyed Matt Smith's performance as the Doctor so far, that mixture of different and familiar as a new Doctor should be, both Eccleston's and Tennant's Dalek freak-outs were more impressive; that particular scene was the first time where the actor's youth showed, and not ina good way, whereas in the previous two eps I had no trouble believing him as a millennium-old man.
Come on, Gattis & Moff. You can do better. Next week?
selenak feels like shrugging, save for a few moments. Seriously, there's nothing actively objectionable in this, but it felt very bland to me. And it needn't; as I said re: the trailer last week, the idea of Churchill & Co. and the Daleks teaming up to win the war has a fantastic moral dilemma potential for the Doctor and Amy. Which was given away in favour of the old moral dilemma for the Doctor, Daleks versus humans on Earth, and sorry, but RTD already did that with Nine in PotW, and I don't have to see it again, especially since there was no serious question which the Doctor would choose, and no dilemma for Amy. But then, this decision scene wasn't exactly the point of the episode. Apparantly Gatiss wanted to do a fun Blitz era adventure, complete with crusty, yet lovable Churchill and V sign. Which, fair enough, but you know - it could have been more. My favourite WWII era Doctor Who story isn't The Empty Child/ The Doctor Dances. It's The Curse of Fenric, which takes place in the English countryside, far away from London, with ridiculous special effects (oh, those wannabe vampires!), but aside from being a fantastic hurt/comfort story for Ace and Seven, it also manages to never to indulge the viewer. One of the Macguffins of the story is that all the minor villains are repelled by faith - not necessarily religious faith, faith in a person or a cause (this story has sympathetic Communist Russians, whose belief in the revolution does just nicely, thanks) will do. The local Vicar, a sympathetic character, encounters several of the wannabe vampires. Your faith started to falter when the bombs fell, they say. He denies indignantly that the Blitz made him doubt. No, they say, not the German bombs. You just felt stronger then. But you started to doubt when the Allied bombs fell on German cities instead, and keep falling. It's such a quiet yet devastating moment, and one of the many reasons why Curse of Fenric rocks so much.
Now, Churchill was a complete product of the Empire. There could have been some great exploration of his ambiguities. After winning over the Nazis, would he have used Dalek tech to ensure there would be no independence of India? Just think of his opinion on Gandhi ("the naked fakir"). And would he have shared the Dalek tech with that profound humanitarian and ally, Stalin? What results then?
But no. What we get is cigars and the Union Jack. How very predictable. Blah.
Enough grumbling about what could have been. As to what was: the most interesting to come out of this episode is that even aside of yet another spotting of the crack, there is a mystery about Amy. Why does she not remember the Daleks? We've seen her as a child, so she can't be an android with artificial memories herself. Could she be from a parallel Earth? (Who says Pete's world is the only one? There is at the very least also the one from Inferno, well, there used to be, since Three saw it blow itself up...) I'm very intrigued.
Speaking of androids, I found the Professor very touching, especially as a BSG fan, but him defeating his Dalek programming via the power of love was a bit much on the nose, and the Doctor just handwaving the existence of a ticking time bomb 1940s Earth, trusting the Professor will keep it in check via love, is that that easy to believe, either. (Otoh, look at what Nine did with the tech in Adam's head in my least favourite New Who episode, The Long Game.) The scenes involving him were probably my favourites of the ep. Which, alas, is not saying much, because: blah.
Oh. Eleven's Dalek freak-out, confirming the Doctor's Dalek issues are alive and well. Yes, but we've seen it before. Repeatedly. And honestly, while I've really enjoyed Matt Smith's performance as the Doctor so far, that mixture of different and familiar as a new Doctor should be, both Eccleston's and Tennant's Dalek freak-outs were more impressive; that particular scene was the first time where the actor's youth showed, and not ina good way, whereas in the previous two eps I had no trouble believing him as a millennium-old man.
Come on, Gattis & Moff. You can do better. Next week?
