The Evil of the Daleks episode 7 discussion:
P: Yay, the end of the Daleks!
MS: No! Please tell me the Daleks did not goooo!!!
P: I think I saw one of them moving at the end, but I don’t know.
MS: Please tell me that he was.
K: I’m pretty sure there are more Dalek stories.
MS: Yes!!
H: Well, it’s the final end for the Daleks in the TARDIS project anyway.
MS: No! Take it back!
H: I’m afraid so. Five years before the next Dalek story.
MS: The Daleks will still prevail! And then be destroyed again. I like Daleks. They’re awesome.
H: Well, we almost got an actual Dalek TV series. But it didn’t end up happening. That’s why this story killed them off.
M: Instead we got steam punk.
K: They were going to use steam to warp the human brains to Daleks.
M: Victorians and steam and cyborgs and top hats and madness.
P: Alchemy.
R: Always the steam with you people.
P: It’s because he’s full of hot air.
Sp: That was spectacular. In the true spectacle meaning of spectacular. They blew up all the things.
R: A giant one note Busby Berkley number.
MS: That episode in the end was just basically them blowing up their toys. What if they had a note at then end that said “thank you for watching us blow up our toys.”
K: More “models” than “toys.”
H: No, toys. They used actual windup Daleks in the end. In fact there’s a lot of the footage that we saw was from a behind the scenes effects shot also available on the “Lost in Time” DVD.
K: Nice that we got real footage for all of that. I’d scene that footage before and was looking forward to seeing it in context.
Sp: So what did they bother with the demonstration of lead into gold?
R: Because the Daleks are douchebots. They’re not content to just destroy somebody. They have to crush his soul first.
Sp: So rather than just spray him with the Dalek mist they had to trick him over it.
H: The mist wasn’t actually ready yet. They just had in a little capsule.
R: They could have just said “hey, come here a sec” and forced him through the door.
P: Or send him at gun point.
R: But they’d rather torture him. And then the Doctor’s hair got Dalekised. That shot was just a little murky. All I could see was his hair going “widdly widdly widdly”
H: We were talking last week about how this copy of the recon seems to be really dark. I don’t know why.
R: I was worried they were going to keep dragging through the doorway one at a time. “JAMIE, SOMEONE OUT HERE SAYS THAT SCOTTSMAN ARE ALL LAZY SHEEP SHAGGERS.”
Sp: Poor Waterfield. Poor Kemel.
P: He didn’t deserve to die.
A: You kind of knew he was going to because the relationship wasn’t going to work out.
K: Yep.
R: But really, out wrestled by a drip in a top hat?
A: Yeah, what was up with that?
Sp: The Dalek factor includes super strength?
H: Possibly Kemel didn’t want to use his full strength against his former master?
Sp: Kemel rolled a one.
H: Yeah, that’s what it comes down to.
H: I have some technical points. This is the first Doctor Who story to have credited visual effects guys. It’s one of the first times that visual effects were actually done by the BBC visual effects department as opposed to the BBC scenery department.
A: So the effects are actually getting special.
E: Yay!
P: They’ll go down in the 80’s, don’t worry.
H: Another interesting bit of trivia is that this is the first time the Doctor has returned to a planet that he’s visited, in a separate story, other than Earth. It’s his second time on Skaro.
K: And not the last (time on Skaro).
Sp: Ewwy gooey Dalek brain effects.
K: Yeah, surprised they had the footage for that too.
R: MY FRUIT SALAD IS CURDLED. I CANNOT BRAIN.
Cz: I thought this episode was awesome.
P: I liked the Emperor. He was true to his name. I think that the black guards were scary enough although I was kind of hoping one would go through the archway.
E: I was waiting for that to happen and it didn’t. I was very sad.
Sp: They had to keep the guys color coded for the audience.
H: Actually, probably.
E: It was fun seeing him get blown up anyway.
<short discussion of Dalek racism>
A: Dizzy Daleks. That is all that needs to be said.
H: Fair enough.
Sp: You know that actually kind of creeps me out, now that I’ve had a moment to think about it, because several episodes ago when the human factor was introduced into the Dalek it made them rather childlike. So, the Doctor was basically leading a rebellion of children into the Emperors waiting gun muzzles.
H: And they sort of succeeded as well as destroying themselves. But yes. It’s pretty disturbing.
K: If it means stopping the Daleks the Doctor pretty much does whatever he needs to do. I think it’s consistent with most of the previous Dalek stories, and definitely the later ones.
P: That point of view kind of reminds me of the Star Trek episode involving Hugh, where a childlike Borg is introduced as a weapon.
K: It’s the same plot. Star Trek stole from Doctor Who.
H: The entire Borg is lifted from the Cybermen in a lot of ways. So, final thoughts?
E: Wow. That’s pretty much my thought on the entire episode. I was not expecting that much exploding.
A: That was one of the better Dalek story lines. No jungles. It only went on for seven episodes, not thirteen. I really enjoyed this one.
MS: In the city I think since there was like a jungle outside, I think the Daleks just blasted everything to make a place for a city.
K: It was basically the same city from the very first Dalek story.
MS: It was kind of a city.
H: Do you have any final thoughts about the episode itself?
MS: Yeah. Okay, so it was a very good episode. I especially liked where the Doctor switched the thing out with the Daleks one and you could see a murmur and it switched with the human minds like good. It’s good mixed with awesome and mixed with explosions.
H: Okay.
MS: You know I was kind of expecting to see if lots of explosions, but what was going on I was pretty sure that there would be explosions. Daleks like explosions. <devil horn sign>
P: I liked this story arc and I thought it ended very well. It’s funny to think of this as “the end of the Daleks” but I swear at the end one of those Daleks was still moving.
MS: We already talked about this.
R: Don’t worry, there’s other awesome bad guys.
P: I think this is probably the only race the Doctor can get away with “sending children into harms way.” It’s funny to think what would happen if he succeeded in converting all of the Daleks into humans what the story after would be. It was transform a lot of things. But of course, they’d probably be wiped out by the Cybermen.
R: Or a disease from a dirty telephone.
Sp: This episode was very good to come in on after missing like four of them.
R: Yeah, they wrapped up a lot of plot damn quick.
Sp: The flute thing must have been really hard to act over.
K: The recorder?
Sp: Yeah. Sure. I imagined the actor playing Waterfield having to take several takes.
H: Alas, no. Several takes? What do you think they are, made of money?
K: All their money was spent on buying Dalek toys, don’t you know.
R: “Take care of my daughter, won’t you? When I… cack it?”
Sp: She is familiar with how doors work, yes?
<laughter>
A: I bet every new companion gets an airlock safety lesson now.
Sp: In the event of an emergency your nearest airlock may be behind you. Or on the wings. Two near the console. In the event of a water landing, K9 can be used as a flotation device.
P: Yes, he does the dog paddle.
R: Waterfield did have one really good line in this episode. “Good life to save.” That actually reminded me a lot of the most recent incarnations of the Doctor. The kind of writing that they have. It was nice, short, to the point, and it really spoke to the character and the situation. Unlike say, Maxtible. That was a damn fine hat though.
K: This was a fun story. A bit more scrambling around that I’d think was needed. And in this episode it bothered me a bit that the human-factor Daleks were all “why?” to the black Daleks but fairly ready to obey the Doctor with a relatively minimal “Because blah” without further detail.
H: To be fair, the black Dalek refused to give them any reasons. To obey to obey, while the Doctor was “because this is going on.”
K: But it’s one thing thing to obey with a simple reason to walk down a hall. It’s another to shoot someone.
R: So, you’re saying according to D&D the Daleks should have gotten another Will save?
K: Something like that. It just seemed a lot to just start diving into danger and shooting each other.
H: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. This is my favorite Dalek story. It’s complex yet understandable. It covers the past, the present, and the future. It’s just a fantastic Doctor Who story and I dearly wish we had more of it. I’m very glad that all of you seemed to enjoy it as much as I do. And hey, and of season four everybody! Two more seasons to go!
MS: Dang!
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