The Power of the Daleks episode 5 discussion:
H: Let me start with a little quiz. How many Daleks does everybody think there actually were in this episode?
P: 5
A: I’m going to go with 8.
Cz: 4
Sp: 3
K: 4
E: 7?
P: Can I guess 3 more times?
H: No.
Sc: 4
R: That would be cheating! Prior knowledge.
H: Everybody who said 4 was correct. Did everybody enjoy the Dalek blown up pictures in the crowd scenes?
Cz: That’s what that was?
H: They were blown up pictures because there were only 4 working cases, the Daleks were incredibly expensive to build.
E: Oh, that’s cool.
R: Yeah, like 14p.
H: Surprisingly, more like 100 pounds.
SG: I keep picturing midgets.
H: Actually, some of the operators were quite large.
SG: I thought someone said at one point they hired ballerinas.
H: Terry Nation used the idea of ballerinas gliding across the floor as the image of the Daleks, but no ballerinas were actually used.
P: Well, that would make the Nut Cracker very interesting.
H: More like the Nut Zapper.
R: <Dalek voice> AS LONG AS I GET TO PLAY MOTHER GINGER.
Sp: I think they couldn’t afford those other 4 Daleks because they blew that budget on salt to go on all the scenery that Lesterson chewed!
H: I that the performance, given the…
Sp: Here’s the top, and here he is way, way over it.
K: Actually, he was supposed to be appear crazy and he was playing crazy. He was convincingly crazy.
H: There’s the whole decent into madness.
Sp: I didn’t really work for me.
H: It’s the performance that people who originally said that it was the center scintillating part of the story. And he’s not dead yet.
R: Oh, spoiler!
H: Oh, come on, it’s a Dalek story. He gotten taken to a hospital to be observed, or something to that effect.
R: Dalek singalongs are one of the most unimpressive things in the universe.
H: You didn’t enjoy Dalek Round #36?
Cz: They overused the echo effect.
A: They sound worse than a box of starving baby starlings.
H: That’s because they had to make two Dalek voices sound like 20 Dalek voices. So they had to make a tape loop.
Sp: It really worked for me. That was suitably intimidating.
P: They were using words besides exterminate. Annihilate!
H: And then of course “Daleks conquer and destroy! Daleks conquer and destroy!” I assume it was going round and round with the small gap after the fourth Dalek that tipped you off?
K: I remember there were only 4 in the Chase, and it was the same 4 in this. And the big tip off excuse that they were never going to have more than 4 move at a time on the colony.
Sp: I liked that the Daleks caught that they needed to hide all the extra Daleks.
H: They figured out that they made a mistake.
Sp: Only to see 3 at a time. And I liked the Doctor’s escape too. He’s playing around with water and then splashes it into the guard’s face.
K: He’s playing with the water and then plays the flute.
H: Yeah, he spends so much time trying to get it with the water, and then after he hears the note on Quinn’s cell he uses the flute.
K: Because he couldn’t hit the note with the water glass for HIS cell, but it was easy to hit the note with the recorder for the other cell without messing the water.
R: And the Doctor never lets the other person, certainly not some stranger, out of jail first if he can help it.
SG: And because then he wouldn’t have had the water to splash in the guy’s face.
Sp: Although the recorder in the face would hurt more.
P: Some recorders players are worse in the ear.
H: I still feel that having him not pull out the recorder and trying that first is a little bit of a padding issue.
K & R: We remember him playing with the recorder in jail last week.
H: No, we made a point last week that he’d likely try it. But I don’t think he actually pulled it out.
Sp: Anyway, he’s free and that’s all that… oh wait, he isn’t.
K: It’s the Cave of Skulls again! I wonder if they’ll think to take the recorder away this time?
R: Now Ook will control the Daleks. Ook will make fire!
H: Kal, actually. But it doesn’t matter.
Sp: So why did Braigan put a gun on the Dalek and had the Dalek shoot the governor instead of shooting the governor with his own gun?
H: Plausible deniability. He can later say that that Dalek killed the governor, not him.
SG: Hey, if you had the choice between shooting someone with a cool robot laser or a gun, which would you choose? It’s finesse. It’s what you do when you’re evil.
R: Honestly, I saw how much of an evilgasm the guy got from being able to use the Daleks. Oh, and I did have this moment in my mind when Lesterson flees the lab and the second Dalek comes out of the capsule and rolls over to the first one who’s been watching Lesterson, I expected the first Dalek to turn to the second one and say “I think he’s sees through the act.”
K: Me too!
P: I thought he was going to say “That one’s not a nutter.”
SG: “We will be stronger and twice as… useful.” I think that was probably the best Dalek dialog EVER. I don’t care what I missed.
H: “Humans are… different.”
E: “Why do humans kill other humans.”
R: Totally missed a teachable moment there. Brought to you buy the church of Jesus, of Latterday… “Dalek, exterminate!”
K: “Are you done with your liquid?”
H: I think we’re at final thoughts, because we’re getting too silly.
Cz: Ahh…
R: …xterminate
SG: I don’t think I have any final thoughts.
A: I have no final thoughts.
H: Ah, comeon!
P: What secret entrance? Okay, true it’s a secret, but it’s the first time they’ve mentioned it.
H: I think they were talking about the door that leads to the conveyer belt.
P: Oh, I thought that was another entrance to the spacecraft.
H: No. But they realized Lesterson must have discovered it.
P: I have more. Apparently I have to carry the weight of the room here. I liked the movement of the conveyer belt.
K: That was CG!
H: No, it wasn’t. That was recovered footage. It was clips.
P: I liked the deception of the Daleks as getting more humanized. Previously Daleks had very simple motives, but they’ve adapted well with playing the part of deception.
Cz: I love how excitable they are. One of them says exterminate and the others are all EXTERMINATE!
E: It’s like reacting to an internet meme.
R: “I’m pressing my ‘like’ button!”
Sp: “Plus one! Plus one! Plus one!”
R: “Mod up, interesting!”
SG: The part that I thought was interesting was laying cable to harness static electricity. And I kept thinking that when they take over they’ll just rub everyone’s heads with balloons.
Sp: “We require 100 cats and 100 balloons. Do not ask. Daleks reign supreme!” Ah, that’s adorable.
Sc: So what happened to PopEye this episode.
H: Last week he got captured –
Sc: So, was he on vacation?
H: Yes.
<laughter>
E: I got nothin’. Everyone else pretty much covered it. Although I’m not lead to believe that Daleks invented how we react to Internet memes.
R: First of all, humans are suckers.
K: Not news in Doctor Who.
R: I mean, every single human being in this entire story line has been just some form of rediculous wondering sheep monster.
K: With one exception – Quinn.
R: Who’s like “I’ll call for help, and then wait.”
H: He kept trying to see the examiner in the first episode and then Bragen won’t let him.
Sp: Polly wasn’t a sheep.
R: I stand corrected.
Sp: It’s unfortunate there was not surviving footage of Daleks laying cable with sucker sticks. It sounds dirty. Oh, and was this the first instance of referring the Daleks as pepperpots in dialog?
K: I think so.
H: I’m not sure.
Sp: And the Doctor was clever in escaping from prison. And then getting thrown right back into prison, and then being generally ineffective completely.
H: He has them right where he wants them.
Sp: All over the place?
R: I think he was just caught off guard by the governor being killed because it was a crazy person plan. Which brings me to the point – wasn’t Bragen going to be all subtle about bringing the rebellion to a boil and then stepping in a saying “I’ll save us” rather than just jumping in “I’m in charge!”
P: He has the Daleks now though.
R: But they were part of the plan before.
H: Bragen is in end game now. I think things got away from him for a bit, but he’s seeing end game happening. And he wasn’t expecting the governor back so soon, so he had to do something quickly.
R: I did surprise me that he didn’t work that into the plan. “My god, the rebels have assassinated the governor. I have to enforce martial law now!”
H: He may have done just that. Remember he was just talking to the Doctor and Quinn who already knew he was the bad guy.
R: A lesson I have learned, as a professional writer who gets paid to write and stuff, is that if the audience doesn’t see it, it never happened!
H: Alas, they couldn’t afford to do that in this story. They couldn’t afford the extras, for example.
R: There are cheaper ways they could have done it. They could just have had him turn to one of the guards and said “Have the populous informed that the governor has just been assassinate by the rebels.”
K: His plan was discussed for two episodes and then just abandoned without explanation.
R: It’s just slightly weak writing. I enjoyed the episode, and this isn’t a particularly big weakness. It bugged me because this is something we deal with at work.
K: Let’s see, for a penultimate final thought… The Dalek screams hurt my ears. I liked all the bits the Doctor was in, but didn’t get enough of him. And his hat is very silly.
R: His hat is mightily silly.
H: I would NOT like a hat like that.
K: Too tired to think of anything else.
H: Now that we’ve gotten most of the way through the story, I can say that there’s something interesting and unique about this Dalek story that we haven’t seen in any one previous. There plan freaking makes sense. It’s not overly complex. It depends on basic psychology that they’ve sussed out. There’s no hollowing out the planet Vulcan and driving it around the universe.
K: They only wanted to do that once.
H: Still! There plan makes sense, and has been very, very effective.
E: You’d think they’d take a cue from this.
H: You’d think they were being written by a different writer. But in all seriousness, I’ve been waiting to point that out.
R: <Dalek voice> “YOU HUMANS ARE NUT JOBS!”
Sp: Which kind of nerfs the Daleks.
H: What do you mean?
Sp: The only successful Dalek plan, thus far, is one in which they do nothing. And let their enemy destroy themselves and then the Daleks come up and sweep up. Which implies that they can’t really do much themselves.
K: Well they can’t walk up stairs themselves.
R: Always with the stairs.
H: You’ll see the complete plan next week.
Sp: <Dalek voice> “I’LL EXPLAIN IT LATER!”
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