Haha - I'll stay alert!
And in the meanwhile... top six dalek stories! New series only. I'll try for one every ten minutes, with 1. going up just before Asylum starts. And I'll edit this post rather than flood the thread.
6. The Stolen Earth
My feelings about this two-parter are so, so mixed. Because the thing is, I love part one to bits. It still doesn't quite feel like a real episode of Doctor Who - it's just this huge, giddy adrenaline rush that bypasses every single one of my critical faculties and drills right into my inner child. I'm not sure I'd ever stop rewatching it. The Stolen Earth, to my inner child, is more fun than Christmas.
But Journey's End... there are some good bits. More than a few, in fact. There's "Exterminieren!" I love "Exterminieren!" And I like how Davros is done, and Donna's exit, and all that jazz... but, oof. The problems. The botched regeneration, with the handy Doctor. Rose's muddled final goodbye. Doomsday was perfect. She didn't need that. It was fun once. And shunting the Daleks away, towing the Earth home - all too saccharine even for my deeply uncynical tastes. Could've been great, and the Daleks are fun and exciting in a way they don't always get to be, but Journey's End is the only black mark on the entirity of series 4, and for that reason I can't rank it higher. My inner child silently weeps.
5. The Parting of the Ways
This is the Dalek story I've most recently rewatched, and I genuinely did not remember it being that brilliant. Because it's properly fantastic, isn't it? Starts so facetious, but cracking fun regardless, and the Daleks are chilling in a way they never managed in subsequent series. The silent "EX-TER-MIN-ATE" - delicious!
I cannot imagine it aging well for a second. It feels a little out of date now, but hey, why not? Everything's going to age at some point - might as well embrace it! Future generations are going to love the 2005 kitsch. Heck, I already do. And I'm constantly surprised by how well the genre-switch works. By all rights, this should feel like two stories grafted into one, but Russell T Davies is, fortunately, a genius. I might not love it with the same vigour I'd love the later Dalek stories, but hey! This forged the template for the two-part finale. And so confidently. Strode right in there - Doctor Who like I'd never seen it. Like no-one had ever seen it. Great slice of Who, and I'd do well to remember that more often.
4. Victory of the Daleks
Poor Victory of the Daleks. I don't think the Doctor Who fanbase ever recovered. Brave new era, brave new Daleks - and all eyes were on this episode. Churchill, daleks... spitfires in space! And with the publicity, the hype, the eyestalks staring out of every single news-stand in the UK, it was never going to live up to the scrutiny. But that's fine! Despite all the kerfuffle, I'd say there's a lot to love about Victory of the Daleks.
Because I don't care about defusing the bombs with love. I don't care about the implausibility of scratching up some spacecraft in the space of a couple of hours - they had prototypes, and Bracewell's Dalek technology! And I've never understood what everyone hates about the new paradigm daleks. When I think of this episode, I think of camouflaged Daleks skulking through corridors, I think of the claustrophobia of the mid-war bunkers, I think of Ian McShane's wonderful Winston Churchill, I think of "Would you like some tea," I think of the Doctor bluffing his way onto the Dalek mothership with a Jammie Dodger... and I'm afraid I can't find it in my heart to hate this one.
So don't worry, Victory. Some of us think you're just ace.
3. Army of Ghosts
Over time, I've fallen out of love with series two. What seemed fun at the time has been done better since, and it's the patchiest series the revival's produced. But the peaks, I'll always maintain, are among the show's best moments, and Army of Ghosts is possibly the best finale Russell T Davies ever wrote.
Because 2006 was probably the best time to be a Dalek. Even though they only featured in half of the story, I think of the Daleks before I think of the Cybermen. From the first second they appeared on screen, from that breathtaking cliffhanger, they stomped their authority all over the entire two-parter. It's all anyone could talk about. It's all I could talk about, certainly. I'm usually more of a Cyberman kind of guy, but there was nothing more exciting than watching the Cult of Skaro rise from the sphere and lay waste to the Cybermen's entire army.
Good, simple story, but fantastically told. It's exciting and heartbreaking and has all the right bits in all the right places. Most notably, a Cybermen v. Dalek bitch-fight. Which, for all their superior firepower, I fear the Cult may have found themselves on the losing side of.
"Daaaaaa-leks have no concept of elegance!"
"This is obvious."
Burn.
2. The Pandorica Opens
We're working to a fairly loose definition of "Dalek episode," here, but the Pandorica Opens is an impeccable story. The stone Dalek is just one masterstroke among many - but that doesn't make him (or her, come to think of it!) any less of a masterstroke. On paper, he should just be a cattle-prod, a device to keep up the urgency, keep the characters moving from room to room, but the design, the personality, the never-ending hatred even in the face of the end of all things... oh, he's good, isn't he?
And though this is the second series finale in a row that the Doctor gets exterminated by a Dalek, for some reason it seems to have more impact this time. In the Stolen Earth, the extermination was just plain exciting. There was a momentary gasp, but we moved straight on to the regeneration, and after that it was very hard to care. But this Dalek? He gives us the breezy "twelve minutes to live" speech, he gives us the Doctor, agonised, dying in the Pandorica, he gives us "geronimo," he gives Auton-Rory a chance to redeem himself, and most importantly, he gives us that chat between Amy and the Doctor. Wait, no, not THAT one, the other one - where the Doctor's shackled in, and Matt and Karen are just sat there, acting their hearts out. The Daleks are so often engines of hate that it's easy to overlook that they can sometimes, just occasionally, be engines of love.
1. Dalek
I'm going to level with you. I didn't like Dalek the first time I saw it. And you know? I think I stand by that initial reaction. It was my first time meeting a Dalek, and I was bracing myself for this terrifying monstrosity. This eldritch creature of pure, visceral hatred. And forty-five minutes later, the credits rolled and I'd watched... the Dalek who learned to love! It was 2005, I was fifteen, how rubbish was that? I wanted explosions!
But in retrospect, it all locks in. Now that I know what the Daleks are about, now that I know them, and I understand the enormity of the story, it's all locked in. Context helped so much - Chris Eccleston's (superb!) speech didn't mean much to me when the Dalek was a stranger, but now that I know them I can see the 900 years of mutual loathing looming over the characters' heads, and it's truly, really astonishing. I hate that the first episode is their best, I hate being that hipster who insists that the early stuff's where it's really at... but hey! This is the one to beat.
So, from one 2012 episode to another... let's see if this is the time!
Topic: Doctor Who (Read 216611 times)
