| Chapter The 229th, where you can tell it in his accent when he talks, he's a Gallifreyan in New York - no, damn, I've used that already... Doctor Who in New York, so good they did it twice. |
Plot:
The Doctor and Martha land in New York in the year 1930. The depression at its height, and lots of homeless people live in an encampment in Central Park nicknamed Hooverville. Hooverville residents are going missing, so the Doctor investigates. The Cult of Skaro, four experimenting Daleks, travelled to this time zone using an emergency temporal shift and are now stranded without power. They plan to use the aerial atop the newly built Empire State Building to channel energy from an imminent solar flare and create human-Dalek hybrids from the missing people, who are all stored in catatonic states in the Daleks' lair. A few humans have also been turned into half pig half human henchmen. Leader of the cult Dalek Sec experiments on himself and becomes a half-human hybrid, but the other Daleks start to distrust him as he acts more and more unpredictably. They depose Sec, and change things so that the missing people will be 100% Dalek. The Doctor - aided by Martha, a couple of Hooverville residents (one played by a future movie Spiderman), a Broadway chorus girl and her semi-pig boyfriend, Laszlo - sabotage the aerial. The Doctor mixes his DNA in by hugging the aerial at the crucial point (ssh... it's science!), and so the hybrid people do not follow orders blindly and eventually mutiny, destroying Sec and two of the other Daleks. Dalek Caan does another emergency temporal shift, which might well prove to be significant in future, who knows?! The Doctor stabilises Laszlo so he can live a presumably miserable freakshow Nightmare Alley existence for the rest of his life, happily ever after.
Context:
Watched on two consecutive Sunday afternoons at the end of April / start of May 2022, from the disc in the Complete Third Series DVD box set, with a week in between the cliffhanger and the second episode, as nature intended. I was accompanied by all the children (boys of 15 and 12, girl of 9). I didn't realise until after we'd watched them that we'd just missed the dates, both weeks, when it would have been the 15th anniversary to the day of the debut BBC1 broadcasts in 2007; close enough, though. I was able to add a game-playing layer of engagement to the first episode. All three of the children have recently watched a Spiderman movie featuring Andrew Garfield, who features in this Dalek 2-parter. Before pressing play, I told them all that they'd recognise a big star who appears in the story, so they were on tenterhooks each wanting to be the first to spot whoever it was, and there was a chorus of excitement when Garfield finally popped up as Frank partway through; "Is that the Amazing Spiderman?" asked the middle child, who's nothing if not exact. All three children were miffed when Frank appeared to die when grabbed by the pig people, and elated when he showed up again later not killed.
First Time Round:
There's one clear memory I have of just over 15 years ago when this story was first shown, and it isn't from either of the episodes themselves, nor from my experience of watching them. It's of a picture on the front cover of a magazine and it sticks in the mind because it was a massive spoiler. The Radio Times UK listing magazine gave Doctor Who its front cover for the week of 21st to 27th April 2007, and it was available to buy in the shops the preceding Tuesday, the 19th April. The photo they used for the cover was a medium close-up shot of the Dalek Sec humanised Dalek; in other words it was an image of the final reveal of the episode yet to air, the cliffhanger moment. Russell T Davies signed off on it, reportedly; I think it was a rare black mark on his record of making and marketing the show in those days. I can remember exactly where I was when I first saw it; I was in reception of the BBC Television Centre. A few of the magazines were on a coffee table next to the sofa where I was waiting, and - after wincing at what was being given away - I turned them all face side down. In early 2007, I was on a career break from the day job to concentrate on the side hustle I had at the time, screenwriting. I had a lot of meetings in that period, but I was in Wood Lane that Tuesday for something a little less work-related. They ran guided tours in those days, and I wanted to see the centre before it closed and was turned into luxury flats (which seemed like it would be imminent at that point, but in the end it didn't happen until 2013). It was an enjoyable experience. A couple of days later I was in London again, in King's Cross for a Writers Guild of Great Britain panel discussion on use of the web. This prompted me the following day (the day before the first episode of the Dalek story aired) to create a screenwriting blog. That screenwriting blog then led indirectly to the creation of this Doctor Who blog. So, I've been spewing out nonsense online for 15 years now - cheers!!!
Reaction:
For the third season of the return of Doctor Who in the 21st century, of which this story is part, once and future showrunner Russell T Davies was for the first time planning a big finale that didn't include the Daleks. This left an opportunity to have a mid season tentpole story featuring the metal meanies, which had been done once before with much success with the story Dalek in 2005. That story was a single-parter but packed with sufficient twists and turns to have stretched to two. Alas, this Manhattan-set double number is the opposite - it's one episode's plot (and that's being charitable) padded out to fit into twice the space in the schedules. It must have seemed impossible at that stage in the show's development, with Skaro's finest being a big presence every year, not to give the mid-season two-parter over to a Dalek plot, but a focussed single episode story would have ultimately been much better. What happens in the story? A small group of isolated Daleks attempt to covert people into foot soldiers to take over the planet. That's about it. The first episode is mostly introducing characters that don't need to be there: Solomon, Frank, Tallulah and Laszlo, and their environs - the theatre, and Hooverville - add colour but could be excised and leave the plot unchanged. Even Mister Diagoras being merged with Dalek Sec to create a hybrid creature, a big subplot that makes up the remainder of the first part leading up to the cliffhanger, doesn't move things forward at all. It's obvious how it's going play out; a Dalek polluted with human will stop acting as a Dalek, and will eventually and inevitably cease to be an antagonist. This is, of course, exactly the same as what happened in that previously mentioned 2005 story, Dalek.
The story does come in for a lot of criticism for its visuals, but this is mostly unfair. The pig slaves are fine when kept in shadow; yes, the humanised Dalek Sec is a bit outré (he wears spats, and the Daleks keep him on a dog collar and chain!), but it's nonetheless effective. The gaps that need to be filled where there isn't plot leave room for some fun set pieces; this is most obvious when action comes to a halt and one of the cast belts out a specially written show tune, but it is a pretty good song, and the sequence is well shot. Introducing the history of Hoovervilles (plural, they had them all over the states, not just in Central Park) meets Who's remit to educate as well as entertain. Having introduced the place and introduced the Daleks, it becomes inevitable that the latter will attack the former, and the set piece depicting this in episode two is good. I'm not sure it makes a whole heap of sense, though: the Daleks are still operating in secret and haven't yet activated the human soldiers, so why do an all-out attack where they hover over a populous city? The performances are very strong throughout, even those where the actor is fighting against the somewhat risible mask they are encased within. Andrew Garfield is magnetically watchable in a quite small role, so it was no surprise to see him go on to bigger things. Hugh Quarshie does the - pretty thankless - sensible leader character very well. Miranda Raison has fun with her broad New Yoiker broad. It's just a bit of a shame that there isn't really very much for any of them to do. In the end, the story's not a total disaster - it's probably the least successful Dalek story from the era, but it's a hell of an era - but feels like a major missed opportunity.
Connectivity:
Both Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks and The Angels Take Manhattan, obviously, see the TARDIS land on the same island in the same city (the clues in the titles), and action takes place in the same decade, the 1930s, in both too. Filming for both actually took place in the Big Apple, though for the Tennant story it was confined to shooting background plates with the main action all being shot in Wales.
Deeper Thoughts:
Ncuti Doc Thing. I had planned, and indeed was a few paragraphs into, a different subject for this Deeper Thoughts section, but then events come along and surprise me (and everyone). On Sunday 8th May 2022, we all found out the name of the newly appointed actor to play the lead role of the Doctor, Ncuti Gatma. Gatma will appear in the series from 2023 (it's not been confirmed whether he will cameo at the end of Jodie Whittaker's final special yet, when she regenerates, but it's got to be a good bet), when Russell T Davies resumes his showrunner role. Like another appointee to this role during a period when RTD was running the show, the star of Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks no less, Ncuti is a proud Scot, but he's also Rwandan and a former refugee. For the first time, the Doctor is going to be played by a BAME man, and for the first time the lead actor in the series is an actor of colour. It's not - as many online comments mistakenly averred, and even more others righteously corrected - the first time the Doctor has been portrayed by a person of colour. Jo Martin's recurring role as an earlier version of the Doctor during Whittaker's tenure paved the way for this, as indeed did the casting of Whittaker herself, and the other Time Lord characters cast or shown to change gender or ethnicity when regenerating in recent years since Doctor Who returned in 2005, demolishing the established pattern that the Doctor - and any Time Lord - had to be pale, male or stale. Inevitably, some people will need time to adjust to this; any Doctor Who fan knows it's sad for a while, but ultimately happy, to say goodbye to one Doctor and hello to another.
The cryptic Instagram image of emojis that preceded the announcement
Sadly - but I don't believe inevitably by any means - there were also negative online comments about the 'wokeness' of this production decision. (Pause, while I throw up in my mouth just a little at having to type the word in the inverted commas - I was going to say the politics of the decision, but it isn't really a political decision, and I think that word is too grand to describe the naysayers' bile.) After Jodie Whittaker's casting announcement in 2017 (see Deeper Thoughts of this blog post from then), there was apparently a backlash, but I didn't see it, just the wave of defensive responses against the initial backlash. I don't know if I'm just more engaged with social media or if the algorithm has changed, but this time I did see the first wave. The most infamous comment was made by a - here come the inverted commas again - 'journalist' on a right-wing UK news channel; he tweeted then hastily deleted a comment that suggested that Ncuti's casting was a box-ticking exercise, as if someone who isn't white could not be cast on merit. There were many other similar comments from non-famous tweeters, who apparently think of themselves as Doctor Who fans but I can't help but think that they've missed the point of the show. Balanced against this were tweets with people suddenly interested in the show because of Ncuti's casting who hadn't watched before. An article in the Telegraph by Michael Hogan on this appeal to new, perhaps younger people had the headline "The choice of Ncuti Gatwa proves the BBC has given up trying to please 'legacy' Doctor Who fans" and put a few older fans noses out of joint. I glanced at the twitter response to the article but after two comments the discourse degenerated into anti-licence fee rants so I ducked out of that. One other seam of online comments I saw centred around people celebrating a non-hetero actor being the Doctor, only to then be corrected by people who rightly stated that Gatma has never made any public comments on his sexuality.
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| Gatwa with RTD at the Baftas on 8th May 2022 |
He is still an LGBT+ hero whatever because of his award-winning and multiple Bafta nominated portrayal of Eric Effiong in Netflix's Sex Education. I've not seen it, not because I'm put off by younger actors despite being increasingly 'legacy' - thank you headline-writing Telegraph editor - but because there's simply too many shows and not enough time. This is interesting on a personal level, though, as it marks the first time since I became a fan in the early 1980s that I have no experience at all of a newly announced Doctor's performances. Peter Davison I'd seen as Tristan in All Creatures Great and Small, and also in some sitcoms; Colin Baker had of course already had a role in Doctor Who before he was cast as the Doctor; Sylvester McCoy was a big part of my childhood as he appeared in 1980s CBBC programmes I loved like Jigsaw and Eureka. Paul McGann I had seen in Withnail and I and a few TV things over the years before he became our favourite Time Lord for one night only. I differ from Tom Baker, who was quoted before Doctor Who came back in 2005 to say he'd never heard of Christopher Eccleston, in that I was very familiar with Eccleston from Jimmy McGovern's work, and Michael Winterbottom's, and Danny Boyle's, and... seriously, lots of fans online at the time said they hadn't seen him in anything either, and I just can't believe they'd missed out on all that great stuff. Tennant I'd seen in Casanova, which is basically his audition for the Doctor role; Smith I had seen in the two BBC Sally Lockhart adaptations starring Billie Piper; Capaldi, in so many things from Local Hero onwards. I saw Whittaker in many things before she became the Doctor, but had no conception of how she'd play the role, as it was different from the sort of roles she had tended to do up to that point. For that reason, I may well hold off on that Sex Education binge watch. It might be nice to go in completely unburdened by preconceptions, and see something fresh, exciting and new.
In Summary:
The script's a bit of a mess, some of the visuals are edging towards being risible, but there are some nice characters and set pieces.
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