Chapter the 317th, a singular Dalek adventure.
Plot:
Answering a distress call, the Doctor and Rose arrive in an underground complex in Utah where tech billionaire Henry van Statten keeps his private collection of alien artefacts. He has one living exhibit, which he's never been able to get to speak, no matter how much his staff torture it. Finding out that the Doctor has alien knowledge, he lets the Time Lord enter the 'cage' in which the creature is kept in chains. The Doctor panics and asks to be let out when he sees that the creature is a Dalek. It's weaponry is non-functional, though; the Doctor attempts to kill it by electrocution, but Van Statten's security guards intervene. Rose has meanwhile been talking to Adam, an employee of Van Statten's from the UK. Adam hacks in to the cameras in the cage, and Rose sees the Dalek being tortured. She goes there and talks to the Dalek, and it plays on her sympathy. When she touches its dome, it suddenly comes back to life having absorbed her DNA, and breaks free from its chains. Adam and Rose run for it. The Dalek absorbs energy from the local grid, renewing its battered and aged armour. It then proceeds to kill every person it comes across. The Doctor closes bulkhead doors to trap the creature, but Rose is left on the wrong side when they close. The Dalek does not kill her; it is starting to change because of the influence of her DNA. The Doctor arms himself with a big space gun from Van Statten's collection and confronts the Dalek. The Dalek shoots a hole in the ceiling to let in the sun, and opens its casing to bask in the light. It then kills itself, not wanting to live as an 'impure' mutation. The Doctor and Rose leave, Rose having persuaded the Doctor to let Adam come with them.
Context:
I watched this one afternoon close to Christmas Day 2024, in a bit of a rush as I'd realised how close it was getting to the big day. I wanted to get a post written up and published before the 25th. I viewed it alone from a DVD copy, the individual disc release of episodes 4 - 6 of the new 2005 series that came out before that series had even completed on television. When I'd finished and took the disc out of the player, I noticed it was looking very scratched after all these years. Should I invest in the upscaled Blu-ray boxset of the new series stories originally broadcast in SD (the first four seasons plus specials)? Maybe in the new year I'll have a look for it in the January sales. Are there still January sales?
Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. This post marks the completion of another Doctor's televisual era, the ninth Doctor joining the fourth, seventh, eighth, eleventh and fourteenth in the 'Done' pile. It also marks the completion of another season of Doctor Who; I have in total completed 32 out of the total of 40 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 1, 2, 4, 5-7, 9-11, 13 and 14).
First Time Round:
In the UK, there was a public holiday for May Day on Monday May 2nd 2005; in the long weekend this created, I - along with the Better Half and friend Phil, mentioned many times before on the blog - travelled up from the south to Shropshire to visit long-term fan friend David (also mentioned many times before on this blog) and his Better Half. One of the things we did, as all of us were fans of the recently relaunched series, was sit down to watch a TV Dalek story (the first for 17 years). It had been very much hyped, but nonetheless exceeded expectations. It was enjoyed by everyone. Over that weekend, I remember we all went to a Birmingham cinema to watch the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie that had just come out. This was not enjoyed much by anyone. The other thing I remember was my being extensively and frustratingly poor at the board game Ticket To Ride, and not getting any better no matter how many times I was resoundingly defeated playing it. This was enjoyed by everyone (except me).
Reaction:
This viewing of Dalek came shortly after my watching the season 25 Blu-ray boxset (which came out in late October 2024). The first story on that set, Remembrance of the Daleks, has a scene towards the end where the Doctor confronts a lone Dalek and persuades it to kill itself. I know that essentially Dalek does a plot with those same basic beats over the course of 45 minutes, but the scene and the 2005 story could not be more different. Remembrance is one of the very best Dalek stories from the classic era, but it still includes a scene of a lone Dalek wobbling and fretting, rather than being a scary evil force. Many Doctor Who stories featured moments like this, or worse scenes where the Daleks were mocked; and, Remembrance aside, the inclusion of Davros in all their latter classic era stories tended to relegate them to fulfilling a role as henchmen rather than top-billed villains. Plus, there were many sketches and adverts sending them up (the last time the Daleks had a mass audience on TV before 2005 they were flogging chocolate biscuits). Dalek exists to empathically change the perception of the Daleks in the minds of the audience, annihilating any sense that they're pathetic, and reinvesting them with menace and import. Though it wasn't the most festive story written by Robert Shearman that I watched in December 2024 (see the Deeper Thoughts section to see what was), it was still somewhat apt. The story's raison d'etre is to roast some old chestnuts: each aspect that might seem silly about the Daleks - the sink plunger, the bumpy hemispheres on the skirt section, their seeming inability to go up stairs, etc. - is used to dark or murderous effect in the story.
A key way to do this that costs less but is more effective than effects work (though there's no slouching in that department, with great moments like the 'bullet time' scenes where the Dalek's forcefield stops a spray of rounds aimed at it, or where it effortlessly elevates itself floating up multiple flights of stairs) is to deploy the story's not so secret weapon, the intense and brilliant acting powers of its leading man. Christopher Eccleston is so good in this story that he burns through the TV screen. The Dalek prop is expertly given voice by Nick Briggs, in his first of many times behind the ring modulator doing vocal duty for Skaro's finest. But, it is how Eccleston reacts to Briggs that sears this story into one's imagination. Eccleston incendiary work is supported by sympathetic but still showy direction from Joe Ahearne. It's obvious why Ahearne was invited back to direct so many times in this season; every moment is framed expertly, from all the magnificent close-ups to set pieces like the Dalek dispatching dozens of security guards by setting off the sprinklers and letting the water conduct his electrifying shots. As I've said before on the blog, nobody can capture moving images of Daleks as well as Joe Ahearne. The script is also giving Eccleston a boost; the sprinkler scene and its aftermath alone delivering some of the best dialogue of the year, from the Doctor noting of the Dalek that "It wants us to see" the devastation it is wreaking, to the Doctor's tirade urging the Dalek to end its own life "Why don't you just die?!" followed up after a beat with the Pepper-pot's devastating "You would make a good Dalek".
As well as delivering a big dollop of the time war backstory that had been hinted at in the first few episodes of the series, the story also focusses on the Doctor's duality, the aforementioned war having left him more like a Dalek that he'd like to admit. This gives Billie Piper's Rose some good material too, calling him out regarding the unthinking hatred that the metal meanie has brought out. The moment where the Doctor thinks she's been exterminated hammers home the bond that exists between these two characters. Given that it's already obvious that the two of them together are something special, it isn't necessary to introduce Adam to highlight this by failing in the companion role (as I detailed in the 2020 blog post for following story The Long Game). That's not an issue in this tale, though, so the only real criticism I have is that the budget doesn't quite match up with the material; if the story had been the following year, it would have a full orchestra performing the wonderful score, rather than just Murray Gold's synths and samples, for instance. Mind you, if it had been the following year, it wouldn't have starred Eccleston, and I don't think Tennant - or indeed anyone - can do the Doctor's anger quite as well as Eccleston. The Dalek having bonded with Rose when it took a sample of her DNA to revivify itself, and hating the changes this brings on in it, its end is a quiet one rather than being in the heat of battle. There are excellent practical effects showing the mutant feeling the sunlight shine upon it before it dies. Exciting and clever, emotional and thoughtful, but with lots of action: watching Dalek in December made for a nice little early Christmas gift.
Connectivity:
Both Dalek and The Legend of Ruby Sunday see the Doctor accompanied by a single female companion visiting a base that has equipment beyond the capabilities of technology in the rest of the world at that time. In both stories, the Doctor is fearful at being confronted by a lone - and massively destructive - survivor of a race he'd previously encountered and thought was wiped out.
Deeper Thoughts:
The Shear brilliance of the man: a quite timely but really not timely at all review of The Chimes of Midnight. Robert Shearman, the writer of Dalek, comes to many of the BFI Doctor Who screenings that I attend. He always hangs around after the screening in the bar and talks to other fans (he is a fan himself, as he's made clear in many interviews and writings). He was in the BFI Riverfront bar after the first of the two BFI events for The Happiness Patrol this year; there, my friend Scott embarrassed me slightly by informing Shearman that I wanted to tell him about how much I enjoyed something he'd written. The reason Scott particularly wanted me to be brave enough to tell him, and therefore forced my hand, was because the thing I enjoyed that he'd written had nothing to do with Doctor Who. It was a radio play called Forever Mine that Shearman wrote for broadcast in 2004 (on the BBC's radio 4), which starred Richard Briers and Pauline Collins. I only listened to it once, but its themes, plus some moments in the narrative and the mental images they provoked, have stayed with me since. A darkly comic play constructed around the difficulties that remarriage would present to widower and ex if the afterlife turned out to be real, it is haunting in its dramatisation of love and relationships, memory and identity. People at BFI events praising Shearman's Doctor Who work are probably ten a penny; I hope it was at least refreshingly different for him to meet someone extoling the virtues of an example of his other work. He certainly seemed a little surprised (maybe even bemused?) that it was Forever Mine in particular that had taken my fancy.
Shearman and friend |
I couldn't, though, tell Shearman how good was his body of Doctor Who work, because - Dalek aside - I had never experienced any of it. Shearman came to prominence in Doctor Who circles because of his work for audio adventures company Big Finish. Long term readers of the blog will know that I've sampled only something like 0.001% of Big Finish's output, none of that smidge including any of Shearman's stories. Until very recently, that is. Wanting to listen to an example of his Big Finish work, I had seven audio plays to pick from, which he penned for the company between the years 2000 and 2007. All of them were well regarded at the time and to this day. One of the seven was Jubilee, the story that he adapted to create Dalek. To pick that one would, of course, have been most thematically aligned to this blog post, but instead I went for a story that was apt in a different way. The Chimes of Midnight, though it was first released in February (of 2002), is a Christmas ghost story. It may be Shearman's most popular work for Doctor Who audio. People are still talking about it: the 2024 Christmas edition of Doctor Who Magazine, issue 611, included an article on Big Finish's Christmas stories that didn't include Chimes because "people bang on about that one all the time". Perhaps the journalist imagined every Doctor Who fan had listened to it by now, but I had not. To rectify that I bought and downloaded Chimes, listening to it - rationed to one episode a day - in a week of late December 2024. The story sees Paul McGann's Doctor with his first audio companion Charley Pollard arrive at a house where some Sapphire and Steel style time anomalies are occurring.
The story deserves its reputation, it's got the whole package: intrigue, chilling scenes, and the same haunting quality that Forever Mine had: some of the moments where people within a somewhat artificial reality are altered as their memories are manipulated are very similar to the radio play, and similarly effective. It's also very Christmassy. The feel of the piece samples greatly from 1970s series Upstairs Downstairs, or half of it at least: the Doctor and Charlie can't ever get to the Upstairs and spend their time dealing only with the servants of the house, all of whom are beautifully written and performed (and a couple of which are in-jokingly named after the 1970s series' cast or crew). There's a repeated refrain that is used for both funny and increasingly eerie effect, "Christmas wouldn't be Christmas" without the cook Mrs. Baddeley's plum pudding, as many characters aver. Reportedly, Shearman indulged himself a little by making each cliffhanger moment a callback to previous 'rock star' classic series cliffs, part one ending like the first episode of The Space Museum, then the subsequent episode endings harking back to Kinda episode three and Horror of Fang Rock three. If that makes it sound like it would be clunky or artificial, I can tell you that the writing is sophisticated enough to perfectly assimilate any such material, no matter how geeky. Everything pays off, and a contained story with few characters and locations turns out to be even more bounded than it first appeared. It's good that the 0.001% of Big Finish audios I'd experienced before included the first 'season' of Eight and Charley audios (this story is from the second) as a little knowledge of her backstory is useful for the ending to have the weight that it should.
An online listening party for the story took place in 2020 |
Even though Shearman never wrote a story for Doctor Who on TV again, The Chimes of Midnight shows that his Who work for other media is just as imaginative and excellent. I may be wasting my effort with this quick capsule review, however: the chances are if you're reading this that you - unlike me - listened to the audio in question ages ago. If not, though, then I hope this seasonally apt but 20+ years late write-up has persuaded you to give it a listen. Merry Christmas!
In Summary:
Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without an obligatory "Incidentally, a Happy Christmas to all of you at home!". (And, presumably, you don't need me to tell you that Dalek is great.)