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Daleks To Be Given 'A Rest' From Dr. Who
donberryman writes "Steven Moffat told the BBC 'There's a problem with the Daleks. They are the most famous of the Doctor's adversaries and the most frequent, which means they are the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe.'" And so, 400+ encounters later, both the Doctor and the daleks will take a break from each other.
someone finally listened to the Daleks... EXTERMINATE!
Too bad for the Daleks they exterminated them
There is no -1 disagree
At the start of Tom Baker's time the sonic screwdriver couldn't even reliably get the Doctor through a locked door, but now it is a magic wand that can do just about anything. Good to see it got written out of the plot recently.
He should of thought of this before bringing in the New Paradigm.
Wern't too hard anyway.
It's like the Borg. They were over after BOBW part 2.
Or does this have to do with not paying rights to the guy who invented them?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
The sonic screw driver is in the image in the article. It doesn't work on doors, as long as they are made out of wood (it does not work on wood).
After years of not being able to stand Dr Who, I've only just been able to watch this new one. Does it need to be camp? I know the BBC can't spend money; but even the The Dresden Files looked better. I wish liked it more. I would go back and watch the old ones to try and get into it; but his penchant for annoying ginger girls puts me off.
I'm guessing they were planning on doing a bunch more Dalek stories... as you say, they definitely set things up for it (though nothing leading to anything specific), and they redesigned how they look.
Problem is that the redesigned Daleks look really stupid... like shitty appliances from Sharper Image or Brookstone, from a decade ago. I get that that's probably the same way they were designed originally, based on shitty appliances, but the appliances in the 60's were apparently a lot cooler looking :)
So, realizing they screwed up with the Dalek redesign, they decide to not have any shows about them for a while... leaving plenty of time for the new Daleks to disappear from time and the original ones to reappear. This can all be explained with a quick hand-wavey timey-wimey explanation like they usually do when things get complicated.
Keep the Daleks, but for the love of everything scifi remove the fucking love stories from the show. Also give the current writers the boot, they can take matt smith with them, though in truth he may just suck because of the truly horrible writing.
Moffat has clarified that he was only talking about the current season: https://twitter.com/#!/steven_moffat/status/75506136593338368
At the start of Tom Baker's time the sonic screwdriver couldn't even reliably get the Doctor through a locked door, but now it is a magic wand that can do just about anything. Good to see it got written out of the plot recently.
It's been destroyed a couple of times since the reboot, and another one has been made, usually popping out the TARDIS console. He used it in the last scene of the last episode that was aired (unless you're talking about future episodes...). It is a fairly simple to use plot device though (need to move plot forward = use screwdriver to open door, otherwise, need to keep characters where they are = door is deadlocked)
Yeah, they should kick these bad writers with names that nobody knows like Neil Gaiman,
They better be back in time for the Doctor Who anniversary next year!!!
Of course you don't know! There's a simple explanation for that. The timey wimey folds of spacetime have done a wibbly wobbley again, that's why!
They solved the problem with the sonic screwdriver a few years ago by inventing the deadlock seal - anything that is deadlock sealed can't be opened by the magic wand. I'm not sure what you mean about it being written out of the plot though. In the last episode, the Doctor left it behind, but he's done that several times before and made a new one...
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He did give it to his ganger to disintegrate the animalistic one (though I fail to see why couldn't they just open the door for a second, and have the real Doctor press the button), but by the end of the episode, the TARDIS generated the new one (and presumably destroyed the old one to prevent misuse), which he used to disintegrate Amy's replicant.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
which means they are the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe.
Surely they're not as incompetent as Evil Warlords, who are so bad that they have to keep a rulebook on screw-ups to avoid.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I still think it was cheating when they changed the Daleks to be able to float up stairs :-)
How many locks have you seen made of wood?
I believe this was because the Doctor needed to see what happened [i]first hand[/i] when you destroy a ganger, ie. his own?
i think a lot of this comes down to the quality of the writers not the tools at the disposal of the characters. A bad/mediocre writer will wave the magic wand to get past the problem the writer has put the character in. To create tension they'll have the magic wand not work. This is fine and an audience will put up with this provided the rest of the story is enough to keep them interested.
A good writer won't need a sonic screwdriver or a deadlock seal, the traps and problems will be those of circumstance, character traits and morals. But like any tool they can be overused too, there's only so many times the lock of the doctor being a pacifist being opened by a companion sacrifice can be used; but we're back to the good vs bad writer stage again...
So I've no problems with the Daleks being used a lot, used in every episode even as long as they are used well. That does seem to worry me about the new Dr Who that they're not being used because they have a good story but used like the sonic to up the tension and that just doesn't work long term.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Hate to reply to myself but:
I meant to say that the daleks being used like the sonic as a writing tool, only instead of being used to let him through any door, to solve any problem, to magic the badness away being used to up the tension at any moment. No need to have a good idea just add Dalek for instant tension. Sorry, overused, doesn't work, come back when you have a good story.
"The weirdest thing about a mind, is that every answer that you find, is the basis of a brand new cliche" -
Definitely for the best in my opinion, and not just because of writing quality, the new design, or anything like that. They've just lost their "oomph." Early on, they were terrifying, seeing them pop up suddenly made my heart sink, wondering how they would get through the situation. Now that the Doctor has plowed through them countless times, in increasingly absurd numbers, they just don't evoke that reaction anymore. "I am the last Dalek!" *dead* "We are the last of the Dalek fleet!" *dead* "We are the last five Daleks!" *dead* "We are all the Daleks ever!" *dead* "We are the last five Daleks! (again!)" *dead*
And, at least for me, the same is true of the cybermen. To be fair, I wasn't a huge fan of them as an enemy in the first place, but they definitely feel stale to me now. I'd love to see the return of some of the enemies used only a couple times, or something new and unique. The weeping angels were just fantastic. They were unique, dangerous without being pegged as "THE WORST THING THAT THE DOCTOR HAS EVER FACED!!!!11", and, perhaps most importantly, used sparingly. Maybe one more episode of them this season, perhaps with a nice twist on the theme, amidst some one-shot challenges, and perhaps even a brand new recurring foe.
Unfortunately the Daleks aren't the only thing that needs a break. So does the Doctor. He has become a bad charicature of himself.
This new season is sort of like being forced to watch a Jerry Bruckheimer film every weekend, with all of the ludicrously over-dramatic theme music and gag-me-with-a-spoon melodramatic themes. Already last season the new Doctor was a little too full of himself, but I was quite shocked to find that it got infinitely worse this season. And the ridiculous "mysterious" River Song character that keeps being forced into every episode for some unknown reason just makes me want to vomit. Every time she smugly says her signature line I want someone to punch her in the mouth.
The plots, and the Doctor himself, are so incoherent that even I barely know what the hell just happened at the end of an episode, and I'm normally the guy in the room who is explaining the plot twists to others. The new episodes make almost zero sense, like they're using some random plot element generator to write the stories for them. The behavior of the characters no longer rings true, so the stories fall flat. The new Doctor comes across as a gibbering moron who doesn't pay attention to anyone or anything besides himself and yet magically finds his way out of every possible situation without seeming to have the slightest clue what he's doing.
I've managed to find and watch nearly every episode of the old series (thanks Pirate Bay!) and thoroughly enjoyed almost every single episode, from the first Doctor right up through all the David Tennant seasons. But this newest stuff has pretty much made me stop wanting to watch the show, at least until they get new writers. It takes some real talent to screw up a show that has been pretty entertaining for decades already using a very simple formula. They should really just rename the show to "The Something Horribly Bad Happens to the Tardis Every Week Show" which seems to be the common theme now.
"[...] they are the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe."
Thing is, the Daleks were only defeated once in the new series (Parting Of The Ways), all the other times, only the current plan was defeated, and the Daleks escaped to plot again. While I do agree that they've become overused, they're the most iconic leg of the triad of classical opponents (the other two being The Master, who's been timelocked and removed from this universe, and they Cybermen, who are going to appear in the next episode). The Sontarans and the other opponents brought back from the old series don't really cut it this time around, but Moffat has been successful in creating some truly terrifying encounters (The Weeping Angels and the Vashta Nerada), and Russel T. Davies's Midnight Entity was great as well. Maybe the writers should focus on creating new, scarier menaces to bring back the "hiding behind the couch" phenomenon that defined the classic series, and thinking up a way to end the current one, or find a plausible way to weasel out of the "12 regenerations"-limit.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
I've always been bothered by the Daleks. Why would a super advanced battle machine made of 'bonded polly-carboid armour' have such a vulnerable and inefficient targeting system? The eye stalk just doesn't make any sense. And only one weapon? Again, that energy rifle thing just seems a bit daft. I think the problem is that R.T. Davis wrote the Daleks to be the ultimate, unstoppable enemy of the Time Lords because they were one of the most well-known elements of the brand and useful for marketing.. This just doesn't fit well with their retro design. Right up until the end of the 7th doctor's time the Daleks were pretty scary, but hardly invincible (remember Ace taking one out with a baseball bat in Remembrance?)
in the later seasons, I thought they were always well used and quite fun, popping up at weird times and delightfully evil. And their simplicity contrasts nicely with the rest of Dr Who, which is usually a bit involved.
I'm sure their come back will be grand.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
The 'new' daleks suck. They are the most horrible enemies you can get, and now they come in 5 colors.... AAAAAAAAAARGH !! They really messed up this one...
Not true. A recent episode (it was either the living flesh one or the pirate one) had the Doctor unlocking locked door by sliding back the bolt on a wooden door with the sonic screwdriver.
The sonic screwdriver has not been written out of the plot, although he does seem to use it more sparingly this series. Like a good magic wand, it's job is to exert the will of the user. In other words, it doesn't change what genius idea the Doctor comes up with, it just provides a useful conduit to make it happen without minutes of exposition and digging around in computer banks. Generally, for everything the screwdriver does, another method exists that would take twice as long - and not make a difference to the plot either way.
But honey, how would you feel if I rescued you from an inner city estate?
EXTERMINATE.
Well ok, how about if I hoisted you out of a killer taxi in a wedding dress?
EXTERMINATE.
Waited 2000 years by your side?
EXTERMINATE.
Flowers?
EXTERMINATE.
This was a big problem with the Russell T Davies episodes. He used spectacle as a substitute for plot. Huge fleets of Daleks or Cybermen as a substitute for character interaction. In contrast, the best episodes have been things like Blink, that have kept the atmosphere with relatively little emphasis on special effects.
The original problem with the sonic screwdriver was that, after being used a few times, writers either had to use it, or have the audience thinking 'why didn't he use the sonic screwdriver?' With the deadlock seal, good writers can just say add a line of dialog saying 'oh, doesn't work', and move on. Imagine 42, for example, without the deadlock seal. Either there would have to be some contrived way of losing the sonic screwdriver at the start, or the audience would have sat there saying 'why don't you just use the sonic screwdriver on the doors?!?!?' Just mentioning the word 'deadlock' meant that we all knew that the magic wand wouldn't work, so there was tension that didn't seem artificial.
With a good writer, the sonic screwdriver is a substitute for technobabble. Put on the glasses, wave the magic wand, and something involving technology that the audience doesn't need to care about just happened and you can return to the plot. No need to go into long explanations. We all know the sonic screwdriver does complicated things with technology, and we don't need to know the details.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Confirmed by Moffat to be just this season, which is probably tight in terms of content. We shall get more technicolor Dalek stuff.
I wasn't a proper fan of the series until the revival, yet I watched enough of the old series to want to follow that revival when it was aired.
I dunno, some people complains, but I really really like the revival. And....I kind of prefer the Daleks from before the "last paradigm" but just because the armor is more detailed. I feel rather satisfied with the modern Dalek overall (they can't be defeated by stairs!).
They solved the problem with the sonic screwdriver a few years ago by inventing the deadlock seal - anything that is deadlock sealed can't be opened by the magic wand.
Plus - it can't do wood...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
They should do a spinoff that shows the situation from the Dalek point of view.
puzzle boxen?
Of course you don't know! There's a simple explanation for that. The timey wimey folds of spacetime have done a wibbly wobbley again, that's why!
Of course you don't know! There's a simple explanation for that. The timey wimey folds of spacetime have done a wibbly wobbley again, that's Who!
FTFY
--
Can you spare bitcoin for Davros?
the TARDIS generated the new one (and presumably destroyed the old one to prevent misuse)
Remember, he needs a spare at some stage that he will have been going to give to River. Plus, they're going to need a spare Doctor for space-suit guy* to going to has** killed, so presumably, we haven't seen the last of the "ganger" Doctor, either...
(* My money is on Amy )
(** Dr Dan Streetmentioner, where are you...)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The first thing I thought of when I saw the coloured daleks was that the Doctor had fallen into an episode of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
(That's what you get for having children who lived and breathed Power Rangers for several years.)
isn't that the whole premise of dr. who? if nothing else, dr can always come in from a later, or earlier, time and catch anyone who's falling to their death, the bad guys can be anything and anything can be conjured up from nothing anywhere. and is regularly done. what's amazing about it is that despite all this, the writers have just been writing the daleks in like beagle boys hunting for scrooges treasure.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
> Good to see it got written out of the plot recently.
however, they are increasingly using scenes where they play very loud music and talk very quickly when solving the problem at hand, to disguise weakness in the plot.
the fact everything stopped (e.g. the acid stopped boiling and the monster stopped pushing the door) when they had the "tender" scenes didn't go unnoticed either.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Generals
Ex-ter-min-ate! Ex-ter-min-ate! Ex-ter-min-ate!
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
They are shortcuts ...
Sonic Screwdriver - Unlock doors easily, mend devices, scan for information
Psychic Paper - Get access and co-operation
Daleks - Here comes trouble
Tardis - Get to latest adventure
They can be overused, but if used correctly simply keep the plot going
All could be used to escape from the scene, or solve the plot too quickly, so all have limitations (Deadlocks, High IQ, Stairs etc ...)
Star Trek had the same issue, get into trouble just beam out ...except either they couldn't, or it would not solve the issue ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
"We all know the sonic screwdriver does complicated things with technology, and we don't need to know the details."
Actually, I like those details. It is like Superman and kryptonite. Just how did all that kryptonite make it to earth? How many Superman villains have attained it? Over the years, the stories would attest that it is sold at the corner store. >_>
Just how many objects are deadlocked? If it is that trivial to deadlock, why not deadlock EVERY door. Then, such a commonality would suggest more common tools to circumvent it. I think using "deadlock" is a cheap workaround and sets a very bad precedence and the SS being such a "magic wand" is a cheap workaround in writing. I can think of many ways you wouldn't be able to pass through a door (in this genre), so the writers shouldn't have an issue either. They shouldn't be so damned lazy.
Or River. Did she not say in a past episode that the reason she is in prison is because she killed a very good man. We know that her timeline and the Doctor's are running in opposite directions, so maybe the Doctor is the man she killed.
What I think works particularly well with the sonic is the fact that it's used so much, but much of the time appears to do little or nothing. The doctor will quite often point it at people or things and take a "reading" that he doesn't do anything with or about, which is a nice way of saying "this tool is always here but it's not always useful" - they've made mention in the past of how flaky it can be. The doctor uses it almost as an extension of his sense to probe situations in the same way as a human might use smell and sound to augment sight (and still sometimes come up with the wrong answer). Conversely using it less but only using it in situations where it always works to save the day would turn it from a tool into a miracle device. What we need is more of the screwdriver but not always more of it saving the day.
My money is on River.
Remember she killed "a good man" to get imprisoned.
...(sunglasses) I'd say they've finally taken the plunge.
(I wear sunglasses now. Sunglasses are cool.)
.
It is like Superman and kryptonite. Just how did all that kryptonite make it to earth?
Supposedly the hyperdrive of the spaceship Kal-El came on had some problems, allowing the kryptonite to follow quite easily.
Plus, they're going to need a spare Doctor for space-suit guy* to going to has** killed, so presumably, we haven't seen the last of the "ganger" Doctor, either...
Exactly this - they even make some comment about there being some way the essence of the "flesh" doctor might survive the disintegration. If that's not telegraphing the end of that particular story arc, I don't know what is.
I suspect that the Doctor that died is a Ganger (Can Ganger timelords regenerate?). It would stretch things too far for the Doctor to also be in the spacesuit...
He's an older, wiser regeneration of me!
Cost. Even galaxy conquering space monsters have accountants.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I knew their days were numbered. The old Daleks were scary in their relentless trundling unstoppableness. They had a physicalness which was scary because it was so mechanical and alien. Once they started flying you could tell it was all CGI and hence not scary. Daleks were designed to trundle, not fly.
Korma: Good
The Washington Generals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Generals) have a record of 6 wins to 13,000 losses. To beat that, the Daleks would have to be defeated at least 1767 more times without beating the Dr. even once.
it just provides a useful conduit to make it happen without minutes of exposition and digging around in computer banks.
All the doctor needs to do is learn to program like the folks in The Matrix learned how to pilot helicopters and shit. Then he can whip up a GUI in Visual Basic, so all his problems will just be a mouse click away from resolution.
how is babby formed?
It's been destroyed a couple of times since the reboot, and another one has been made
Apparently the much-maligned John Nathan Turner (producer of Who throughout the 1980s) had it destroyed early in his tenure and explicitly vetoed attempts to have a new one made- or whatever- for similar reasons. He thought it was too easy a plot device- I guess it's a sort of Deus Ex Machina.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I disagree completely that The Doctor needs a break.
"The Doctor's Wife" is perhaps one of the best episodes I've ever seen. It completely eclipses anything that had David Tennant in it. The script and the acting.
I don't think that you appreciate the subtelty of the new Doctor's character. He appears as a gibbering moron but is anything but. For example, in last year's Christmas special, he's walking around in the room (at the start) and turns around asking "Who is she?", saying that he's never met anyone unimportant. It portrays a person that is keenly aware of everything going on around him even if it appears otherwise.
Listen to what the TARDIS said about needing to find someone mad enough to join it galloping around the universe. The Doctor is meant to be slightly crazy/mad and lost it with some of the previous leads.
No. His copy who got left behind with the screwdriver used it in the last scene of the last episode that was aired.
Probably the Doctor has encountered them "only" about 20 time, over the last 48 years (and almost 800 episodes).. At least a quick search through the list of episodes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Doctor_Who_serials) finds 17 including the word "Dalek", and they usually got billing.
The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks, Planet of the Daleks, Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, City of the Daleks, Destiny of the Daleks, Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, Dalek, Daleks in Manhattan, Victory of the Daleks. Plus a couple others, like "The Long Game" where they were acting in secret.
Of course, Moffatt will bring them back soon regardless.
Some small alien life form moving around awkwardly on a very human scale
in an exoskeleton looking not much different than a big vacuum cleaner?
Please.
I think an actual big vacuum cleaner that sucked people up
and fed on their life force would be far scarier.
Generally speaking he really can't do that. The laws of time prevent a person from being in the same moment twice, or otherwise interfering in events from their own personal timeline. It seems as though these are 'laws' in the sense of 'the laws of physics', rather than in the sense of 'criminal law'. The Doctor has tried to break some of them in the past, but it didn't work. Time corrected itself to erase his interference. I'm not saying they always stick to the rules they created for themselves, but in theory... the Doctor can only change events within certain limitations.
How many locks have you seen made of wood?
Ones that float.
Why do we have to defeat them every episode? It's easy enough to write a story where there are people in danger, the Daleks are involved and the Doctor comes swanning in. He can't fight the whole Dalek army but decides to save as many as he can, fighting a few and sneaking them out, losing some on the way. The Daleks don't lose and the Doctor wins. Plenty of scope for Dalek / Doctor stories that don't mean anyone gets wiped out. I could come up with ideas about that all day long. New Dalek empire, stronger than ever, they snatch the TARDIS and Doctor and decide to put him on trial. Clever writing making it seem like the Doctor is somewhat guilty of leaving too many people to die, killing too many Daleks, whatever. Twist at the end where the Doctor escapes in the TARDIS. Hey, I'd like to see that episode. Then bring back Gallifrey - not for one paltry episode, but for good, along with the Daleks. No need to go for the end of the world every season.
This and the last season (and a bit of the end of the previous doctor) have been atrocious. He's trying way to hard to make the show something that it's not. These giant story arcs are not only boring, but no one gives a shit.
As an American, I hate the fast talking over loud music- I have the darndest time figuring out what Matt Smith is saying. David Tennant was easier to understand.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Spoilers.
(* My money is on Amy )
I'm thinking Amy's child, which is somehow fathered (or entirely created) from the Flesh's remaining imprint of the ganger Doctor. By killing the doctor proper and taking the energy from his regeneration this being can then regenerate, either "back" into Smith (as he is apparently sign-on for at least another series) or the next Doctor (if the plot line encompasses the next series too). This might be their way of getting around the 12 regenerations limit for the Doctor, assuming the resulting being is starting with a fresh count, rather than saving the decision of how to deal with that until a few series hence.
There is also timelord DNA floating about the universe as a result of the "The Doctor's Daughter" episode though. They could bring that into it too/instead.
But we also know the past Doctor met a River in that ends up with a sonic screwdriver that one could assume the Doctor gives to her at some point in his future. Timey whimey.
It's gotta be the bold primary colors... those seem to signal children's shows. Plus all the roundedness signals "safe" - it's kinda a meme that scary stuff has sharp angles.
So they now looks like AI robot pets!
This thread just reminded me that the BBC's click program recently featured the Dalek6388 web site that has the history of the daleks used in the series from '63 to '88. I'm just having a look through it now (so please don't slashdot it before I'm done) :-)
Old episodes: we can go anywhere in the universe and here we are in the English countryside AGAIN.
Hooray for CGI backdrops and larger budgets.
Curse of the Black Pearl^H^H^H^H^HSpot. A bolt, which, admittedly, wasn't wooden...
He couldn't get the wooden door open in Silence in The Library, though.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
Stairs haven't stopped Daleks for a while now. just saying.
Reply to That ||
maybe the Doctor is the man she killed.
That is exactly what I've been thinking too.
Reply to That ||
That's what you're expected to think, but it's obviously going to be someone else, such as Rory.
Cost. Even galaxy conquering space monsters have accountants.
[Cut scene to a dimly lit counting house in the outer reaches of the of Sol galaxy.
Pan down to a green blobish looking fellow behind a raised desk and a Dalek gliding into the room]
Dalek: HERE IS MY REQUISITION FORM FOR DEADLOCK DOORS!
Vogon Accountant: Get stuffed! We can't afford it. The Galactic Economy is complete in stook thanks to you lot failing all the time!
Dalek: THE LOCKS ARE EFFICIENT! THE LOCKS WILL KEEP OUT THE DOCTOR ! WE WILL NOT FAIL!!!!
Vogon Accountant: I can't get money from nowhere! Can't you conquer something?! How about the Cybermen? They keep hording gold away like their lives depend on it.
Dalek: CYBERMEN ARE NOT THE PROBLEM! THE DOCTOR IS THE PROBLEM! WE WILL EXTERMINATE HIM WHEN THE DALEK RACE IS SECURE!!! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!! EX-TER-MIN-NATE!!!!!!
Vogon Accountant: Oh Hells Bells! [Accountant pushes a button on his console] Imelda, another Dalek 'client' has turned foaming mouth mental again. Bring out some of my . . . poetry. [Imelda hands him a large leatherbound tome which he unlocks] Yes, now then! Fie gorlble sond on one summer day. Tise doc! Doc doc! Tise doc!
Dalek: Naggggg! MY SENSORS ARE IMPARED!! Narrrghhh!! MY PLUNGY THING CANNOT REACH MY BRAIN!!! AAAAAAGGHHHHH!!!
[Dalek explodes. Two Vogon janitors in coveralls come by and wheel the remaining Dalek stump away.]
Vogon Accountant: Shoulda used a Sonic Screwdriver. Stupid blobby git.
that the Daleks are the easiest opponents to defeat in the universe.
In case you don't know that's the team that historically played against the Harlem globetrotters
The Daleks are England's Godzilla - their take on the echo of the trauma of WW2: a mechanized tank with unrepentant genocidal goals. When they were on screen I could see they touched some lingering discomfort in my parents' generation - even though I didn't entirely know why. They way they were reintroduced in the revival, there was a touch of the that same legacy fear in the way they had the Doctor recoil from them - that background trauma was internalized into the canon of the show.
Now that the show has moved past the Time War survivor guilt issues, the Daleks do need to go away for a while until a suitable story can be found that needs them.
I admit I am tiring a bit of the Amy+Rory soap opera saga, but can't quite envision how they are going to get phased out. I don't think the writers have the balls to kill one or both outright, esp if Amy is really pregnant, and it'd be too trite to do the "we want to settle down and not travel any more" out.
Churches!
Very small rocks!
I drank what? -- Socrates
Ok, but what about the flying? If yellow sunlight gives Kryptonians the power of flight, how does that work? Are they able to negate the effects of gravity and just float? What about thrust; where does that come from? And if they can negate the effects of gravity in a yellow star system, Does that mean that Power Girl would need a heavy duty bra in a red star system?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I was hoping they'd keep the ganger version around to explain how the Doctor from the season opener dies in his current regeneration. What the show needs is some subtle, multi-season arcs; some mysterious coincidence that pops up now and again that when resolved it changes the perspective of the show. I mean things like The Face of Boe being Captain Jack Harkness, and the Bad Wolf concept. With Bad Wolf, it would have been great if that had spanned the entire Rose arc instead of just the one season.
Star Trek TNG got this right. The series premiere has Q putting the Enterprise crew on trial for the crime of being a vicious, savage, child race. Picard convinces Q to to test them, and they have their little FarPoint encounter, and you think: that's that. Over the next seven seasons, Q pops in from time to time, like he said he would at the end of the Premiere. During the sixth season, when Q is testing Amanda Rogers to see if she's really Q or not, we get a hint of the arc. Q is going to be Amanda's judge, jury and executioner, and when Picard recounts the trial from the premiere, Q says "The jury is still out, Picard. Make no mistake." Then, during the series finale, Picard finds himself back in the same court as the premiere, and the enormity of the arc becomes apparent. The entire series that we'd enjoyed watching for seven seasons were all part of the trial that started in the first episode.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
She was probably wearing a space suit at the time.
I drank what? -- Socrates
It's already clear that The Doctor is perfectly able to program from the virus he wrote to expose Prisoner Zero in "The Eleventh Hour".
The Doctor's daughter pulls up in an obscure American car when they need to make a quick get away?
I drank what? -- Socrates
I think the Daleks will be back, but probably not before season 7. I suspect the rest of this season will involve Amy, her baby, and what ever alien race is involved.
Part of me thinks the Amy-having-a-timelord-baby story arc is borderline jumping the shark. I hate it when shows use babies as plot devices. It just feels too much like a cheesy soap opera gimmick. The other part of me is going to give it a chance because I can sort of see an overall theme emerging. Either her baby is a genetic experiment or it is hers and Rory's but since it could have been conceived on the TARDIS then due to all the time energy it could be part time lord.
We've seen TARDIS-like consoles in two episodes. The first was in the Lodger, in the "upstairs apartment" where people were being zapped while being forced to try to power the ship. The second time was in The Day of the Moon, in the sewers with the Silence. I do not think the Silence are responsible for the TARDIS-like ships, and we will see a new, different enemy that is trying to build a TARDIS and has kidnapped or engineered Amy's baby so it can power the ship. This is just my speculation.
I can see this story arc spanning many more episodes, so there isn't really any room for Daleks. I do think we can use a proper break from Daleks and Cybermen, so that it'll actually mean something again when they are re-introduced.
As for the 11th doctor, I like him more than I thought I would when I heard David Tennant was leaving the show. Matt Smith plays a very quirky doctor and the 11th doctor feels more vulnerable, quirky, and child-like. He makes mistakes and his technology is more fallible (e.g.: the sonic screwdriver doesn't work in every situation). As much as I love the 10th doctor, the writers made him too powerful and god-like and near the end I never really felt he was in much danger (with few exceptions). Moffat either had to tone down Doctor Who's invincible awesomeness, or he had to introduce ever-more-powerful enemies. There is more wiggle room if he weakened the doctor, so I think that was a good decision. My only real complaint about Matt Smith as the doctor is that he needs to be more intense at times. I love his quirkiness, but if he can add in some intensity to the mix then he has potential to be one of the best doctors.
I also like Rory, because he is a stand up guy that does the right thing. He is the best of humanity. I think he is a better person than Amy. He is a bit insecure, but wouldn't we all if we were standing next to the Doctor? I am happy the writers ended up making Amy and Rory be together and love each other without making her another wide-eyed lovesick Doctor groupie. I hate love triangles and I am glad that plot device is not being used ... for now.
Same with Amy vs Donna. Amy has some kinda' accent or something.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Post like this is what keeps me reading slashdot. No matter where you go, there is always an accounting cost. it's like being hit on the head with the anvil, the Answer is very true but nobody ever thinks of it.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
How about they actually let the Daleks win a *battle* or two?
Or River. Did she not say in a past episode that the reason she is in prison is because she killed a very good man.
Yes, but I think that has been telegraphed *too* clearly not to be a red herring (...along with the River==Mrs Who gag - he's a bugger, that Moffatt guy).
My prediction: Amy shot the Doctor in order to prevent some horrible timey-wimey disaster and/or to protect her baby (after all, she's been so concerned to try and save the Doc that its a matter of narrative causality that she should have been the one to kill him) but River turns out to be Amy's daughter, and takes the rap for her Mum (we know that she is staying in jail to keep some sort of "promise").
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Every episode a 'fishfinger-custard' and not a single 'green scaley womble'. If you want the Doctor to finish, just stop watching him, and if enough agree with you, then he will magically disappear.
"The new episodes make almost zero sense"
They make perfect sense, ask a question if you don't understand, there's no shame in not being able to follow complex plots.
Donna knew that all she really had to work with was a big mouth, so she used it.
Amy... Amy talks?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I was thinking more along the lines of using her biological make-up as a reference to help extract the Doctor's influence on the Flesh from the remnants left behind by the humans. Of course if they (whoever "they" are) know of her and have her alive, she would make a more logical vessel than Amy if the baby is in fact entirely or part gallifreyan.
The "400" encounters was just a number plucked out of the air by Moffatt, in case anyone's wondering. They've appeared in about 30 stories over the years, and some of those were cameos or flashbacks.
Don't diss the sonic!
No. His copy who got left behind with the screwdriver used it in the last scene of the last episode that was aired.
[Spoiler warning]
A couple of scenes after the Flesh-Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver, in the TARDIS, the original uses the sonic screwdriver to break the link to the fake-Amy (which collapses just like the Flesh Doctor did).
The Flesh Doctor was an exact copy, down to the clothes and everything. He normally carries his sonic screwdriver in his pocket, so it plausible that the Flesh-Doctor had a copy of the sonic screwdriver, the copy being the one subsequently destroyed.
Ah. I never followed the show that closely.
how is babby formed?
A sonic screwdriver is a piece of equipment. Anyone can have one. Liz Shaw had one, though that was probably a mistake (she used one while the Doctor had gone to another dimension; the writer probably meant she was using his and didn't realize the story made that impossible.) Romana made her own. A villain in "Partners in Crime" had a sonic pen, and that was part of the new series. River didn't have to get it from the Doctor, no matter what she said.
Watch the episode again. There were a few scenes after the copy bit it, one of which took place in the TARDIS and featured the Doctor using the screwdriver again.
I won't describe exactly what happened as it constitutes a pretty major spoiler, but it was a very important scene and the screwdriver played a key role.
The doctor needs to go take back K-9 from Sarah Jones....
She has had him long enough, and likely he can just take her from the timeline after she is dead and K-9 is all alone. K-9 is best companion ever, although I do enjoy the eye candy companions also.
everyone knows that Daleks are easily defeated by stairs - or did they solve that with the new ones?
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a reference to Godwin's Law approaches 1
What I see happening with the current season is not so much that the overall story is good or bad, but that the writers have raised the stakes and taken much bigger risks. There are unresolved mysteries going back a season and a half. That could mean that there is a very big dramatic payoff coming, or it could mean that the writers screwed up a season and a half ago and don't even realize it.
Isn't their a child doctor (well the non-twist interpretation was Amy and Rorey's altered by the TARDIS) currently?
They really don't need a stand-in for the space-suit murder at all. That child could have the doctors memories, and go.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
And now they have sexy human daleks who can sneak in with humans and who wonder about if they are really daleks or humans.
There is this actress who would be perfect for the role, tricia helfer.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I'm not sure how I forgot that in less than a week even though I've seen a lot of Tom Baker stuff since then.
It looks like a continuity problem because there was one scene earlier where the doctor passed the screwdriver to his copy (or vice-versa) which looked like it was to establish the point that there was only one. Either that or there was another in the Tardis.
Anyway, the sonic screwdriver magic wand thing and a desire to tone it down or get rid of it came up in an interview last year. I was hoping it was left behind but that was wishful thinking. Like K9 there was probably just another one in storage.
One of the weakest points in the Doctor Who movie was the notion that the Daleks would have anything we might call a criminal justice system.
But it would be interesting to see the Daleks in a marginal situation where they have to start co-operating with other races - hating every minute of it - and perhaps observing the Shadow Proclamation, with the Doctor and the Daleks each grudgingly respecting each other's legal rights, at least while others are watching.
I'm not sure how I forgot that in less than a week even though I've seen a lot of Tom Baker stuff since then. It looks like a continuity problem because there was one scene earlier where the doctor passed the screwdriver to his copy (or vice-versa) which looked like it was to establish the point that there was only one. Either that or there was another in the Tardis. Anyway, the sonic screwdriver magic wand thing and a desire to tone it down or get rid of it came up in an interview last year. I was hoping it was left behind but that was wishful thinking. Like K9 there was probably just another one in storage.
I think at that point they had switched, so the Flesh Doctor was giving the real Doctor (who was pretending to be the Flesh Doctor) his (copy of the) sonic screwdriver, to convince the others that the Doctor passing the screwdriver was the real one (when it actually wasn't). That's my guess anyway.
It really did become the Star Trek tricorder. The damned thing could do anything and then some. Need to adjust a cell phone to work through time and space? [points sonic at it] Done. Need to see what this lifeform is? [points sonic at it] Done. Need to fix the computers that were just destroyed in a massive explosion? [points sonic at it] [points it again] Done.
They really need to just consider what it is. A sonic screwdriver. A device that sends a tuned frequency out. Some things, like unlocking modern doors, could be feasible, but it would require a tensioner too. Look at what a lock pick gun, a lock pick rake, or even a bump key do. But, a sonic device against a keypad? That makes just as much sense as shooting one to make the door fall open. Sure as hell, when I finish forming my evil intergalactic empire, I'll make sure it has locks that work, not locks that you can just shoot, kick, or yell at. I also will have well positioned guards and surveillance, and not build in secret back doors to subvert my own security.
If some schmuck in a blue box shows up, I'll have him captured immediately. He won't be able to just walk in, steal my evil universe destroying device, and disappear with it.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Somewhere the Daleks will be a spa.... EXFOLIATE EXFOLIATE
Where does the signature go?
And (in the Sarah Jane Adventures spinoff) Sarah Jane Smith had a sonic lipstick.
Moffat did some good work in a group as a contributor; previously. As a leader we have been moving too far into fantasy kiddie stories which is something Moffat had done in the past; he needs some restraint to make him shine... somebody who doesn't like TV for children.
I was upset with the lame ending last season which is the worst I've seen since the 70s - not that they had all that many long story arcs as they do now. Tom Baker died in a lame story but it wasn't as bad as last season. Somehow I feel like Moffat must have come up with that weak ending 3? seasons back when the Master returned the 1st time -- where it was just a hair short of asking the audience to think good thoughts of the doctor so he will live/win and turn from a house-elf back into a humanoid.
As this arc continues I'm thinking we are heading for a top contender for worst ending. I've been a fan but unlike any of the fans I know, I'm not immediately sold as soon as the theme music starts. I can drop it as a waste of time, like everything post Tom Baker.
They also have to weigh the same as ducks. I used to have a bridge made of ducks, but it flew away.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
Is this a trial separation or are they free to date? Are we going to see a frustrated Dalek repeatedly killing Jack Harkness on Torchwood? I can just picture a disgusted Dalek slowly gliding off, eye stalk hung low as Jack Harness yells insults after him and grabs his crotch daring the Dalek to kill him again. A Dalek can only take so much abuse and it was bad enough from a Timelord let alone a sexual indistinct American.
They're just clearing out the retail channel, and then they'll announce new, upgraded Daleks now with Sonic Screwdriver invulnerability at a conference and people will be lining up outside the stores to buy them.
real laughter was produced.
Anybody want my mod points?
Not really true. There have been quite a few times in recent years when the Doctor has been in the same moment more than once.
That would be bad writing if that were the case. Where's a bio-organic compound going to store the electrical energy something like that will need?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
What I want to know is what did Arthur Darvill do to Moffat that was so bad. It's like Moffat takes it out on poor Rory who gets killed literally every week.
:p
STOP KILLING RORY!!!
I'm guessing they were planning on doing a bunch more Dalek stories... as you say, they definitely set things up for it (though nothing leading to anything specific), and they redesigned how they look.
Problem is that the redesigned Daleks look really stupid... like shitty appliances from Sharper Image or Brookstone, from a decade ago.
I tell ya, all this whining about the new Dalek design never gets old (except for immediately).
I mean, it's like you're a Star Trek fan, circa 1987. Oh, lordy, does the new Enterprise look stupid. And the captain is a bald French pacifist with an English accent. And that android guy is just a big Spock wannabe. Clearly this new show is going nowhere.
The thing is, times change. We get new stuff. Unless you want to get the same stuff you've been getting for 40 years, that is. And today's "worst design ever" is tomorrow's beloved classic. So why not get on board while it's still fresh?
Now, don't get me wrong, I think the 2005 Daleks had a lot going for them - the Daleks have had those slats from like the third Dalek story, but it was the 2005 Daleks that made those slats actually look good. To me the 2005 Daleks are like the pinnacle of Dalek designs based on the 1963 originals. But, at the same time, I welcome a turn into new and unexplored territory, and I think the new design has a lot going for it. It's got that new eye-stalk and the new neck vanes, the departure from the slats in pursuit of something sleeker, more like the bands that were on the original Dalek casings.
I guess it's silly for me to say that you should like the new design, or anything like that. But if you're getting hung up on the hunch-back or the bright colors, I'd say get over it and give it a chance.
As for this declaration of a Dalek hiatus - I really think it's unavoidable at this point. There's just been too much Dalek activity since the 2005 series started. "The Stolen Earth" was especially gratuitous - the whole thing was like a giant circle-jerk of character cameos and a ridiculously huge Dalek fleet subjected to a total humiliating defeat... (Though it did bring us Dalek Fred!) That said, I do want to see more of the new Daleks - but I guess I'll just have to be patient. In the mean time I'm really enjoying what's going on with The Silence...
Bow-ties are cool.
And I hate River. River is a classic Mary Sue--the kind of character that a 13 year old girl would put in a fanfic. "I'm the Doctor's secret wife, and I'm the only one who can talk smack to him, and I can time travel like him and I'm as mysterious as him and I have a really cool name."
And she's the one who carries a gun so the Doctor doesn't have to... I can see your point. Her "I'm so awesome" moment shooting The Silence in S06E02 left me with a bit of an eye-roll... I don't like when "highly skilled fighter" characters are so "highly skilled" that they just take their enemies for granted. "Oh, I can just let this last one run at me from behind and shoot him without looking. I'm that cool." (Though Tenth Doctor was guilty of this as well, with the Sycorax... And after losing a hand!)
Still, that aside, I've enjoyed her part in the show. What can I say? She's a fun character. IMO anyway. And poor River. She doesn't get any more kisses. :(
Bow-ties are cool.
The Eleventh Doctor is awesome. Most of his episodes are awesome as well. I have no idea what you're complaining about.
Bow-ties are cool.
Thank goodness. The Daleks were getting so overused. They need to preserve their impact by making their appearances more rare.
Maybe we can also stop getting linear appearances too? They are time travelers after all. Why do they keep encountering each other in the same order? It wasn't always the case, and River proves that it's much more interesting when they don't meet in the same order.
You might try, but you'd be stuck in your bathroom because your locks will work. (Your keys not so much)
"Vortex Cortex told Slashdot 'There's a problem with the Doctor. He is the most famous character of the Doctor Who series and the most frequent, which means he is the most reliably triumphant protagonist in the universe.' "
If predictable story lines and characters are right out, then Who is left in?!
Team Rocket. Yes, I started watching Who after Pokemon. "emergency temporal shift" == "team rocket's blasting off again"
I haven't been too impressed by the more recent Dalek episodes, and we certainly don't need one every season. So, I'm glad they are giving them a break.
Aren't the Two/Five/Three Doctors stories counterexamples to those being 'the laws of (Doctor Who) physics'?
The gay Daleks, Victor Lewis Smith has a lot to answer for he he
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfxyvrW-lUs
Turn on the subtitles (DVDs) or closed captions (broadcasts).
One of the weakest points in the Doctor Who movie was the notion that the Daleks would have anything we might call a criminal justice system.
It was totally meaningless to have the Daleks put the Master on trial anyway. They didn't even show any Daleks on-screen. It could have just as easily been the Timelords holding the trial, with the Doctor taking the Master's remains somewhere else...
Bow-ties are cool.
Even if Regeneration Girl does a gender-swap regeneration (which per remarks the Doctor made in "The Doctor's Wife" IS possible), she's still extremely unlikely to end up looking like Matt Smith (who's staying until at least 2013 according to what I've read). Besides, I doubt they'll replace the Doctor with some other version of himself (unless it's like Crichton on Farscape and both Doctors both have an absolutely equal claim to be the "real" one).
Which is one reason I don't really care for those stories. They just make a mess of everything. You notice that none of the doctors in question remembers what happened to his earlier incarnations in those stories? It is far from a perfect series, but as a general principle they try to suggest that the Doctor can't just do whatever he likes. If he saw someone die, it shouldn't be possible for him to go back and change that. It would make the series boring. To put it another way, that's how good stories do it. Bad stories break the rules. With a series as long as Doctor Who, there are a lot of both. It is kinda pointless trying to make sense of it all, really.
Rory being the "best man I've ever known" to River is a real stretch. Besides, it can't be him. She was STILL in Stormcage during the period that Rory never existed. Besides, she didn't know him before meeting Auton-Rory.
It's hard to think of who else it could possibly be. Someone whom River thinks is the best man she's ever known AND is someone whom when Father Octavian was asked by the Doctor who it was would say, "you really, really don't want to know." It HAS to be the Doctor (since this is Doctor Who and so it CAN'T be Jesus).
Yes, but that would be covered by the "generally speaking". In the Five and Three Doctors series the collective powers of the Time Lords was being used to allow the doctors to co-exist. In the Two Doctors, the Second Doctor was on a mission for the time lords, so they may have been intervening to allow it as well. Collectively (and individually with individuals such as the Doctor himself) the Time Lords are meant to be scary powerful and can turn off, or at least work around laws of physics. Basically, the current series and episodes like _The Waters of Mars_ seem to indicate that the Laws of Time that the Time Lords follow are laws of physics for the rest of us, but are more like regulatory laws for them. So, they can break them and potentially contain and repair the damage, with some violations being worse than others
He didn't use it then because he knew it would disintegrate Amy.
We all know the sonic screwdriver does complicated things with technology, and we don't need to know the details.
I'd prefer that doesn't equate to "technobabble" though, like the language in Star Trek. Mystery is fine, not everyone knows how a microwave oven actually heats food ("it's microwave radiation of course" one would say, still without knowing *how*) and less how a carburettor works in the common car. It's all "magic".
But there's consistency - we don't say, "quick, microwave the carburettor so we can get outta here!" IMO, good sci-fi knows the audience won't lose disbelief if the rocks look like styrofoam, but we will if it's not consistent and takes the genre "seriously" (incl. comedies like the wonderful Galaxy Quest).
What I want, nay need to know is whether or not the Doctor destroying Amy's replicant also destroyed his shoes which he got from his ganger. Weren't they made of the flesh too?
How exactly do you trade clothes with a ganger anyway? If all of their clothes are part of them, you couldn't; any more than you could trade feet with them. If all of their clothes are just separate creations produced by the flesh wouldn't they be alive as well? The pile of discarded Jennifers was turning into a pile of dirty jumpsuit laundry with flesh blobs. Would their eyes really be the last thing to go or would it be their clothes?
...and if this alien flesh lifeform is alive and can be pressed into clothes that aren't alive, humanity can use it to replace third world sweat shops making clothes the old fashioned way. I'm thinking something akin to the Torchwood episode Meat.
Of course I wouldn't have to think of such oddities if the episode wasn't such a letdown after last week's decent build-up. I'm not saying it's the Worst Episode Ever but it is my least favorite 11th Doctor episode taking the title away from the previous champion Victory of the iDaleks.
When River shoots at the spaceman(woman) and misses (despite being already established as an excellent shot) she mutters something like "Yes, of course" which could mean she knows her shots went wide because it would be a paradox for her to shoot her younger self.
Don't you wish you hadn't wasted 3 seconds of your life reading this sig?