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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.
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.
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.
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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.
(I am submitting this for a friend who has trouble with keyboards)
The BBC is bi-ased. The pro-gram shows only the da-leks being de-fea-ted. It never shows the time-lines when the da-leks con-quer and the doc-tor is de-fea-ted. They por-tray the da-leks as mind-less kill-ers. The daleks are nu-anced. The da-leks are complex. The da-leks have had it up to here with this stu-pid pro-gram. Dear 'Points Of View'. Oh why, oh why, oh why can we not have un-bi-ased re-por-ting? Why can't we see the da-leks win and the doc-tor get his ass ex-ter-mi-nated? Why can't the doc-tor stay dead when he dies? It's all so un-fair. Yours, Dis-gus-ted of Ska-ro.
They appeared fairly regularly in the "classic" series, but not quite as frequently as peoples' memories would lead them to believe.
Indeed, Doctors 5 through 7 only met them once each on-screen. 2 & 4 encountered them in two televised stories each, 3 bumped into them in 3 stories and 1 holds the record (if you count modern two-parters as single stories) at 5 televised meetings. I'm ignoring short "guest" appearances here, like the few minutes in the 5 doctors, and counting the last segment of Frontier in Space as a run-on to the full Dalek story that followed.
The fact that they didn't appear often heightened the excitement for the fans when they did and I agree with many that they have perhaps been overused in recent series, so giving their narrative a break for a bit certainly makes good sense to me.
The Daleks went from being a feared nemesis to being a laughing stock.
Exactly as what happened to The Borg in the Star Trek universe. It got so bad on Voyager that I wouldn't have been surprised to see The Borg beaten in an episode by cream pies in the face as Captain Janeway spun around on the floor yelping "Woop woop woop!" like Curly.
Trolling is a art,
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.