THE DOCTOR WHO RATINGS GUIDE: BY FANS, FOR FANS

BBC
Victory of the Daleks

Story No. 222 The new Dalek race
Production Code 1.3
Dates April 17 2010

With Matt Smith, Karen Gillan
Written by Mark Gatiss Directed by Andrew Gunn
Executive Producers: Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis.

Synopsis: Winston Churchill summons the Doctor, because the Daleks have offered to help win the war.

Reviews

A Review by Gavin Smith 20/4/10

Like the other scripts by Mark Gatiss, Victory of the Daleks seems to be more about style than about substance. But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it.

Ok, I have a problem with the Daleks. They've turned up... again. As the Doctor's number one enemy, the Daleks are only really effective when they creep in on him and the audience. Admittedly, I liked the bit at the start where one says "I am your soldier"; an allusion to the end of episode two of Power of the Daleks? Nevertheless, here they are, perhaps the fifth "lone" Dalek ship to have escaped their mishmash of final defeats by "falling through time". That is seriously starting to annoy me. If the Daleks are going to be the adversary, they need substance! Also, their plan is rubbish. It is inherently clear from the start what they are trying to do. Daleks in Manhattan, for all its flaws, was a story worthy of the great space dust bins because it featured them trying something relatively new; not completely new, as similar things had been tried in Evil of the Daleks and Revelation of the Daleks. Here, they are one step away from regenerating their race through some sci-fi, dues ex machina idea that was probably borrowed from Russell T. Davies. Also, the Cult of Skaro stand-ins look like bath toys.

Now for everything else...

The TARDIS crew are on form. Matt Smith reminds me of Patrick Troughton, not just in appearances but also through his mannerisms. He is not, to my delight, completely above being outwitted by those around him. Neither is he completely above being bailed out by his friends; he and Amy have to work from either side of the same problem before finally working directly together to solve it. I like those episodes where the Doctor clearly would not have survived had it not been for his companion: Rose, Turn Left. Whereas David Tennant often seemed like a one-man show that quickly got annoying but just wouldn't stop, here we have a couple of more believable - and in my opinion more likeable - adventurers who complement each other well. It was also good to see Matt Smith get a personnal confrontation with the Daleks.

I liked the concept behind Professor Bracewell. Ok, it got a bit hammy when they were defusing the bomb but that was one thing about the Daleks that was quite fresh.

Now, this is a negligible point, but it has captured my attention. The revived series is very proud to establish itself as a British show. If there was one thing I learned from The Idiot's Lantern, it is that Mark Gatiss loves his Union Jacks - or Union Flags as he has Billie point out. More interesting, however, is the show's efforts to encompass the wider United Kingdom, though it seems to have forgotten Northern Ireland and Cornwall. Winston Churchill very much embodies this identity, well portrayed by the guy who played Baron Harkonnen in Dune. Churchill's legacy is an interesting one; these days it's really quite partisan: Gallipoli, Dresden, eh Winston? The British stuff I'm fine with, though I imagine it may become annoying for other viewers, particularly those in other countries.

In conclusion, despite a lack of depth - compared to the last two episodes at least - Victory of the Daleks provides a sweet burst of adrenaline early in the series, hopefully upping the overall pace.

A Review by Paul Mackie 15/5/10

It's time to put the Daleks to bed for a good long time. Victory of the Daleks makes this abundantly clear. Like The Stolen Earth/Journey's End and Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks before it, Victory is another plot-hole-riddled outing for the pepperpots. You've seen this plot before and you've seen it done better, and I for one don't want to see the Daleks back unless they come with an original and satisfying plot.

What's particularly annoying about Victory is that, for the first 15 minutes or so, it really is a different kind of Dalek story. We share the Doctor's curiosity and irritation with the "Ironsides", whose ruse is consistently amusing for as long as it lasts. Ian McNeice is entertainingly hammy as Churchill, enunciating every line as though posterity is watching. The Doctor is so bothered that it seems the Daleks' plan is just to get him to lose his cool, which it is, and he does. Smith's more physical performance, as opposed to Tennant's wild-eyed line readings, makes for a tremendously funny freakout scene.

But then it all breaks down, and quickly at that. The Doctor walks straight into the Daleks' trap, which makes very little sense in the first place; is that really the only way the "corrupted" Daleks could identify themselves? Far be it for me to question Dalek racial science, but couldn't there be some other phrenological test that didn't involve the Daleks' worst nemesis and most dangerous threat?

Of course, the Daleks haven't always made sense, and the story could easily have been redeemed if the proceedings from then on hadn't been such trash. The Doctor exposits while holding the Skittle Daleks at bay; Smith plays the reveal beautifully, but otherwise this is the same old scene we've seen in each and every Dalek episode of the new series. Spitfires in Space; well, it looked great in the trailers, anyway, but it comes off as unnecessary and has too much distracting illogic to work, even on Doctor Who.

Worst of all is the oblivion bomb: specifically, how it's defused. For the second week in a row, wonderful companion Amy Pond saves the day. But talking to a living bomb; I mean, what good could that possibly do? Why would the Daleks, the most cruel and sadistic of Who villains, give their bomb the ability to defuse at all? Why even bother with the whole London business when they could have just as easily set off the oblivion bomb in the first place; to get the Spitfire setpiece in? Why bother with Bracewell at all? Why not just trap the Doctor some other way? Why would an intelligent, calculating race like the Daleks have so many moving parts in such a simple plan?

Season 5 has been better than this, for the most part, but boy, this is the kind of wall-banging script that I hoped had gone out of style with Davies' departure. The Doctor and Amy remain likable enough to carry even this pile of crap and make it fun while you're watching it, but it's just not worth the logic hangover. The only real redemption here is the brief notes of foreboding about Amy. Undoubtedly this will play into the finale. Too bad the other 2/3rds of Victory is straight garbage.

A Review by William Adam Sinclair 2/8/10

I am honestly incredibly sad that my first negative review must be of a story from the Matt Smith era, an era that, so far, has managed to deliver imaginative stories full of energy and wit every week and that the episode was also written by my second favorite (to Moffat) Who writer, Mark Gatiss. If you look at my review of The Stolen Earth/Journey's End, you will know that I enjoyed it. However, I did notice that the Daleks were beginning to become a bit pathetic in the way they could be beaten by the flick of a few buttons. This story looked like it could have revamped the Daleks and made them scary again. Sadly, it didn't.

The episode starts extremely well with the Doctor and Amy landing in the cabinet war rooms. They are greeted by Winston Churchill who takes them to see his new weapon. I would like to note that in making it that Winston and the Doctor know each other already Mark Gatiss has managed to save a lot of time, no "who is this intruder?!" or psychic paper they merely have some delightful banter in which we find out that Winston and the Doctor are very close friends indeed! We then meet Criswell, the "creator" of the new weapon. As you may have guessed by now the new weapon is of course a Dalek.

The Daleks are tricking Winston into believing they are called "Ironsides" and were invented by Criswell to win the war. The Doctor is obviously annoyed about this and warns Churchill that they are Daleks and are deadly. This is where the episode is at it's best, it really does feel like this should have gone on for a lot longer but alas this is only 15 minutes of the episode before we are launched into a cartoonish romp with absolutely no redeeming factors.

When no one believes the Doctor, he complete and utterly loses it and starts pummeling the Dalek with a comically oversized spanner. This scene is incredibly well done and is rather unsettling to watch. Then the Daleks show they're true nature and exterminate two red shirts/soldiers (with no concern from any of the main characters except for Chriswell) and promptly reveal that Criswell is in fact an android before teleporting back to their ship. And here we have it! After 15 minutes of careful plotting and tension building, we suddenly have this cartoon of an episode that does nothing but cement the fact the Daleks are no longer scary at all.

After some rather shit exposition about some random plot device (yeah I know "progenitor" but the writers obviously didn't put any thought into it at all so why the hell should I care?!) the new merchandise emerges! Six new, rubbish-looking Daleks! When I saw this scene, I felt like I was watching an incredibly high-budget toy commercial! I could just imagine someone saying "now in new colors, buy them now!!!" Me and my friends have had many a laugh at how rubbish the new Daleks look. Some of us say "Teletubbies", others say "power rangers". Now, to be fair, they don't look half as bad as most people say but they are just a huge step down from the masterfully designed bronze Daleks we have had for the past few seasons.

There is an attempt to make us care about Chriswell but we don't really care seeing as how we've only known him for around 17 minutes! I really think this should have been a two parter. It would have given the episode time to flesh out the characters (and also the awesome concept of the Daleks infiltrating the cabinet war rooms); as it is, however, it really doesn't work. I am not even going to start talking about the sheer stupidity of the spitfires in space sequence. It would've been awesome if they had given us a proper explanation as to how the hell they were built! I know I'm a nerd for nitpicking like that but it just really annoys me!

And so it all gets rounded up in the most idiotic way possible and we're done. Thank God that's over! Now I would like to stress that for the most part I have loved season five of New Who (and New Who on the whole) but this episode just seems like wasted potential. I really do feel bad for bashing the new series like this, seeing as how I normally get annoyed by people who do that. Therefore, I promise that my next review of the new series will be good! Hmm, perhaps I might review The Eleventh Hour?

Failure of the Daleks by Richard Evans 12/10/10

What does anger actually feel like? According to Davros' Dalek Supreme (Journey's End), "anger, sorrow, despair" is experienced by the Doctor after an apparently catastrophic setback. The truth of the matter is that "anger" equates to having suffered the insulting Victory of the Daleks.

My Time Lord instinct (it's in my guts, so I know what I'm talking about) immediately indicates if I feel good or not at any particular time. After watching the credits roll on the Eleventh Doctor's ridiculously early Dalek encounter, I was truly fuming as, for every little thing the story did right, it erred at least twice.

The initial set-up, concerning the Cabinet War Rooms and a prematurely confident Churchill, is promising enough; the historian in me had to admire the apt set pieces, even if what I have seen in the actual War Rooms is incredibly dissimilar. We finally get a look inside a Dalek saucer - and that comes across incredibly strongly, not to mention as a welcome contrast to the motherships of The Parting of the Ways and Journey's End. Mark Gatiss slips in at least one thoughtful throwback to The Power of the Daleks, furthering the parallels between the Eleventh and Second Doctors, but these are rather irritating, because it is too clear that Victory of the Daleks as a whole has been engineered around these referential one-liners.

This has a temporary side-effect of regressing the Daleks to the sympathetic beings they were in the Hartnell era, with a highly compromised sense of menace and believability. The Doctor is understandably frustrated at their uncharacteristic ways, because I definitely was (these are the same monsters that attempted to destroy absolutely all alien life in their previous appearance). On the plus side, the conversation between the Time Lord and Prime Minister, in which the former addresses his loathing for the Daleks, gives Matt Smith an instantaneous moment of brilliance: shutting his companion up when she has reasonable grounds to doubt him. Despite David Tennant's exit, the Doctor's long-standing arrogance is sustained, and that can only be commended.

Such is only an instantaneous blip in a dismally conceived, inconsistent misfire. The whole plot structure is illogical and messy, with the latter half of the episode completely failing to ignite my appreciation of the Daleks. Following the activation of their unusual plan of attack, nothing much happens, with both the villains and the supposed superhero standing still and watching too many inadequacies materialising in the story. Smith is not a convincing enemy for the monsters from Skaro, partly due to his embarrassing tendency to pelt them with empty threats at the top of his voice. In a sci-fi cliche which, by now, has become unbearably predictable, one sequence sees a respected named character and two unknowns going off to do some good work, only for the unknowns to perish between long pauses and the named man to make it out alive. Even while this is going on, the Daleks don't seem to know what they are trying to achieve, making everything awfully aimless. Eventually, the climax arises and Gatiss throws in an over-familiar ultimatum - another instance of a plot point being thrown in at the last minute with no evident consideration - the realisation of which does not gel with what has gone before it. The net result is the wimpiest ending I can think of, as well as the least stirring and satisfying, and one that cemented my fury.

Victory of the Daleks not only contains too many spoken and visual elements that Doctor Who has seen already in recent years, but many components of the whole thing make no sense at all. If there exists a test for logic that works much like an IQ test, the people responsible for this episode have just failed it. What's with the planes flying over London in broad daylight? If these aircraft are British, why is Churchill organising their destruction? Were there really zeppelins overlooking the city in the months of the Blitz, or is their presence a rotten attempt to remake Rise of the Cybermen? How have two Daleks managed to change their colour to khaki since we last saw them? Above all, I cannot and will never stop feeling violently dejected thinking of Matt Smith's false mood swing in the closing minutes (he is told by one of his fellows, "but you [did something very good just now]" and sheds his shame ridiculously). The very presence of these Daleks contradicts a comment made by Dalek Caan two years earlier, and the explanation of how they made it to London in 1941 is beyond lazy.

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin for Victory of the Daleks is a pointless, ill-advised jest from Amy Pond to Churchill, who proves herself to be pleasingly resourceful in every other scene: "Oi, Churchill!" The same line is heard in a large number of Churchill Insurance adverts, which (thanks to their brutish bulldog mascot) petrified me to death when they were aired. Accordingly, its use in Victory of the Daleks strikes all the wrong notes. To this day, I am mesmerised that nobody else seems to have made this link; or maybe it was utterly unintentional. If the latter is the case, Mark Gatiss is acquitted on this charge, but this does not relieve him of the remaining shameful sins committed by the episode.

I haven't even mentioned the one major thing about Victory of the Daleks that sets it so lowly in the appreciation of myself and everyone else. There's no point in doing so; I would prefer to leave this infuriating error to burn, along with nothing else but The Two Doctors, in the archive of the most utterly pointless Doctor Who stories.

Tin Soldiers by Mike Morris 29/1/11

Now, it wouldn't be fair or right to say that I resent Mark Gatiss' success. I don't, not in the way that I get infuriated by the continued career of Chris sodding Chibnall. After all, Gatiss was part of the League of Gentlemen, and the League of Gentlemen was a wonderful piece of work that understood narrative and grotesquery. Plus he was involved with the new remake of Sherlock, which turned out to be quite good, even if Gatiss himself wasn't very good in it.

Ah. There's the rub; much of what Gatiss does can, truth be told, be filed under the "not very good" category. There's always been a nostalgia to his Who work, which gave him a decent fan base back in the days of the Rad vs Trad fan-wars, and culminated in the curiously over-the-top acclaim given to The Unquiet Dead. Turns out that fandom's as enamoured with Victoriana as Gatiss is, then.

Say it quietly, but The Unquiet Dead was never really that good, and it looks worse now than it did on release. The script has some sharp moments, and I still maintain that the prettified production is more of a problem than the rather witless conclusion to the story (I called the script godawful lately, which probably wasn't fair), but it's not much of a story once you get past the "ooh, it looks a bit like Talons" factor. The Idiot's Lantern was less acclaimed but possibly better, although the last ten or fifteen minutes badly lets down the creepy moments in the first half-hour. And then, two not-very-good stories under his belt, Gatiss gets to write a Dalek story. With Winston Churchill in it. How the hell did he wangle that?

(Okay, I so maybe I do resent his success a bit.)

And, like every other story Mark Gatiss has written, this one isn't very good. It pootles along at the level of ordinariness for some time, and then descends into awfulness for the last fifteen minutes or so. This isn't a new phenomenon for a Gatiss story; he seems unable to come up with plots that end themselves, or to work them sufficiently through so that they have a natural resolution, and so the conclusions always seem tacked-on. So in The Unquiet Dead, the Gelth are revealed to be evil and numerous, pretty much invalidating the preceding half-hour; in The Idiot's Lantern, a bloke ends up climbing an aerial with Maureen Lipman for no readily discernible reason. Here, the Daleks have pretty much done what they have to do after half an hour, and the rest is taken up with Spitfires-in-space that are nowhere near as thrilling as they ought to be.

Ah yes, Daleks. The premise here is rather wonderful; the Daleks and Churchill form an alliance! The Daleks get to say "would you like some tea?"! Some absent-minded professor claims he invented them! The Doctor, and only the Doctor, knows that something's wrong!

Does it work? Well, partly, although the bits that do work are a blend of Evil of the Daleks and the clockwork Daleks from Rob Shearman's audio drama, Jubilee. The Daleks themselves are suitably menacing, and their wartime paint-job looks great. And while Karen Gillen is doing a bit too much of her pouting-and-flirting act with the soldier lads to engage interest, Smith is as great as always.

In fact, it's Churchill who disappoints most. He smokes cigars and spouts wartime rhetoric. That's... it. There's a couple of hints of a slightly ambivalent relationship between him and the Doctor - his grab for the TARDIS key, say - but this is a cartoon of a character, with none of the depth of the real historical figure. Mark Gatiss said in interview that he'd decided that "Doctor Who isn't the place for that kind of conversation" and forgive me if my response is predictable, but... why the hell not? If Doctor Who has done anything in its long history of the celebrity historical, it's humanise its subjects. Ultimately it's about entertainment over education, but who's a more entertaining character; an alcoholic, imperialistic egotist with brilliant oratory skills and surprising passions (Churchill painted quite well, for example) whose qualities were exactly what were needed in extremis, or a cigar-chomping caricature who never once comes close to being a believable human being? Dammit, when he wrote a wearying Charles Dickens at death's door, at least Gatiss was trying.

As for the Daleks themselves... once you get past the initial joy of the premise... what exactly are they doing, anyway? They need what appears to be a tape-recording of the Doctor's voice, but why not get someone else to say the same words? It's not like they've ever met Matt Smith's Doctor before, so they won't recognise his voice. Plus, the talk about them being hybridised suggests they're the Daleks of Eccleston season, but other events contradict this, and besides... hey ho. The premise of Daleks in WWII is a wonderful one, but there seems to have been no attempt to develop this into anything interesting or even plausible.

The most suggestively silly scene, however, remains the scene where the Daleks turn on the lights in London. For pity's sake... why? There's some sort of unfathomable idea that they want to destroy London out of sheer bastardy Dalekness, but... all they'll actually achieve is a worse-than-usual bombing of London. It betrays the story's comic-book aesthetic, where history is reduced to truisms; World War Two saved civilisation, the Battle of Britain stopped the Nazis winning, therefore surviving the Blitz saved the world. It wasn't like this, obviously, and I could give all sorts of counter-examples; however, just watch The Empty Child or The Curse of Fenric. The broadbrush Boys' Own strokes in which this story is painted are killingly obvious. There's even a bally English RAF boy who says tally-ho, for crying out loud.

I'll skip over the twin plot devices of new Daleks and the Bracewell character, except to say that the new Daleks look a bit rubbish; and also, since the story's finale depends on it, it's worth asking how the shiny iDaleks even know who Bracewell is.

Still, it's not as bad as it could be. It ambles along uneventfully, and gives the new Doctor his first real taste of failure, and only really collapses at the could-have-been-amazing dogfight scenes at the end. Like all of Gatiss' scripts, it mixes workaday plotting with a view of history that seems grounded in a festering nostalgia, and unlike the previous efforts, it's about an important point of history where the nostalgia becomes offensive. This is a view of World War II with heroes but no deaths, apart from offscreen ones of background characters that are only there to make the heroism more textured. In short, it's moronic... and yet it's not entirely unlikeable. It's one of the weaker stories of the season, and it's worse than either of Gatiss' two previous offerings, but it's not completely without merit. More faint praise, but it's the only kind of praise I can manage, sadly.

The Worst of Series 5 by Kaan Vural 17/4/11

Steven Moffat's acquired a reputation for being a sort of magical Scottish gremlin with a Midas touch. I'm a fan of his ideas, and a big fan of his writing - he clearly has talent - but obviously the man's going to be handed a crap script once in a while. Victory of the Daleks was the low point of Series 5, and the reason should be obvious: the writing. It's atrocious. The logical gaps in the story are down there with any of Davies's work.

First and foremost, the Daleks' plan is patently ridiculous. Why does the Progenitor need an excuse to produce Daleks? And even if there were a good reason for this, why on Earth would the Progenitor rely on voice-recognition when the Doctor's voice is unrecognizable from previous incarnations? Don't tell me it's that the Daleks can always recognize the Doctor; that in and of itself is never given a full explanation in the series, and it's equivalent to trading one plot hole for another. How did the Daleks know the Doctor would visit them specifically? If a simple voice recording would have worked, couldn't they have used a recording from some earlier encounter - and they must have had them, if they could recognize the Doctor - or simply faked his voice? I mean, the Progenitor's going off an mp3 or something, isn't it? It's not hearing the Doctor for itself?

Moreover, why would these Daleks even want to use original Dalek DNA? Shouldn't they consider themselves superior, the way each side in the Dalek Civil War did; it's not like Davros was going to program them with self-loathing, is he? Couldn't they just build a new Progenitor and use their own DNA to create new Daleks? And how is it that the Dalek ship doesn't have the energy to do this - or even defend itself against fighter planes from the forties - and yet it does have the energy to travel vast distances across space and time, maintain a force-field, power all of London, teleport a couple of Daleks back and forth, build a fully-functional android, and instantly synthesize five new Daleks? And if it can do all of this, why can't it stop the TARDIS from materializing on the ship? Surely a ship that fought in the Time War should be able to do at least that! And how, for the love of God, can a single ray light up London? Believe it or not, lightbulbs don't work because of rays! A spotlight of some kind would have worked better; frankly, the image of lighting up London to destroy it is nice, but is more consistent with some kind of high fantasy than it is with what is ostensibly science fiction.

Then there's Churchill. Churchill trusts the Doctor's experience and technology enough that he asks the Doctor to help them win the war, but when the Doctor tells him that these murderous mechanical beings are his lifelong, mortal enemy who are essentially Nazis in space, he shrugs this off. I mean, what on Earth is going on in Winston's head? Does he think the Doctor is so delusional that he made up centuries' worth of Dalek memories? That the Doctor is just lying for some unexplained reason? Why does Churchill feel no guilt when he realizes he was party to the resurgence of a genocidal cosmic superpower?

Bracewell isn't stupid in and of himself, but the idea behind him certainly is. Why did the Daleks program him with real scientific knowledge that could be used against them if Bracewell turned rogue or were reprogrammed? Why didn't they just deactivate Bracewell after they left or, more to the point, detonate him if they had no more business on Earth? In fact, when the Daleks were in the room, why didn't they exterminate the Doctor before teleporting away, when they had no reason not to do so and the Doctor was defenseless? And how can Bracewell make three fighter planes fit for spaceflight - and capable of destroying a Dalek vessel - and send them up into space in less than ten minutes? And how is it that convincing him he's human defuses the bomb inside him? The closest I could get to an explanation for this was that this would give him autonomy and therefore the ability to stop his own self-destruct. Couldn't the story have spared two sentences to explain that?

Finally, and most unforgivably, the Doctor. Instead of taking the subtle course of action and waiting the Daleks out, watching them for clues, he instantly goes into "shout-away-the-problem" mode. He somehow fails to impress upon Churchill the fact that he has been fighting these creatures across space and time, and that they pose a much greater threat to Britain that Hitler ever would. He honestly believes Daleks are stupid enough to be held at bay with a biscuit; it's not something the Doctor wouldn't try, but he'd do it out of desperation, not as a first option. Think about the Fourth Doctor threatening Davros with real dynamite, then think about this joker waving baked goods around it. You can't take it seriously. It defuses any tension instantly. But that's not even the half of it. The Doctor doesn't realize that if he leaves the Dalek ship, they'll just detonate Bracewell anyway; he doesn't realize that destroyed Daleks wouldn't be able to detonate Bracewell, and that destroying the Dalek ship basically makes no difference to his chances of being able to defuse Bracewell. He punches Bracewell for no reason. And in spite of being able to lower the Dalek ship's shields without remotely putting himself in danger, he can't disable its communications so they won't detonate Bracewell and he can't track it when it escapes through a time corridor.

Every single one of these problems boils down to Gatiss having logic operate at the convenience of what he wants to see. Tension has to be maintained, so Churchill has to make idiotic judgments; he wants fighter planes in space, so Bracewell has to have ridiculous amounts of technical knowledge; he wants the Doctor to have a moral dilemma, so Bracewell has to detonate as fast or as slow as the script requires.

But even writing this boneheaded usually has at least a consistent tone to back it up. This story, though, is the creative equivalent of building a Porsche by ramming two Vauxhalls into one another: all you have is an automobile accident on your hands. The initial idea of the Daleks' deception (which, as The Power of the Daleks proved, is a workable idea) aborts halfway through, without having time to build, develop, or relate in any way to the setting, to make way for the exposition and ending. This is a story that is just not about anything, which is especially insulting when you consider that a) the episode turns a real conflict and real human concerns into a caricature to support freaking pepperpots from space and b) the setting doesn't even relate to the story! For God's sake, putting the Daleks and the Nazis together should give you storytelling gold - and Gatiss still manages to run the concept into the ground!

The point of having a Dalek story this early on was obviously to help cement the idea that Smith really was the Doctor, and also to give him his first "big villain" encounter. This just reeks of a kind of insecurity I can neither stand nor understand. Matt Smith is a great actor with a great take on the Doctor, and if you want him to impress people what you need to give people is good writing, not shoddy attempts at big villains. Daleks or not, Smith is going to make this part his own. If people stop watching Doctor Who because they didn't see Daleks all season, screw 'em; they probably weren't real fans anyway.

About the Dalek redesigns... they were apparently inspired by the Technicolor movies, and I'm still confused as to why they would draw inspiration from them. I mean, we're talking about space Nazis here; they shouldn't be big on colors and variety. Totally aside from their appearance, even the idea of Dalek castes feels off when you remember that especially in their early appearances the Daleks were interchangeable and uniform. They do have a height and weight to them that is suitably menacing, but if it were up to me I'd have gone for the classic Baker-era look: imagine combining their dark coloring and monochromatic eyes with the size of the current model. I'm certain the result would have been a deeply intimidating design, especially with the Supreme Dalek's deep, grating boom of a voice. But honestly, I could care less what they look like as long as they don't appear in schlock like this story. Every time I see the Daleks given rehashed, simplistic storylines, it only further tempts me to think that the Daleks should be written out of the show once and for all.

A look at the positive. The acting is pretty solid all-round. Matt Smith continues to impress; he's got a Bakeresque talent for expanding his personality to fit any vessel. Gillan delivers a passable Pond, but this story isn't really about her and she takes a back seat. Bill Paterson renders Bracewell as absent-minded (appropriate for his artificial identity) but also sympathetic. Ian McNeice also does a good job, though admittedly he is working with flat and nuance-free writing; the decision to have Churchill and the Doctor be old friends was a nice touch. The female assistant and the warden are utterly pointless in terms of writing, but Susannah Fielding does imbue the paper-thin character of Lillian with genuine emotion, and Colin Prockter imbues the warden with... well, annoyance. The music is good, especially when the Supreme Dalek reveals its ace in the hole; the scene where the Doctor and Pond are trying to strengthen Bracewell's humanity is wonderfully acted and sweetly written, if fundamentally stupid. And a lot of the images - fighter planes vs. aliens, Daleks in WWII, and the Daleks enacting a plan of deception rather than all-out war - are pretty good, if poorly realized here.

It's abundantly clear to me that this is the worst story of the season, but a few points bear consideration. First is that Smith can work even with writing like this to convince as the Doctor, a testament to his acting abilities. Second is that this was an early episode; I get the feeling that Moffat knew this was going to be a dud, and figured he'd get it out of the way early on. I like that decision: it teaches rabid Moffat fans that Doctor Who's not going to be perfect every time under his watch, but lets us raise our expectations as the season continues. Finally, I hope this will contribute to the track record that gets Gatiss kicked off the writers' team. I do have a hunch that this was originally intended to be a two-parter but was condensed for scheduling reasons; if so, I'll forgive Gatiss as cutting a two-parter in half is a Herculean task for the best of writers. Otherwise, Mark, I love you like a brother, and your work on Sherlock is terrific, but take a back seat or get a co-writer to lend you some balance.

So there you have it. It's not a total loss, and there are some great creative seeds involved, but it's certainly not need-to-watch material and you could skip it without much incident.