fajrdrako | Doctor Who: comments on "Evolution of the Daleks"...

If I don't comment on "Evolution of the Daleks" now, I probably never will - and I want to do so before I see "The Lazarus Experiment". So...

As a newcomer to Doctor Who I never felt I understood the Daleks. They've never seemed scary to me - and yet the Dalek episodes I've seen ("Dalek", "The Parting of the Ways", and "Doomsday") have been among my favourite episodes. But aside from their obsessive imperialistic obsession to exterminate, I couldn't figure them out.

Now I've got it. The thing about the Daleks is, they're thick. They're like the Judoon: Thick, thick, thick. Even the upgraded thinking-independently version of the Daleks were think. Even the Dalek humans and the human Daleks. There isn't anything there besides the obsessive imperialistic obsession, and that's the whole point.

Cool. I can enjoy that. All they every had in their favour was numbers. Like cockroaches. Very like cockroaches, in fact: hard to destroy, fast-moving, living inside tough carapaces, kill one and a dozen appear. I never saw a cockroach with a toilet plunger, but one can imagine.

So the Dalek Sec/Diagoras hybrid wasn't scary, he was pathetic - a single organism insufficient to be either human or Dalek. A creature for compassion, as the Doctor saw. I was less than enchanted with the practicality of his new Dalek race and I wondered why the Doctor cooperated with him even as much as he did, but of course, that put the Doctor in a position to throw a spanner in the works and turn Daleks into Time Lords... which is a scary thought, too.

This explains too why the Doctor thought he could bargain with the Daleks not to kill everyone in Hooverville once they had killed him. They're so suggestible that they could be made to see it as an either/or situation, rather than the reality that they could just kill everyone, starting with the Doctor. Or turn them all into Daleks, which was their plan, and would have the same effect.

So: many interesting themes, but I thought this the weakest story so far this series, which isn't saying much, since the first three were so strong. And what was good about this episode was the discrete scenes that had emotional power, most of them centred on the Doctor himself. Who seemed extraordinarily suicidal this time.

First time through, I had trouble with suspension of disbelief. All those: "Okay, kill me, just kill me," scenes, and the Daleks don't kill him? Then I realized how thick they are, and how the concept of suicide just doesn't happen to a Dalek, and how the Doctor had simply confused them into immobility. And they didn't even learn the first time, even though this is the Cult of Skaro, who are supposed to be the accelerated-learning Daleks, because he did it over and over and they froze each time, despite their urge to kill.

I'm really starting to enjoy Dalek psychology.

I love it when the Doctor is snarky with Daleks. Which is much of the time when he's talking to them. "Boo! Et cetera." I liked the way the Doctor used sound as a weapon - presumably frequencies the Dalek's can't stand? Sonic screwdriver, sonic radio...

There were enough 'angry Doctor' scenes to really, really make me happy. It was fun to see the Doctor doing his scientist thing in the lab - in fact, I thought the best scene in the whole show was when he determined to save Laszlo. "What do I need? A big genetic library. Oh, look, I've got one... The Doctor is in." This sort of epitomizes the Doctor - at least, an important side of him - the optimism, the determination, the humour, the compassion, the opportunism.

Interesting talk about the nature of humanity on several occasions - the cynical and the idealistic. Without favouring either extreme as 'the truth', though the truth in the context of this show is generally closer to idealism than cynicism.

Interesting to see the three stages of Daleks: normal Daleks (if the Cult of Skaro can be described as 'normal'), the hybrid Diagoras, and the human Daleks. The third category seemed extraneous, quite superfluous to the plot, though it was fun to see humans shooting Daleks with Dalek weapons.

I loved it that Martha found the sonic screwdriver the Doctor dropped, and that she knew it was important to him, and teased him in her relief that he was alive. In fact, the scene of the Doctor lying unconscious and wet on the top of the Empire State Building tweaked all my dormant hurt/comfort reactions - those reactions I often claim I don't have, but I'm not kidding anyone. It just takes certain characters and certain situations. This was it.

Frank wasn't in it as much as I'd hoped he would be, but I enjoyed the bits that featured him. Loved the way he smiled. I was, of course, disappointed that he either didn't get to kiss the Doctor or we didn't get to see it. When I said this to

commodified and

auriaephiala, the agreed it didn't happen, that he was a nice straight boy. I confess that my thought was, "People and their quaint categories." Not so much that Frank was straight (or otherwise) but that this is irrelevant to the situation....

Anyway, I liked the way that Frank was able to help, to repay the Doctor by finding Laszlo a place to exist. What will happen to Laszlo when he has to leave Hooverville? I wondered if the Doctor shouldn't take him and Tallulah to a planet where pig-faced people would have a better chance in life, but ... no, perhaps the problems of emigration would be too great for them. Let them at least make their lives on familiar turf. I wonder what Laszlo's parents thought.

I enjoyed the friendship between Tallulah and Martha, and the way they got along, even though their life-experiences were very different.

I loved the moment when the Doctor hugged Martha, and then said, "Never waste time with a hug." It's the pattern he's been following with Martha - approach and back off, approach and back off. Is he afraid of his own fondness for her? Afraid to let go of his obsession with Rose? So messed up with his grief and loneliness that he doesn't want to let go of it?

"The only man in the universe who might show you some compasson" - I Think I liked it better when the Doctor said to Mr. Finch, "I used to have so much mercy." But I also like it that he was being contrary: he could not bring himself to kill the last of a species, even if he wouldn't mind dying himself.

Loved the "pig and the showgirl" line.