Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Flight Through Entirety
the only Doctor Who podcast recorded live from several places
beginning with S. I'm Nathan.
I'm James And I'm Stephen.
It's the year 2012.
We've just materialised in Elon Musk's basement, and there's
nothing to see here but the discarded pieces of all our hopes and
dreams, which can only mean one thing, the 6th episode of the new
series, Dalek.
So there's a real sense in which this is a kind of new beginning
for the series, I think.
We've sort of laid the ground rules with rose, and then, you know
we've gone into the past and into the future, and then we've been
back at Earth to catch up on sort of Jackie and Mickey and
things.
But now it's kind of like we could go anywhere.
This is something completely new.
It's off the hook.
Yeah.
Yeah. sort of everything's been done and set up.
And I think too, because all the publicity had the dalek in it.
I think a lot of new people would be tuning in.
And it's very deliberately been set up to not have any baggage.
There's no real references, the previous episodes of the series.
It's just a, it's another episode one.
Yeah.
I think you're right, Nathan.
In terms of Doctor Hula itself.
This is a massively important story.
I think this is where new who really makes its own mark.
For all the reasons that you've mentioned in terms of the way that
it sets it up, and this is the 6th episode of the series.
And it sort of addresses the questions of its own identity and
basically establishes new who on its own terms in terms of both as
a continuation of the story that we saw over the 1st 26 years, but
also in a totally new way of telling that story as well.
You know, here it is, the doctor confronts his mortal nemeses, the
dialects, or a singular dalek, at least.
And I just think it's exactly what series one needed at that point
in time.
And it's wonderful.
Yeah, it really is something.
I think it was kind of David Whittaker, who really kind of was the
one who 1st realised that the Daleks were kind of like a mythical
enemy to the doctor.
And, you know, fans kind of like to think that the doctor isn't
really the doctor until he's encountered the Daleks and we're all
sort of very conscious that each doctor gets to encounter the
dialects once on TV, apart from number eight.
And this, I think, is so very definitely set up as a way of
creating a real mythical opponent to the doctor.
I think you're right in the sense that we have like a David
Whittaker, Whitticarian sort of conception of the Daleks.
And I think what we see here is kind of like the Daleks as we see
them in, say, power of the Daleks, where they're scheming and
utterly brilliant.
But also, um, evil of the dialect is drawn upon as well, where you
got the human factor with roses touch, essentially sort of
corrupting the, the dalek DNA and it becomes half human as well.
I love that they've leaned more so on that conception of the
Daleks than maybe the Terry Nation kind of runaround conception of
the Dialects, which we get a little bit of, and we might talk
about that later on.
But I think it's that sort of reimagining of the Daleks for the
21st century, that's really beautifully done here.
And I think too, that given that so many of the members of the
audience were people who were kind of aware of the Daleks from
Doctor Who's 1st run, but probably weren't sort of big fans, it
has a lot of kind of myths to dispel, you know, that Daleks can't
climb stairs, that they can't really see you as they trundle
past.
So this is, and it may be apocryphal. maybe just, you know, fan
law, but apparently Rob Shimman talked to his wife when he was
writing the script for Dalek, and he said to her, what's so crap
about the Dalek experience?
what do you see is the main sort of things that make the Daleks
really naff?
And he wrote them down.
And then he deliberately inverted them when they were writing the
script.
So, yeah, that, oh, that sync plunger, you know, what does it do?
use it to break someone's skull.
They can't go upstairs.
Yes, remembrance, we know.
Like they very deliberately invoke that.
Oh, they can't see behind them.
Its head can turn 360 degrees.
Um, so that um, was, you know, that was a very, very forefront in
their mind.
They were saying, well, this is what these characters can do.
This is what they were always supposed to be.
And they're super killers.
Like that dialect kills, you know, like 100s of people with like 3
shots.
You know, like he shoots the, you know, the sprinkler and then he
just electrocutes everyone.
And the doctor yells at Van Stanten and says 1000000 people all
dead.
That's what's going to happen if it escapes. and it's just one
dalek.
And so many Doctor Who stories with Daleks in them have Daleks in
the plural in the title.
And so having a singular dialect and really kind of lampshading
that by calling it dalek singular is so clever.
And then making it like a carnage.
Yeah.
Rather fabulously.
Well, I think it's rather famous.
You know what the working titles for this story were?
No, go on.
One of them was Return of the Daleks, which isn't factually
accurate.
And the other was creature of lies.
Which I kind of, I kind of like.
I wish I wish they had actually gone with that.
I think another one, which was used.
We'll get to that later.
No, let's do it.
Let's do it We'll talk about the kind of the antecedents of the
story because one of the where he titles was Absence of the Dies.
Because as is now kind of well known, Terry Nation's estate has
the rights to the Daleks.
They're not owned by the BBC.
And so they needed to get the estate's permission to use the
Daleks.
And for a while it didn't look like they were going to be able
to.
And Rob Shearman found himself having to write several versions of
the story.
And yes, and there was the one that, you know, now we all know
because I think we've all read the writer's tale, haven't we?
Um, it became the Toclophane in series 3.
And like, I think they, I don't think they changed much of that
like that whole concept of them being balls of like, you know
little human mutants from the far, far end of time.
Yeah, yeah, that spoke like children.
That was in this version of Absence of the Daleks.
And then they went, hey, that's a great idea.
Let's use it the end of series three.
Yeah, but eventually they, you know, do get nation's permission
and I think they end up having to include the Darwin.
We'd think given who Nathan's estate's ancient is.
Oh, who's that?
Well, um, feral virtue.
Oh, really?
So that's Stephen Moffat's mother-in-law.
Look, I mean, I, I, could you misremembering that?
But I thought I thought that his estate, they were still
represented by her.
I could have that wrong.
Right.
We'll edit all that out.
Along with all of your things.
Yeah.
And then you'll re-record the good bits.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I always do.
I think, though, you needed to use Dalek as a title because it's
almost as a, it's kind of like a back to basics, you know
unplugged album for the Daleks in many ways.
You know, you only get the one dalek, but it's also a way of
telling Dalek stories, again, that don't rely on or place Davros
at the centre of them.
And I think, you know, we needed to have Dalek there to sort of
you know, as you say, beat up the publicity and the sort of
awareness that this was Doctor Who and it was coming back and so
were the Daleks and that's really important.
But I think in terms of the way in which the Daleks are portrayed
here. really important because, you know, it's like, again, that
21st century reimagining that it's kind of like they've had 26
years of the Daleks and then 16 years to think about what did work
and what didn't work, what they got right and what they got wrong
and reinvented in that way.
I think this does it really well.
I mean, I could go on here and to stop me if at this point I
shouldn't.
No, no, go on.
So I think we see like the Daleks are on the par of the time lords
you know, there's reference to the great time war and they were
the 2 sort of antagonists in it.
So it sort of elevates the dialects as equal to the the time lords
who are, you know, the most powerful, you know, race in in the
Doctor Who universe, if you like.
But, you know, you know, we had all the imagining of us.
As you said, you know, the toilet plunger and the way that it can
turn around quicker than the QE 2 after all, and, you know, it can
do a 1000-0000000 calculations every second.
You know, it's absolutely impenetrable because it's got like a
force field around it.
It can climb stairs.
Like all of that needed to be there, I think, because it reinvents
the Daleks in a way that makes it a credible threat for the 21st
century rather than, you know, sort of shuffling down corridors
and not being able to see outside a sort of peripheral vision sort
of thing, like you get in some 70s runaround stories.
I think that's, you know, it does that really well and he needed
to.
I also think too, that it makes it personal as well, because we've
had the time war, the last great time war kind of teased for
episodes, and we've seen the consequences of it in rows and in the
unquiet dead.
Um, you know, it's been a thing and a thing that we've been
wondering about and now here's where we find out who it involves.
And so you've got the doctor who hates the Daleks, not just
because, you know, he encountered them on a planet in the middle
of a mercury swamp or whatever, at some point in the past, but
because they killed all of his people and they put him in a
position.
We discover where he had to wipe them all out.
Like, you know, they made him a genocide.
And so I don't think we've ever seen anything quite like the
doctor's reaction to the Dalek when he 1st realises what it is
where he's literally foaming at the mouth, isn't he?
And he mocks it and he tries to kill it.
And look, just last week in Aliens of London, we had him in 2
minds about whether he should be, you know, taking Rose's life
into his own hands, um, putting her at risk to, possibly save the
human race from the sort of, I cannot.
I cannot say Sloveen.
Oh my god, what sort of Doctor Who fan am I?
Um, and then this week he, he, like the threat of the Dalek
basically leads him to, you know, like let her die.
Yeah, he sacrificed.
He's willing to, he's willing to sacrifice her.
Yeah, yeah. to stop the Dalek.
He, like, you know, the threat of the Dalek in, in this universe
because of what happened in the time war, because of how scarred
he is as a character, his new best friend who he wasn't willing to
kill, you know, to let it be killed last week, is just thrown away
because Dixie has to save, save the planet from this Dalek.
It's uh, sort of, you know, dramatically shows the threat.
I have to say that that, for me, that's one of the stories, weak
moments because then he just goes, oh, well, screw it.
Okay.
I'll let it lift. you know.
And I think they just about sell it.
He's had the opportunity to make the decision once and that's as
many times as you can possibly bear to make that decision.
But, you know, it's a huge dramatic moment that is almost
immediately undermined by him saying, oh, well, I'll open the door
after.
Well, that would be like the episode one into episode 2
Cliffhanger.
Yeah, I guess so.
Okay, I'll open the door then.
I'm not so sure though, Nathan.
Like, it becomes very quickly where, you know, he's able to sort
of say, yeah, okay, I'll sacrifice Rose and then, you know, he has
that 2nd chance and he saves her.
But there's something sort of metaphorical about the way in which
you know, you put the doctor up against the Dalek, and the doctor
becomes more like the Dalek, and through rows, the Dalek becomes
more of a human.
There's that sort of wonderful cross, you know, the paths that the
2 characters sort of take along this particular story.
I think the way that that's done is really quite beautiful.
You know, the doctor sort of descends into hell, whereas the Dalek
sort of ascends, you know, up to level one and into the light
before sort of coming to sacrifice itself.
I don't know, I think I think he kind of works dramatically there
for me.
I agree with you about that.
I do think that having Rose and the doctor split up, not just so
that they can sort of explore different parts of this exciting new
world they find themselves in, but so that they can have different
responses to the dalek that aren't kind of cross-pollinated.
You know, Rose doesn't know what a dalek is.
Exactly.
And all she sees is someone being tortured.
And like, I think it's telling that it's set in America too.
Just, you know, after the abuses in the in the Iraq war. that, you
know, torturing prisoners is is something that...
Well, that an equal...
Yeah, well, Abu Garai, in Iraq itself, where there were famous
photos only, you know, very briefly before this, of prisoners
being tortured.
You know, the British Board of Film classification gave us the 12
certificate because of the torture scenes.
Yeah, specifically the scenes of the doctor torturing the Darlin.
Yeah, yeah.
I think they would set, you know, turn the hero into into a
sadist.
Yeah, there was some talk about giving it an M rating here.
I don't know if they'd ever eventuated, but it is darker than
Eccleston's gone.
And again, he's still finding his feet here.
There are bits that I don't think he pulls off completely, but
certainly that bit where he confronts the Dalek is absolutely
compelling.
Apparently, as written, the scene where he initially confronts the
Dalek, was written by Rob Sherman as more him mocking it, and
belittling it, but not responding to it so aggressively. and
Eccleston imbued it with all of the anger and and seething
hatred.
It's so amazing, isn't it?
Because we're used to the doctor mocking his enemies.
That's one of the things that he does.
He laughs at people who are evil.
But when he's saying, you know, poor little thing to the dalek
he's really taunting it, it's not funny.
It's not something that we can laugh along with him.
He is really, really quite, quite emotionally damaged.
Yeah. and abusive.
But that makes sense, though, given the trajectory of the
character, like what we know of it since in terms of the time war
and how he's the survivor and sort of lone survivor and has that
survivor's guilt and has also done some pretty terrible things in
the not too distant past.
And Eccleston himself.
I mean, if there is one actor to have played the role, who is
capable of that kind of, you know, not just gravitas, but anger
and that sort of, you know, crossing the line as the doctor.
I think it's him and I think he really works for me.
That's why you employ Christopher Eccleston to play a dramatic
role.
Exactly.
You give him meaty, sort of emotionally weighty, angry, sort of
broken people to play because he's bloody good at it.
He's brilliant.
In fact, in Day of the Doctor, I was actually slightly
disappointed that they gave the role of wiping out the Daleks and
Time Lords to another doctor that we hadn't heard of before
because I kind of thought it would have been interesting to see
Eccleston do that.
And I know that, you know, they couldn't get Eccleston for
whatever reason, and they did quite a good job of getting around
that.
We didn't negotiate with him until quite late in the day as well.
Yeah.
But that would have been amazing, that the person who done that
wasn't, you know, this dark secret that the doctor had sort of
disavowed, that was one of the doctors that we loved, that Rose
had loved, you know, someone that we knew had done that.
Though if you've listened to the Big Finnish War Doctor stories
you might change your mind.
I don't know, but then you get the chance of getting John.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, no, no.
Exactly.
It turned out.
It turned out for the best.
Jacqueline Pierce playing basically a time lady version of... of
the quarantine Greek.
Okay.
Franzine Greek I should say.
Can we talk about some of the guest stars?
Oh, yes.
So, we have Henry Van Staten.
What do we think?
I cringed when I rewatched this episode the other day?
Did he?
Yeah, I mean, I think you're supposed to.
I think maybe I cringed in 2005?
And look, I think that's he's a big comedy obnoxious brash
American stereotype.
So, like, I don't think that's not what they were going for.
I don't think it's him playing the part badly, but I just found it
uncomfortable to watch.
I think there's an element of like intent around that as well.
Like, you know, the doctor mocks him.
He says he wants to touch the stars, but the only way that he can
do it is by dragging them down to earth and burying them with
something along those lives.
There's a real sort of collective vibe to him, both, you know, in
terms of the literal sense. kind of like a John Fowles collector
sense and even here's a deep cut.
A bit like John Blum and Kate Ormond collector in unnatural
history, or even light in ghostlight.
There's someone who sort of has a very narrow view of the entire
universe and he comes across as entirely ridiculous when pitted
against the Dalek.
You know, he says, I am Henry Van Staden.
Now recognise me.
He's so irrelevant in the overall scheme of things, and, you know
there's that lovely sort of irony, I guess, that we can see as a
result of that.
He's meant to come across as faintly comedic to me.
I think his best bit is actually when he's looking directly into
the Dalek eyepiece and we get the Dalek point of view and he
demands, you know, that the Daleks speak to him and his face is
all kind of inflated and stuff like that.
I think I think that is really great.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, like I said, I think, you know, that's very deliberate.
Yeah.
The character is rich.
I think so.
To be more.
Yeah, it deflates him.
For his hubris.
Yeah, like I actually found him a lot like some of the sort of
scary and unpleasant kind of tech guys that we have now, like
Zuckerberg and Bezos and Mark. mask.
I wouldn't say that too loudly.
You don't want to be banned with Facebook.
I think he's meant to evoke that.
Yeah, wasn't wasn't the initial name of the character meant to be
Will Fencers as a play on Bill Gates?
Yes.
Yes, it was.
Yeah. appalling. fences what?
Sorry.
No, he just sounds like one of the pint people in the patrol, I
think.
But I love Goddard.
I just think, um, so his sidekick, the fabulous sidekick, who is
the um, Crow Timman of the thing.
You know why she's called Goddard?
Jane Goddard is Rob Shem.
Sheman's wife's name.
Yeah.
Also, um, you read it.
Prevention.
Yeah, yeah, we met.
Yeah, yeah.
We got to meet Rob Shearman.
And he was introduced to his wife by Katie Manning.
Oh wow.
Because they I think they went to school together.
Right.
Or, you know, at least have known each other since like Rada or
something.
And he's such a lovely man.
Yeah, yeah, he is really hasn't written for shape since.
Like, I don't know why, but I can't help thinking that being
assigned one episode to write and having to write a whole bunch of
scripts as the demands change meant that it was, you know, more
work than he'd expected.
I think also he's more of an author.
And in that, like, sorry, an hauteur, he tends to write very
idiosyncratic, you know, like you can tell something is written by
Rob Sherman.
Particularly big finish. and Jubilee.
Yeah, and the Holy Terror.
Yeah, which is dark and twisted and amazing.
Um, and I think being rewritten and rewritten and rewritten kind
of robs it of a lot of the Rob Shermanness.
It's dark, but it's not as kind of weirdly dark and comedic as his
big finish stuff.
It has kind of been sort of sandpapered a bit so that it fits into
a particular space in the season and a particular tone that
they're going for.
Yeah, I think that's right.
Rob Shearman, I think, claims that he's never watched Dalek.
It's the only Doctor Who episode that he hasn't been able to bring
himself to watch.
That's really rather sweet.
Yeah, no, he can sort of barely believe that he wrote for Doctor
Who all these years later.
Maybe Chipnall can bring him back.
We don't have pics of the week this week, but Rob Schumann and
Toby Hadoke have written 2 books called Running Through Corridors
in which they just email their reactions.
They watch 2 episodes a day and they email their reactions to each
other at the end of the day and their brief is to be positive to
find something really good to say about every episode and it's
absolutely wonderful.
It's a really fun kind of, well, let's call it a flight through
entirety.
It's a really fun kind of trip through the history of Doctor Who
by people who really kind of know how TV works and have a lot of
knowledge of the of the show.
People sitting on a couch blowing.
I think I read this.
But I can really strongly recommend it.
And he's, he, how very lovely he is absolutely comes across in
running through corridors.
So that's available in all good bookstores everywhere.
So Goddard, who is the last woman standing, and she gets to do
lots of comedy as well.
She's the one who wipes his memory and when Van Staten wants the
president replaced, you know, she wants it to be a Democrat
because they're just so funny, you know, she does get a lot of the
best lines.
And even after the sort of huge disaster has happened at the end
she gets to sort of take us out with sort of funny gags, you know
about Van Stanton's ultimate fame.
No, I think she's great.
I love how hypercompetent, but also ambitious she is.
You know, the 1st thing that we see of her is that she slots
seamlessly and quickly into the place of the number 2 role the
moment the...
She just slips in there whilst the other guy's been carted off to
become a, you know, a junkie somewhere beginning with M. No, she's
fabulous.
And she's sort of crowds him and only funny.
So, the other big guest star is, of course, Bruno Langley's Adam.
I think it's hilarious that, you know, what we get with, uh, in
terms of a 1st full scene that he has with Rose, he starts to
mansplain aliens to Rose.
I just found that incredibly funny.
And she does, like, this is, you know, a decade before the word
mansplain comes into the vocabulary.
I love her where she licks her teeth as he's doing it.
Like, oh, this guy doesn't know it.
I mean he's such a dork.
Yeah, she just bites her tongue and then says, you know, he says
something like, I think they're all, they're all crazy, you know
those people who talk about aliens and she goes, yeah, you're
probably right.
In fact, I kind of like that because, you know, that is kind of
how the audience at home would react to someone who thought they'd
seen aliens.
Do you know what I mean?
And I just thought it was terribly funny that Rose maintained that
attitude, even, you know, having seen all these aliens.
Yeah.
Actually, they're mostly just not cases.
I thought that was terribly cute.
And there is a little bit of a sort of an attempt to give them a
little bit of a sort of romantic scene and it's not something I
think that is particularly overwritten.
Like it's not like what we'll get in a few weeks time with, you
know, Rose and Jack, but there is a sort of low-key thing.
She clearly finds him a bit attractive.
He finds her attractive.
You know, and Van Staten immediately casts them in that role by
you know, sending her off with him to canoodle or spoon or
whatever it is you breeds do.
Yeah.
Speaking of, speaking of canoodling, Media Watch UK, which is the
organisation that used to be the national viewers and listeners
association.
Ooh, Mary White House.
Yes, yes.
They're back They, um, well, I think they changed their name
briefly before this.
So they were.
Clean up national TV originally and then...
Oh, what's it called?
Cleanup TV society.
Okay.
And, yeah, and then they they became Media watch UK and they're
like, I think in like 2008, 2009.
They had a lot to say about this.
Really?
Yeah, so they, um, they complained that certain parts of the
episode, including the torture scenes and the, um, you know, the
doctor being x-rayed, um, were, were Cedo masochistic torture.
Oh, and they take his shirt off. have we not mentioned that?
He's very skinny.
Yes, he is very skinny.
And they brought up the canoodling scene as well. and said it was
inappropriate sexual language.
What?
Bizarre.
Children's private television series.
Wow.
I don't think they know what the widdling is over there at me.
Yes, they did.
Oh, that just reminds me of the Dame Dasiri cart, what's episodes
of the goodies?
What do we think the Goodies podcast?
We're doing it now, darling.
We'll put that in the show notes.
Yeah, I think he's, like, I actually kind of like the idea and, you
know, at this point in the, in the show, we don't know how it's
going to go, like with hindsight, we know that the cast will
change every year and, you know, that we'll get Captain Jack
coming in for a few episodes and things.
But, you know, when he goes off in the Tartars at the end.
We don't know how that's going to play out.
And it's certainly nothing like what's happened in the old
series.
You know, But we have that kind of list in our head.
You know, our roster of people who count as companions who don't
and you know, Sarah Kingdom, yes, Brett Vion, no, the brigadier.
Yes, because he was in the Tardis that one time, maybe, or
whatever.
And you can see Russell kind of wanting to break that as a
concept.
And so Adam gets to go into the TARDIS for 2 episodes, spoiler
alert.
So he doesn't really count as a companion.
I think, well, he gets into taught us one episode.
You don't see him in the title.
Yeah, no.
There are no charter scenes.
Yeah, that's true.
I think we touched on this.
Uh, when we did, I mean, it's fun in World War 3 with Max.
The idea that the doctor doesn't have companions anymore.
They kind of got rid of the word and they just became his friends
and those friends could jump in and out.
And that comes much more pronounced in the Moffat era, where Amy
and Rory might be there, they might not.
It depends on their contracts and whether, you know, they've
managed to convince them to come back this week.
And we're recording this just after seeing the series 11 trailer.
Oh, I'm so excited.
Yeah.
And it's entirely possible that this is going out after the season
begins. because we haven't got a definite date.
Or maybe after...
Sorry.
So, um, and they very definitely have gone away from the idea that
they're companions and, you know, these are the doctor's friends.
And companion was always kind of a weird sort of thing.
And Rosaleva makes fun of that in aliens of London, where, you
know, the doctor says, oh, I employed Roses, my companion.
And the policeman says, oh, so you're shagging then?
Is that what's happening?
This is a sexual relation.
Yeah.
So we'll talk more about Adam next week, obviously. and I'm sure
that he's going to go into the Hall of Fame of, you know, greatest
companions along with Katrina and Dodo, I suppose.
And everything's going to turn out just fine for that young man.
I can just tell.
Do you reckon he's meant to be a bit crap because there's a
there's an underlying theme, I think, to, to companions in in
Noohoo, where they almost need to be worthy to enter the Tartars
which certainly wasn't the case in the classic era.
Yeah, I think they, I think they, they actually lampshaded that.
In confidential or some interviews at the time.
Basically, I think Russell Russell said, yes, I wanted to show you
what happens when a companion like isn't up to scratch. that takes
a certain type of person to travel with the doctor.
They have to, you know, have like the same sort of moral code as
him.
They have to be held to a higher standard.
And, and I specifically wanted to actually show what happens when
someone who's not up to scratch comes into the TARDIS.
Well, in rows, you know, like rose is just someone completely
ordinary, but the doctor is impressed by her.
She's smart.
You know, he's reluctant to take her on board, I think, initially
and tells her to forget him and stuff, but she's smart and funny.
They spark, they laugh together.
She's super brave, all of those kinds of things.
Here kind of Rose wants to take him on board, perhaps, because
well, you know, because she thinks he's pretty, but also because
she kind of feels a bit sorry for him.
He's kind of left behind and he really, really wants to see the
stars and doesn't think he ever will.
But I think that we'll talk more about this next week, but it's
more that Adam's her companion for the next story.
Yeah, so she's a dowager aunt.
She is.
He's the doctor's grand companion, I think, probably.
Oh, dear.
What do we think at the beginning of the story, the Daleks up to?
Like, Rose meets the Dalek.
She doesn't know anything about the Daleks.
You know, the doc hasn't shown her any pictures or talked about it
or anything.
And so all she sees is something being tortured and that she wants
to help.
And she responds to it in the way that she has learned, that he
responds to, um, to aliens, in the in the last, you know, half a
season.
Yeah, yeah, like to the gal. you know, he wanted to help the gal.
He wanted to help the nest team.
So she is basically playing the traditional role that she sees the
doctor playing in these stories.
She's going, oh, this poor creature.
It's being tortured.
I feel sorry for it.
I'm not making assumptions about it.
She's not judging it by its appearance, and that's the, you know
that is the main turning point in the story is when she touches it
because she's feeling for it, and then that gets 100s of people
killed.
And, but it also, it also leads the dalek in a new direction as
well.
I think it goes back to that.
We were talking about the David Whittaker conception of the
Daleks.
I think the moment that it hears that Rose is a friend of the
doctors and has travelled through time.
You know, it's that sort of cunning, calculating aspect of the
dialects coming to the fore.
And, you know, it sort of plays on that pity.
It sort of, you know, really sort of tries to get that element of
compassion out of her so that when she touches him or it, it
regenerates, I think I think that's a really sort of clever way of
sort of representing the Daleks is really just, you know
incredibly conniving and incredibly intelligent and being able
just being smarter than you, you know?
But there's a wonderful twist to it because, you know, the
compassion that he tries to elicit, it is actually the thing that
undoes it, and that is incredible.
That's the best part of the story for me right at the end.
See, you can't kill Daleks.
You can't destroy fascists with guns like the doctor postures in
that showdown scene.
It's like only the compassion of the companion here can do that
because compassion to a dalek is a corrupting contagion.
Like, it's the only way that Doctor Who could ever destroy the
last of the Daleks, and I just love the show for it.
I like too, that there is kind of a sort of crummy science fiction
explanation given for what's going on.
But I think it's also just possible to read that she has been kind
to the Dalek, and the Dalek has really properly experience that
kindness, and that's why it's confused.
You know, it's been taught to hate all other life forms that
they're worthless and someone who shows.
It's never had, it's never given itself the chance to, to actually
to see that because they never last long enough.
Yeah, so in one sense, it's a sort of science fiction contagion
where her DNA has, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, whatever.
But really what has happened is she's shown it kindness.
She's physically touched it.
And it's been moved by that and it no longer finds itself able to
muster up the desire to kill.
And I kind of like the complexity of it as well.
I mean, the story needs the dalek to die at the end and it kind of
forecloses any possibility that any of our characters are going to
kill it.
We can't have the doctor killing it.
So, you know, it decides to kill itself.
And that's a moment that Rose, I think, finds difficult to deal
with.
You know, there's a sort of a weird thing where she's had
compassion for the dalek, but also recognises it as something
really evil, you know, that it still does, it's conflicted about
whether to kill everyone or not, you know, and certainly the look
on Billy Piper's face when it's kind of enunciating that kind of
moral dilemma shows a sort of, There is a level of disgust there.
But just the sheer simplicity of what it wants instead of killing
it wants to feel the sun on its face one last time before it kills
itself.
Wouldn't it have been just beautiful if they'd never brought the
Dalux back?
Yeah, that's been the ending.
They would have been something quite poetic about that.
I agree.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, then ruined it at the end of the series.
Yeah.
But an act of kindness is the last thing in the time war.
It's the thing that puts the time war to rest.
Such a gorgeous idea.
It just isn't doable because you have to have the dalek, I think.
I mean, maybe if Dalek had happened in the last, you know, in
series 43.
And I also kind of like the way that she confronts the doctor as
well, that the dalek turns the doctor into a man with a gun.
And, you know, we had that line, which I can't believe we haven't
mentioned before now, that you would make a great dalek.
I think it's another reason why the title Dalek is, you know, with
no article and not plural is a perfect title for this because it's
not.
Who is the Dalek, yeah.
And the doctor runs up there with a massively ludicrous science
fiction gun, you know, as big as he can possibly carry.
In order to kill the dalek and she won't let it happen because
he's a man with a gun.
And this is something sick and sad and conflicted that just wants
to feel freedom for a moment.
And you're breaking the format of the program.
But I think this is what Dalek does, right?
I mean, again, we talked about it sort of reimagining the Daleks
in a very sort of uh 21st century way, but part of that also is
the nuance or the sort of complexity of the characterisation of
the dalek and what's the motivation of it as well as also the
motivation of the doctor, you know?
I really think in that regard, like the setting of the story is
really important, rather, in the way that that story is told, you
know, it's kind of like the descendant into the underworld and the
ascent back into the light, from the depths of hell, you know, you
have, yeah, sure, the TARDIS arrives in the bowels of the earth.
It's sort of very much sort of, you know, hearkens back to
Heracles and Odysseus, Orpheus, Aeneas and Dante, but it's the
metaphorical dimensions, I reckon, of that structure that
fascinate me more because it's neither the doctrine nor the Dalek
are entirely good or evil in this one.
It's not a nice, safe, clear sort of binary where the doctors, the
hero.
This is the Dalek and they're the villains.
Instead, they're kind of like, there's almost like they're the
same, or the different sides of the same coin.
You know, they're both survivors of the last time war.
You know, they're both sort of alone in the universe in that
regard, but they just happen to sort of be opposite ends of that
spectrum.
And, you know, it's sort of Jungen in many ways as well. you know
the archetypes of the self and the shadow.
And those are aspects of the same self.
And this is what I really like about Dalek, in terms of the way in
which the morality of the doctor is questioned, and maybe even the
sort of qualities of the dalek, in terms of it being able to be
redeemed are also brought up.
Whereas before, I don't think we've ever had that.
No, I mean, we had the human factor, didn't we, in Evil of the
Daleks.
Evil of the Daleks, yeah.
But I think there's quite a touching moment too.
When the Dalek and the doctor are talking to one another on the
screen and the Dalek says we're the same, you know, like neither
of us have any orders coming, what do we do now?
Well, they listen, we've tucked out him in and read him a bedtime
story, so it only remains to whisk him off to somewhere in Earth's
distant future.
You'll see how that turns out in next week's episode, where we'll
be discussing the long game.
In the meantime, you can find us at flightthroughentirety.com
flight through entirety on Facebook and Apple Podcasts and at FTE
podcast on Twitter.
Where can people find you, Stephen?
Ah, well, you can find new to who on Twitter at Sunudahoo podcast
and also on Facebook, or you can email us at uh new to who podcast
at gmail.com, and all our episodes can be found on our website, www
nudahoo.com, uh or on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Over on Bondfinger, you can find some fabulous James Bond
commentary podcasts all recorded at different levels of
inebriation.
That's bondfinger.com, bondfinger on Facebook and Apple Podcasts
and at bondfingercast on Twitter.
Until next time, may the blaster you're using defend off the
latest Dalek onslaught not turn out to be yet another hairdryer.
Thank you very much for listening and good night.
Good night.
That was Flight through Entirety, starring Nathan Bottley, Stephen
B. and James Selwood.
Theme arrangement by Cameron Lamb, strings performance by Jane
Orberg.
This episode to Mansplain Aliens was recorded on the 22nd of July
2018 and released on the 30th of September.
We regret to inform our billionaire listeners that Henry Van
Stanton's upcoming spaceflight around the moon has been
cancelled.
And if you see Mr. Van Staten anywhere, please ask him if he knows
where the keys to the space rocket are.
Oh, well thank you.
You were so great.
That was so awesome.
I kind of felt like James and I were wittering on James mostly.
But I was kind of wittering on.
But that was some really, really good stuff.
And it's such a great episode.
You know, there is so much good stuff to say about it.
Yeah, you need more about this than I am.
No, I just sort of go off on my tangents, but you guys keep it
together in terms of just, you know, bringing the actual sort of
story through.
I sort of get lost in the allegorical and the metaphorical sort of
aspects of it because I really, it's really what struck me, even
when I 1st saw it, it was just like, 0 my god, this is like
postmodern good and evil for Doctor Who in the 21st century.
I just, that's the abiding memory that I have of the story.
Oh, it's even it's like the Orpheus thing too, of getting as far
as sunlight. you know, like getting, you know, within sight of
daylight and then going back down to hell.
And like heaps of Russell stories have that sort of verticality to
them as well.
Like, I know this is Shearman, but, but, you know, we are
constantly going up and down in, um, the end of the world and in
New Earth, um, you know, that's something that he he likes to do
just to create.
Yeah, the long game.
The long game.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, people are like trying to...
The last story, parting of the ways, is all about that.
Of course it is, right?
Yeah, trying to go to level 400.
Yeah.
Oh, see, this should have been in the podcast.
Well it can be.
It'll be the tag.
Just remember it for next week.
Yeah, yeah.
I will remember it for a thing.
So we've got...