Doctor Who New Series 1.6 - 'Dalek'

Plot: In the year 2012, Henry Van Statten - a wealthy collector of alien artifacts - has imprisoned the last surviving member of the Doctor's greatest enemy in his underground Utah bunker. After a single touch from the hand of a time traveler, the creature awakens; ready to rise up and wipe all of mankind from the face of planet earth.

So here it is. The episode that everyone wanted from day one. No matter what one may think, the most popular form of hype surrounding the return of Doctor Who was to see the Daleks make their way back onto the small screen. Sure, everyone wanted to see the Doctor and his TARDIS, but they were also dying to see how the Timelord's number one enemy scrubbed up in the 21^st century.

The phenomenon surrounding the Daleks is vast in its size. They are so iconic in their existence that they make up as much of the program's history as the Doctor himself. It seems that you cannot have one without the other. The Doctor and the Daleks. New who would not have been the same without them, and their very existence were solely responsible for creating a large chunk of the curiosity surrounding the modernization of Doctor Who. The Daleks just had to come back, but strangely enough, this was almost not the case.

In actual fact, for a brief period of time, the Daleks were not returning for the revived series. The reason for this is because the BBC do not actually own all of the rights when ti comes to using Daleks. The rights to this iconic enemy are actually in the hands of the Nation Estate. The Nation Estate is the family of Terry Nation; the creator and writer of the original 1963 Dalek story.

The reason for this being that back in 1963, some of the original series producers (most notably Sydney Newman) did not realize that these villains would go on to become such in iconic figure amongst popular culture. At this point, they were perceived as a one time monster. As a result, Terry Nation decided to pack his bags and take the Daleks off to the United States; where he planned on setting up his own TV series which featured the shouty nazi-tanks. When that idea finally fell on its arse, Nation returned to the UK and continued to write Dalek stories for Doctor Who.

Yet he still owned the rights, and after his death, those rights were passed on to his family. It would be the members of the Nation Estate who had the power to give the Daleks the greenlight for a 2005 revival; meaning that the BBC had to go crawling to them if they ever wanted to use them.

The reasons why they were initially reluctant to grant the rights are still unclear to this day. In the BBC press statement that announced their absence in the revival, the BBC claimed that producers and (the then alive) Terry Nation could not come up with a way to successfully adapt the creatures for a 21^st century audience. Yet we all know this to be a load of nonsense. As we'll see over the next few years, Davies and other writers will become obsessed with using them in a great number of stories. Whatever the real reason behind the temporary hiatus, it had nothing to do with the new production team struggling to find ways of utilizing them. Davies and co were dying to have them in their series, and would have wanted nothing more back in 2003 to snatch up the rights without further questions.

In light of this brief cancellation, the writers of the new series were forced to come up with an alternative plot for this episode. Their solution was to replace the lone Dalek from this episode with a creature called the Toclafane.

The Toclafane did, as a matter of fact, finally receive an episode of their very own in the wildly disappointing final of Davies' third series. In that episode, the Toclafane were written in as members of the human race who had been mutilated by the Master at the end of the universe and sent back in time to overthrow their 21^st century ancestors. If they had been used as the Dalek replacement back in 2005, however, then their back stories and execution would have probably been universes apart from what they eventually transpired into.

The Toclafane would have been the murderous race of aliens who were the Timelords' number one enemy. Essentially, they would have been the ones who the Doctor presumed were all dead, who referred to our time traveling hero as 'the oncoming storm' and who would have been responsible for the gargantuan time war which the Doctor barely survived.

Looking at the what if's of this rewritten premise, it doesn't actually sound half that bad. The Toclafane were poor villains in the series three final, however that was mainly down to weak execution on Davies' behalf. If they had decided to use them in the context of this story, they could have been scary, sinister, and something completely new. Just imagine that sinister, childlike creature hovering in one of Van Statten's cells? The glowing sphere, which spoke in such an innocent and playful manner, would turn out to be one of the universe's most destructive monsters; responsible for playing a vital role in the biggest war conceivable. Their innocent demeanor juxtaposed with their history of mass slaughter would have made them absolutely terrifying.

But none of this really matters, because it never transpired this way. At some point in 2004, the BBC were granted the go ahead by the Nation Estate to use the Daleks and the rest was history.

There are rumors that suggested BBC bosses wanted the Daleks to come back as early as the pilot episode of this series, however Russell T Davies chose to hold them back until episode six. I couldn't agree more with Davies here. Placing them in the pilot episode could have lead to some problematic consequences for the future of this show.

As I mentioned above, one of the main hooks that lured so many viewers in for the 2005 revival was the fact that the Daleks were coming back. They had not been on our screens for almost fifteen years (excluding Steven Moffat's 1999 Comic Relief parody; The Curse of the Fatal Death) and people were desperate to see how they would be reestablish within 21^st century culture.

During the promotional footage released for the new series, we only managed to get one glimpse of the contemporary pepper pot. The official trailer revealed a brief shot of a battle torn Dalek wrapped up in chains. The shot was no more than a second in length, but it gave viewers enough information to understand where this was all going. The damaged armor, the dark and gold-plated paneling, the harsh brown paintwork gave us all a solid idea of what they were going to be like. These new pepper pots would be merciless soldiers; damaged, tainted and possibly even imprisoned by the deathly battles of war. A monster, repackaged for the world of today.

Throwing such an eagerly anticipated villain into the very first episode would have been a poor move on the BBC's behalf. As I have mentioned before, the aim of this series was to try and generate a mainstream interest for Doctor Who once again. This was a show with a colossal budget. For it to work, it needed to be big and remain so in the long run.

This made it the producers' job to lure as many people as possible in and keep them there for thirteen long weeks. But if a large majority of those people were only around to check out a new Dalek, then throwing it into the very first episode would not give those viewers any reason to come back during the second, third, fourth and fifth week.

They needed to keep people in their seats for as long as was possible. They had to prove to them that Doctor Who was more than just as show with Daleks. By placing the core icon in the middle of the series, it gave audiences a reason to stick around for long enough to understand the show a little better.

Remember, non-fans were not avid researchers of the new series. They didn't know when the Daleks would show up. Whilst the more passionate viewers knew that episode six would be the return of the killer pepper pots, most people were unaware of this. So they tuned in on week one, not knowing whether or not they would get what they had come for. When this turned out to not be the case, they tuned in for another week, then another, then another, and so on and so forth.

By the time they finally saw what it was they wanted, they had already been exposed to a select number of stories. This gave Davies and co enough time to lure these viewers in by showing them what else Doctor Who was capable of doing.

Due to such a wise decision, the Daleks never made an appearance in the pilot episode, but were instead left untouched for the five preceding episodes; not making a single appearance until Rob Shearman's episode six; Dalek.

Shearman was on board to write a script for the revived series of Doctor Who from as early as 2003. The reason why Russell T Davies hired him was because he wanted Shearman to adapt his Big Finish audio play, Jubilee, for the sixth episode of this series.

Jubilee was a Doctor Who audio adventure released back in January 2003. The story revolved around the sixth Doctor (Colin Baker) discovering a lone Dalek being held prisoner by a family who ruled the “English Empire”. Their reason for keeping this metallic monster locked away was so that they could use it for their own political propaganda purposes.

During the adaptation phase, Shearman was asked to rewrite several aspects of his original story so that it could fit more comfortably within Russell's interpretation of the series. The main change revolved around replacing the Empire rulers with Henry Van Statten; a multimillionaire who lived in Utah and collected alien artifacts for a living.

Shearman was one of the few writers from the wilderness years of the 1990s who managed to secure himself a position within the 2005 series revival. His integration into the new era showed that Davies and team were not willing to ignore the creative force behind the less mainstream years of the program.

At the same time, however, the fact that Davies wanted him to rework and essentially remake a story that was a member of the wilderness years suggests that he may not have wished for that era of the show to be established as officially canon. I say this because in order for this story to exist, the events of the original Jubilee story could not be a member of the same Doctor Who universe. The story was too similar, meaning that both events could not occupy the same universe simultaneously, as it would be just too much of a coincidence (but then again, seeing that this is Doctor Who - a show where absolutely anything can happen - the idea that two highly similar stories existing within the same time frame may not necessarily be that too far-fetched of a concept).

Jumping forward in time a little bit, Davies will prove to make the same move again during the revived shows third series. He will hire writer Paul Cornell to adapt one of his classic adventure novels for a 2007 story; Human Nature/Family of Blood. Again, seeing as the events and premise of this 2007 episode are similar to the premise and events which transpired in the novel, it is almost suggesting that Davies is establishing the idea that Cornell's novel didn't actually exist within the 'official' run of past Doctor Who. There is only room for one version of these stories, and seeing as Davies' version of the show is a member of the official televised series, these adaptations are the 'definitive' account of the Doctor's time line.

What is also interesting about Davies' decision to hire only a select number of writers from previous eras of Doctor Who, is that he hires only a small number of them. The authors of the novels and audio spin off's of the Doctor Who television series were plentiful in their numbers. They had spent the past several decades dreaming up all kinds of arcs and stories within the book and audio mediums. If Davies wanted to, he could have hired a large portion of these writers to help him bring the show back to BBC One. Except he didn't. Instead, he only brought a handful of them on board.

This could suggest that Davies only selected the members of the wilderness years whose interpretation of the show he preferred the most. The many writers of the wilderness years all had their own ideas on how Doctor Who should be made. Some believed that the show should venture down the science fiction route, whilst others preferred the fantasy path.

By hiring members of this group to write for the 2005 revival, Davies could very well have been picking the individuals whose idea of what Doctor Who was suited his preferences the most; simply ignoring the rest. 

Here Davies crafts his own style of the wilderness years. His version of the show will promote some of the aspects of this era whilst happily ignoring the rest. He's picking the stories and concepts from the dead period and using them for the benefit of his own era, whilst leaving the rest to exist outside the mainstream realm; far away from his vision of this universe. This is as close as he will ever get to influencing a part of the program's history.

So Davies hasn't chosen to ignore the past decade of Doctor Who, but instead he has nominated to pick the styles and stories that he liked from that particular decade.

And this leads on to another interesting question regarding the wilderness years period; was any of it actually canon? I mean with Dalek alone, we've already had a story lifted from that era and retrofitted for this one, so surely that has removed one story from there already. But what about the others? Did all those off-screen adventures with the sixth, seventh and eight Doctor ever happen? Did all those novels set after the 1996 TV movie really take place in this Doctor's time line? We know that the events of the 1963 to 1989 series, as well as the 1996 movie were 'officially' declared as part of the 2005 revival's universe, but what about all the tales supposedly set in between?

I think that this is a very difficult question to answer, but I have my own theory, which is that it's entirely up to the viewer. Like Davies, every audience member of the wilderness years would have consumed stories that they felt fitted perfectly into the Doctor Who canon, whereas they would have also consumed ones which had the opposite effect. There were so many different versions of the show during this period that people learned to cope by picking and choosing which stories they wanted to follow.

This essentially turned a decade duration of the show into a modifiable canon of the Doctor's life. Not one person can confidently state which stories took place in the Doctor's 'official' time line. Therefore it is up to their subjectivity to make the choice that suits their perception of the show the most.

But I don't want to linger around in this subject area any further. There are a hundred different theories and claims regarding the canon of the series. Some will state that none of the audio plays and novels existed in the Doctor's 'real' past, whereas other will state that some did and some didn't. 

At the end of the day, who knows, and who outside the fan base really gives a damn?

So anyhow, I digress. How did the iconic pepper pot come across in its 21^st century début? Well it came across as an indestructible death machine of course.

The direction of the episode made heavy use of showing off what this creature was capable of doing. It could revive its battle-scarred shell simply from the touch of a time traveller; glide up stair ways; dissolve bullets moments before impact; unlock high security doors in a matter of seconds; absorb vast quantities of data in mere minutes; and blast people from existence with a single ray. It was a monster with uncomprehending levels of strength and fire power.

It was fuelled by its existence to hate anything that was different from itself. It had no concept of mercy, empathy or understanding for the value of human life. Nothing could destroy it and nothing would survive it. The ultimate killing machine that was immune to human weaponary.

This was how the Daleks were brought to life for the 21^st century. Their fear factor had dried up years ago. No longer were they simply the shouty pepper pots of the classic era, they were ultimate warriors. They were dedicated murderous who were more or less invincible to the resistance of any other life form in our universe.

But the level of their destructive force was not the only way that Shearman upgraded the Daleks for New Who. The modernisation of these icons was also executed through the use of dialogue and character confrontation.

To voice the Daleks, Davies hired actor Nicholas Briggs to take on the role. Briggs had worked on Doctor Who prior to this episode. Much like Shearman, he was a man who was lucked straight from the wilderness years of the show.

Briggs had written for and starred in a number of the audio adventures. What he was most famed for, was his ability to add great depths of character to the Dalek voices. He was not simply a man who made a living by voicing iconic monsters. He took on the role as if it was any other performance. Instead of portraying the Daleks as nothing more than shouting nazi metaphors, he gave them personalities. His Daleks could be angry, sad, scared, confused and all kinds of emotions that would promote them into fully functioning characters of their own.

He would portray the Daleks in a way which would make them dominate the narrative. No longer were they just killer henchmen who screamed “exterminate” at the top of their lungs (though he still does that); now they were killer henchmen who were complex individuals in their own right.

To bring Briggs into the new series was a wise and grand move. This was their chance to show that the Daleks were more complicated than just their iconic presence. Briggs uses the script of Dalek to deliver this message across to its audience perfectly.

The Dalek in this episode is a lost, melancholic soul who is the last member of his race. It has fought in the time war and is now trying to survive in a universe where it no longer has a purpose. On top of this, its greatest enemy has now arrived back into its life. It is confronted by its greatest target and biggest fear; the Doctor. Briggs uses this back story to deliver all of these conflicting emotions through the power of his performance.

Writer Rob Shearman also contributes to this element of the Daleks through the execution of his screenplay. What we should recognise with Shearman is that he is also known for being a play writer for the medium of theatre. He has written plays such as Dented Crowns (1991), Breaking Bread Together (1993), Fool to Yourself (1995) and Shaw Cornered (2001).

The medium of the theatre is one which makes great use of self-contained set pieces and heavy dialogue. Due to the constants of limited sets, as well as the intimacy of a live audience, theatrical plays must utilize closed set pieces and narrative driven dialogue in order to tell its story in the best way conceivable.

Television use to also be written in this manner. Back in the early days of the medium, lack of editing techniques, small television screens and limited sets to film upon meant that writers and actors had to tell a story as if it was being performed live within the same room as its viewers. As technology progressed however, these constraints were freed from the medium; allowing it to become more cinematic in its execution.

And so far, New Who has been very much a piece of cinematic work. Fast editing, single cam shots, plentiful special effects and hasty-paced forty-five minute stories have been all the norm. But here, Doctor Who reverts back to a time where intimacy and dialogue were vital members of televisual storytelling.

This works perfectly when it comes to establishing the Doctor's relationship with these creatures. The Dalek and the ninth Doctor spend a decent number of scenes locked in a small room; expressing their anger, disgust and sadistic hatred toward one another in the most intimate and dialogue driven manner imaginable. Both characters are terrified of one another. Both of their existences infuriates the other; showing them to be the war-torn lifeforms that they are.

The utilization of intimacy and dialogue on top of Briggs in-depth performance breathes new life into the Dalek race. They are more than just mindless henchmen. They are brilliant, smart, complex beings who have real motives behind their existence. They may very well be a race that have had all their emotions removed (minus hate), but deep inside, there is far more going on than could possibly meet the eye. In the 21^st century, where all popular dramas are driven by deep character-based narratives, this is the perfect way to modernize such an iconic monster.

Surrounding all of the intimate dialogue scenes of Dalek, however, lies a classic base-under-siege story. The base-under-siege formate is one that was used frequently in classic Doctor Who; particularly amongst Patrick Troughton's second Doctor era. The set up is simple, The Doctor and companions land in a base that is isolated from the rest of civilisation. After a number of the base's characters are established, an external force invades. The Doctor, his companions and the recently established natives of this base must use their resources and character archetypes to help fight off the invading force.

Dalek uses this narrative from the inside out. Instead of the enemy being an external force, it is one that comes from the inside. It is one of the base's previously established props which transforms into the destructive forces. Yet regardless of this switch in structure, it is still essentially your typical base-under-siege episode.

Yet despite the bog standard narrative layout, this format works perfectly for Dalek. Not only does it give the Doctor a chance to commune with his greatest foe in a locked off environment, but it also allows Shearman to show off what one lone Dalek is capable of doing.

The base essentially becomes the Dalek's own playground. It is his sandbox for destruction. There are plenty of stairs for to glide up, combination locks to hack and enemies to slaughter. The base is a linear, closed-world environment which lets the Dalek put all of his skills into action. The perfect setting for its début.

In conclusion, Dalek is a fantastic instalment to the new era of Doctor Who. Shearman's dialogue driven, closed-set narrative and intense take on the Dalek is just what this villain needs in order to be promoted into an icon for 21^st century popular culture. The use of Nicholas Briggs as the voice of this complex beast is also a perfect move; introducing a persona bearing, enigmatic version of the Daleks into the program's main text.

Apart from the final episode of this series, this is probably one of the finest utilizations of the Daleks during New Who's run. From series two onwards, their execution will become somewhat predictable and problematic; failing to make a solid comeback until as far ahead as the seventh series.

But more on that later...