Terry Nation grew up in the Second World War, an experience which seemed to influence the development of his Dalek creations. Their "dislike for the unlike" on creed of the Nazis. In The Dalek Invasion of Earth, the Doctor and his companions visited a bombed out London not too dissimilar to the city during the blitz. Here, the Daleks were presented as tanks, rolling through the streets of a ruined London. killing people and enslaving others. When Terry Nation finally addressed the origin of the Daleks in Genesis of the Daleks, he presented Skaro was in a war torn planet where the racially impure were rejected. It made sense then, for the modern production team to put the Daleks into the proper World War II setting, taking the monsters back to their roots. Unfortunately, the script fails to deliver on the potential of its premise.
After receiving their summons from Winston Churchill last in the previous episode, The Doctor and Amy arrive at the Cabinet War Rooms a little too late. Winston is no longer worried about the Daleks, who he believes are an invention of Scottish Scientist Bracewell. Winston wants to use them against the Nazis, but the Doctor is convinced that the Daleks are up to something and is determined to prove their manipulative ways to Churchill.
In contrast to The Empty Child, we only ever see the war damage from the safety of the Cabinet War Rooms. There's no sense of how it's impacting on ordinary people. There's a subplot about a WREN who has lost her boyfriend, but this gets quickly buried under all the Dalek plot and is pretty much forgotten about.
The Doctor makes a grave mistake in trying to get the Daleks to reveal their true identity, as he ends up giving them a voice testimony of his identity, which is what they wanted. They reveal that Bracewell is their creation and transmat to their ship.
At this point the Wartime setting becomes completely irrelevant. The Doctor follows the Daleks to their ship where they use the Doctor's testimony to activate a device which generates a whole new race of Daleks. These new Daleks are not particularly good. I can't say I'm too keen on the new design either. The colours may be gaudy, but what really niggles is the fact that the Dalek casings look like their made of plastic instead of metal. They're more like toys than war machines. The set of the Dalek Spaceship is even worse. It's just a bland white room. It's not a patch on the gaudy ships of the RTD era.
All the plotting and manipulation is tossed aside as the Daleks opt for a straightforward attack on the Earth.
Bracewell is able to make bi-planes fly into space to fight the Daleks.
The Bi-Planes beat the Daleks, but the Daleks have turned Bracewell into a bomb. The Doctor and Amy manage to convince Bracewell that he's human. When Russell T Davies presented an emotional moment he made it convincing. Somehow trying to convince a robot that he is human is not that good.
The characterisation of Winston Churchill was not quite right. He is presented as a straightforward good guy, full of bluster and little else. His alliance to the Daleks is born out of misunderstanding, and it might have been more dramatic to see him accepting the evil of the Daleks as a necessary risk to beating Hitler.
I don't know why, but the new Doctor really grated on me this week. Maybe Matt's performance was a bit off? Maybe Mark Gatiss had written him as a Pertwee clone? Who knows? Some of his dialogue, like the "I've defeated you time and time again" bit, felt like they were written for a classic series Doctor, and didn't have the power of the Eccleston or Tennant Dalek confrontations.
With the focus of this episode on the Doctor and the Daleks, Amy Pond was left just giving a few quips and being feisty in the background. She seemed to be showing an interest in the grieving WREN, but once that subplot had dissapeared, Amy ended up comforting the stupid sci-fi robot guy. Her "have you ever loved someone you shouldn't?" line suggests a possible direction for her character, but that's all.
Mark Gatiss has always been the writer to turn to when the showrunner needs something "British" and nostalgic, whether its Victorian London in The Unquiet Dead or Quatermass references in The Idiot's Lantern. The World War II setting seemed right up his street, with all the British Patriotism and all those scientists and soldiers recalling his other favourite show, Quatermass. However, Gatiss chose to write this story like a Bank Holiday War time movie, which means it's a very straightforward, unambiguous tale.
In conclusion, this episode is the first clunker of Series 5. Still, they've got another ten episodes to show improvement.
Next: The return of River Song and The Weeping Angels!
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