Dumbing Down Daleks

Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks

Airdate: April 17th 2010. UK. BBC1

You know... I was always a fan of the multicoloured Daleks. If I had to pick a favourite set of Daleks from any decade of Doctor Who then it would be the bright and colourful metal geezahs from the two Peter Cushing movies of the sixties. Heck, I even liked the fact that they fired steam.

Yesterday’s new episode of Doctor Who gave us three different types of Daleks. The predominant ones in this episode, set during World War Two, were the classic, upgraded, most used style of the Daleks which featured from the late sixties to the late eighties. It was nice to see these on screen again. Then there was one of the new designed Daleks from the recent Russel Davies era of the show... standing them up against the older types really showed just how good the design of those old types were in comparison.

And then there were the brand new Daleks...

Oh dear. What was the brief here then. Like I said... I don’t mind multicoloured... but THESE! When I saw these on the cover of Radio Times I just assumed the designers of the magazine were having fun and using cheaply made, badly observed toys to decorate their cover with. I had no idea that these were actually the new Daleks. They’re awful. Like cheap, chunky plush toys for kids. I would have thought it was almost impossible to screw up this design classic this much... but they’ve somehow managed it.

Hope these new guys don’t stay around for too long. They are not in any way threatening! Time to put the Daleks away again for a decade or so methinks.

Right. This is not good now. This show needs to get back to being at least as good as the first half of the first episode.

The story was mostly preposterous. There’s no way you are going to rig up spitfires to do that in how ever many short hours they had. This is ridiculous.

As has been the case in all the episodes so far... the Doctor really took second place to Amy Pond. She’s showing him up something chronic... although I’m not too sure she’s even human anymore. There’s something about Amy. She doesn’t remember the Daleks (funny... why did I just know that was going to be the case?)... which either means the timelines have been altered... or she’s not who we think she is. She might even be Prisoner Zero for all I know! Is she friend or foe? Maybe she’s a trap. Who knows? And frankly... at this stage after three not so great episodes... who cares?

That crack in time is already overused. Not too subtle are we Mr. BBC?

There was one nice thing about the episode and that was a shot lasting a couple of seconds of a Dalek poster in the style of British World War 2 Propoganda Poster Art. Not too shabby. The rest was semi-enjoyable but mostly rubbish.

Oh well. Both River Song and the Weeping Angels are back for couple of episodes next. Let’s just hope that these are not going to be tarnished and disrespected in the same way the Daleks just were.

Stopped looking forward to this show!