"Victory Of The Daleks" Continues To Undermine The Primary Doctor Who Villain!

The Good: Moments of performance
The Bad: Ridiculous plot progression, Undermines both the Doctor and the Daleks, Generally lousy character development
The Basics: "Victory Of The Daleks" is another unfortunate episode that undermines both The Doctor and his greatest adversary.


When it comes to science fiction, there are few adversaries who are fleshed out over time that are not weakened from their initial, powerful, iterations. In Doctor Who, that concept certainly applies to the Daleks. The Daleks were originally conceived as genetically-perfect creatures who interface with mechanical war machines that travel the galaxy wiping out all imperfect life. The Daleks in the modern Doctor Who series's have been weakened by sects, temporal wars, insanity and major cataclysmic events which seem to remove most of the Daleks from existence. The last time the Daleks appeared in the modern Doctor Who was "Journey's End" (reviewed here!) and the first time Matt Smith's incarnation of The Doctor encountered them was for the episode "Victory Of The Daleks."

"The Beast Below" (reviewed here!) climaxed with Amy Pond in the TARDIS getting a phone call from Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Churchill is using Daleks in "Victory Of The Daleks" and the premise is a tough check for writer Mark Gatiss to cash. In "Victory Of The Daleks," he does not entirely land the premise and it ultimately undermines much of the menace and concept behind the Daleks in favor of a series of very merchandisable concepts for collectibles.

Opening in Winston Churchill's war room below London, during the blitz, the TARDIS arrives with Amy and The Doctor. The two witness a squadron of German planes being shot out of the sky by advanced energy weapons. Those weapons come from Dr. Bracewell's Ironsides, tanks that look identical to Daleks. Bracewell is working for Churchill and under his direction, Bracewell has built a few Ironsides in order to take on the Germans and win World War II. Seeing the Daleks, The Doctor freaks out and starts challenging them. The Ironsides turn on one another and take The Doctor's testimony, rebooting to recall all of their programming as Daleks. So aware, the Daleks start killing Churchill's people, then teleport out to a ship behind the moon.

The Doctor abandons Amy on Earth, taking the TARDIS to the Dalek mothership. There, the Doctor witnesses the Ironsides using a Progenitor Device, an artifact that contains pure Dalek DNA. The Ironsides reconstitute the DNA to make five Daleks who then menace The Doctor and Earth. With the threat of destruction from the Germans and the Daleks above, The Doctor and Amy have to work to defuse a Dalek bomb left on Earth.

"Victory Of The Daleks" is a series of horrible plot concepts that are simple problems that are solved through incredibly complex solutions that make very little sense in the overall continuity. In fact, the solutions derived by The Doctor show a fundamental lack of the character's ability to use basic reasoning skills. When The Doctor first encounters the Ironsides, he begins freaking out. His temper tantrum sets off the events that follow, but he is presented with two incredibly easy ways to prove his concerns about the Ironsides are valid to Churchill. The Doctor has his sonic screwdriver on him; using it to open the casing on the Dalek to reveal the alien creature inside. If it is there, he proves to Churchill that the Daleks are real; if there is no entity within the Dalek armor, The Doctor realizes they actually are constructs built by Dr. Bracewell. Barring that, The Doctor has Bracewell's blueprints of the Ironsides, which he flips through without actually looking closely at. That, too, would have given him the information he needs to understand the Ironsides, as opposed to him just throwing a hissy fit.

The other big, ridiculously complicated plot concept comes at the episode's climax. When The Doctor and Amy have to defuse the Dalek bomb, they go about it in the most convoluted, absurd way. For sure, watching The Doctor try to access Bracewell's humanity fits his character, but The Doctor wants to save the Earth and its people above all else. Instead, he prioritizes talking to one Dalek android with unknown programming and abilities and a very real bomb. There is nothing within the episode "Victory Of The Daleks" that satisfactorily explains why The Doctor did not simply materialize the TARDIS within the war room, grab Bracewell and take him to a distant time and place for a controlled explosion.

Furthermore, the new Daleks make no sense in the overall concept of the Daleks. The Daleks are a monolithic race that is genetically-identical and bent upon exterminating all imperfect life. The Daleks are interchangable and single-minded; art deco coloring to differentiate the Daleks is a ridiculous conceit. In fact, the only truly sensible act the Daleks do within "Victory Of The Daleks" is disintegrate the Ironsides. Even the bomb they created and the Bracewell android indicate a level of creativity that damaged Daleks should not have had.

The only reason "Victory Of The Daleks" is at all important within the context of Doctor Who is for the mystery of Amy Pond. When Amy Pond first encounters a Dalek, she has know remembrance of them, which The Doctor finds odd. Amy Pond would have been a conscious young adult during the events of "Journey's End" when the Daleks filled the sky and Earth was dragged across the universe. That she does not recall these events is an anomaly, which The Doctor acknowledges, but "Victory Of The Daleks" does not even begin to explore why this discontinuity exists within Amy Pond.

Ultimately, "Victory Of The Daleks" is a cheap use of the Daleks, including their ridiculous getaway without The Doctor and Amy following them to stop them once and for all. Instead, the episode serves to act as a cheap, obvious, point of merchandising as opposed to telling a concrete, compelling story.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fifth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Ian McNeice, please visit my reviews of:
Valkyrie
Rome
The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Chef! - Season 2

1.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Clever Construction Gives "The Beast Below" An Interesting Moral Dilemma!

The Good: Morality, Dilemma, Plot progression, Performances, Moments of character
The Bad: Exploitative quality, Moments of simplicity.
The Basics: "The Beast Below" is an excellent idea where those surrounding The Doctor outshine the new Doctor!


When the new Doctor was introduced to Doctor Who fans in "The Eleventh Hour" (reviewed here!), writer Steven Moffat had a task that was actually much harder to plausibly pull off for viewers than he might have realized. The pressure was not on to redefine The Doctor, but given the space between David Tennant's Doctor losing Donna Noble and not taking a new Companion, onus on Moffat was to convince viewers that Amy Pond would be an individual The Doctor would want to spend time with, long-term. To do that, the final scene of "The Eleventh Hour" introduced the new, steampunk TARDIS operations room and almost explicitly asks "why me" for Amy Pond. "The Eleventh Hour" presented The Doctor as a funloving madman, which made it seem like Amy Pond would ground The Doctor as she was the girl who waited fourteen years for him. "The Beast Below" picks up the very night "The Eleventh Hour" left off.

"The Beast Below" serves, in many ways, to act as a pilot which will allow completely new viewers to get into Doctor Who. Amy Pond begins "The Beast Below" asking all of the key questions a young woman might if she found herself in the TARDIS, meeting The Doctor for the first time. As a result, the episode begins with a lot of exposition, which acts as a primer for Doctor Who in general, as opposed to setting up the specific plot for "The Beast Below."

Amelia Pond, still in her nightgown, interrogates The Doctor on his nature and that of the TARDIS. He does his best to give her answers and reassure her before shoving her out of the TARDIS into space, where she is able to float outside the gravity field, but within an air pocket, from the TARDIS. Making a trip to the future, the pair discovers a starship, which is essentially a giant city representing the United Kingdom after the Earth has been hit by solar flares. On the ship, a child is evaluated by a creepy machine as having received a "zero" and he disappears. His friend, Mandy, waits for him at their promised rendezvous location and when he does not arrive, her crying in public unnoticed by the adults around her draws the attention of The Doctor. When Amy meets up with Mandy, Amy goes into a blocked road and is nearly attacked by a giant scorpion tail before she is knocked out by gas from a creepy man.

While The Doctor is met with a stranger, having both realized that the starship does not seem to have a recognizable power supply, Amy wakes up in a booth where a video tells her she will learn the truth about Starship UK. Given the option, Amy erases her memory of the truth she is told and records a message to herself telling her to find The Doctor and get off the ship. The Doctor arrives and chooses a different option for him and Amy. They find themselves in the mouth of a massive beast and, after getting ejected from the creature, they are rescued by the stranger, Queen Elizabeth X. The Doctor, the Queen, Mandy, and Amy flee the Smilers and are taken to the tower, where they learn the truth about Starship UK and have to choose how to procede with their new knowledge.

"The Beast Below" continues the weird exploitation of Karen Gillan as Amy Pond. Pond was introduced as a kiss-o-gram in the first episode, which was an excuse to have her running around in a skimpy outfit which, admittedly, is hard to complain about. But in "The Beast Below," Pond is no longer in her costume; she is wearing a nightgown. This creates an odd moment that is unfortunately uncharacteristic for Amy Pond; when The Doctor points out that she is walking around the future space ship in a nightie, she freaks out, but does not close her robe. That contrast makes no in-episode sense, so it makes the use of Gillan (who is a talented actress) just feel cheap.

Beyond that, "The Beast Below" is a good alternate introduction to Doctor Who and the new Doctor. The titular creature creates a smart moral dilemma for The Doctor, though that dilemma seems very simple. The mystery to make the dilemma explicit is well-executed.

Unfortunately, while the set-up for the moral dilemma of "The Beast Below" is good, the final act reduces the character of The Doctor. The Doctor throws a temper tantrum and reduces the options for Starship UK to three. Even before Amy comes up with a third option, there are more solutions to the moral dilemma. Amy plays a hunch that is exactly the type The Doctor (in his various incarnations) does and The Doctor gets pissy. In other words, by this second episode with Matt Smith as The Doctor, the character's support mechanism outshine the protagonist.

The performances in "The Beast Below" are unremarkable until the final act and there everyone rises to the occasion. The real surprise is how the child actress Hannah Sharp plays perfectly off the virtual tentacles like a pro (getting eyelines and such correct for CG objects is something many adult actors fail to get right!).

Ultimately, "The Beast Below" is an intriguing set-up that leads to an interesting moral dilemma that is well-resolved without truly highlighting The Doctor as the great hero, intellect, or moral compass of this phase of Doctor Who.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Fifth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Matt Smith as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

For other works with Sophie Okonedo, please visit my reviews of:
After Earth
Aeon Flux
Hotel Rwanda

7/10

For other Doctor Who episode and movie reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2016 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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