It’s sort of disheartening to hear how several podcasters didn’t think much of this episode, in particular I refer to Tom’s recent review for Two-Minute Time Lord. This is crushing to me as I felt it was a great episode, certainly much better than last week’s “The Beast Below.” What I liked so much about it is that is was FUN. When’s the last time we’ve honestly had any fun with a Dalek episode? Yes, I realize they’re the scourge of the universe, the Doctor’s sworn enemy, the annihilators of Gallifrey, but they’re just so darn stuffy. Even “Dalek” which we can all agree is the best new series Dalek episode, and arguably one of the best ever, is awfully dour. With each subsequent appearance since then, my interest in the Daleks has gone down exponentially. “Victory” is the first one since “Dalek,” where they haven’t been portrayed as a nigh-omnipotent plague and I haven’t then rolled my eyes at the very sight of them. Each and every time they show up, it’s an all-out melodrama, complete with Captain Jack proclaiming “We’re dead” and cowering behind something in Torchwood. The Daleks stopped being menacing. The reverence we’re meant to have for them was gone. By that point, they were no longer a threat in my eyes. How many times can they be destroyed en masse just to come back as large and in charge as ever?
But this one is different. The Daleks are running scared. Their numbers have dwindled. There are only three at the beginning, and even after the upgrade and cleansing of the impure, there are only five. And the “end of the world” aspect, the Bracewell bomb, is really just a means for them to get away. They are victorious, but they succeed by retreating. THAT’s the kind of villain I want. They’re wily and opportunistic as well as being unfeeling and ruthless. Say what you will about the new Dalek design, but like everything about the Moffat era thus far, it’s a bold move. The Daleks have been different every single time you see them in one shape or another. Here they have again evolved but there isn’t a human-hybrid or a Davros’ head in the bunch. They’re just plain old Daleks again, if a little beefier. They have cleansed their race, a further allusion to the Third Reich.
One criticism I completely disagreed with is that this episode wasn’t “Doctor Who” as it was back in the day. Now, I wasn’t there from the beginning. I’m 25 years old. I was born two months after the last episode of the Twin Dilemma was transmitted, AND I’m American, so admittedly, I don’t have the history with the show that a great many fans have. But over the passed year since I discovered the series, I’ve been watching as many adventures, both new and old, as Netflix will allow and what’s great about it for me is that, it’s ALL new. Every time I watch an adventure, it’s new Doctor Who. It’s all happening now. Victory of the Daleks is 100% in line with the classic series and the bulk of the new series. It’s everything between Turn Left and End of Time that seems incongruous. It’s like we’ve forgotten that the Doctor is a HERO and not always a TRAGIC hero. Tragic’s overdone.
Was it a perfect episode? Absolutely not. For starters, the stuff with the professor didn’t really work for me. While the performance of Bill Patterson was very good, I wasn’t ever sold on the ramifications of his coming to terms with not being human. Sadly that’s the bit that was too long. I think there needed to be greater build up to the Doctor’s near-frothy blowup at the Dalek. I would have liked to have seen more of them being “helpful,” beforehand. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there talk that this was supposed to be a 65 minute episode? Clearly a lot was cut out of the beginning. The Doctor ended up on the Dalek saucer way too soon. This could have easily benefitted from a few extra minutes if not a whole second part for development’s sake. Like “The Beast Below” before it, “Victory of the Daleks,” suffered the most from poor direction on the part of Andrew Gunn. The camera was almost never where it needed to be. The Doctor/Dalek confrontation would have been excellent if we could have seen it properly. Also the pacing of the two episodes, especially last week’s, was very off.
That all notwithstanding, “Victory of the Daleks” did come away as a victory for me. It’s an adventure, it’s a swashbuckling, Flash-Gordon-y throwback to a simpler era. I think if we can glean anything from the first three episodes of Steven Moffat’s era, it’s a deliberate attempt to reconnect with the 1960s, down to the TARDIS’ control panel which looks to me like what science fiction films of that decade thought the future would be like. If this whole season were in black-and-white, I don’t think it would feel the least bit out of place. Like the WWII era movie serials on which its clearly based, this episode stands as a rip-roaring, high-flying good time that possessed wide-eyed kidness that the latter RTD years sorely lacked.
You're welcome
-Kanderson
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