Why I like the Movellans (Redux)
Okay guys, I'm breaking my own rules and doing something I've never really done before, which is revisiting a topic I have already written on. There is already a "Why I like the Movellans" post kicking around the project somewhere, but (1) that post kinda sucked and (2) the Movellans have suddenly become relevant again in a way I could not have anticipated but which is nevertheless wholly appropriate. And of course, like Ron Swanson, I Do What I Want.
The Movellans are a race of Killer Robots - no hang on, they're more than that. They're people, fully realized and individuated (and incidentally stunningly beautiful) people, who just happen to be made out of metal and circuits and such instead of being made out of meat. Like the Mechanoids of Mechanus (who also have zero time for Daleks), there is no implication that anybody else built them, but rather they seem to be a case of genuine machine life. This is a concept I find fascinating even though it's not at all obvious how that actually works. But then, the whole point of science fiction is to explore other ways for life to be. So the Movellans are Androids, I suppose, but that seems like a vast oversimplification, especially compared to the other things called Androids in the history of the show.
It does have a couple of important implication though. First off, the Movellans are the ultimate Straw Vulcans of the show. As machine people, they are perfectly Logical, and this is a serious problem for them. Unlike in most of Doctor Who's Killer Robot narratives though, this is not presented as sinister per se, but simply as a hindrance. There's no moral component, as there is with, say, the Cybermen. It is just a limitation on their thinking, which is what has led to their unbreakable stalemate with another perfectly logical machine race: the Daleks (Terry Nation having apparently just forgotten at this juncture that that is not true of the Daleks even a little bit, but what can you do? He was busy with Blake's 7 at the time, and more power to him). The Doctor then teaches them a Valuable Lesson about Chaos by beating them repeatedly at Rock-Paper-Scissors: specifically that an illogical/unpredictable opponent will always have the advantage over a predictable one. I'm not sure this is true, but it sure is a nice idea, at least if you happen to be someone who's a bit more chaotically oriented. Like, say, the Doctor, who was once perfectly summed up in the exchange: "I don't think he's a stupid as he seems" - "My dear, no one could be as stupid as he seems."
The other neat result of the Movellans being androids is that they are concomitantly androgynous. This makes sense. There is no reason to expect sexual dimorphism in a race that (presumably) does not reproduce sexually. It doesn't stop some people of course: we've had plenty of single-gender races that were exclusively masculine (eg the Sontarans) or exclusively feminine (eg the Carrionites) - it's just really nice to have a single-gender race that falls out as non-binary. What good is the gender binary to a robot anyway? And speaking of unnecessary social monoliths in alien settings, after seeing species after species of humanoid that are basically just white people, it's kind of nice to see one that is apparently all black - and what's more, all black in a way that does not obviously play into any kind of existing terrestrial racial stereotypes. They're still apparently racially monolithic, but then, there's no reason to expect biological variance in a race that doesn't have a biology. Why one skin tone instead of another? Why not? There's no particular reason for it, but then there doesn't need to be - what it does is get away from the idea of whiteness as a default. The overall effect of this is that the Movellans are just stunningly beautiful, especially since the color palate they seem to be into is white with a little bit of silver accent, which just looks, okay, pretty 70s I'll admit, but also really really great. They're probably the best looking aliens in the series.
What's interesting about the Movellans is that they are not, prima facie, the Good Guys. They're very pretty, and they're opposing the Daleks, who are always the Bad Guys, but, like the Sontarans, they're not really interested in humans at all, just in their War. There is no moral imperative to the Movellans one way or the other, they're just kind of doing their thing, which can be really bad for anyone caught in the crossfire. They spend most of their episode being Another Hazard faced by the various human slaves the Daleks have been importing to Skaro, at least until the Doctor sits them down and gives them a good talking to. There's no reason to believe they're just as bad as the Daleks, since Daleks are canonically The Worst, but there's no particular reason to believe that tipping the stalemate in their favor won't have them go on to rule the galaxy with an almost literally iron fist. The Doctor helps them because the Daleks are about to unearth something that will tip the stalemate the other way - namely, Davros - and that would presumably be much much worse. For what it's worth, we never really hear of the Movellans again, so presumably once they're done absolutely wiping the floor with them, they do not go on an unstoppable campaign of conquest, but just sort of get back to doing whatever it is Movellans do, and good on them for it.
And this is the really important bit: the Movellans win. The Movellans are, I think, the only people to ever win a war against the Daleks. We know humans have fought the Daleks and have won several victories, but there's no implication that we ever straight up beat them. Whoever won the Time War, if that's even an idea that makes sense, it certainly wasn't Gallifrey. Occasionally we've seen folks kill all the Daleks who happen to be on a particular planet, but that's not the same by any means as a direct military victory. But the Movellans go to war against the Daleks and they win. Partly through a superior understanding of Rock-Paper-Scissors, but mostly through the somewhat obvious means of biological warfare, given that their opponents are biological and they are not. They beat the Daleks so thoroughly and so completely that the Daleks have to recruit human soldiers - not enslave, recruit - one of whom grows up to be one of the most interesting and compelling characters in the Whoniverse, whom I have not yet written on only because I need Mod to have seen his other episode first. And when even that won't save them, they have to actually revive Davros, a desperate move (and probably poor life choice) that leads directly to the Dalek Civil War and changes the entire Dalek narrative forever. All because of the Movellans.
And this is why their appearance in "the Pilot" was absolutely perfect. The Movellans are a one-off race that are there to oppose the Daleks and that's about it. There's not necessarily a lot of other stories to tell with them, although I would be interested to see a particularly clever writer attempt it. But the Movellans fighting the Daleks to a stalemate and then ultimately beating them is a historical fact. The Doctor wants to bring their pursuer into "the deadliest fire in the universe" - and Daleks are at their deadliest not when they're winning, but when they're losing. He's not going to bring Bill into the middle of the Time War - you can't go to the Time War and even if you could, you really really shouldn't. But the Movellan Wars, when the Daleks are perfectly matched and needing to get creative, and before all the germ warfare gets going, that is exactly the right sort of cruciable for what the Doctor is trying to accomplish here: physically deadly, temporally harmless. Moreover, it's not the sort of situation where you would be tempted to get involved. The Movellans know what they're doing, they're robots (sad, but people just care less when robots get killed), and they're winning. The Doctor can just let them get on with it because they don't need him at this juncture. And you don't need to know all this for the episode to work, but it's a beautiful bit of continuity that makes perfect sense, without needing to get deep into the backstory or show too much of the Most 70s Aliens Ever. My first thought was "Movellans WTF" but my second thought was "archibravo, well done team."
The Movellans are strikingly beautiful and strikingly important to the Dalek narrative, as well as being pretty darn neat in and of themselves. They're certainly the best thing about "Destiny of the Daleks," and they were a delightful addition to "the Pilot." They deserved a more thorough treatment than I gave them the last time around.
The Movellans are a race of Killer Robots - no hang on, they're more than that. They're people, fully realized and individuated (and incidentally stunningly beautiful) people, who just happen to be made out of metal and circuits and such instead of being made out of meat. Like the Mechanoids of Mechanus (who also have zero time for Daleks), there is no implication that anybody else built them, but rather they seem to be a case of genuine machine life. This is a concept I find fascinating even though it's not at all obvious how that actually works. But then, the whole point of science fiction is to explore other ways for life to be. So the Movellans are Androids, I suppose, but that seems like a vast oversimplification, especially compared to the other things called Androids in the history of the show.
It does have a couple of important implication though. First off, the Movellans are the ultimate Straw Vulcans of the show. As machine people, they are perfectly Logical, and this is a serious problem for them. Unlike in most of Doctor Who's Killer Robot narratives though, this is not presented as sinister per se, but simply as a hindrance. There's no moral component, as there is with, say, the Cybermen. It is just a limitation on their thinking, which is what has led to their unbreakable stalemate with another perfectly logical machine race: the Daleks (Terry Nation having apparently just forgotten at this juncture that that is not true of the Daleks even a little bit, but what can you do? He was busy with Blake's 7 at the time, and more power to him). The Doctor then teaches them a Valuable Lesson about Chaos by beating them repeatedly at Rock-Paper-Scissors: specifically that an illogical/unpredictable opponent will always have the advantage over a predictable one. I'm not sure this is true, but it sure is a nice idea, at least if you happen to be someone who's a bit more chaotically oriented. Like, say, the Doctor, who was once perfectly summed up in the exchange: "I don't think he's a stupid as he seems" - "My dear, no one could be as stupid as he seems."
The other neat result of the Movellans being androids is that they are concomitantly androgynous. This makes sense. There is no reason to expect sexual dimorphism in a race that (presumably) does not reproduce sexually. It doesn't stop some people of course: we've had plenty of single-gender races that were exclusively masculine (eg the Sontarans) or exclusively feminine (eg the Carrionites) - it's just really nice to have a single-gender race that falls out as non-binary. What good is the gender binary to a robot anyway? And speaking of unnecessary social monoliths in alien settings, after seeing species after species of humanoid that are basically just white people, it's kind of nice to see one that is apparently all black - and what's more, all black in a way that does not obviously play into any kind of existing terrestrial racial stereotypes. They're still apparently racially monolithic, but then, there's no reason to expect biological variance in a race that doesn't have a biology. Why one skin tone instead of another? Why not? There's no particular reason for it, but then there doesn't need to be - what it does is get away from the idea of whiteness as a default. The overall effect of this is that the Movellans are just stunningly beautiful, especially since the color palate they seem to be into is white with a little bit of silver accent, which just looks, okay, pretty 70s I'll admit, but also really really great. They're probably the best looking aliens in the series.
What's interesting about the Movellans is that they are not, prima facie, the Good Guys. They're very pretty, and they're opposing the Daleks, who are always the Bad Guys, but, like the Sontarans, they're not really interested in humans at all, just in their War. There is no moral imperative to the Movellans one way or the other, they're just kind of doing their thing, which can be really bad for anyone caught in the crossfire. They spend most of their episode being Another Hazard faced by the various human slaves the Daleks have been importing to Skaro, at least until the Doctor sits them down and gives them a good talking to. There's no reason to believe they're just as bad as the Daleks, since Daleks are canonically The Worst, but there's no particular reason to believe that tipping the stalemate in their favor won't have them go on to rule the galaxy with an almost literally iron fist. The Doctor helps them because the Daleks are about to unearth something that will tip the stalemate the other way - namely, Davros - and that would presumably be much much worse. For what it's worth, we never really hear of the Movellans again, so presumably once they're done absolutely wiping the floor with them, they do not go on an unstoppable campaign of conquest, but just sort of get back to doing whatever it is Movellans do, and good on them for it.
And this is the really important bit: the Movellans win. The Movellans are, I think, the only people to ever win a war against the Daleks. We know humans have fought the Daleks and have won several victories, but there's no implication that we ever straight up beat them. Whoever won the Time War, if that's even an idea that makes sense, it certainly wasn't Gallifrey. Occasionally we've seen folks kill all the Daleks who happen to be on a particular planet, but that's not the same by any means as a direct military victory. But the Movellans go to war against the Daleks and they win. Partly through a superior understanding of Rock-Paper-Scissors, but mostly through the somewhat obvious means of biological warfare, given that their opponents are biological and they are not. They beat the Daleks so thoroughly and so completely that the Daleks have to recruit human soldiers - not enslave, recruit - one of whom grows up to be one of the most interesting and compelling characters in the Whoniverse, whom I have not yet written on only because I need Mod to have seen his other episode first. And when even that won't save them, they have to actually revive Davros, a desperate move (and probably poor life choice) that leads directly to the Dalek Civil War and changes the entire Dalek narrative forever. All because of the Movellans.
And this is why their appearance in "the Pilot" was absolutely perfect. The Movellans are a one-off race that are there to oppose the Daleks and that's about it. There's not necessarily a lot of other stories to tell with them, although I would be interested to see a particularly clever writer attempt it. But the Movellans fighting the Daleks to a stalemate and then ultimately beating them is a historical fact. The Doctor wants to bring their pursuer into "the deadliest fire in the universe" - and Daleks are at their deadliest not when they're winning, but when they're losing. He's not going to bring Bill into the middle of the Time War - you can't go to the Time War and even if you could, you really really shouldn't. But the Movellan Wars, when the Daleks are perfectly matched and needing to get creative, and before all the germ warfare gets going, that is exactly the right sort of cruciable for what the Doctor is trying to accomplish here: physically deadly, temporally harmless. Moreover, it's not the sort of situation where you would be tempted to get involved. The Movellans know what they're doing, they're robots (sad, but people just care less when robots get killed), and they're winning. The Doctor can just let them get on with it because they don't need him at this juncture. And you don't need to know all this for the episode to work, but it's a beautiful bit of continuity that makes perfect sense, without needing to get deep into the backstory or show too much of the Most 70s Aliens Ever. My first thought was "Movellans WTF" but my second thought was "archibravo, well done team."
The Movellans are strikingly beautiful and strikingly important to the Dalek narrative, as well as being pretty darn neat in and of themselves. They're certainly the best thing about "Destiny of the Daleks," and they were a delightful addition to "the Pilot." They deserved a more thorough treatment than I gave them the last time around.