Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks
Hmm. I'm on the fence about this one. It all feels a bit been there, done that. Not to say it's a bad two-parter or anything, but there was very little new ground covered concerning the Daleks, the Doctor, the Time War, et al. In many ways it felt like a blatant ripoff of Patrick Troughton's classic "The Evil of the Daleks" (Daleks contemplating how they've been defeated by humans, Dalek DNA transferred to human beings, new human-Daleks questioning orders, etc) mixed with a smidgen of William Hartnell's "The Savages" (Dalek Sec developing compassion after absorbing the human Diagoras).
The New York external scenes looked great, considering they were filmed in Cardiff, Hooverville was excellent, and the Empire State Building looked stunning.
Lots of kudos for the nods to "The Talons of Weng-Chiang", with the sewer tunnels beneath the theatre, and "The Five Doctors", with the Doctor seeing the familiar shadow of the Dalek on the wall, and I also felt that seeing the Dalek base glide past while he and Tallulah were hidden in the alcove reminded me of Grigory and Natasha in "Revelation of the Daleks" doing the same halfway through Part One.
My favorite scene by far is when the two Daleks dismissed the pig slaves and one admitted to having doubt. I loved the way its eyestalk turned, making sure they weren't being overheard. It was nice to see a bit of character coming through the Daleks in that respect, and highly reminiscent of the Daleks in their glorious 1960s classic series stories.
"You told us to imagine, and we imagined your irrelevance..." Probably the best line of the series so far!
Downsides, pig people? Why? If the Daleks were experimenting with hybrids, then certainly there were an abundance of rats in the sewers? I shudder to think of rat people though... Surely Robomen ala "The Dalek Invasion of Earth" would have been better. Those pig people were far too comical to be threatening, yet alone be taken seriously. I mean, c'mon, how is the viewer supposed to be afraid of pig slaves in a lift? Especially when you could see them all looking at the counter thinking 'Come onnnnnn....come onnnnnnnn!'
The Dalek/Human hybrid could've been scarier. What hurt him were those silly thick tentacles writhing half-heartedly on his head coupled with that faux New York gangster accent.
The only thing that... maybe not disappointed, but surprised me, with this one is that, being written by a female author (script editor Helen Raynor) I kind of expected it to be at least as 'emotionally-driven' as the other new series episodes. But the one thing I would say it didn't do was particularly move me in that way - Lazlo and Tallulah were a sweet enough couple, but it was all a bit obvious and rather superficial; and Solomon's death was all very noble but I didn't particularly feel much over it. And that almost lack of emotion seemed to extend to that final scene, with Martha apparently unfazed and unchanged by her experience.
"Evolution of the Daleks"? More like "Decidedly Average of the Daleks".
3 / 5 stars