Who's Being Stupid?
Spoilery thoughts on "Evolution of the Daleks", the latest Who episode (and a bit of 'What I'd Do With...'ish thinking about the Daleks).
Non-spoilery summary: It was pretty lame.
Okay, let's start out by saying the basic beats of the plot weren't _too_ bad. A group of more imaginitive-than-usual Daleks, realizing despite their apparent superiority that they keep being destroyed, attempting to 'improve' themselves with the genetic stock of the ultimate survivors, humans, then the prototype becoming corrupted by human emotions and considered weak and non-Dalek by the others... it's decent. Not groundbreaking, mind you, maybe a little obvious, but you could make a good plot out of it. Unfortunately, they didn't.
The NY in the 30s setting is also a decent idea, and they did a slightly better job at it for a show filmed across the ocean than I expected. I liked some of the supporting characters.
But really? The execution of the plot was so awful, and relied too much on idiot plotting. You
know it's a very bad sign when you're shouting at the screen, at multiple points, "EXTERMINATE HIM!" in regards to the main character of the series. I want to root for Who, but in this case I was rooting for the Daleks, because... well, it's like a stupid puppy that gets kicked and kicked, and you want to see it bite back. I'll talk more about the greater problem behind this and how I'd fix it a little later, but for now I'll stick with the specific problems. And in this case, that problem is "too many times where the Daleks should have just shot the Doctor immediately, rather than let him make a speech." If you want to improve something about yourself, Daleks, get yourself some Malcolm Reynolds DNA in you and fix _that_ part. If he's your ultimate enemy, you SHOOT instead of standing around talking about how awesome it'll be that you can kill him until you're ordered to spare his life. Shoot first, gloat later. And then the last scene? "Let me help you, Dalek Khan ("KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"). The reply should have been, "EXTERMINATE!" (zap) rather than "Emergency Time Shift!". Yeah, I supposed they've played with the idea that the Daleks are scared out of their cans of the Doctor, but there's no excuse for not firing there if you want to believe they've even got the slightest ability to create a starfaring race.
Okay, moving on. We have the Daleks trying to create dalek hybrids. Okay, fine. But they way they went about it? Dumb! "Hi, I'm an eeevil mutant inside an impenetrable TANK full of weapons. But I must improve myself... which I will do by combining my DNA with humans and... STEPPING OUTSIDE OF MY TANK ENTIRELY! THAT'LL MAKE ME UNSTOPPABLE!" Instead of, say, taking the good parts of humans and STAYING IN A FRICKIN' TANK SO YOU CAN STILL KILL THINGS AT WILL.
Mechanics wise? The plot was dumb. Oh, sure, I can go with 'using a solar flare as a power source to do a widescale technomagic genetic resequencing of humans'. And the Doctor getting hit by the lightning (and halfway through the plot they seemed to have changed from the device being powered by a solar flare to being powered by lightning, without changing the rest of the plot to match), and because it passed through him, it somehow added TIME LORD DNA to the mix? GAH. I might have missed some of the important dialog after that point, because I had trouble hearing over all the stupid. STUPID STUPID STUPUD STUPID STUPID. So, among the other magic crap added to the Doctor in the new series (at least I assume added over the new series, but perhaps not), now zapping the doctor with energy somehow passes on time lord DNA into machines that get the energy after it. The only thing that would have made that outcome worse is what I was dreading, but thankfully never came to pass - I was almost certain that after the Human-Timelord-Daleks self-destructed, they'd "regenerate" and get their old human minds back, and the Doctor would say something like, "I guess there was enough time lord DNA in them for just one regeneration...".
Now before I start screaming and throwing things at the screen in reflex just remembering that, let's move on to the next problem. Lazlo the pigman. See, here we have a good example of one of my other big problems with the new series. The Doctor can magically fix anything, except when they decide he can't. He tells Lazlo "I'm sorry, I won't be able to help you!" while on relatively good terms with the Daleks, and sitting in the middle of the same genetics lab they used to create the pigmen. Well, gee, at least give it the old Gallifreyan College try, huh? I mean, they changed him into a pig man. Hell, just zap yourself with a pair of defibrulator panels while touching Lazlo, since apparently that will give him time lord DNA according to this episode. Then, when Lazlo's dying, he miraculously decides he _can_ do something for him. Except, apparently all he can do is fix the (much more extensive) apparent systemic destruction of his body. Removing the pig face? That's apparently beyond his means, for no apparent reason other than it makes for a slightly more bittersweet ending. Maybe this version of the Doctor's just secretly a SOB and just gets a little thrill out of leaving people disfigured. After all, he left Ursula's face sticking out of a block of cement (so, let's recap: Fixing a pigman's dying body? Fine. Pulling a face and mind out of a block of stone that got some Absorbaloff all over it? Piece of cake, just wave the sonic screwdriver over it. Fixing a pig man's face? I'M SORRY, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO DO THAT. But I've arranged for a comfortable life as a freak for you.)
And in the realm of minor pet peeves - another tease with the sonic screwdriver being lost only to have it turn up again. But I suppose even if it was lost, he'd just have another back in the TARDIS. They really need to give up that crutch. Give him a mark 1, one of the earliest tools that just functioned as a screwdriver, but he'd have to actually futz around in the guts of whatever he opened up manually.
Okay, calming down now, and more with the general problem of the Daleks, and how to fix it.
The problem is they're too powerful. Yes, generally speaking, powerful = scary, but there comes a point when they're so powerful that the only way you can defeat them is to have them be complete and total idiots. Especially when you sometimes write your hero that way... you know, running up to them and confronting them and giving them every opportunity to shoot him.
I think this problem goes back to the Time War. All the Daleks we've seen in the new series, save perhaps the one in Dalek, are Time War Daleks. Refugees from the Time War, and it's been indicated that they're the only Daleks left in existence. Now, that's okay if you only intend to use the Daleks once. But let's face reality. Who's going to just use them once? Nobody can resist it, they're the biggest draw, enemy wise. Even the fact that they're owned by a separate party from the rest of Who doesn't stop them from getting used repeatedly. So you have time travel enabled Daleks. This is a problem, because now every time you face the Daleks you have to defeat them utterly, or there's no hope for the universe. Sure, you can let a handful or one get away, but otherwise there are no partial victories, and the audience senses that going in. All the Daleks you meet are going to be undone. And at the same time you know they're not going to completely remove the Dalek threat, because they'll be back. So it all feels a little hollow. It's like Smallville's problem (which I digress because it's playing while I'm writing this): Luthor can't know Clarke's secret. The show wouldn't work that way. So if it ever looks like he's going to know for sure, you know they're going to pull back, give him amnesia, give him some false evidence that points to him being normal (and completely ignoring that 90% of the times putting security cameras in Lex's mansion and actually watching them would be conclusive proof), and you think 'why even bother watching'?.
How do you fix it? Make Daleks into a realistic universe conquering threat again... by making them weaker. Get rid of their time travel ability. At the conclusion of an adventure, have a group of Daleks (or Khan) land on another world (non-Earth), completely damaged. Survival becomes the ultimate imperative, and they do manage to make more Daleks, but they don't have enough in them to make them time travel or even, at this point, space travel. Perhaps have the Doctor involved, where initially they have a plot like any other (maybe even a retread of this plot, if Khan thinks he can make the local populace into new Dalek stock), but by the end, the Daleks completely lose much of their technology. Khan might know some of the technological secrets, but not enough to pass them all on to the next generation before he dies. A Dalek Dark Ages looms... but in some ways, they've actually beaten the Doctor, for they've changed the timeline. They have a future again. And they hate.
Then the Dalek race begins clawing its way up from rock bottom. They can still build Dalek drones, but slowly, and with less power. A single Dalek drone might still be the equivalent of a modern day tank, but it's not completely unstoppable (and maybe, just maybe, it even has trouble with stairs... not where they'd completely stop them, but where stairs dramatically slow them down because they can't hover but have to use a contrivance to climb them)... luckily for the Daleks, the rest of the population of the world is even more primitive than that. So they continue, eventually conquering the planet and acquiring space travel and better weapons, and the Doctor meets up with them again as they spread outward, conquering nearby worlds. Still nowhere near Earth at this time (this is another big thing the New Who needs to do - get some stories set OFF Earth and 'New Earth' and 'Earth Space Station' - there should be a decent mix), but the threat's looming. And it's not temporal - pick a time and stick with it. Because it's not 'outside the timestream' anymore, the Doctor can't just go back to the beginning and erase them (since that'd be a major history alteration), he has to deal with them as a real and growing threat. Putting out fires. Times where sometimes a partial victory, say destroying the initial survey party, preventing the Daleks from invading one particular world is enough. Hell, a few times where simply escaping _alive_ is enough, and we're left with a sad episode ending where the Doctor fails and the Daleks exterminate an entire race. This, to me, would make the Daleks more terrifying and pack more punch, despite the fact that they're no longer unstoppable, because you don't know for sure that the Daleks will be beaten this time. You still don't have to use them much... perhaps use them even less than you do now. Do other things. But have them no longer be the Somehow Regularly Stoppable Unstoppable Juggernaut, and make them the Often Unstoppable Monsters they _should_ be.
Keep the Daleks out of time, and put them back into space where they belong, cutting a swath of destruction through the galaxy, and making all fear the cry of "EXTERMINATE!"
I think that's about all I have to say.
Non-spoilery summary: It was pretty lame.
Okay, let's start out by saying the basic beats of the plot weren't _too_ bad. A group of more imaginitive-than-usual Daleks, realizing despite their apparent superiority that they keep being destroyed, attempting to 'improve' themselves with the genetic stock of the ultimate survivors, humans, then the prototype becoming corrupted by human emotions and considered weak and non-Dalek by the others... it's decent. Not groundbreaking, mind you, maybe a little obvious, but you could make a good plot out of it. Unfortunately, they didn't.
The NY in the 30s setting is also a decent idea, and they did a slightly better job at it for a show filmed across the ocean than I expected. I liked some of the supporting characters.
But really? The execution of the plot was so awful, and relied too much on idiot plotting. You
know it's a very bad sign when you're shouting at the screen, at multiple points, "EXTERMINATE HIM!" in regards to the main character of the series. I want to root for Who, but in this case I was rooting for the Daleks, because... well, it's like a stupid puppy that gets kicked and kicked, and you want to see it bite back. I'll talk more about the greater problem behind this and how I'd fix it a little later, but for now I'll stick with the specific problems. And in this case, that problem is "too many times where the Daleks should have just shot the Doctor immediately, rather than let him make a speech." If you want to improve something about yourself, Daleks, get yourself some Malcolm Reynolds DNA in you and fix _that_ part. If he's your ultimate enemy, you SHOOT instead of standing around talking about how awesome it'll be that you can kill him until you're ordered to spare his life. Shoot first, gloat later. And then the last scene? "Let me help you, Dalek Khan ("KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!"). The reply should have been, "EXTERMINATE!" (zap) rather than "Emergency Time Shift!". Yeah, I supposed they've played with the idea that the Daleks are scared out of their cans of the Doctor, but there's no excuse for not firing there if you want to believe they've even got the slightest ability to create a starfaring race.
Okay, moving on. We have the Daleks trying to create dalek hybrids. Okay, fine. But they way they went about it? Dumb! "Hi, I'm an eeevil mutant inside an impenetrable TANK full of weapons. But I must improve myself... which I will do by combining my DNA with humans and... STEPPING OUTSIDE OF MY TANK ENTIRELY! THAT'LL MAKE ME UNSTOPPABLE!" Instead of, say, taking the good parts of humans and STAYING IN A FRICKIN' TANK SO YOU CAN STILL KILL THINGS AT WILL.
Mechanics wise? The plot was dumb. Oh, sure, I can go with 'using a solar flare as a power source to do a widescale technomagic genetic resequencing of humans'. And the Doctor getting hit by the lightning (and halfway through the plot they seemed to have changed from the device being powered by a solar flare to being powered by lightning, without changing the rest of the plot to match), and because it passed through him, it somehow added TIME LORD DNA to the mix? GAH. I might have missed some of the important dialog after that point, because I had trouble hearing over all the stupid. STUPID STUPID STUPUD STUPID STUPID. So, among the other magic crap added to the Doctor in the new series (at least I assume added over the new series, but perhaps not), now zapping the doctor with energy somehow passes on time lord DNA into machines that get the energy after it. The only thing that would have made that outcome worse is what I was dreading, but thankfully never came to pass - I was almost certain that after the Human-Timelord-Daleks self-destructed, they'd "regenerate" and get their old human minds back, and the Doctor would say something like, "I guess there was enough time lord DNA in them for just one regeneration...".
Now before I start screaming and throwing things at the screen in reflex just remembering that, let's move on to the next problem. Lazlo the pigman. See, here we have a good example of one of my other big problems with the new series. The Doctor can magically fix anything, except when they decide he can't. He tells Lazlo "I'm sorry, I won't be able to help you!" while on relatively good terms with the Daleks, and sitting in the middle of the same genetics lab they used to create the pigmen. Well, gee, at least give it the old Gallifreyan College try, huh? I mean, they changed him into a pig man. Hell, just zap yourself with a pair of defibrulator panels while touching Lazlo, since apparently that will give him time lord DNA according to this episode. Then, when Lazlo's dying, he miraculously decides he _can_ do something for him. Except, apparently all he can do is fix the (much more extensive) apparent systemic destruction of his body. Removing the pig face? That's apparently beyond his means, for no apparent reason other than it makes for a slightly more bittersweet ending. Maybe this version of the Doctor's just secretly a SOB and just gets a little thrill out of leaving people disfigured. After all, he left Ursula's face sticking out of a block of cement (so, let's recap: Fixing a pigman's dying body? Fine. Pulling a face and mind out of a block of stone that got some Absorbaloff all over it? Piece of cake, just wave the sonic screwdriver over it. Fixing a pig man's face? I'M SORRY, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO DO THAT. But I've arranged for a comfortable life as a freak for you.)
And in the realm of minor pet peeves - another tease with the sonic screwdriver being lost only to have it turn up again. But I suppose even if it was lost, he'd just have another back in the TARDIS. They really need to give up that crutch. Give him a mark 1, one of the earliest tools that just functioned as a screwdriver, but he'd have to actually futz around in the guts of whatever he opened up manually.
Okay, calming down now, and more with the general problem of the Daleks, and how to fix it.
The problem is they're too powerful. Yes, generally speaking, powerful = scary, but there comes a point when they're so powerful that the only way you can defeat them is to have them be complete and total idiots. Especially when you sometimes write your hero that way... you know, running up to them and confronting them and giving them every opportunity to shoot him.
I think this problem goes back to the Time War. All the Daleks we've seen in the new series, save perhaps the one in Dalek, are Time War Daleks. Refugees from the Time War, and it's been indicated that they're the only Daleks left in existence. Now, that's okay if you only intend to use the Daleks once. But let's face reality. Who's going to just use them once? Nobody can resist it, they're the biggest draw, enemy wise. Even the fact that they're owned by a separate party from the rest of Who doesn't stop them from getting used repeatedly. So you have time travel enabled Daleks. This is a problem, because now every time you face the Daleks you have to defeat them utterly, or there's no hope for the universe. Sure, you can let a handful or one get away, but otherwise there are no partial victories, and the audience senses that going in. All the Daleks you meet are going to be undone. And at the same time you know they're not going to completely remove the Dalek threat, because they'll be back. So it all feels a little hollow. It's like Smallville's problem (which I digress because it's playing while I'm writing this): Luthor can't know Clarke's secret. The show wouldn't work that way. So if it ever looks like he's going to know for sure, you know they're going to pull back, give him amnesia, give him some false evidence that points to him being normal (and completely ignoring that 90% of the times putting security cameras in Lex's mansion and actually watching them would be conclusive proof), and you think 'why even bother watching'?.
How do you fix it? Make Daleks into a realistic universe conquering threat again... by making them weaker. Get rid of their time travel ability. At the conclusion of an adventure, have a group of Daleks (or Khan) land on another world (non-Earth), completely damaged. Survival becomes the ultimate imperative, and they do manage to make more Daleks, but they don't have enough in them to make them time travel or even, at this point, space travel. Perhaps have the Doctor involved, where initially they have a plot like any other (maybe even a retread of this plot, if Khan thinks he can make the local populace into new Dalek stock), but by the end, the Daleks completely lose much of their technology. Khan might know some of the technological secrets, but not enough to pass them all on to the next generation before he dies. A Dalek Dark Ages looms... but in some ways, they've actually beaten the Doctor, for they've changed the timeline. They have a future again. And they hate.
Then the Dalek race begins clawing its way up from rock bottom. They can still build Dalek drones, but slowly, and with less power. A single Dalek drone might still be the equivalent of a modern day tank, but it's not completely unstoppable (and maybe, just maybe, it even has trouble with stairs... not where they'd completely stop them, but where stairs dramatically slow them down because they can't hover but have to use a contrivance to climb them)... luckily for the Daleks, the rest of the population of the world is even more primitive than that. So they continue, eventually conquering the planet and acquiring space travel and better weapons, and the Doctor meets up with them again as they spread outward, conquering nearby worlds. Still nowhere near Earth at this time (this is another big thing the New Who needs to do - get some stories set OFF Earth and 'New Earth' and 'Earth Space Station' - there should be a decent mix), but the threat's looming. And it's not temporal - pick a time and stick with it. Because it's not 'outside the timestream' anymore, the Doctor can't just go back to the beginning and erase them (since that'd be a major history alteration), he has to deal with them as a real and growing threat. Putting out fires. Times where sometimes a partial victory, say destroying the initial survey party, preventing the Daleks from invading one particular world is enough. Hell, a few times where simply escaping _alive_ is enough, and we're left with a sad episode ending where the Doctor fails and the Daleks exterminate an entire race. This, to me, would make the Daleks more terrifying and pack more punch, despite the fact that they're no longer unstoppable, because you don't know for sure that the Daleks will be beaten this time. You still don't have to use them much... perhaps use them even less than you do now. Do other things. But have them no longer be the Somehow Regularly Stoppable Unstoppable Juggernaut, and make them the Often Unstoppable Monsters they _should_ be.
Keep the Daleks out of time, and put them back into space where they belong, cutting a swath of destruction through the galaxy, and making all fear the cry of "EXTERMINATE!"
I think that's about all I have to say.