Dr. Who - Daleks in Manhattan

[hazelk]

I think Martha pretty much nailed it at the beginning with calling it “like one of those old black and white movies but in colour.” Historical accuracy confined to occasional bullet points but a quite authentic recreation of the Depression Hollywood-style down to the random Joad-alike insertion, the Goldiggers accents and Busby Berkely budget choreography. Fun. One departure from the 1930s script was the complete lack of racial segregation. New Who has its roots in Children’s TV, I've always suspected its colourblindness is like that of Balamory, the least white Scottish village that never was.

Tennant is very, very good at the odd serious moments, especially on realising the old nemesis was back. Nemesisiseseses? The one thing the Daleks have always had going for them is there being gazillions of the buggers. How do the idiot Nazi pepper pots reproduce? Do they manufacture those casings or secrete them like molluscs? This story seems to be hinting at the latter calling them shells and having the workmen ask what ‘metal’ the sections being nailed to the Empire State transmitter are made of. Maybe each of those knobby bits is a spore case or some kind of bud and having succeeded in their proof of concept transgenesis the master plan is to spray blobs of Dalek DNA over Manhattan. It’s raining inhomunculi! And have them land on peoples’ heads and slime them into hybrid-hood. I only hope they can afford the CGI.

Comments

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

The Davros episode is one I still remember from, what was it 30 years ago? He was in some kind of wheelchair with the same design as the bottom half of a Dalek and that's how we, the audience, knew? And the proto Daleks were things in tanks 'evolving.' Actually the wierdest detail that struck me in "Manhanttan" was Diagoras very deliberately putting on his (leather) gloves to meet Sek and then the human Dalek still had spats but no gloves. Do they ever go into Dalek life history in any of the stories between the Davros one and now?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

He was in some kind of wheelchair with the same design as the bottom half of a Dalek and that's how we, the audience, knew?

That, and the kind of similar voice and the horrible make-up.*g*

And the proto Daleks were things in tanks 'evolving.'

Yes. Davros claimed that they were what the Khaled would develop into in a few millennia anyway, so he was just speeding up the process (and removing all inconvenient feelings etc. while he was at it).

Do they ever go into Dalek life history in any of the stories between the Davros one and now?

Bear in mind that I have only spotty Old School knowledge. I do remember that in a not so good Fifth Doctor story (which brought back Davros yet again - really, the first Davros story was a classic, Genesis of the Daleks, but all later returns of the character were annoying), you had a Dalek who had been ripped out of his shell and went on killing people as long as it survived anyway, Alien face hugger style (but without procreating like those beasties do in the Alien movies). In Rememberance of the Daleks (aka The One Where The Doctor Blows Up Skaro And Commits On Screen Genocide For The First Time), they were experimenting with mind control telepathy, but they needed technical means for that, and minions. I don't think we ever got to see "newborn" Daleks after Genesis of the Daleks again.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

they were experimenting with mind control telepathy, but they needed technical means for that, and minions

The technological mind-control of the kind we saw on the headmaster in Remembrance looks like a less obtrusive and more advanced version of the Roboman technology they were using as early as The Dalek Invasion of Earth (the second ever Dalek story). I'm not sure the nature of Dalek reproduction is ever explicitly stated but there's nothing ever to suggest that the casings aren't constructed. The question that arises is whether the variously black-cased or black-and-gold-cased officer Daleks are created as a superior class or promoted from the ranks.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Ah well I was being a little fantastical and it could have looked cool. But I suppose that the shells having to be manufactured is actually better metaphorically, it makes the Daleks inextricably dependent on some form of slave labour or at the very least slave technology.