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...DEBATE, DEBATE...

Speaking as a Dalek, I cannot wait. It's been 14 years since I've had any work.

If anyone wants me, dahling, I shall be in my trailer.

So then Dr X, what have you been up to these past 14 years to earn a crust? Bet a dalek would make a great cab driver. DO NOT BRING THAT KEBAB INTO MY VEHICLE OR YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED.

I too am much looking forward to the return of the metallic voiced ones. I think they will fit in very well with the look and feel of the new series.

 Probably because they are now iconic and its expected they will be in. But also because they are suitably daft and menacing at the same time. This sits well with the show itself which moves between light hearted and serious.

Are thay still going to look the same, y'know, grey with dear little suction cup hands?  

"suction cup hands"?

Don't you know anything? It's not a suction cup, it's a highly complex magnetic field manipulator that allows the dextrous manipulation of anything nearby on an atomic level.

And it looks like a suction cup.

Debate? what's to debate?

Here i am, 43 years old, currently writing and drawing the Who comic strip so you'd think I'd be jaded and cooly professional and yet I'm stupidly stupidly excited by the prospect of seeing a Dalek going up against the Doctor again for the first time in almost two decades...

You're writing that as well? Doesn't that mean they've let you in on stuff that happens during the season? That's got to be something of a mixed blessing. I'm really looking forward to all these episodes but fighting my innate urges to glean details and spoilers has been ridiculously hard.
That said, if I hadn't seen, and got used to, the new Tardis exterior long in advance I'd probably've been distracted thinking it looks slightly wrong.

God, I'm such a fanboy.

Nope, no hidden secrets.

I'm writing just one story at the moment, then there's an arc coming up by Dalek's author Rob Shearman, maybe I'll get to do more writing later-- I sent in a stack of pitches and some got rejected for reasons 'they couldn't say' so obviously I'd crossed future continuity but fanboy I am I didn't want to know why! Just as well, as one was to do with stuff covered in Aliens/WW3.

S
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Ooh its the Daleks tonight whats the outcome
Fascists with cute half bubbles on them.

Sorry to drift wildly off-topic, but when's your Who strip seeing print, Mr. Collins?

I'm slightly upset that the trailer gives away what will probably be the best bit, but still, can't wait.

Part 2 of the story written by Garerh Roberts drawn by me'n'Dave Roach (and coloured by Dylan Teague-- a 2000AD group job!)came out on Thursday- there's one more part after that then my solo story.

You might just be able to persuade me to buy DWM again if it's a Collins solo job...

EX-TERMINATE!

Awww, the littlest Dalek, ain't he cute?

Pretty good episode, and quite a blast for the old Dr Who fans and new I hope.

Was that a Fendahl in the other case?

I've got to say - absolutely brilliant! A very good episode. I never thought I would ever feel sorry for a dalek. We find out more about the Doctor's darker side, and why he's feeling survivor's guilt.
And nice touch with the Cyberman!

Well, that was great. Very mixed, but great all the same.

Things I loved:

The interplay between the Doctor and the Dalek. Some of the best scenes in the series so far, that really made use of the Daleks in a way that's never really been attempted before - in the TV series, at least.

The Dalek effects. Generally very good, with some great additions to the Dalek "template".

The work done to make the Dalek menacing. It's been a while since they've been quite so threatening a presence, but this one episode did a lot to remedy that.

The alien museum.

Things I could have done without:

Bruno Langley. He doesn't convince at all, and I would have preferred a more competent actor in his role.

The final "self-destruction" effect. After some neat work on the earlier scenes, this was a bit naff.

The constant and intrusive music in scenes that should have been silent or far more muted.

Next week's episode looks interesting, but I'm a little less hyped after this one - although I suppose any episode following a Dalek one is always going to look a little less interesting.

...oh, and another Bad Wolf reference at the beginning!

...and one final minor quibble:

This episode was said to have gone through 14 re-writes. Did no-one thing to tweak some of the clunkier dialogue?

"It's downloaded the internet"? Blimey, that's bad!

Still, the creepy, pleading Dalek made up for the occasional naff line...

+++THEY... HAVE... TORTURED ME+++

...oh, and another Bad Wolf reference at the beginning!


err, wasn't that saying that the american guy WAS bad wolf,or did i misshear or summatt?

I thought it was great, better than the victorian one

:: Bruno Langley. He doesn't convince at all, and I would
:: have preferred a more competent actor in his role.

I thought the basic dynamic of Rose and the Doctor worked really well, and I'm not at all looking forward to a second "companion". As they say, two's company...

-- err, wasn't that saying that the american guy WAS bad wolf,or did i misshear or summatt?

I took it as the callsign for the helicopter that flew him in. Since the 12th - and penultimate - episode is titled "Bad Wolf", I suspect the mention of the name in this was simply another reference for alert viewers.

-- I thought the basic dynamic of Rose and the Doctor worked really well, and I'm not at all looking forward to a second "companion".

Yeah, I'd agree with that. Thankfully, he's only in next week's episode, then it's back to the Doctor and Rose.

Definitely my fave so far - it would have been cool to have a more crunchy sound effect on the head-sucking bit though. The self-destruction animation was a bit off though...

Aren't they returning for the final two episodes?

- Steve

Dunno - I thought they were only due to appear in this episode.

Loved the new, improved sucker - and best of all, it crunched the head of a hugely annoying extra! Hurrah for the Dalek!

;-)

If they are, I really don't want to know 'till it happens

Thats the best episode they've done so far,here's hoping they can find away to top it.

The Dalek was wonderfully done,both in look and characterisation,both menacing and pitiful.

The only bit that let it down was the Daleks self-destruction.
 

That was absolutely great.  I spent the five minutes following the end in disbelief that I could have found syympethy fpr a Dalek!!!

Nice to see they threw in all the jokes without devaluing the script...

Dan

Unless you're on a desert island, I think avoiding what's coming up is pretty difficult.

If they run true to form, I'm sure the Beeb will be trailing the finale well in advance...

- Steve

Hopefully they'll have a little more restraint and avoid spoiling any future cliffhangers, though!

(still grumbling about the end of Aliens of London...)

Missed the first ten mins but what I sure was fantastic!!! Loved everything, just top class entertainment. The BBC has been on a role as late (I wish charter renewal happened ever year) with Casanova, Fingersmith, Genghis Khan and Dr Who-and this episode tops the lot. Bloody brilliant.

Now if only they'd get on with the Halo Jones, Charley's War and Slaine TV shows we'd be all set

Will

"Hopefully they'll have a little more restraint and avoid spoiling any future cliffhangers, though!

(still grumbling about the end of Aliens of London...)"


Call that a bloody cliffhanger?

Imagine for a moment that you didn't see any of the trailers in the week.
The show opens; the doc and Rose are hanging around the museum doing their thing and looking at dead Cybermen heads. You don't know what's going on.

Then whuff! The bloody credits come up and announce that the episode's called "Dalek". How spoilerific is that? Quite ruins the scene where we meet it.

Ah, yes - good point. Makes me nostalgic for the days when first episodes featuring returning villains used to be titled more cryptically.

Perhaps the creators would have a harder time maintaining secrecy about things like that these days, but it would be nice to see them try.

That said, if the "Bad Wolf" references do turn out to relate to the return of a classic villain, then they're keeping that well under their hats...

Of course - good fun and entertaining overall.

But come on... the Dalek going from this terrifying evil edifice, from "Exterminate" to a poor little baby crying and wanting to feel the sunlight on the new-found sensisitivity of its face...?!?

Putrid, soft, sentimental bollocks. Would have been much better if an army of flying Daleks flew through the hole in the concrete.

And it might be good to have an episode where Rose isn't always about to die, and The Doctor doesn't mawkishly reproach himself for it.

M@

:::: I'm not at all looking forward to a second "companion".
:: Yeah, I'd agree with that. Thankfully, he's only in next
:: week's episode, then it's back to the Doctor and Rose

Is that true, for certain? If so, I might just have to do a little happy dance!

I really enjoyed it. Some ambivalence about the Dalek's force field, its scan-tastic armoured exterior leaching samples from anything it touches, and its sudden imputed 'genius' mental capacity - something they never used to be known for.

And yes, I was underwhelmed by its self-destruct sequence. An exploding Dalek should leave bits of plywood everywhere, not vaporise itself.

Not too sure about the Timelords being wiped out, though. Bit of a rum do, that.

And as to the Daleks having been wiped out too - that's interesting. Presumably all the DAleks the Doctor ever encountered in the future were time-travelling Daleks from the past? Including the ones that invade Earth in 2150AD?

Anyway, I enjoyed the show.

AFAIK. He's listed as appearing in next week's episode, "The Long Game", but he's then missing from all subsequent cast lists.

It does look like there will be a slightly more regular second companion - John Barrowman will appear as "Captain Jack Harkness" in five episodes, from the "The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances" two-parter through to the first series conclusion.

"its sudden imputed 'genius' mental capacity - something they never used to be known for."

I thought the "genius" was referring to a particular facility for breaking codes, rather than anything else. More Rainman than Einstein?

As for the destruction of the Daleks... well, I'm not going to try and make sense of the Dalek continuity, but it's been suggested by some fans that there are several Dalek timelines. The Doctor's intervention, or the Dalek's own experiments with time travel mean that in one timeline, the Daleks are perhaps wiped out before even leaving Skaro, while in another alternative timeline the Doctor goes back to a time before the events of "The Daleks", so they survive, and escape Skaro to rage across the galaxy.

It all gets a bit convoluted, and I'll be interested to see where the writers go with the Time War that led to the destruction of the Daleks...

It all gets a bit convoluted, and I'll be interested to see where the writers go with the Time War that led to the destruction of the Daleks...

If you watch the documentary (either on BBC3 just after the show or on t'internet - from the BBC website in yucky real player format) Russel Davies talks about the Doctors background detail and the time war - to paraphrase 'it's a nice iconic background that appears rich when we dip into it'. In other words - I don't think there is a well thought out background to the time war, rather - they're making it up as they go along (with probably a couple of bullet points to keep things fairly consistent).

I'm going for the Master as the Big Bad Wolf reference in the last episodes, simply because we're now so firmly entrenched in the idea that the Doctor is the *last* timelord it'll be fun to see that rug get pulled out from under us.

-pj

And because I forgot to say: yes, this episode was fantastic -- in turns surprising and cool and sad (and, in the explodo dalek a bit weak). But really good - and I'm a little amazed that each episode seems to get better and better ....

-pj

Is the Doctor supposed to be dragging Rose around because she's got some significant role to play in the end of the 'timewar' thingy?  Because it's time travel, presumeably the final battle not actually having happened yet, the Doctor's aware of events from gallivanting around time in that way he does, and now he's suffering pre-emptive survivor's guilt because he knows he can't interfere in events on that scale.  He's *going* to be the last Gallifreyan, maybe?

Sorry, I've been drinking.

These references to Bad Wolf are time echoes, reverberations from the main event, they aren't directly connected.

Anyone gets the ratimgs I'd be interested.

Overnight ratings should be available sometime on Sunday evening. We'll have to wait a bit longer for the final figures.

"I'm going for the Master as the Big Bad Wolf reference in the last episodes, simply because we're now so firmly entrenched in the idea that the Doctor is the *last* timelord it'll be fun to see that rug get pulled out from under us."



Master? Get ye away, with your lesser baddie Time Lords. I'm all for the Meddling Monk, or the Rani. Or maybe not.

"Speaking as a Dalek, I cannot wait"

So that would be:

"I CAN-NOT WAAAIT...
I CAN-NOT WAAAIT...
I CAN-NOT WAAAIT..." etc etc

ADE

Or maybe 'Bad Wolf' is the Doctor?  He's seen as a bit of a rum sort because he wiped/wipes out the Daleks and Timelords in one sweep - hence his 'bad wolf' persona being a sort of boogieman down through time as a result?
The upshot of this could be that maybe he could have done this bad deed when he was Sylvester McCoy - meeting Rose for the first time - and then regenerated as Eccleston, popped off to meet Rose in episode one, then went about getting her ready for some showdown or other with the McCoy Doctor.  I only suggest this because it rather nicely wipes the whole American Doctor Who tv movie under the carpet like it never happened...

Time travel.  It's just silly, isn't it?  

Great episode, though, "What're you going to do? Sucker me to death?"  Heh heh...and I for one actually liked the self destruct bit, it gave a novel purpose for the round metal studs on the dalek's body.

Kicking myself that I've missed a few episodes and waiting anxiously for the repeats.

Best.

Episode.

EVER.

Fanboy Mike

I liked McGann, and there have been worse episodes than the American TV movie.  Personally, I would really like to see a three doctors type affair at some point.  And McGann would be great.

Cheers

Paul

"7.83 million viewers and peaked at 8.73 million viewers"

Bets of the day apparently, but I was kind of hoping it might get over 10 million viewrs again.

That's not the fional figues so it'll probably balance out about (or just under) 9 million I suppose.

Funnily enough the TV movie got jabout 10 million viewers and it was commissioned for a series, but differant times I suppose...

Wow what a great, great episode.

2 possibilities that occured to me:

1) The self-destruct purposely didn't leave any bits of exploded Dalek lying around.  This leaves it open for the Daleks to return (as they bloody well ought to): as we all know, in sci-fi the villin isn't dead till you can see his bloody mangled corpse, and possibly not even then.  So this Dalek, evolving because of Rose's DNA, will then build more Daleks, and it'll all be Rose's fault.  And the emotion stuff will come back to bite em on the arse, too - this Dalek will have lust for power and all that.

2) The Time War having already happened, possibly with the Ecclestone Doctor as the protagonist, leaves a great opportunity for the BBC, if they can secure funding etc, to make a proper feature film using Ecclestone, a proper movie star type, in the lead role.

That was the best episode of Doctor Who I've ever seen.

On the self destruct thingy, I'd add to what FQ said there. Didn't they say in passing that the Dalek had extrapolated how to regenerate from absorbing Rose's DNA? So perhaps it didn't self destruct at all, but just buggered off somewhere to build more Daleks?
I hope so anyway.

And here's for Cybermen in the next season!

I thought it all good apart from the fact the dalek could have rammed through the guards with precision shooting

To make it longer they could have upped the body count

And if yer gonna levitate go up the middle of the stairwell

Oh,the genius was spotting the fire alarm hmm

no, I loved it and it was great to see after its experience with sentimentalism the ikkle dalek still felt it was disgusting to have anything other than hate in its *life*

the final 2 episodes are a flashback showing the time wars, so the daleks should be in it.

"the final 2 episodes are a flashback showing the time wars, so the daleks should be in it."


Really? Le woo!

That's the sort of spoiler for another thread.  Sorry, but I didn't think that would be the case, so it has spoilt it for me (not disastrously).  

Tuough I admit It's very difficult avoiding spoilers for these shows.

Hopefully they'll have a little more restraint and avoid spoiling any future cliffhangers, though!

I assume that the trailers are built-in to avoid the BBC squeezing down the credits in order to run another trailer for EastEnders or something - like the one that completely ruined the end sequence for the last episode of Casanova the other week.

After the soaps, it's the highest rated show on telly, so it would definately have a trailer bunged on.

Wish it was less spoilerific, though - I suspect that this week's has given away several major plot points of the next episode!

Doctor Who Confidential on BBC3 still had a massive graphic advertising something else taking up about a quarter of the screen all the way through the show, though...

"And the emotion stuff will come back to bite em on the arse, too - this Dalek will have lust for power and all that."

Pay attention, Dudley: they have that already!

I'd quite like to see the Beeb do away with trailers for the second part of a two-part episode. Fair enough to trail the next stand-alone (provided you keep spoilers to a minimum) but a cliffhanger only really works if you leave the "what next?" completely up to the viewer.

Bugger

this Dalek will have lust for power and all that

With Rose's emotions creeping in, I think the Dalek's far more likely to start craving romantic comedies and gigantic bars of Galaxy.

++I-CAN'T-FIGHT-YOU-TODAY,-DOCTOR,-I'VE-GOT-AN-APPOINTMENT-FOR-A-PEDiCURE-AT-12++

Almost forget - Didn't watch it.

FLUFF-Y KIT-TENS. *hoorp-blerk*

WHY-DO-YOU-PLAY-THAT-SONG-SO-LOUD?

BEC-AUSE-WE-WANT-TO!

EX-TER-MI-NATE

EX-CEPT FOR GIN-GERS

LET'S GET MARR-IED

...Anyway...

I really enjoyed the Dalek episode, although I thought they overdid the "humanising" aspect just a tiny bit. That's just IMO and wasn't a big deal.

Is this the first Doctor to foam at the mouth in the middle of a massive rant? :-)

Truly fantastic television!

- Trout

Bad-Wolf.co.uk!

Link: here!

Bah! Everyone I spoke to about this seems to disagree with me, calling it the best episode of the setries, if not ever. What next - self-help sessions for Stormtroopers?

"Well, there I was running down the corridor after Han Solo, and we went past a window. And it just struck me how beautiful space is. And I thought, forget Darth Vader - I just want to crochet!"

M@

I'm agreeing with you M@.

I watched in dread for the moment when the Dalek would ask Rose 'What is this thing that you call love?'

And after all the great under-used background aliens in the second episode a Dalek is controlled by sugary porridge with a barely blinking eye - grief.

Disappointed Tulkas.

Well, I quite enjoyed that but I think it was a mistake "humanizing" the Daleks so early on in what is, effectively for a lot of viewers, a new series with all new monsters.

Tiny Tips said it best when we caught a bit of the repeat on Sunday night "The dalek loves the girl so he will not shoot her". This made me think; "Yeah, this is a bit gooey".

But I did like all sorts of things about the episode:
- Eccleston stopped grinning for most of it
- a lone Dalek was a very good threat and it was a good way to show how evil they are
- the delek's new tricks were all pretty good
- Eccleston being more Dalek than the Dalek. I know it's an old trick turning one of your human protaganists into a ruthless killing machine when faced with their nemesis (see Terminator 2 etc.) but I think it was done rather well.  
- Hey I even liked the final destruction - the way it wrapped itself in a forcefield to destroy itself so nothing else got harmed.

Don't you just hate the American accents in these shows though. They just never sound natural and relaxed (even though, I'll bet, some of the actors were wales based Americans).

IIRC Van Statten's female assistant was the only non-American American in it. But I'm not sure where I got that from...

my tuppence worth...

I loved the use of the Dalek's design features and incorporating them into the technology the Dalek used.  For example, the 'bumps' on the dalek; I'd always they were just for show, but it makes sense for them to have a function; also the small vertical bars on the bottom of the upper half of the Dalek - these could be part of the defence shield generator. It was also nice to see the 'sucker' used in a practical way (not just sucking the guys face, but also to interface with the computer system).

As for the Dalek episodes set in the future, we don't know when the time war takes place (and as it's a 'time war' could its effects alter the time-line?).  But the Doctor did say that this Dalek had been thrown back in time.  But, aren't Daleks supposed to be around now (didn't all the previous Doctors encounter them on earth in the near-past)?  Maybe the effect of the time-war was to wipeout the Daleks and the time-lords (excluding the Doctor) from the current time-line.

I'm guessing that in a future episode, we'll see the the time lords brought back, with the unwelcome result of returning the Daleks as well.

Well I thought it was fecking excellent, bring on Darius and the rest of the Daleks!

Don't you just hate the American accents in these shows though

The guy playing Van Staten is called COREY JOHNSON and is actually American. He not only appeared in Hellboy, but I also saw him in an excellent production of A View from the Bridge at the West Yorkshire Playhouse and having chatted to him afterwards, I can confirm that the accent is genuine.

but you're right, everyone else's Yank accents were pap.

Darius?

LOL! wondered if some bright spark would spot it...

+HIT      ME     BABY    ONE,    MORE  TIME!!!!!+

Don't suppose anyone taped last week's Dr Who did they? I missed it & our sodding NTL cable won't show us BBC3 at the moment so we couldn't catch the repeat.

Anyone mind lending us the tape?


:)

As far as i'm aware, that's exactly it. The Time-War wiped out both the Time-Lords and Daleks from the time-line, which is why The Doctor can't simply travel back/forward in time and pick up any other Time Lords. He, and The Dalek, are anomolies that haven't yet been explained (roll on eps 12 & 13).

Alan!

They haven't really humanised The Daleks at all. This is one Dalek who's genetic makeup was altered, and who took his racial cleansing ethics to the extreme and destroyed himself rather than be what he consideres impure. To me this shows just what a monster the Daleks actually are.

I'm also not convinced by the suggary elements. The Dalek wanted to destroy itself but this went against it's previous orders and it needed a new one take precedence. It wasn't going to take such an order from The Doctor (a sworn enemy of the Dalek race) but was prepared to do so from Rose (as this would also go along with the Daleks wishes) and I think, it simply told her what she wanted to hear in order to convince her to give that order. Not sugary watering down for me, but showing the deceit and deception the creature is prepared to go to to get it's own way (just like it lied to her to get itself released from the cell earlier on in the episode).

Alan!

I saw a dalek just the other night, shooting up Robbie the Robot in an ad for a call centre.
  Watching the old Jon Pertwee Dr Who's, my son complains about the way the Daleks keep repeating themselves. We got to see nice big Dalek friendly buttons in their spaceship though.

yours having only seen the trailer for the New Who and loathing Rose's accent already

Just to recap the viewing figures so far:

Rose - 10.81 million (9.94 "live" + 0.87 recorded)
EOTW - 7.97 million (7.25 "live" + 0.72 recorded)
TUD - 8.86 million (8.34 "live" + 0.52 recorded)
AOL - 7.63 million (6.98 "live" + 0.65 recorded)
WW3 - 7.98 million (7.26 "live" + 0.72 recorded)
Dalek - 8.63 million (7.82 "live" + 0.81 recorded)

...debate, debate, debate...