...NEW DR WHO TONIGHT, 28/04/07, 6:45pm, 'EVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS'...

[Will I. Cooling]

"Couldn't believe they did the Temporal shift escape thing again. OK they'll never totally kill off the Daleks but that was plain lazy. They've also written themselves into a corner with just one Dalek left, but no doubt the Xerox of Skaro will save the day. "

I really can't see how they can bring the daleks back without Davros now. Dalek Kahn just isn't a strong enough character to bring them back believably. Hopefully, they'll leave that for series 5 though.

[Buttonman]

Dalek Khan - the most evil being in the universe, he's got it in for the Muslims!. Fatwah must follow!

[The Amstor Computer]

Rac - I'm usually keen to try and play up the more positive elements of the show & remain hopeful, but this ep was just a bridge too far for me.

Since the end of series 1, I've been hoping that what I felt were the weak points of the show would be picked up and worked on, but TBH it just feels like either no-one cares about those elements or they actually think they're not failings. Fair enough, but I'm not prepared to waste any more of my time watching for the occasional good moment, or in the hope that the bad points will be addressed.

At the risk of pissing off the people who did enjoy this ep, but for the sake of my sanity after having watched it:

-- Almost universally dreadful American accents. Hire some Americans, or a better voice coach.

-- "The Doctor is in!". Fuck right off.

-- Shouty "dramatic" moments which are nothing of the sort. Every fucking episode seems to have one now, but this one was particularly bad - from the ridiculous scene where he "cures" Laszlo, to the latest rant at the Daleks.

-- Human Daleks. A terrible idea, executed terribly.

-- Magic solar flare lightning.

-- Flying Daleks. The hovering was originally a neat solution to the mobility question, but if I see another fucking Dalek dive-bombing or performing aerobatic manoeuvres, I'm going to scream.

-- The generally terrible, overloud music. This episode's worst offenders being the naff vocal piece that accompanied most of the Dalek scenes and the piece playing during Laszlo's "cure".

-- Human Dalek Sec. Terrible design, naff performance (Kiff Croker sprung to mind as well...)

-- Psychic paper. An annoying device that just keeps on reappearing, though not as bad as...

-- The sonic screwdriver. Perhaps the laziest element of the new show, this bloody thing can light fires, open doors, access computers, undo panelling... It's just an excuse for lazy writing, appearing wherever a writer can't - or won't - spend two minutes figuring out another way for the Doctor to do something.

-- A "genetics laboratory" filled with glass beakers, dry ice and coloured liquids in test tubes. Yeah, right.

-- The Doctor Loves Rose. It was bad enough having this smacked over our heads for the past two series, but having to put up with post-Piper is infuriating.

-- Timelord DNA being spliced into the Human Daleks by aforementioned magic solar flare lightning. Call it fucking magic and get it over and done with.

-- The Doctor lecturing the bloody Daleks again. I'd "Emergency Temporal Shift" if I had to listen to the umpteenth lecture from Davies' version of the Doctor. He's supposed to have met them dozens of times, seen them lay waste to planets (including his own) and still he's bleating at them and acting surprised when they commit "genocide" (does killing a dozen slave beasties constitute genocide, anyway?)

-- The "You Don't Want to Mess With Me" Doctor. I can't be the only person fed up with the posturing, threatening ponce the Doctor becomes when he's given another of these moments in a script?

...plus God knows what else I forgot, and the other awful crap from previous episodes.

So, so disappointing.

[Bad Andy]

KAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!


Anyway, this was pretty poor and I liked the first part.

Human Daleks. A terrible idea, executed terribly.
I didn't so mind Sec, but the automontons! Ohhh they're a bit pale. and they reminded me of the Mindy character from Animaniacs.

Why?
Why?
Why?
Okay I love you, bye bye. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19TBzy81Mac

The doctor saving everyone bit from the 'are you my mummy' episodes was alright and worked. Just. This was.... weak. Anyone actually give a shit about Tallulah anyway? If anything there were too many humans in this episode.

[Steve Green]

Did I miss something, but was there anything special about the Dalek Hybrids that would prevent them getting shot?

Having a dalek gun was only half the equation, as far as I could see. If they were half as vulnerable as humans, then they didn't seem to pose much of a threat, egg-whisk tommy gun or no.

And yes, flying daleks look fucking stupid.

- Steve

[paulvonscott]

Amstor, you lasted longer than me.  I was watching it because it was Who, not because it was any good and I soon realised it wasn't going to change.  It's quite a sad moment when you realise it's not for you.

[House of Usher]

I've just watched the bits I missed on Saturday night. Oh dear. For me it's the bad science (i.e. magic) that lets it down every time.

I think they use the sonic screwdriver so often not specifically to get the Doctor out of tricky situations, but just to use it for the sake of it because the kids like it, it's a merchandising opportunity, and it's easy for kids to roleplay in the playground. What does the Doctor do that's easy for kids to imitate? He points his sonic screwdriver and makes a "Vvvvvvvvvv..." noise.

But educationally it's unhelpful. I really think we're building a society where most people are content not to know how things work, and when things go wrong you just pay someone else to fix them. It's not empowering when you see your heroes (Doctor Who, Harry Potter) waving a magic wand to get things done. Self-sufficiency is one of the themes of the novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: how can experience be authentic if you are entirely dependent on other people (car mechanics, plumbers and others) to interpret the world for you?

The level of scientific understanding communicated in Doctor Who is no better than shovelling uranium into a furnace in the old Flash Gordon serials, or wire cables that are animated by artificial intelligence and can crawl along the floor and plug themselvelves into the mains (Hardware), a head with bat wings crudely grafted on that's capable of achieving lift and flying (Bride of Reanimator).

I'm sure I read in a comic book (maybe the one where they killed off Blue Beetle?) someone was able to locate a receiver that a radio signal was broadcasting to. Huh? I thought one might have more luck tracing the transmitter...

[Quirkafleeg]

'Are You Being Served?' in-joke, nice one.

[Trout]

I found it all terribly depressing.

Oh well. I like Neighbours, too, and I don't moan about that.

- Trout

[Adrian Bamforth]

"I'm sure I read in a comic book (maybe the one where they killed off Blue Beetle?) someone was able to locate a receiver that a radio signal was broadcasting to. Huh? I thought one might have more luck tracing the transmitter..."

Did it look like this? Yeah I never believed they were anything other than a spinning roof-rack either.http://www.tvlicensing.biz/detection/images/tv_detector_van_1.jpg">

[TordelBack]

This episode committed the ultimate TV sin AFAIC.  I actually fell asleep in the middle, and was only awoken by the GF loudly complaining "God, I'm bored" (a terrifying refrain that always rouses me from slumber, usually with a guilty expression).  

What a shame, when I really enjoyed the first part.  I think I dozed off when Martha and Fay Wray spent 10 minutes poring over blueprints (which apparently achieved nothing, because the 'Dalekanium' was still in place when I woke up) while the Doctor lectured the poor Daleks about humanity for the twentieth time - the Oncoming Snore.  He's a genius, you know!

I agree with most of the posters above, if you have such a pathetic Sun-sub-editor-level grasp of science, shut the hell up about it.  I have no problem with retreading the Ghostbusters concept of a NY skyscraper as conductor for extraterrestrial forces, or the Back to the Future aproach of lightning/solar flares as convenient sources of power for the temporally displaced, but the combination of gamma radiation, Timelord DNA, sonic screwdrivers lighting bunsen burners, people on suspended gurneys... I'm sorry, I totally lost you there.  It's worse that Star Trek technobabble at its very worst, and it has no place here.

Oh, and Doctor?  STOP SHOUTING, YOU NINNY.

Next!

[The Monarch]

yeah even I didn't think this was good still professor Lazarus next week!

[[YT-2]]

been away all weekend and just watched both episodes, what a pile of arse

[The Adventurer]

I ask this every week, and never seem to get an answer. What exactly do the people complaining about this show want exactly? Every week I come in and am regularly entertained by the very best in pure Adventure Sci-Fi. What exactly do the shows detractors want out of this? Because I can't work out what the big problem is.

[House of Usher]

For me, the problem is that it's simple-minded pap. I still watch it, and I still enjoy it. But I don't beat myself up about missing an episode, and it's not compelling enough to stop me getting up and going to make a cup of tea halfway through a programme.

I was reminded yesterday of another example of bad science in sci-fi: in Kenneth Brannagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Brannagh collects buckets of (used) amniotic fluid with which to fil the creature's birthing vat. What on earth for? Only possible explanation: magic.