11.3: Victory of the Daleks

In which this brilliant new era hits its first bump in the road.

Broadcast: April 2010

Watched: October 2021

“If Hitler invaded hell, I would give a favourable reference to the devil” is so much better than every other line in the episode that I’m assuming it’s an actual Churchill comment that Gatiss has bastardised. [It is, it’s about allying with the Soviet Union.]

The smaller annoyance is the title – it feels like someone decided it was the perfect title for a Churchill/Dalek story, and then went round telling everyone the Daleks would win was the consequence, even though they only sort of win? I dunno.

The bigger annoyance is that this is that “Churchill wants to use Daleks to beat the Nazis” is one of the best one-line concepts for a Doctor Who story there has ever been, and this story utterly pisses it away. We get some nice iconography (the poster and the khaki Daleks); some fun with Daleks offering tea or carrying files; some vague descriptions of the moral dilemma on the table...

...but all that grinds to a halt precisely 12 minutes in. It doesn’t even make it to the halfway point. After that, the Daleks are evil and McNeice is basically doing nothing more than Churchill cosplay (“KBO” etc). The moral dilemma is no longer a factor. The irony of using a Nazi analogue to beat the Nazis is entirely unexplored.

Then most of the rest of it’s a bloody toy commercial with a load of boring exposition. The new Daleks are terrible. Oh well, at least their ship is cool, the Dalek-shaped recording device is awesome, and the Daleks attacking London by turning on the lights (someone literally shouts “Oi, put that light out!”) is a good joke. 

Then the Daleks f**k off, unconvincingly, and there’s the final act in which the regulars have to talk a bomb out of exploding. It’s not clear why Bracewell’s personality doesn’t get totally deactivated at some point, if he’s just meant to explode. It’s also not obvious why Amy can do it with “Remember when you fancied someone” when the Doctor can’t do it with “Literally all other human experience”. At the end, Bracewell is just hanging around waiting to be shut down, like he knows he’s in a Doctor Who story and doesn’t think he’s a real person.

It’s just such a *waste*. Ian Macneice and Bill Paterson are great; Susannah Fielding, who would go on to be the co-star in the latest Alan Partridge thing, is a potential star. None of them get any good material. 

What went wrong? Did the script not go through enough drafts? Or was the story, which seems more interested in repositioning the Daleks in the show’s mythology than in the WW2 stuff, just fundamentally misconceived?

Oh well, other things.

• Interesting that this is two very union jack-themed episodes running, just as the show was about to break America. Coincidence? [It also feels like something you wouldn’t have done by the other end of the 2010s. “Cool Britannia” is a very long way away now.]

• I assume “Not bad for a Paisley boy” is a reference to Moffat. [The showrunner was born there.]

• Smith hitting a Dalek with a massive spanner is clearly meant to be like Eccleston with the Dalek in Van Statten's basement – but Smith, who until now has been note perfect, can't make the script work.

• The decision to wipe the events of The Stolen Earth from history, and then make it part of continuity, feels very weird. The crack is a neat device but they can’t play this one every five years, surely: you just have to make a joke out of the fact no one remembers the alien invasions.

• The silhouette of the raising of the flag is iconography from entirely the wrong country, but otherwise great.

• “Broadsword to Danny Boy” – is that an NA reference, or is this just my fan brain at work? [In the Virgin New Adventures book No Future by Paul Cornell, UNIT has a, well, unit called “Broadsword”. Both are referencing Where Eagles Dare.]

• “WE WILL RETURN!” well, funny story, but-