Victory of the Daleks

I am the Doctor, you are the Daleks.

Victory of the Daleks is a good example of a story that is less than the sum of it's parts. When you take the story in ten minute chunks, it's not too bad. But when you put it all together, it is a big load of meh.

Plot Summary

The Doctor and Amy arrive in London during the blitz, having received a call from Winston Churchill. He shows the Doctor a new weapon devised by their chief scientist, Dr. Bracewell, which are called Ironsides. In actuality, they are two Daleks. They repel a German attack and once back in the bunker, the Doctor loses his temper and confronts the Daleks. After he calls them Daleks, they confirm this and beam up to their ship.

The Doctor lands on the Dalek ship with the TARDIS, leaving Amy on Earth. He holds off the Daleks by pretending a cookie is the TARDIS self destruct device. He learns that after the Daleks were destroyed in the encounter with Davros, one ship survived along with a pod of pure Dalek DNA. However, since they were not pure Daleks, they could not activate the pod and needed a conformation, which they received through the Doctor's testimony about them. The pod matures and a new set of Daleks come out. They immediately destroy the old Daleks, seen as inferior. They immediately threaten the Doctor by activating all the lights in London, making it an easy target for German bombers.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Amy and Churchill go to Bracewell to see what they can do to knock out the mechanism that is lighting up London. Bracewell, it turns out, is an android built by the Daleks and has other Dalek technology at his disposal. He rigs up three fighters to fly in space. Two are shot down but with the Doctor's help, the remaining fighter destroys the generator and London goes dark again. The Daleks then activate a self destruct mechanism within Bracewell that will devastate the Earth. The Doctor returns to Earth and with Amy's help, triggers memories implanted within Bracewell. The memories of a human nature, override the self destruct code and the bomb is deactivated. The Daleks however, use the distraction of Bracewell to jump back into the future and regenerate the Dalek race.

The Doctor and Amy encourage Bracewell to run and find his lost love whose memory helped him override the self destruct order. The Doctor also takes and destroys all of Bracewell's plans and designs containing Dalek technology. The Doctor and Amy then leave in the TARDIS, the Doctor concerned over Amy's lack of memory of the Daleks from Stolen Earth/Journey's End. As they leave, a universe crack is observed in the wall of the bunker.

Analysis

I mentioned before that this episode is less than the sum of it's parts. What exacerbates the issue is that it starts off on such a good note. The Daleks posing as Bracewell's creation and repeatedly using the phrase "I am your soldier" are direct call backs to The Power of the Daleks, arguably one of the best, if not the best, Dalek story. To see the Daleks return to a cunning deviancy is refreshing and really made the first ten minutes of the episode stand out.

However, they give themselves up once the Doctor confronts them and then it just goes south after that. The Doctor holding the Daleks off with a Jammy Dodger is a little too cute and it takes all the believable menace and fear that the Doctor showed for the Daleks and throws it right out the window. He goes at it and is just playing around with them. That the Daleks believe him adds to the disillusionment of the first part of the episode.

Then you have the Skittle Daleks. I don't have as big a problem with them as other fans do, but they still seem less menacing and more silly than the conventional Daleks. I think the colors give them a very plastic look rather than the more metallic look they effect before. Of all the looks, I thought the olive green battle paint was the most impressive look. To go from that to an oversized and a bit too rounded form just didn't feel right. That they didn't convey any extra sense of menace or cunning didn't help them either. It was an appearance only change that that appearance was inferior in my opinion.

Also unlike a few other fans out there, I didn't have a problem with the Spitfires battling it out with the Dalek ship. The Daleks had left the technology and I saw no reason why the conversion couldn't happen. What I did have a problem with was the speed at which it happened. Amy, Bracewell, and Churchill did not move to act until after the lights of London came on. We were also told that German bombers were about approaching (at least in radar range). So they were able to rig up these fighters, fly up to the Dalek ship and knock out the dish before the Germans reached London? It doesn't make sense. It also doesn't make sense in that if the lone Spitfire was still able to attack, why didn't it swoop down and just destroy the entire German bomber group before landing, further reducing the threat? The poor timing just made it look like a action-y tack on to get the Doctor out of a silly situation rather than let him solve the problem himself.

Rounding out the descent is the drawn out ending. The Doctor defuses the bomb not through any technological savvy but by convincing Bracewell that he is truly human. It's mind over matter. It is also a second time in this episode where it is not the Doctor who solves the issue but Amy. In many ways the Doctor is rather useless other than supplying information. The episode then goes on for another five minutes after the Daleks jump forward in the future to tidy up lose ends that didn't really need to be tidied up. It just added to the uneven feel where the beginning felt so rushed and yet there is the slow bleed at the end with what feels like multiple endings.

One last thing that I would add to the weakness of the episode is that like The Beast Below, the Eleventh Doctor is still channeling the Tenth Doctor a bit too much. His erraticness and sudden mood shifts are evocative of the Tenth Doctor and it doesn't feel like the Eleventh Doctor really makes his full debut until The Time of Angels.

I'm probably making the episode sound worse than it actually was, but it just didn't have a lift to it after it started with some decent potential. It's watchable a few times around, but I can't imagine picking this off the shelf for a random watch.

Overall personal score: 2 out of 5