Tony
hears a cry in the dark.
After some wrangling over whether or not the new, revived Doctor Who would have access to the Classic show’s greatest villains, the Daleks, the honour – and also the potentially poisoned chalice – of bringing them back to the screen in a brand new 21st century way was given to writer Rob Shearman.
Always a writer whose work provoked
thought and left readers or listeners pondering on deeper themes, Shearman
seems to have got the gig mostly on account of a Big Finish audio drama by the
name of Jubilee. By far the more complex of the two projects, Jubilee had at
its heart the rebuilding of the brutal reality of the Daleks on a world where
they had become funny, the butt of jokes and gags, legends more of marketing
than death or fear.
While the plots of Jubilee and Dalek are entirely different, it’s possible to see the plot of Jubilee almost as the writing brief for Dalek.
By 2005, the Daleks in the wider public
imagination had become the butt of jokes. Their inability to climb stairs was
common knowledge, and no amount of fan-wailing about Remembrance of the Daleks
could shift the dial of public consciousness on it. The uselessness of the sink
plunger attachment had led them to ridicule as the avatar of the
make-do-and-mend ‘silliness’ of Classic Doctor Who. The idea may have been
unjust more often that it was warranted, but the idea of ‘shaky scenery’ was
epitomised in the public image of the Daleks. Even among fans, there was a
certain smirk over the hysterical self-destruction to which the Daleks put
themselves the moment their ‘vision was impaired.’
Quite the challenge then, to rescue the
Daleks from the public perception of silliness.
Shearman’s script was stripped back and simple in terms of what it actually did. A single, final Dalek in all the universe, being tortured by a venal, special collector of curiosities. How would it break free, restore itself to the universe, and bring about the literal resurrection of the Daleks?
There are things worth saying about the script beyond this though. In removing Gallifrey from the equation of the Doctor Who universe, Russell T Davies had given the Ninth Doctor a troubled history and a darkened character compared to almost all his predecessors. The legend of the last great time war shuddered through that first new series. And as much as Dalek had to re-establish the Daleks themselves as a genuine threat in the 21st century, it also had a bigger job to do. It had to show us the new Doctor in his most extreme moment of stress – faced with the enemy that had taken everything from him, possibly even the version of himself he used to know. The version of the Doctor before the time war. The version armies of Classic fans knew and loved – the one who would always strive for the little people of the universe against the bullies. Especially against the metal-hided bullies known as Daleks.
The symbology of Dalek is straightforward but satisfying. A Dalek is, at its most fundamental, a screaming Nazi child locked in the dark. So we initially find the ‘Metaltron,’ as Henry Van Statten calls his pet, alone in the dark and screaming. And when the Doctor and Rose first encounter it, it’s a masterpiece in experience – not to say a masterpiece in acting. The Doctor has rarely if ever been quite as scary as the Ninth when he comes face to face with the de-weaponed, tortured Dalek. He laughs at a creature in pain and torment. He rails at it. Rages at it. And for the first time, both Rose and we are scared of this powerful stranger whose hand we’ve grabbed.
Rose, on the other hand, who comes to
the Dalek with none of the Doctor’s long experience of Daleks and the hate and
destruction they represent. She sees only a creature in pain, and she reaches
out to touch the untouchable thing.
It’s a neat touch that her compassion is what brings the rebirth of the Dalek, and the accompanying calamity that such a rebirth entails.
From there, the allusions come thick and fast. The rebirth is literal, the damaged, wounded, chained abomination is repaired by a touch of time energy. It tastes that baptismal Dalek taste – death by gunstick – and it absorbs all the knowledge our connected world can feed it. It’s faced with staircases, and with the lazy human certainty that it cannot follow its prey up such human devices.
And then it confounds expectations, rising into the air, and coming relentlessly on. And on broadcast, generations of fans turned to their disbelieving families and friends and jumped up and down in triumph, pointing and going “SEE?! I TOLD YOU SO!”
It was faced with inquisitive humans, and the lazy notion was put to it – “What are you going to do? Sucker me to death?”
What happened next surprised both new viewers and long-term fans with the power of that sink plunger – and it’s arguably in that moment, more than the ‘Dalek Climbing Stairs’ scene, that Shearman won his greatest victory over the lazy stereotypes of Dalek (and Doctor Who) ‘silliness.’
As the Dalek rises through the levels of
Van Statten’s complex, it gains more power, more danger, both in real and
practical terms and as the Doctor, the only person in the building with
previous experience of Daleks, begins to get through to the humans about what a
Dalek is, what it means, and what it will undoubtedly do when it
breaks out of the complex. It will kill – because it honestly believes that
humans, and that anything non-Dalek deserves to die.
It’s worth noting that the rebirth of the Dalek as a credible threat for 21st century Doctor Who depended on more than the script. The fundamental Dalek design by Raymond Cusick had always had a particular menace to it by virtue of its total separation from every human archetype, but its fair to say that over the years of Classic Who, the Dalek props had begun to look a little tatty, and sometimes silly, and made of wood.
When the Dalek found its rebirth in
2005, it had a phenomenal new prop design – seemingly cast in bronze, heavy on
rivets, a genuine, believable personal tank for the new century.
When it subsequently did things Daleks had never done before – flying, rotating its mid-section for the extra-rapid dealing of death, the joyously logical, economical mass destruction of its enemies, it was like seeing a Dalek for the very first time. It was a new thing, a new thrill. And it absolutely cemented the reasons you should be scared of a Dalek back in place.
But Shearman’s script was more successful than that. Yes, he brought the Dalek back and made it shine along our shivering muscles again. But he also forced the dilemma of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, of consequences, into the world of Doctor Who. The Doctor, the ultimate finder of clever solutions, when all else has failed him, picks up a gun, determined to rid the universe of the last stinking Dalek in existence.
But between him and that destiny stands Rose Tyler.
The girl who can tell the last of the Time Lords no.
The girl who demands he find a better solution. Who puts herself between the weak in the universe in the bully, even when the bully is the Doctor himself.
The girl who, like an infection of the Human Factor, changed the nature of the Dalek itself. Made it feel the horror of compassion, trapped as it is in its tank, in the dark, in its swirling seethe of chemical hatred and loathing. Its rebirth cost it almost everything it knows.
Everything it held sacred and pure about its Daleks self.
And the Dalek did another new thing – at least, a new thing in TV Who. It self-destructed, not in a hissy fit of blindness, but in a calculated suicide, using the baubles on its skirt to explode itself. Dalek gave us one more lesson about what a Dalek is. It is extreme. It may have no alternative, engineered and maintained in its hatred and its extreme beliefs, but it would rather die a Dalek than live with a compassionate corruption and a pointlessness that sickens it. It will die, rather than bend, rather than expand its thinking. The Dalek was originally born from the imagination of Terry Nation as a warning against Nazi thought, Nazi power. Rob Shearman’s Dalek helped remind us that extreme and rigid thought was corruptive, whether you’re born and raised in those thoughts, or whether, like the Doctor, you acquire them along the way.
Rose Tyler, the girl who can see more sides, the girl who talks to cleaners and engineers just as easily as queens and ambassadors, makes her case to both the Dalek and the Doctor. The Dalek, inherently inflexible, cannot live with the idea of a wider universe than itself and its position. And in Dalek, we see a Doctor who hasn’t been able to see that either for a while. The influence of Rose Tyler though persuades us that he eventually will. That he will come back to the truth of himself.
Dalek did everything it had to do – and then did more. It showed us a Doctor who could be terrifying, wounded as he was by the effects of the time war. It showed us why Rose Tyler was the companion the Ninth Doctor needed. He was struggling to be the Doctor he had been for most of the time we’d known him. She could help remind him who that was, without even knowing who he’d been. She could stand between the Doctor and his darkest impulses, even when faced with the reminder of his greatest losses.
In some ways, Dalek was above and beyond its time.
In others, even though its structure is
simple and its symbology straightforward, Dalek remains one of the shining
jewels not only of the Christopher Eccleston series, but of all 21st
century Doctor Who. As much as Rose itself, it helped redefine Doctor Who for
this new, emotionally engaged century, and it will always stand as the modern
make-or-break Dalek story. It won its audience, it rewrote the Daleks for a new
generation – and it’s still a rip-roaring watch.
