TeeVee! We Talk TeeVee!

[kingandy]

Oh, a few quick notes re this week's Doctor Who ...

• Part of me hopes they will take this opportunity to tie all the Dalek survival into one big lump. Currently there are three distinct instances of Daleks surviving the Great Distaster From Which No Dalek Could Possibly Have Escaped, which is somewhat stretching the bounds of credibility. From 1930s New York, it would be quite easy for (a) one gold Dalek to end up, broken and confused, in Van Statten's museum in 2012, and (b) the others to escape, hide in subspace, decide one of them is the Emperor and start converting humans into Daleks^[1] to build up their empire (in their Long Game). I half-suspected the human-to-Dalek conversion process was what the Great Experiment was going to be ... it's still not out of the question for Dalek Sec to become the Emperor, he does have that big throbbing brain after all.
• I still don't see the advantage of leaving behind your impervious flying battle-suit with built-in ray-guns, even if you do get "imagination".
• Why wasn't it called "The Daleks Take Manhatten!"?

Still, it was all good fun and I quite liked the musical number. Loved those wings...

[1] Or "Using human cellular matter and protein chains as raw material from which to grow new Daleks"

Comments

[myki.livejournal.com]

I want my Davros! I want my Davros!

[kingandy]

NO DAVROS

[myki.livejournal.com]

Aww Man!

Seriously though I believe your theory has merit although I do not think they'll spell it out. They're a tendancy for slight nods rather than blantancy. As to this seasons suprise guest. I really hope the Daleks and them are unrelated.

[kingandy]

There is definitely a case to be made for not laying things down in stone - if you state explicitly where the Dalek from "Dalek" came from, you rob people of their fanfiction...

If there is a connection, it'd better be a damn good one.

Wait, weren't they the ones who executed him that one time?

[myki.livejournal.com]

I stuill want to see Adam Mitchell return and be connected to the Dalek's.

And yes, they did. But I'm not sure why. Up until then they'd only shared screen time cannon once.

[belisarius-534.livejournal.com]

Of course that name would have given away the oh so not surprising relevation that the Masters were the Daleks....

[mrssshhh.livejournal.com]

It was called "Daleks In Manhattan", so not exactly... hidden anyway.

[belisarius-534.livejournal.com]

Ah, I missed the first couple of minutes!

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately that was the already given away by the BBC's obsession with revealing everything in the damn trailers...

[kingandy]

The actual title was "Daleks In Manhatten".

They weren't shy about letting on the Daleks were in the episode - just like Army of Ghosts, when they were happy to plaster Cybermen all over the publicity because the big end-of-episode reveal was the contents of the Sphere. They even cut that out of preview screenings and review tapes. (And then somebody had the good idea of sending the previously-unseen black Dalek to some TV awards or other, which rather gave it away. Apparently RTD was mortified. But I digress.) Of course, that rather falls down because this episode's Big Reveal was in fact on the front cover of the Radiotimes. Luckily I don't typically see a Radiotimes cover, so it was a complete surprise to me.

Incidentally, I would like at this point to register my suspicions regarding that word. They really are using it quite a lot, and my mind has started to wonder if there's going to be any connection with the season's rumoured returning character...

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

There has been a new character cast for this new season. The guy out of Life on Mars. He's been fairly close about who/what he's playing, but he does have a rather smashing goatee beard now.

[kingandy]

I think it's fairly solidly confirmed that he'll be playing the mysterious "Mr Saxon", who's been mentioned a few times on-screen (notably he was credited as giving the order to fire on the spider lady in the Runaway Bride, is apparently outspoken on the existence of extra-terrestrials and is standing for some manner of election) but is otherwise unknown. Naturally, speculation abounds.

Goatee beard, eh? Hum...

[anne-l-davies.livejournal.com]

Now, Paul's got a rather interesting theory about things yet to come in this season. I won't reveal them here, on the off-chance that he's correct.

I get Radio Times, the only thing it left you to guess was who was going to get eaten. I also hate it when they leave them in mortal peril and then show the trailer for next week where everybody is plainly fine.....

[kingandy]

"Paul's got a rather interesting theory"

I've heard a few theories about anagrams of the name.

The most popular seems to be that "Mister Saxon" is an anagram of "Master no. six".

It has also been pointed out, however, that "Saxon" rearranges less obtusely to "Axons"...

[anne-l-davies.livejournal.com]

True.

But not Paul's theory :P

[myki.livejournal.com]

I need to know. I cannot wait. No, not at all.

Although I hope we're all wrong, I really like hearing people guesses.

[stsquad.livejournal.com]

Thats the beauty of time travel - post-pre-rationalisation. Its a lot easier to do in Who than Lost even if the writer there are trying really hard to show ¨that was our plan all along¨.

[kingandy]

Randomly, I yearn for them to encounter even one person at a different point in their personal timeline than they last met. I mean, outside of Father's Day, when it was sort of intentional.

There's a vague potential with Elizabeth I, but I strongly suspect we won't get see their first meeting on screen - smelt like a throwaway gag to me.

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

IIRC the 'Cult of Skaro' was the same bunch of Daleks in the Dalek/Cyberman thingy. But certainly, there's far too many 'oh look, some more daleks' things going on. I'd really like it if the Daleks this time got 'somehow' dumped in the void, to show up quite a few years later.

[myki.livejournal.com]

Indeed they are – Sek did a temporal shift at the end of the Canary Wharf thing and ended up in 1930’s Manhattan. But they are the last 4 (so they think – it kinda does suggest that Sek is the Emperor)

[kingandy]

That was my initial thought, but given Sec's "development" it seems unlikely they'll go from here to the Void (and thence to Canary Wharf) ... though he could always go back inside the suit.

Personally I reckon the voidship's the best avenue for Daleks surviving the Time War; I'd like to see all the others stem off from that.

[myki.livejournal.com]

The time line is not as you think. The earliest incarnation of Sec is Canarf Wharf - he escapes that via a temporal wotnot and gets all mutated and wears spatz. From there - there's nothing stopping him hiding out in space getting lots of Dalek's throigh Big Brother and getting explodified by a chav in the future. There's no need to go back into the suit.

[ed-fortune.livejournal.com]

But then wouldn't he kill Rose as soon as he see's her? Rose as already said 'I killed the emperor, nur nur nur'.

Personally, I think the hole was bigger and that's how The Master, The Rani, The Meddling Monk, Romana and Commander Maxil fell through.

[kingandy]

No, that's how I see it, I meant to imply that it seems more likely to me they came here from Canary Wharf than the other way around. I was just trying to think of ways it could happen.

[myki.livejournal.com]

Ahhh I see. It is worth mentioning that in the past the Dalek Emperor has been referred to as "A Dalek Emperor" so it's not necessarily the same guy as we keep seeing in the older series.

[mrssshhh.livejournal.com]

Just a notion in reaction to all of the above, what you're missing is that it's already happened. You've got your notions of time wrong, especially in light of the "anything can happen" nature of time, now that it's caretakers are all dead.

Sec can't be the Dalek Emperor.

The Dalek Emperor is already dead. Yes, the actual even doesn't occur for tens of thousands of years, but it has already happened from the perspective of both the Doctor and Sec; it's "past" for them, and out of reach.

If you lock yourselves into the way of thinking as you're doing now, then you're making a mistake. If the confrontation between the Emperor & Rose is "yet to happen", then the Daleks at Canary Wharf and in Manhattan would have been gathered by the Daleks in the Time War; where they assembled all Daleks from throughout time and space.

In the aftermath of the time war, we're off the page, off the beaten track and up shit creek.

The only "time" that matters now is the Doctor's personal chronology. Everything else, if you want to think of it this way, isn't actually "real".

[kingandy]

"anything can happen"
"Sec can't be the Dalek Emperor."

Hmm, yeah.

See, this is the thing. It's a long-standing narrative convention in Who that you always encounter fellow time-travellers in the same subjective sequence as they do (anniversary specials notwithstanding), but personally I see no reason for this to be. Perhaps with fellow Gallifreyans (who could conceivably have such safeguards installed in their TARDISes), but such conveniences are, as you point out, all the less likely now the Lords of Time are all but gone.

I like how half your post is about how things are less rigid and more open now, and the conclusion you draw from this is that things can only possibly happen in one way.

[mrssshhh.livejournal.com]

"I like how half your post is about how things are less rigid and more open now, and the conclusion you draw from this is that things can only possibly happen in one way."

Exactly.

[myki.livejournal.com]

Actually no. Consider if you will the Queen Elizabeth meeting in the Shakespeare Code. It's a fairly good example of how the show is not always about the Doctor's personal timeline.

Although the Destruction of the Dalek's has happened in the past for the Doctor - it's still the future for Sec and the Cult of Skaro (potentially)