Did Witch’s Familiar really ruin the Daleks?

Back on my Dalek bullshit again…

This discourse refuses to die, so we need to get the heart of it. During The Witch’s Familiar, Missy neutralises a Dalek patrolling the sewers, then wires Clara into its casing as the new operator. As both a demonstration and twisted experiment, she commands Clara to say some seemingly innocuous phrases, which don’t come out of the Dalek’s speakers the way Clara expected:

MISSY: Say ‘I love you’. Those exact words. Don’t ask me why, just say it.
CLARA: I love you.
DALEK: Exterminate.
MISSY: Say, ‘you are different from me’.
CLARA: You are different from me.
DALEK: Exterminate! Exterminate!

Trapped inside the Dalek, Clara finds it increasingly difficult to communicate when it really matters; later on in the story, she cries “I’m your friend!” and it emerges as “I am your enemy”. Everything she’s trying to say is being warped into things you’d expect a Dalek to say instead.

The problem – the accusation that here Moffat is ‘ruining’ the Daleks, ‘damaging the franchise’, etc. – stems from the assumption that this means the casing is the evil part of a Dalek, and the mutant inside the casing would actually be innocent (even friendly!) without this insidious censorship happening to them. The charge is that Moffat’s trying to make all of Dalek history out to have been the same kind of verbal miscommunication that we see happening to Clara. This would certainly neuter the concept of the Daleks quite a lot, making the mutants redundant and the casings equivalent to autonomous robots.

CHIBSHOW: 10+1. Refugee

< Prelude | 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 10+1 | Postlude >

A long time ago, in the battlefields of Bristol, a lone writer came to pose himself an impossible challenge – beyond his wildest nightmares. This unlikely project scrutinised eleven of the most opaque of episodes…but only just. The final opponent was so vast, so fearsome, its resistance to any all-encompassing statement was absolute.

So I t- I mean he took a creative liberty. He split his opinion into countless smaller segments, to be buried at the far corners of his imagination, and vowed that the pieces would remain forever “coming soon”. With the unyielding might of the Three Custodians – scope creep, procrastination, and depression – the terrifying blog entry was to be erased from history, in the hopes that everyone would just forget I was ever supposed to release it. And time moved on…

…until five minutes ago, when the pieces magically teleported themselves back together. The resulting completed post is below, with all divisions clearly indicated. Because even when a broken thing is made whole again, some scars never fade.

• Slice I: Restitution
• Slice II: Absolution
• Slice III: Revolution
• Slice IV: Dissolution
• Slice V: Resignation

Compiled 2019-2020.

Atavism of the Daleks

Three linked discussion posts from September 16. Beginning in response to the accusation that The Magician’s Apprentice is ‘substanceless setup’.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the first half of a two parter being a stage-setting exercise. Important tasks achieved in The Magician’s Apprentice:

• Introduce the main S9 theme of best friends who are bad for each other (12/Missy, most of Missy’s dialogue).
• Establish Clara’s power level via her standoff with Missy.
• Reframe 12’s character as the aging rockstar in denial. The hugging metaphor from Death in Heaven is made lopsided, to signify that the Doctor is the one who still can’t be honest to Clara.
• Demonstrate the Doctor’s inability to process the moral dilemma from the start of the episode, feeling he has no option but to accept his death (which he views as karmic).
• Introduce the snakes-disguised-as-person metaphor, representing Davros in part 2 who literally acts as the human face of the Dalek collective.
• Reveal the Daleks have created a nostalgic replica of their homeworld with the intent of continuing the cycle of violence.
• Characterise the Daleks as animalistic creatures whose sadism is borne out of instinct, and connect this to Davros’ fascist worldview (“Hunter and prey, locked in the ecstasy of crisis. Is this not life at its purest?”)
• Hang structural suspense on the question of how far the Doctor will go to avenge/revive Clara (a question which is central to Hell Bent).

The hugging metaphor from Death in Heaven is made lopsided, to signify that the Doctor is the one who still can’t be honest to Clara.

by the way, in setting 12 up as the one who is the most flawed, this prefigures him being the one whose memory must ultimately be wiped in Hell Bent.

Also.

Reveal the Daleks have created a nostalgic replica of their homeworld

This is not brought up nearly enough in my opinion. The inherent fanwank of bringing back classic Daleks and the Hartnell-era version of Skaro is literally put into practice BY THE DALEKS, as an extension of their ideology. Not only that, but it’s a version of Skaro where “Every Dalek Ever” (the forgotten marketing slogan for Asylum) freely congregates with the others in a big collection. This cuts distinctively against certain past interpretations of the Daleks where they’re either trying to advance themselves as a species, or destroy alternative versions of themselves. These Daleks don’t care about having other models of themselves bobbing around the place as long as they’re Dalek-shaped. And they put effort into even making the corridors the same shape as back in the old days. It’s implied by this that our fanwank desire to see classic Dalek shit brought back is a Dalek-like desire, connected to both the reactionary urge towards traditionalism and consumerist Dalekmania. This alone is closer to Jubilee than Shearman’s actual NuWho adaptation of Jubilee!