“Victory of the Daleks” is the third episode of Doctor Who’s fifth series, in which Matt Smith’s Doctor and Karen Gillan’s Amy Pond land in London during the Blitz and find Winston Churchill relying on a new secret weapon: tea-serving Daleks he calls Ironsides. The review covers the Doctor’s reaction to them, the Dalek plan behind the offer of help, and the new multi-coloured Dalek design.
It praises the premise, Smith’s angry Doctor and Ian McNeice’s Churchill, enjoys the Spitfires in space, and is less sure about the redesigned Daleks and an ending where the Doctor loses. No rating is given.
After the fairy tale start of The Eleventh Hour and the dystopian city ship of The Beast Below, Doctor Who’s fifth series takes a sharp turn into familiar territory with “Victory of the Daleks”. Much like Dalek did for the Ninth Doctor, this one brings back the Doctor’s most iconic enemy, and it does it with a twist that I suspect a lot of fans are going to argue about.
The premise is deliciously simple. Winston Churchill has enlisted the help of some mysterious “Ironsides” to fight the Nazi threat, and these Ironsides are, of course, Daleks, painted khaki green, serving tea and calling everyone “sir”. It’s an image as unsettling as the gas mask kids asking “Are you my mummy?” in The Empty Child, though for entirely different reasons. We expect hatred and extermination and we get subservience and helpfulness instead. That cognitive dissonance is perfect.
The Doctor and his oldest enemy
Matt Smith’s Doctor shines here, and his newness gives us a fresh take on the Doctor’s deep-seated hatred of the Daleks. Eccleston’s Doctor was a traumatised survivor and Tennant’s could be a vengeful warrior, but Smith’s approaches them with an almost childlike rage, pure and uncontained and a bit dangerous. When he beats a Dalek with a comically large wrench and shouts “I am the Doctor, and you are the Daleks!” it’s both frightening and revealing. Like Bad Wolf, it shows how much his history with these enemies has shaped him.
The supporting cast is stellar too, with Ian McNeice’s Churchill stealing every scene he’s in. His relationship with the Doctor feels lived-in, as if there’s a long history we’ve never seen. Karen Gillan’s Amy continues to develop nicely, though it’s odd that she doesn’t recognise the Daleks at all, given how recently they were all over the Earth. That’s got to be a deliberate hole and I’m curious where it goes. Doctor Who TV has a poll running if you want to score the episode yourself.
The real story is the Daleks themselves. Their plan is convoluted but clever: play humble servants to trick the Doctor into identifying them, and that identification activates the Progenitor device, which wouldn’t otherwise accept these Time War survivors as pure enough to use it. It’s a neat way of getting more Daleks into the show and also of redesigning them. I like that they win by losing, letting the Doctor abuse and defeat them while the real plan goes ahead behind his back. It’s a clever twist on the usual “Doctor defeats Daleks” formula we’ve seen since The Parting of the Ways.
The redesign is where I stumble. The new “Paradigm” Daleks, with their colour-coded roles and chunky bodies, are a big departure from the bronze warriors we’ve had since “Dalek”, and the colours are a bit Power Rangers for my taste. The idea of a hierarchy based on function is interesting, but the execution left me cold, and from what I’ve read around the fan sites I’m not alone. I’d happily be proven wrong once they’ve had a few more outings.
The wartime setting is used well, though maybe not as immersively as in The Empty Child. The threat of German bombers keeps a constant tension in the background, and whether Churchill should be allowed to use Daleks as weapons adds some real weight. It reminds me of the dilemma in The Unquiet Dead, about whether to trust apparently helpful aliens. Britain’s eventual victory is presented as inevitable, yet the episode reminds us that in 1941 nothing felt certain. Churchill himself is a good example, a man who’ll grab any weapon that might win the war and doesn’t much want to hear the Doctor’s objections, which makes the Daleks’ offer feel plausible rather than silly.
There’s also Bracewell, the human scientist who turns out to be an android built by the Daleks, which gives the story some heart and a clever resolution. Like The Doctor Dances, it comes down to human emotion and memory averting disaster. The scene where Amy talks Bracewell through his “memories” to stop him blowing himself up is lovely, even if it resolves a bit too easily. The Doctor spends most of the episode shouting at Daleks, so it’s good that the thing that actually saves the day is somebody being kind to a frightened machine. I’d have liked a little more time with him before the reveal, but the cast sells it, and it’s the emotional centre of the hour for me.
Spitfires in space
The climax, a space battle between Spitfires and Daleks, is Doctor Who at its most gloriously ridiculous. It’s the kind of sequence only this show could play with a straight face, and the gravity bubble that lets Second World War fighters reach orbit is exactly the pseudo-scientific nonsense that makes it so much fun.
The ending is where I’m least happy. The Daleks get away with their victory complete and leave a rather hollow human triumph behind. It sets up more Daleks, sure, but it lacks the punch of “Dalek” or the scale of Bad Wolf, and the Doctor’s failure feels more like a plot necessity than a dramatic choice. Even so, it’s an entertaining hour with some genuinely clever ideas, and it shows the new team isn’t afraid to take risks with the established parts of the show, the same way The Beast Below did. Amy not remembering the Daleks, Bracewell’s artificial memories and Churchill’s own view of what winning takes all seem to be circling the same theme of memory, and I’ll be watching to see if it pays off. Sometimes the old enemies are the best ones, even with a new paint job.
2 comments