Daleks in Manhattan & Evolution of the Daleks by: Helen Raynor and directed by: James Strong

 

“Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks” stars David Tennant as the Doctor and Freema Agyeman as Martha Jones with Miranda Raison as Tallulah, Ryan Carnes as Laszlo, Hugh Quarshie as Solomon, Andrew Garfield as Frank, and Eric Loren as Mr. Diagoras.  Dalek Operators were Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg, Anthony Spargo, and David Hankinson while Dalek Voices were Nicholas Briggs.  They were written by: Helen Raynor and directed by: James Strong with Lindsey Alford as Script Editor, Phil Collinson as Producer, and Russell T. Davies and Julie Gardner as Executive Producers.  It was originally broadcast on Saturdays from 21 to 28 April 2007 on BBC One.

 

Helen Raynor is one of many Doctor Who writers who have spoken against the rights of transgender people.  While I am unsure of if she is a TERF specifically, she is a writer who has campaigned against unisex bathrooms and the general right against trans people (and children) using the bathroom of their gender.  As with other bigoted actors still alive and working this especially will color any piece of media being reviewed.  Trans rights are human rights.

 

There is an unconfirmed rumor amongst Doctor Who fans that the Terry Nation estate’s deal with the BBC, made when the show returned in 2005, was that for every production cycle the Daleks would appear at least once.  Indeed they have appeared in every production cycle at least once through the entirety of the revived series in Dalek focused stories and in the years without a singular Dalek story there would be a cameo appearance.  In designing the third series of Doctor Who, Russell T. Davies decided that after Dalek appearances in the present and future, going to the past would be the next logical step, approaching Steven Moffat to pen a two-part story set in New York City during the Great Depression, focusing on Daleks genetically engineering human-pig hybrid slaves.  Moffat declined, finding himself too busy to tackle a story of this length and agreeing to a single episode adventure to be produced later in the series, so Davies, impressed with script editor Helen Raynor’s work on the first two series and in penning an episode of Torchwood, commissioned Raynor for the slot.  Raynor was still working as script editor on Doctor Who and as such had a limited time for writing the two episodes, titled “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks”, drawing on classic horror films including Frankenstein and King Kong.  Davies provided several rewrites to bring the story in line with his view on Doctor Who’s ethos, including allowing some characters to survive and omitting a steampunk Dalek subplot before assigning the two episodes to director James Strong as the fourth production block of the third series.  Strong was able to get some footage of New York City for believability, using a skeleton crew sent by producer Phil Collinson.

 

Both episodes comprise a story that is one of this third series’ large failures.  “Daleks in Manhattan” is the superior episode, at least in terms of originality.  The premise is genuinely quite solid: it’s the Great Depression, the Empire State Building is nearing completion, and the people of Hooverville are disappearing.  If it wasn’t for the fact that the Daleks are in the title, their appearance actually coming approximately 15 minutes into the episode, it would be perfect for a surprise appearance of the four surviving Daleks.  Strong still plays the Dalek reveal as a reveal with a Murray Gold music cue and a genuinely great shot of elevator doors opening, complete with Dalek-esque set design priming the audience for their appearance.  The Doctor and Martha arriving in Hooverville should immediately set the episode up for a critique of the treatment of the homeless under capitalism, and the seed of the idea is a brilliant one as time is spent establishing the poverty and how the police will not care if the lower classes go missing.  The Daleks have genetically engineered people into being their pig slaves, the image of a man as a pig generally being used as a parody of the rich and powerful.  Raynor, however, is clearly just the image of the pig men to be a scary humanoid monster to be slaves for the Daleks to operate above ground and add to the genetic engineering theme of the story.  This accidentally gives “Daleks in Manhattan”, which in places critiques the response to the Great Depression skyrocketing unemployment and poverty while rich capitalists can still build the Empire State Building off the backs of laborers working for a pittance.  The inclusion of Hooverville and a theater in New York as two major settings for the episode which includes an over the top musical number, genuinely just feel like set dressing without any real exploration of poverty or the characters.  Tallulah and Laszlo, played by Miranda Raison and Ryan Carnes, have a love story explored in the pre-credits sequence before the latter is turned into a pig slave gone wrong.

 

Mr. Diagoras, played by Eric Loren, is the episode’s main critique of the laboring class, however, his performance just does not work and the material is not there as Raynor has him working with the Daleks for money and doesn’t actually make it about any sort of class traitor.  Loren plays Diagoras with a heavy New York accent, and there is a line that implies that he may be an immigrant himself, but these ideas are not explored before the character is used in a Dalek experiment.  By used in an experiment, Diagoras is forced up the rectum of Dalek Sec to become a Dalek/human hybrid, the cliffhanger of this episode being the result of the experiment.  There is a human/hybrid Dalek with tentacles coming off its head, one single eye, and a pinstripe suit.  The design is at least only in the final moments of “Daleks in Manhattan” but as a design misguided would be putting it lightly.  The Daleks themselves are in the place of the capitalist ruling class, discarding the brains of failed experiments in the sewers which again feels as if Raynor is going to make a statement on the waste of the economic system, but instead knowing Raynor’s influence makes the viewer realize that it was just window dressing because those other stories had villains do that sort of things.  Raynor also just doesn’t seem to know how to write Martha Jones as an intelligent character in this episode, reducing much of Freema Agyeman’s acting talents to asking standard companion questions, have slight rapport with Tallulah, and be captured by the Daleks after chasing the modified Laszlo off the stage during the middle of a performance (in front of the curtain).  David Tennant’s Doctor is also just there to investigate and eventually find the Daleks are there by the end of the episode, though the investigation is fun.  There’s also an appearance by Andrew Garfield as Frank and Solomon played by Hugh Quarshie are essentially Raynor’s attempt at showing the hardship, the former with a standard runaway story and the latter with a Biblical allusion.  James Strong’s direction is one of the few positives of the episode, doing an excellent job of turning the filming locations into a believable New York setting in the 1930s.  3/10.

 

“Evolution of the Daleks” then takes a nosedive in terms of quality as the second half of the story immediately drops any of the interesting commentary on the Great Depression and the workers building the Empire State Building, something the Daleks have been interfering with by grafting their own metal onto the spire which will be hit by lightning to power their ultimate plan in this episode.   Somehow this final development is through using gamma radiation, which is not lightning, to create an army of Dalek/human hybrids taken by the people abducted from Hooverville to conquer the world and universe.  Dalek Sec, still played by Loren, slowly gains a sense of humanity to create a more human Dalek race from the same corpses, but the rest of the Cult of Skaro turn on him, literally putting him in chains (mainly so he can save the Doctor with his life at the climax of the episode) instead of killing him.  The plotting of the episode is a messy grafting of some of the major plot beats of The Evil of the Daleks, a 1967 Patrick Troughton serial that largely works by setting itself up as living in the world of mysticism and alchemy, while “Evolution of the Daleks” wants to be a serious science fiction episode setup by a campy “Daleks in Manhattan”.  Helen Raynor’s script also just doesn’t have the punch of a David Whitaker script nor a Russell T. Davies script: it’s a script whose climax visually screams references to James Whale’s interpretation of Frankenstein without really using the references any deeper than superficial ideas.

 

David Tennant as the Doctor gets the opportunity to play a good Dalek story, but like Martha in the previous and this episode, is not served by the material.  The script itself has issues with repetition, indicating that new to Doctor Who script editor Linsey Alford did not tighten up the script as was her duty.  It’s slightly humorous due to Raynor’s general history as script editor of the program.  Dalek Sec is still a Dalek who has killed countless beings, kidnapped human beings to experiment on them unethically, and forced a human up its own rectum to take over his body ending his life.  Both The Evil of the Daleks and “Dalek” grappled with the question of a good Dalek with more clarity and understanding, the former using three Daleks who are just born and haven’t caused many atrocities while the latter uses the idea of a Dalek changing gradually through an episode and to parallel the Doctor’s darker side.  The Doctor in “Evolution of the Daleks” is just immediately willing to help Dalek Sec and the inevitable betrayal from the other members of the Cult of Skaro is entirely predictable in a terrible way.  The design of Dalek Sec in human form is also just difficult to look at, the entire facial mask and makeup looking like various parts of genitalia, complete with their own pulsating that only adds to the description of this two-part story by some crass reviewers as Dalek hentai.

 

Eric Loren as Dalek Sec also just does not have the chops to pull off the character, his performance even with the poor script feeling incredibly strained.  Loren feels as if he is fighting with the makeup to get the words out and the diction of his line delivery is incredibly stilted with these slight pauses inconsistently placed between syllables.  It’s clearly meant to indicate this is the Dalek in Sec coming out, but it is inconsistent.  Loren is clearly also attempting to emote as a human and not a Dalek.  Perhaps giving the human voice to Nicholas Briggs or allowing Loren to spend time with Briggs as he recorded Dalek dialogue could have helped make the performance consistent, or at least feel as it is growing the character into humanity.  The climax of the episode is also quite weak.  Martha at least is allowed to deduce the purpose of the Empire State Building in the Daleks’ plan, but the Doctor being struck by lightning causing a genetic transfer to the Dalek/human soldiers leads to a climax that is decidedly anti-climactic.  Some of this may be down to James Strong’s direction which drops off heavily in the second half, feeling as if he is working with a strained budget in the climax and Dalek attack on Hooverville especially.  There’s almost a repeat of the ending of “Love & Monsters” with our pair of lovers saved at the last moment by the Doctor (the pig slaves only have a lifespan of three weeks) but in saving them the Doctor is condemning them to a difficult life as Laszlo is still a pig man, a decision added at the last minute by Davies which honestly leaves an already bad episode ending on a sour note.  1/10.

 

Overall, “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks” is genuinely one of the weakest Dalek stories in the history of Doctor Who.  The first half has the seeds of a brilliant story that aren’t allowed to even begin to germinate even in that episode, failing to properly critique the systems of capitalism that led to the Great Depression even with the Daleks’ fascist origins being able to dovetail nicely into these ideas.  The second half suffers from some terrible production design on the human/Dalek hybrid and apes from much better previous Dalek stories throughout Doctor Who’s history.  Both parts also suffer from a script that doesn’t feel as if it has been edited by a script editor adding to the irony of how the serial fails almost completely.  2/10.