4. Victory Of The Daleks - It's Not As Bad As Some People Seem To Think
Let me first start off by correcting a few misconceptions about this story that some people seem to have. This is not in anyway an objectively bad story. It's not perfect of course, and there are problems with it. But as a whole for what it is there really isn't anything to hate about it beyond the cosmetic. And for the sake of my sanity I'm going to discount the Dalek redesign because in reality, that's all anyone who hates this episode talks about. They seem to ignore that there is a 45 minute episode in here full of other (and really great) stuff. There is one problem with this story, and it's a problem that you can't really pin on Gatiss when you think about it. To prove my point here's a list of everything he had to do in the space of just one 45 minute episode. -Introduce the war time setting - Winston Churchill's relationship with the Doctor, as well as give characters in the bunker screen time to establish themselves in order to show the personal stakes of the war. - Introduce the Daleks - analyse and discuss from both sides whether regardless to where their loyalties lie if they should be used in the war effort. - Have the Daleks reinstate themselves as a credible threat and have the Doctor confront them. Have them create a threat on a global scale that could cause mass destruction on top of the war itself and for this plan to be thwarted. -Ensure the Daleks restore themselves to a position of power and escape to open up their possibility to return future episodes. -Have the Doctor reestablish his relationship with churchill and provide a satisfactory conclusion to the characters in the bunker. He had to do all of this in the space of one 45 minute episode, something in the writing has to give way in order to cram all of that in. You have premises there in one bullet point that could potentially carry one episode on their own, let alone be one tiny element in one story. My argument with this is that Gatiss did the best job he could with the poor hand he was dealt with. If this episode had been longer or even a two part story, I'm confident that it would have probably been a much stronger episode. However for what the episode is, it is still pretty good, but all of the problems with the episode, the rushed ending, reliance on quick fix plot solutions (spit fires in space and convincing the Bracewell robot he is human) and general lack of development (all of the war officers should have had more screen time for their characters) all boil down to a lack of time to tell the story in any other way. But what is there is good, the war time setting and the Daleks matches both the icons the Daleks are in this setting as it draws from their initial inspiration and makes for an interesting premise. You've got some great Doctor/Dalek interaction here that we haven't really seen since series 1 seeing as the last time we saw them the Doctor had pacifism thrown into his character for no real reason. Not to mention Churchill as a character was excellent, the war time atmosphere and execution of the time period was well handled. And the Daleks for the first time in the new series were portrayed more as intelligent and cunning as oppose to this big overly bombastic threat they had been in the past years. They took a back seat and allowed to use the Doctor's hatred of them to their advantage rather than the other way around which gives them a new layer of depth that hadn't been seen since Power of the Daleks in 1966. I can't say I didn't enjoy this episode despite its flaws, what is there is great, the problems only really lie in the time it was given to tell the story it needed to. At it's best it's a decent story, at its worst it's a story that didn't quite live up to it's full potential because of circumstances that were out of Gatiss's control.