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charameiWhen watching New Who, I often get the sense that Daleks are becoming overdone. Dalek was brilliant, but all of the season finales featuring them have been cliched, miserable messes, and the less said about Daleks in Manhattan the better.
And then I read one of the novels, or listen to a Big Finish play, and I realise that it's not the Daleks: it's the writers.
First up, Patient Zero. It's my first month subscribed to Big Finish's main line, having thoroughly enjoyed Eighth Doctor Adventures. And a Dalek story, to boot!
It's unfortunate that I'm not more familiar with Charley, because a lot of the plot seemed to rely on me caring about her before the story began; and since the only other of her stories that I have heard is Chimes of Midnight, I am left with the sensation that Charley Pollard is a woman whom a lot of other women become obsessed with and break Time in order to do strange things to. I'm sure this isn't the whole of her character... at least, I hope not.
The basic plot of Patient Zero was a little odd - I don't think that that plotline would have worked had it not had Daleks behind it - but the Daleks themselves made up for it. It was absolutely wonderful to see them suffering under the same limitations as the Doctor, and the interplay between the bloodthristy Daleks on the ground and the Time Controller, well aware that they could not kill the Doctor, was beautifully done. It also allowed the focus to be fully on what the Daleks were up to: too often, especially in New Who, the Doctor turns up and derails their plans by his mere presence as they scramble to get rid of him. And why not? Why shouldn't the Daleks have to worry about the timey-wimey ball just as much as the Time Lords themselves do?
It was the B-Plot that I felt let down on; an unfortunate side-effect of having come in just as a companion is leaving is that you're meant to care about her by default, and I just didn't. Maybe in a few years, when I'm more caught up, I will listen to it again and have my heartstrings appropriately tugged.
Patient Zero was not one of my favouritest stories ever, but I did very much appreciate the angle taken with the Daleks: putting limitations on them made them a more credible threat, and did not in the slightest diminish the horror - although said horror was mostly off-screen.
By contrast, the horror in Prisoner of the Daleks is all on-screen, all the time. It's a chilling and very traditional Dalek story: torture, planet destruction, enslavement and murder and war and a certain joke about the Large Hadron Collider that came so unexpectedly in the middle of all this that I had to laugh. I really don't know why the BBC shelves these books in the children's section.
In some respects, PotD was a failure for me, in that I did not get what I wanted out of it. I picked it up because I have horrendous trouble writing the Tenth Doctor, and figured that a book with no companions, that struck so close to the heart(s) of the series with its central villains, would provide a good opportunity to analyse how others do it. I had, of course, reckoned without the torture, maiming, etc. The whole book is written, by necessity, in a detached third-person omniscient POV: getting any closer into anyone's heads would certainly push it into full-blown adult horror, given its gruesome nature. However, at the same time the detached POV made it worse; with very little of any character's personality colouring the writing, the events took on a starkness that made them all the more effective.
The plot is, as mentioned, very traditional for a Dalek story: most of its plot devices are things that already existed, and the book makes reference to as many of the Classic Who Dalek stories as it possibly can. What really makes it is that very starkness, and the way it refuses to overpower either the Doctor or the Daleks; there are no deus ex machinae here, no clinging to the Empire State Building or random Cybermen or companions becoming gods. The Daleks look about to defeat the Doctor by the simple expedient of having, y'know, dealt with him before and worked out how to contain him, and the Doctor eventually outwits them without recourse to any RTD-induced stupidity. It is, simply, a good book.
There were only a couple of things that rankled. One was the setting: the Doctor lands in a time-track before the Time War (it's implied but not stated that he's in the same time period as the Big Finish Audio series Dalek Empire), which is handwaved away with a couple of lines of technobabble about the TARDIS acting up. I spent a lot of the book wondering why he didn't contact Gallifrey, and still more of it wondering why the CIA weren't on his tail for having a dangerously malfunctioning TARDIS. In fact, I kind of want to write that fanfic...
The second was one of the last scenes. I know the Doctor is often accused of gloating over his enemies, but I struggle to think of another time when he has deliberately sought out one of the bad guys just to tell them they were going to die alone in the dark. Sure, it was a Dalek, and sure, it had tortured him. Sure, the Ninth and Tenth Doctors are damaged by the Time War: but I found the scene to be out of character, and I do not think the book would have suffered for dropping it, particularly since it undermined a very major point made earlier when the Doctor refused to partake in a torture-and-gloat session organised by the Secondary Human Cast (tm).
Overall, though, Prisoner of the Daleks was a thought-provoking, chilling and thoroughly enjoyable novel.
Which just goes to show what you can do with the Daleks, if you're a good enough writer.
And then I read one of the novels, or listen to a Big Finish play, and I realise that it's not the Daleks: it's the writers.
First up, Patient Zero. It's my first month subscribed to Big Finish's main line, having thoroughly enjoyed Eighth Doctor Adventures. And a Dalek story, to boot!
It's unfortunate that I'm not more familiar with Charley, because a lot of the plot seemed to rely on me caring about her before the story began; and since the only other of her stories that I have heard is Chimes of Midnight, I am left with the sensation that Charley Pollard is a woman whom a lot of other women become obsessed with and break Time in order to do strange things to. I'm sure this isn't the whole of her character... at least, I hope not.
The basic plot of Patient Zero was a little odd - I don't think that that plotline would have worked had it not had Daleks behind it - but the Daleks themselves made up for it. It was absolutely wonderful to see them suffering under the same limitations as the Doctor, and the interplay between the bloodthristy Daleks on the ground and the Time Controller, well aware that they could not kill the Doctor, was beautifully done. It also allowed the focus to be fully on what the Daleks were up to: too often, especially in New Who, the Doctor turns up and derails their plans by his mere presence as they scramble to get rid of him. And why not? Why shouldn't the Daleks have to worry about the timey-wimey ball just as much as the Time Lords themselves do?
It was the B-Plot that I felt let down on; an unfortunate side-effect of having come in just as a companion is leaving is that you're meant to care about her by default, and I just didn't. Maybe in a few years, when I'm more caught up, I will listen to it again and have my heartstrings appropriately tugged.
Patient Zero was not one of my favouritest stories ever, but I did very much appreciate the angle taken with the Daleks: putting limitations on them made them a more credible threat, and did not in the slightest diminish the horror - although said horror was mostly off-screen.
By contrast, the horror in Prisoner of the Daleks is all on-screen, all the time. It's a chilling and very traditional Dalek story: torture, planet destruction, enslavement and murder and war and a certain joke about the Large Hadron Collider that came so unexpectedly in the middle of all this that I had to laugh. I really don't know why the BBC shelves these books in the children's section.
In some respects, PotD was a failure for me, in that I did not get what I wanted out of it. I picked it up because I have horrendous trouble writing the Tenth Doctor, and figured that a book with no companions, that struck so close to the heart(s) of the series with its central villains, would provide a good opportunity to analyse how others do it. I had, of course, reckoned without the torture, maiming, etc. The whole book is written, by necessity, in a detached third-person omniscient POV: getting any closer into anyone's heads would certainly push it into full-blown adult horror, given its gruesome nature. However, at the same time the detached POV made it worse; with very little of any character's personality colouring the writing, the events took on a starkness that made them all the more effective.
The plot is, as mentioned, very traditional for a Dalek story: most of its plot devices are things that already existed, and the book makes reference to as many of the Classic Who Dalek stories as it possibly can. What really makes it is that very starkness, and the way it refuses to overpower either the Doctor or the Daleks; there are no deus ex machinae here, no clinging to the Empire State Building or random Cybermen or companions becoming gods. The Daleks look about to defeat the Doctor by the simple expedient of having, y'know, dealt with him before and worked out how to contain him, and the Doctor eventually outwits them without recourse to any RTD-induced stupidity. It is, simply, a good book.
There were only a couple of things that rankled. One was the setting: the Doctor lands in a time-track before the Time War (it's implied but not stated that he's in the same time period as the Big Finish Audio series Dalek Empire), which is handwaved away with a couple of lines of technobabble about the TARDIS acting up. I spent a lot of the book wondering why he didn't contact Gallifrey, and still more of it wondering why the CIA weren't on his tail for having a dangerously malfunctioning TARDIS. In fact, I kind of want to write that fanfic...
The second was one of the last scenes. I know the Doctor is often accused of gloating over his enemies, but I struggle to think of another time when he has deliberately sought out one of the bad guys just to tell them they were going to die alone in the dark. Sure, it was a Dalek, and sure, it had tortured him. Sure, the Ninth and Tenth Doctors are damaged by the Time War: but I found the scene to be out of character, and I do not think the book would have suffered for dropping it, particularly since it undermined a very major point made earlier when the Doctor refused to partake in a torture-and-gloat session organised by the Secondary Human Cast (tm).
Overall, though, Prisoner of the Daleks was a thought-provoking, chilling and thoroughly enjoyable novel.
Which just goes to show what you can do with the Daleks, if you're a good enough writer.