C+Q - Victory of the Daleks (2010)

Victory of the Daleks marks one of the first major changes to Who canon that Steven Moffat made during his tenure are showrunner. Throughout the RTD era, the Daleks were always on the very edge of extinction, often with only a handful of Daleks alive at any one time. It was a good idea to give them a bit of gravity, but it became pretty absurd by Series 4, where the Daleks appeared so regularly that you never really believed they were all gone. Here Moffat does the smart thing and decides to bring them back into the Whoniverse permanently. Victory of the Daleks sees the full revival of the Dalek race after the Time War so they can potentially return for any episode at any time. To accompany this change, the production team tried redesigning the Daleks entirely and gave them a new coat of paint. However, unlike all the redesigns from The Eleventh Hour, this one doesn't really stick.

Here's the thing about the new Dalek paradigm: I love the white Daleks, I love the red Daleks, I love the blue Daleks, I love the orange Daleks, and I love the yellow Daleks. All five of them in the same room? Terrible. They look about as threatening as they did when Catherine Tate made them all spin on the spot. I like this design a lot more when they appear in Asylum of the Daleks, with just the red and blue Daleks dotted around amongst the regular gold ones. But in this episode, they're just too colourful. They really should've stuck to one or maybe two different colours for these Daleks, like just red and blue. Maybe then this redesign would've had a longer lifespan than three TV episodes and a handful of shitty, shitty video games.

The way they're introduced also lacks the same impact as the introduction of the gold Daleks in Series 1. There, we had an episode of one lone Dalek slaughtering masses of people to establish its power before getting a finale with thousands of them. In Victory of the Daleks however, the new Dalek paradigm don't really do anything other than move around their ship and talk to each other in badass deep voices. Yes, we do see them destroy the old models of Dalek with relative ease but the moment looses all impact because the effect looks so cheap. The Daleks are there, there's a CGI laser blast, and the Daleks are gone. We don't get to see any smouldering, burnt shells or debris or scorch marks. The Daleks just get destroyed in a very controlled and clean way with no indication of how hard they were hit. Ideally, if they weren't going to have a scene in which the new Dalek paradigm took to the streets of war-torn London and exterminated people, they could have at least had the old Daleks get blown up in an impressive way, with a hole burned right through them.

The Daleks aren't handled all that well in this episode generally. The idea to have them disguised as Bracewell's Ironsides, fighting to keep Britain safe during WW2, is a nice Power-esque twist and fits quite well with the Daleks being a clear allegory for the Nazis, but after they're revealed to be evil, it goes downhill. We all know the Daleks are evil, so that isn't a surprise. The surprise was all about seeing when they'll reveal themselves, and the reveal itself and the subsequent revival of the Dalek species is just kinda meh. The idea that the Daleks needed the Doctor to verify that they were still Daleks is pretty dumb because the script doesn't firmly establish in what ways these Daleks aren't 'pure'. It seemed to be a cheap reason to make the new multi-colour Daleks seem superior to the gold ones. It's weird more wasn't done with this considering a group of unfeeling killing machines seeking genetic purity thematically fits with the events of WW2.

Speaking of which, after they get the progenitor working, the WW2 setting becomes almost incidental, and I really would've liked to see more of the iconography used, if only to make this episode stand out from one taking place in literally any other Earth setting. The only moment that feels uniquely historical is when the spitfires fly into space, which was charming in a weird way, but the idea is far too light-hearted and twee for an episode which was intended to reintroduce the most terrifying beings in the universe. I don't know, maybe I just don't know how to have fun, but I really thought the spitfires in space didn't fit with the rest of the episode. Nor did the day being saved by a robot learning the power of love.

So, now that I've had a good moan, what did I like about this episode (because, believe it or not, I do like Victory of the Daleks)? Well given that this is a Mark Gatiss script, the sense of historical accuracy and period detail is breathtaking. Churchill's cabinet war rooms are beautifully realised and the costumes and dialogue are filled with little touches that make it clear that the team did their research. This is mainly why I wanted some scenes on the streets of London; because we spend so long cramped in the wonderful cabinet war rooms that I really wanted to get out into wartime Britain and see it all looking this good. This episode basically takes place in two rooms: the cabinet war rooms and the Dalek ship, both of which are well-realised but they're too claustrophobic.

Overall, Victory of the Daleks is a pretty meh story. Despite featuring some loose science, a questionable redesign for the Daleks, and a bomb which is defused with love, what little we see of the WW2 setting is very immersive and the episode ultimately served its purpose in bringing back the Daleks.