May 21, 2011

Evolution of the Daleks (2007)

Evolution is the disappointing conclusion to a disappointing two parter. The story plays around with the idea of human Daleks which I do like however the problem is that it just doesn’t grab my attention in this story which is a shocking revelation. The original idea of the Daleks has always been to keep the Dalek race pure, their likeness to the Nazi’s has been commonplace since they first appeared. However now that there is a human Dalek this contradicts the Daleks’ idea. There is a wonderful moment where two Daleks are talking to each other about Dalek Sec and one of them looks around them to make sure that they aren’t being spied on. Another thing I didn’t like was the way that the Daleks got written out of the story. The temperal shift that they used in Doomsday was clever and was also impressive. Fast forward to this story and it just looks like a bit of a cop-out as it robs the viewer of a satisfactory end to the Dalek involvement in this story.

The story is centred around the Empire State Building which when this story was set was still being built. It was a good idea and helps to maintain the illusion of the country that this story is set. It also good that a well known landmark is used but not in the way that we know it. I also thought that the sets were very impressive. I thought that the big lab area that the Daleks use was very good and allowed for some big scenes to take place. However my favourite were the tunnel scenes which had a claustrophobic feel to them.

The performances of David Tennant and Freema Agyeman continue to be entertaining. I did start to warm to the Laszlo character (played by Ryan Carnes), I didn’t like him in the previous episode but he grows on me during this episode. Something I didn’t twig until this episode was another famous face who wasn’t famous at the time but would go on to become quite a big name appearing in The Social Network where he was nominated in the Best Actor category at the Oscars and BAFTA’s. I thought at the time that his character wasn’t anything particularly special and I still don’t but its interesting to know that in this series of Doctor Who we have two actors (Carey Mulligan the other) who would go onto to get Oscar nominations.

Unfortunatley the story is a rather mish mash of a story. I think the story suffers from fairly dull characters and a rather ordinary Dalek plan. Out of all the Dalek stories in the new series, this is by far the weakest one. It’s not terrible just dull. I thought it when I first watched it when it aired in April 2007 and I think it today. I know that there was a lot of people ripping the story to shreds and I think that its unfair to Helen Rayner because I think that had it been another sort of story then it would have gone down better but because it had the word Dalek in the title then people’s expectations go up and sadly she wasn’t able to match it.

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