This is true. Moffat is so good at pulling things out of his rectum he should just make a career out of it....ohwait, he does! (Thank you, I'm here all week)

The problem I had with the Doctor helping the Daleks was not because of motivation - it was just so out of character. You'd think the Doctor would come up with some grand scheme to destroy the Dalek fleet - or at least the Doctor would be disgusted that he's helping out the Daleks. These are the people who bought about the destruction of the Time Lords, dont you think the Doctor may object to 'saving' the Daleks? He's just so unphased about a thousand Daleks in a position to kill them. Just look at how the Ninth Doctor reacted to seeing a giant Dalek fleet, and compare it to how the Eleventh Doctor reacts.

You see, whether you like it or not: Russell T Davies understood the Daleks. Yes, he overused them, but he always treated the Daleks like the Doctors mortal enemy. There was huge dramatic weight in his stories featuring Daleks - even if at times they didn't make any sense. He knew that if the Daleks are involved then there is going to be huge drama - and if you create that much drama surrounding Daleks then they become scary. Even in that episode that only featured one solitary Dalek, it was terrifying due to the build-up that Dalek was given and so when it escaped we were all frightened of it (and in awe of how cool it was). OK, the whole thing with Rose being bonded to the Dalek was stupid...but still! The Drama was there!

Moffat, on the other hand, clearly hates the Daleks. This is a man who when an interviewer asked about what he thinks of the negative fan reaction concerning the multicoloured re-design of the Daleks, he literally said "its just a prop". Umm, no - your dealing with the shows most beloved and well-established villains. Its like painting Yoda purple and going "Oh, its just a puppet! Stop winging!". I get that he doesn't want to overuse the Daleks like RTD (and I respect this decision) - but if you want to avoid the Daleks....just dont show them! Quickly devoting one single episode to temporarily remove them from the series is not the way to do it! The Daleks are not tax forms to be quickly signed off and forgotten about for a while until they have to show up again! They're the most iconic monsters of the show (despite how hard he's tried to make both The Stone Angels and The Silence key recurring monsters). If your actually bothering to show the Daleks, treat them seriously!!

And that AnnoyingNoises is another one of the idiotic things we've recieved from RTD, keep bringing back the Daleks and always stating that everyone were destroyed until a season later were they say "OUR SHIP SURVIVED!"
FINALLY the Daleks are NOT trying to take over the world! That is one of the reasons why this is the best Dalek story since Genesis of the Daleks.

YouTube | Twitter | Letterboxd

Perfect observation

I like Doctor Who but I don't really want to participate in this thread.

Thats what Daleks do! They are hate-driven monsters who's only purpose in life is exterminating everything until there is nothing but Daleks left! (With the exception of The Emperor Dalek and the Cult of Skaro who were specifically designed to actually have imagination also - but they still hate everything too)

Also, whilst the Daleks overall objective has always been complete domination of the Universe, they're have actually been episodes that deal with other matters. Even in this episode - they want to get rid of the Asylum because its interfering with their plans to conquer the universe. They're frightened of the Asylum and so want to destroy it because Daleks aren't supposed to fear (which makes no sense because Daleks are physically incapable of fear, but whatever) and fear is a weakness that's stopping them from conquering the universe (at least, that's what I think is going on). 'Evolution of the Daleks' was about survival, and as Dalek Sec becomes human he realises how primitive the Daleks singular goal to conquer the universe is ("Then our function is wrong!"). OK, the episode was extremely flawed, but it wasn't about conquering the universe. 'DALEK' is kind of depressing in how the one Dalek is unable to conquer the universe, and therefore its lost its only purpose in life. In that horrid episode from Series 5 Even 'Doomsday' was more about resurrecting the Dalek race via the Genesis Ark, and obviously once that's all taken care of the Daleks can then move onto conquering the universe.

What else are Daleks supposed to do apart from conquering the universe? Have political debates? Try to collectively figure out how exactly the Doctor managed to save the universe in the climaxes to both Series 5 and Series 6? Play Scrabble? Maybe if you sat a million Daleks in front of typewriters they might be able to write 'Hamlet' together...

To be fair, they've tried a different tactic each time - although with both 'The Parting of the Ways' and 'Doomsday' their plan was:

1. Get together a crap-load of Daleks
2. Destroy Earth/Kill the Doctor
3. ???
4. Total domination of the universe

('Journeys End' doesn't count because they were pulling all the planets together and using that particle-weapon-thing - which is different to the plan above where they just EXTERMINATE everything they see. Yeah, step number 4 was the same, but they're not exactly going to go "Well, we've tried this many times to rule the universe - maybe we should all just call it a day and play 'Sim City' instead")

I'm sure the next time the Daleks show up, they'll be trying to take over the world with this exact plan though (just because they cant remember the Doctor doesn't mean they've forgotten about their whole 'world domination' thingy - which is why I was shocked the Doctor just ran off and left them all to take over the world). I mean, they've already got together an entire army and mercilessly destroyed an entire planet filled with broken Daleks (I refuse to call them 'insane'. Insanity does not just mean 'slow'. Watch 'Shutter Island' if you want extremely dangerous and scary insane people); what else do they need to do? "OH. AND. THE. KITCHEN. NEEDS. REPAINTING"

Actually, The Doctor looked so un-intimidated by the sudden reappearance of a giant Dalek Armada that I'm surprised he didn't say "oh, you again!"

And before you reply "well, that's because RTD's used them so much the appearance of thousands of Daleks is no longer frightening" - I found the outward tracking shot revealing a giant courtroom filled with Daleks quite intimidating actually....right up until they started pleading for the Doctor to 'save' them. Really? First Moffat actually gets them to say "Mercy!" and now they're begging their arch nemesis to save their asses because their all too scared?? More evidence that Moffat hates the Daleks and is just being like "Oh, you want the Daleks?! Here! Suck on this plebeians!! I'm off now to write more River Song..."

Last edited by Max Butcher (September 5, 2012 (03:57am))

Agreed. The overall direction and cinematography has improved a lot since the RTD era (I could tell that they were trying really hard to make the broken Daleks intimidating). I've always respected how Doctor Who has always kept an ambitious scope despite clearly having to contend with a tight budget (particularly with the classic series where everything had to be physical). My problems with Doctor Who have always been with the writing only...

The Daleks are interesting (though not nearly as interesting as other villains) when the impact of the Time War/their evolution into monsters is addressed and analysed. The problem is that, like their attempts to take over the world, both of these areas have been done several times before. I suppose this is the problem with all recurring villains - eventually you just run out of things to do with them and have to either completely re-invent them (which Moffat spectacularly failed at in Series 5) or do what Moffat did here and try to add variety. Although, I still think there are about a thousand other ways Moffat could have gotten around this problem rather than the solution he came up with...

Speaking of recurring villains - am I the only one who wants to see a complete re-invention of the Cybermen? Since in the RTD era the Cybermen came from a Parallel dimension, wouldn't it be great to see them completely reborn in the real universe? With a whole new design and new origin story? Am I just one of many who wants to see this happen, or am I mad?

i thought the daleks were really cute in the new episode

but that's probably just me

Agreed. The twist regarding Oswin would have made so much more sense - and it was established in 'Doomsday' that Cybermen upgrades can go wrong and leave them insane ("I did my duty for queen and country!!"). The only problem would be that the Cybermen obviously have much less emotion than the Daleks, so they would have had to have come up with a very good reason for keeping the insane Cybermen alive rather than just destroying them (maybe experimenting on them so less upgrades go wrong?) Also, you would have to revert the insanity so that instead of it being war veterans driven insane, its instead humans who have been completely addled by the upgrading process - which might ruin the twist about Oswin.

Now that explains everything.

Anyways, just watched 'Dinosaurs on a Spaceship' on iPlayer. I'm confused. No, not about the plot. Its just I really want to like this episode, and there is just one thing stopping me.

The only problem is that its meant to be a comedic episode. We have several parts that are lifted straight from 'Scooby Doo', and almost all the time the characters are pointing out just how utterly ridiculous the plot is. All throughout the episode there is this self-aware wink-to-the-camera attitude to it that I actually quite liked (though I completely understand that it wont be to everyone's taste). But then its completely capsized by tonal shifts so sudden and juxtaposing I think I got whiplash.

The Doctors 'gang' is all very well written with great chemistry, and for once I actually liked Rory (something I never thought I would say). But then we have Solomon (why would you trust anyone called that!?) who is lifted straight from an episode of classic Star Trek. In fact, he even looks a bit like Khan - minus anything that made Khan one of the most intimidating Sci-Fi villains of all time. In fact, to prove how juxtaposing this whole thing is - we have Solomon who is dead serious and has committed genocide, but then we have his two comedy sidekicks who reference '2001'  for some reason (Stanley Kubrick is spinning in his grave...).

This is meant to be a silly, fun episode - and I can get behind that. I prefer dramatic/mysterious episodes, obviously, but once in a while we need a bit of stupidity in our lives (that's why Monty Python exists). However, this episode is like "Lets go crazy! Lets have the Doctor, Rory and his dad riding a Dinosaur! Oh, wait - this is only the second episode...um....lets kill the Dinosaur! Look! We're perfectly balancing comedy and drama! Now lets have innuendo for all the kids! Ahaha look how racy we're being! Oh wait, we still need drama. Um...genocide!! That' always ruins the mood! This is like 'Brazil'....only with Dinosaurs!"

So, hopefully next episode we'll get back to the serious dr-ohwait, their doing 'Cowboys vs Aliens' next