The Daleks have been beaten back and seem to be retreating, but where are the Supreme Dalek and the Emperor, and how can a strange project in an obscure part of the galaxy affect the war?
The Daleks have been beaten back and seem to be retreating, but where are the Supreme Dalek and the Emperor, and how can a strange project in an obscure part of the galaxy affect the war?
Review of Series 1
“Every time she faced this creature, she became more and more certain that it had no soul, and yet it somehow knew how to invade the very heart of her!”
Big Finish is very much about second chances and recapturing the spirit of lost eras. Doctor Who was always a series in flux and subject to radical change and reinvention, but Big Finish often asks the question of what if things hadn’t changed? In much the same way as the Gallifrey spin-off series took us back to the frivolity and imagination of the Graham Williams years before John Nathan Turner’s neurotic backlash turned the show into a joyless, soulless nerd-trap, Dalek Empire recaptures the spirit of the 1960’s when the Daleks were at their most intelligent and devious, at the height of their imperial power and independently united in a way they never would be again after Davros turns up. Dalek Empire is about recapturing that spirit of the 60’s show when the Daleks really were an all consuming galactic technological biomass, and also updating it for the modern post-Babylon 5 sci-fi age of long term planning and moral ambiguity. This goes one further in the moral ambiguity stakes and eliminates the Doctor from the equation too and thus opens the very real possibility that this time the Daleks could win.
A Dalek spin-off series had long been proposed by Terry Nation, but to no avail, and many dismissed the prospect of a Daleks-only series as a dull venture, with some justification. In the long term Dalek Empire proved the critics right by letting the series fall into the rut of diminishing returns and repetitive redundancy of reusing the same canvas. But here at its inception, Nick Briggs is clearly working his hardest to defy those expectations to make this series as unpredictable, varied and rich as possible and adding enough points of interest and twists to keep things from getting boring, and yet it’s done in a manner that feels genuinely organic and creative rather than forced or gimmicky. Like Sympathy for the Devil, this story is brimming with inspiration and collisions of story elements, making this a raw, unpredictable and rather unsettling listen. Nick gives us talking insects, telepathic Seers, warrior cultures that aren’t given the patronising treatment that Star Trek usually dishes out, and dimensional gateways that open the story out beyond the typical boys own space ranger material. This vision of the various races of the future seen literally cross-galaxy could almost have been a sci-fi series of its own without the Daleks.
Indeed the inclusion of the Kar-Charrat data as a source of insight into human psychology is rather an admission that usually the Daleks are pretty boring villains with no chance in hell of winning, but for now the rules have changed, and suddenly the Daleks become far more interesting and frightening.
The series presents a clear, passionate and explicit picture of what the oft referenced but never seen Dalek wars were like, but does so without demystifying them. As a portrayal of war and totalitarianism it strikes the right note between cartoonish violence and brutal honesty, with a shrewd understanding of psychology and power games.
Susan’s story is a particularly feminist one about the victimisation of women who refuse to be docile, and follows her gradual self-degrading institutionalism into patriarchal society. Susan is subtly changed and institutionalised into the very tyranny she was once victimised by, to the point where she almost complacently believes that she’s the one exploiting her exploiters, which is the comforting philosophy of many an ‘empowered’ lap-dancer or sex-worker, but eventually she sees the light, remembers who she really is and regains her defiance one last time. Indeed occasionally the scenes with the Seer of Yaldos sharing her biography with us sound almost like something from The Vagina Monologues.
In modern fashion the Dalek Supreme is presented as a stalker, obsessively watching Susan’s every move and gaining all the cards of psychological power over her, which takes the core concept of the Dalek as the ultimate predator to its natural conclusion. This is quite refreshing in the days when films like Saw and Phone Booth present their stalking villains as ‘noble’ avenging angels who only pick on the deserving or ungrateful (as if such stalkers didn’t pick their victims on sight long before rooting in their dirty laundry for any excuse or justification they could find), but here there’s no such pretense. In an age where young males are increasingly raised to be apologetic and terrified of ever daring to admit a personal interest in someone of the opposite sex, god forbid it be taken the wrong way, hearing the Dalek Supreme blatantly delcare its perverse fascination in Susan without any remorse or excuses or tender softening of the blow is is such a striking piece of naked honesty. It’s Susan’s firey personality that gets her noticed by the Daleks and thus it becomes her fatal flaw that leads her to a grand Shakespearean exit, it doesn’t mean she dserved her fate but it gives her fate a narrative and emotional context rather than just another token sacrifice. Life under Dalek rule becomes almost a soul defining, existential experience where people discover the noblest, most heroic parts of themselves, preparing for the moment in their life that really matters. It’s a beautiful affirming clash between life and death and the violence and galaxy-shrinking sense of nowhere to run, makes the worlds of Vega 6 and Lopra Minor feel honestly haunted by the massacres that take place there, making this future vision that bit more vivid and tangible. Rather like Logopolis it builds up a disturbing amount of collateral which climaxes in existential grace with the almost euphoric death (and rebirth) of the protagonist and the enemy virtually winning despite the climactic last fight to stop them. In places it feels like downright goulish listening, but the fact that we keep on listening and keep up hope in the heroes hints that the story is doing something right that was lost on Eric Saward when he tried the same approach back in the mid-80’s. What Nick Briggs does with the Daleks is look into his own worst nightmares, darkest fantasies and personal demons and draws vivid, insideous pictures out of them, and that’s really what makes great art. This is beautiful controlled chaos, to Eric Saward’s ugly contrived smut, and unlike most modern sci-fi that aspires to be ‘dark’ there’s nothing forced or contrived about its spontaneous violence and natural cavalierness.
Infact this is an incredibly fan-savvy piece of work and there is a sense of using its clean slate as a spin-off to perfect the things that Doctor Who frequently got wrong. The Daleks are retconned into the biggest badasses in the galaxy, and the Emperor has never sounded so evil (so evil infact that he could happily belong in an episode of Cracker or the Jeremy Kyle Show). The story of Susan Mendes’ collaboration is almost a belated rebuttal of the vile appeasement message of Warriors of the Deep, but simultaneously it humanises and draws empathy with the kind of quisling character that Doctor Who stories usually treated with unforgiving scorn. The character of Kalendorf basically takes the best bits of Orcini from Revelation of the Daleks, and actually demonstrates why we should see him as ‘noble’ and ‘dignified’ rather than just because the writer tells us to. The usual routine of the Daleks finding flimsy excuses to keep the lead characters alive actually enhances their evil since here it seems like the cruellest thing they can do, and the series even has its very own Master in the deliciously creepy Dalek-agent Tanlee. It even rifts on the scene in Destiny of the Daleks where the Daleks are massacring hostages to break the hero’s resolve, except this time performed with real conviction, horror and urgency, and thus it becomes one of the story’s most dramatic, nail-biting moments. It’s almost as if Doctor Who was always just a ramshackle run up to this far superior, more mature and hardcore series. If only the series had ran for no more than two seasons, it might have had the advantage of quality control over its parent series too.
But at this point in time, Dalek Empire stands as one of the best things Big Finish had ever produced. From its worlds so lush and tactile you can smell them, to its pulse-racing climax that never seems to relent, to the beautiful way Kalendorf and Susan realise before the moment of sacrifice that despite everything they’ve become beloved friends over the years. It has the kind of warm human interest and grasp on psychology that most current sci-fi shows cry out for. Sarah Mowat’s performance as Susan Mendes is raw enough to saw your face off. At her best, she’s so expressive in her vocals that the listener can almost read the expression on her face simply from how she speaks. When she delivers the message of rebellion to the masses you can almost see the look of vengeful fury on her face, and you know that if looks could kill, everyone in that crowd would be dead. Kalendorf is quite simply Doctor Who’s best character ever (just try to imagine Star Trek presenting the grumpy alien warrior as the leading hero without patronising such a character, let alone allowing him the authority to command his own ship and criticise the poor moral fibre of the human characters) and a dignified, well spoken vocal presence like Gareth Thomas makes it clear that Nick is partly aiming to channel Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds, and to really make alien invasions and apocalypse work as a poignant, sharp, landscape-building audio-musical experience, and in that he succeeds. Its sound design is superb, each leading character gets a moment to shine, there’s a sharp rawness to its first steps for Nicholas Briggs to work without a net, and he demonstrates a shrewd understanding of how to make audio work as a credible piece of action horror, with some of the best action sequences you’ll ever hear and a nowhere to run sense of a whole galaxy being shrunk under the grip of the Daleks.
Even for the jaded adult fan who is now far harder to shock, it returns the Daleks to their rightful place as the stuff of nightmares. The series is so relentless that it practically is a waking nightmare. The cliffhanger ending may provoke various reactions, for some a sense of being cheated of a proper conclusion, for others a sense of copping out of the Daleks’ moment of triumph (though personally I enjoyed seeing the Daleks get the ass kicking they’d long deserved), but it’s an audacious ending that makes it clear that things will never be the same again.
DALEK EMPIRE: PROJECT INFINITY
The first three installments in the Dalek Empire series told the story of Susan Mendes, an archaeologist who came to work for the Daleks, traveling the galaxy and spreading a message of hope to all Dalek slaves. They were about her internal struggles, and her final decision to lead her people to rebellion. They were about Alby Brook, desperately pursuing Suz in the hope of rekindling a love that had only started to build. They were about Kalendorf, Knight of Velyshaa, and his increased horror at Suz’s complicity with the Daleks. Flawed as they may have been, they formed the beginning, middle, and end of an interesting story.
Now we have a fourth part, that has nothing to do with any of that.
This isn’t to say, of course, that “Project Infinity” is a poor production, just that it jars with the first three in confusing ways, and serves more as the first part of an entirely new series than the last part of Dalek Empire. Throughout the first three parts, the Daleks were behind everything, seemingly anticipating each move that Suz made and interrogating her for explanations they already possessed. The explanations for this behavior were shrouded in mystery, leading this reviewer to expect a hugely elaborate plan. But then the Daleks successfully conquered the galaxy, and seemed to render the entire thing moot. True, Suz launched a slave rebellion, but even a large group of healthy, hopeful slaves wouldn’t stand a chance against two galaxies’ worth of Dalek might. But even this was turned on its head — Kalendorf suspects the Daleks are intentionally losing to the slaves, and he is proved correct.
Yet the final revelation is deeply disappointing. The elaborate charade of carting around the Angel of Mercy to start a slave rebellion, the intentional retreat against said rebellion — all was in service of distracting the Earth Alliance forces from noticing the Dalek Emperor’s ship flying toward the planet of Project Infinity. Huh? Given the nature of Project Infinity, and given that it’s fairly obvious that the Daleks would eventually have conquered the Milky Way with or without Susan Mendes, and given that they knew the nature and location of Project Infinity centuries before this invasion even started, what on earth was the point of the past three stories’ worth of plotting and maneuvering? The play never offers an answer to this question, and this is a major failing — normally, I don’t nitpick at plot holes, but considering that four discs’ worth of story are built around this one plot thread, I’m truly baffled about what happened.
Sure, we get the usual sci-fi trappings about the journey to stop the Daleks: Kalendorf, drumming up the support of his people in the wake of a seemingly easy victory; Alby, drunkenly depressed over the death of Suz and needing encouragement to once again take action; Mirana, revealed as a Dalek plant just as the heroes determine what’s going on; etc. It’s all presented competently (except for the specific scene in which Mirana is revealed as a Dalek plant: after determining where the Daleks are headed, and resolving to head there themselves, and then being shot by Mirana in response, it takes the characters a good 5-10 minutes to work out that yes, she’s working for the Daleks) but none of it stands out: we’re left with an indistinct space opera. The specific nature of Project Infinity is an interesting conceit, but it is put to uninteresting use: the Daleks want to join forces with more powerful alt-Daleks. Then, of course, it all ends on a cliffhanger — one which obligates the listener to invest in a completely different Dalek Empire series if they desire a resolution. I can imagine buyers were infuriated at the time.
But ultimately, none of it really [i]matters[/i] — this is a play almost totally devoid of subtext. The uplifting comparison of human hope against Dalek ruthlessness, featured so heavily in the first three parts, is completely absent in this episode. Instead we get a travelogue punctuated by (brilliantly-directed) battle sequences. And to make matters worse, there are strong suggestions that Suz is not dead after all — a revelation which would painfully invalidate the work of the first three installations.
Gareth Thomas steps to the fore in this play, and commands it in ways that Sarah Mowat and Mark McDonnell simply could not in the prior episodes. Kalendorf is a compelling character, one whose story could support its own series, and it is bittersweet to see him stand out in such a mediocre production. Without his motivation, Alby Brook isn’t particularly useful as a character, and though McDonnell does his best to keep Alby entertaining, it’s something of a dead-end street. Teresa Gallagher turns in a fine performance, even in the I-can’t-control-the-confusion-in-my-mind! possession scenes that have taken down Doctor Who performances in the past. Joyce Gibbs continues her series of strong performances, now revealed as a Seer, and Mowat’s brief appearances in flashback might be her strongest of the set. As always, the Dalek voices are superb. Writer-director Nicholas Briggs’ production is easily the best of the series: tightly directed, engrossingly-designed, and well-scored. I loved the final battle sequence, expertly related through battlefield communications.
Ultimately, “Project Infinity” is only tenuously connected to the first three plays in the first Dalek Empire series. As the introduction to the Dalek War series which followed, it appears to do a good job, but as the conclusion to the first series, it is rather poor. I had high expectations for the Dalek Empire series, but ultimately I found it plagued with the same issue present in most Nicholas Briggs plays: an inability to connect a series of solid elements into a cohesive whole. Yes, the character work is solid, yes, the plot is interesting, but over four parts Dalek Empire never manages to demonstrate any sort of consistency, either in theme or in composition. This is illustrated perfectly by “Project Infinity,” which is a somewhat-above-average scifi tale on its own but a baffling letdown for the series it concludes.
5/10