The year is 1987, and Britain is divided. In Bradford, strikers are picketing and clashing with the police. In the City of London, stockbrokers are drinking champagne and politicians are courting the super-rich. The mysterious media mogul Alek Zenos, head of the Zenos Corporation, is offering Britain an economic miracle. His partners wish to invest – and their terms are too good to refuse.
While the Doctor investigates Warfleet, a new computer game craze that is sweeping the nation, Mel goes undercover to find out the truth about Zenos’s partners.
The Daleks have a new paradigm. They intend to conquer the universe using economic power. The power of the free market!
WE ARE THE DALEKS
After the “Locum Doctors” trilogy to mark their 200th monthly Doctor Who release, Big Finish made a conscious effort to return to standalone, accessible storytelling. With a years-long, complicated Sylvester McCoy arc now solidly in the past, Jonathan Morris returns to season 24 with “We Are the Daleks,” a story pairing the Seventh Doctor and Mel that is very much of its era.
I often criticize Big Finish’s Doctor Who output for lacking depth, but that is certainly not the case with “We Are the Daleks.” Set in 1987 in the latter years of the Thatcher government, the story casts the Daleks as arch-capitalists, getting their claws into UK (and therefore Earth) society by promising favorable trade deals. Of course, their ultimate plan is still to control the population and transform them into slaves, but the rhetoric is familiar: promising full employment, eliminating people who rely on public assistance, “gentrification” of slums, and so forth. It’s never explicitly stated which party Dalek collaborator Celia Dunthorpe MP (Mary Conlon) belongs to, but it doesn’t take a political insider to figure it out. Given the politics of the show, and especially the politics of the show in the Cartmel era, it’s no surprise that “We Are the Daleks” is strongly against this “free market above all” philosophy, but Morris still tries to balance it out with a brief scene in which Celia articulates conservative arguments and the Doctor, oddly, isn’t able to properly respond.
The story also engages with online gaming and drone warfare, conflating them in “Warfleet,” a Dalek-crafted MMO that puts unknowing players in control of actual remote drone ships far across the galaxy, using them to destroy Thal and other rebels. While Morris is to be commended for ignoring the easy (and often lazy) stereotype of gamers as unwashed layabouts, the political element is clunky. There are some hints of commentary about how drone warfare dehumanizes the opposition and makes killing easier, but the theme takes an odd turn in the final episodes, shifting instead to the Dalek argument that humans are naturally murderous and quite similar to Daleks, deep down. This is where the title of the story comes from, but the argument is quickly dismissed without serious engagement. Still, the fact that it is there at all is quite welcome.
As a drama, meanwhile, “We Are the Daleks” is quite good. I like the little pre-credits sting, and I like how the story jumps right from there into the Doctor and Mel already infiltrating and investigating. McCoy stories often avoid the traditional explore-and-get-captured format and are often better for it. And while there is some repetitive journeying back and forth to Skaro, Morris gives each trip a new justification. The fourth episode throws a major wrench into the works, giving events a panicked feeling, and that makes for a gripping listen. It’s also interesting to have a story set on a rebuilt Skaro, one that isn’t a war-torn radioactive wasteland, and to have the knowledge that the Doctor will soon be destroying the entire planet. There are also a few subtle continuity nods to “Remembrance of the Daleks” – the suitability of children to Dalek battle computers being a big one.
The production is similarly successful. Ken Bentley is reliable as ever in the director’s chair, and Wilfredo Acosta’s sound design is dramatic and believable. Overall, “We Are the Daleks” is a strong release with a lot to say. Sylvester McCoy is great, and Bonnie Langford once again shows why their pairing had the potential to be so successful. Well worth a purchase.
Highly recommended.
8/10