Kalendorf is ready to risk destroying the galaxy to defeat the Daleks but even if he does, can he be sure they would be gone forever?
Kalendorf is ready to risk destroying the galaxy to defeat the Daleks but even if he does, can he be sure they would be gone forever?
Review of Series 2
“Never trust a man of noble birth. They’ll sell you all down the river for the sake of honour”
A sequel series that manages to easily hold its own against its predecessor. It’s more polished than Dalek Empire, but not in a way that detracts from its edge. In some ways Dalek War is a more subtle series than Dalek Empire. It has moments of nail-biting intensity and brutality yes, but in a manner that flows more smoothly with the rest and doesn’t make for bumpy listening. Infact the violence here is altogether more sensual. It continues with the relentless, spiralling descent progression of Dalek Empire, starting on a hopeful note and then goes dramatically downhill from there in implosive and intense, and ultimately deeply satisfying fashion. The story begins with the humans apparently on the brink of victory, and then skips ahead several decades to find that the humans still haven’t broken any new ground.
But in shrinking its canvas to a more microcosmic, claustrophobic, base under siege, it actually manages to create a wider tapestry of the greater galaxy. Feeling almost like a completely different series. It’s the kind of series you can become so immersed in that all disbelief is suspended. Quite simply it implies its horrors more poetically, through metaphor, and in forms that are charmingly familiar to us fans.
The Vaarga plants and Robomen are also a retro addition (much like the alternate Daleks are a colourful homage to the vibrant 1960’s Dalek movies), but are actually better suited to this story as a poignant metaphor for the murderous monstrosities that war turns ordinary men into. The windy sand dunes setting of the final chapter, brings a vision of a galaxy literally brought to dust, which owes a lot to Logopolis’ decay imagery and is just as haunting, particularly when married with Kalendorf’s crumbling sanity. The Daleks are presented as a technological virus, placing control discs in people’s minds and decimating eco-systems at their root, which creates a sense of technology and nature forcibly melded together in a way that accelerates everything’s mutual rust and decay at the root. Indeed the use of mind analysis discs is a very shrewd and compatible inclusion for an audio CD play. Likewise the chilling moment where Susan is mind-raped by the Emperor Dalek will conjure memories of Kinda (and Sarah Mowat’s scream in that scene is blood curdling). The latter homage is appropriate because this is very much a Buddhist story. It’s the tale of a woman who lived in fear but died with courage and was reborn as someone far braver and determined to make amends for the sins of their past life. If you had skipped the first series and started here, then Susan’s confrontation with the Daleks where she shows a brave willingness for martyrdom is enough to make it immediately clear why Susan is such a beloved figure of hope to the galaxy. In Buddhist tradition Susan gains empowerment against the Daleks by her willingness to die again, which for the course of Chapter Two, puts the Daleks in the amusingly unlikely role of Samaritans- something for which they have no aptitude.
It’s also the tale of the tide of humanity and a choice between two equally bumpy streams for mankind to flow down (which is why the parallel universe angle is so perfect in emphasising the theme of choice and consequence), and what is most brave about the story is that it doesn’t cop-out of showing humanity go down that bumpy route and leaving us wondering if maybe the Mentor was the one to follow if we wanted an easier time of it. Infact even in Dalek Empire III, it feels as if humanity is still learning the ‘better the devil you know’ lesson the hard way.
But otherwise the Doctor Who iconography is subverted in an ethos that bears little resemblance to its parent series. Unlike the cozy tales of the Doctor’s success in averting war in Frontier in Space or The Monster of Peladon, the point of Dalek Empire is that there’s no easy way of getting pulled out of this war, and these things must be seen through to the end, and in a series where for once we can see the long term consequences that Doctor Who rarely showed. The morality of Genesis of the Daleks is turned firmly on its head as we see the so-called alliance against a common foe turn into a power game of exploitation and subjugation. Kalendorf is our hero, but he succeeds by shady methods and doing terrible things that not even McCoy’s Doctor would do.
When Eric Saward tried to address the naivety of Doctor Who, and point out the fact that the Doctor’s aversion to violence and peaceable methods wouldn’t work in real world conflicts, he only succeeded in turning a cheap and cheerful show into something cheap and nasty. As one poster on Outpost Gallifrey appropriately summed up, in refusing to play the game, Eric made Doctor Who as entertaining as watching a heckler spoil a magic act by shouting ‘it’s up his sleeves’. This however is its own series and plays by its own rules, and there’s a grand plan that makes the deaths and misery more than just contrived smut. It easily shows up how gratuitous and vacuous most of the mid-80’s body-count stories really were, and just how frequently they relied on the lamest plot device copouts, whether it be the convenient Hexacromite gas or Movellan plague that really could have been broken out at any point in the story and saved the day if the Doctor wasn’t so shockingly negligent (to say nothing of New Who’s deus ex machina endings to every season finale). Here the violence and horror really makes the urgency matter, and draws the situation’s desperation to the point where whatever the solution is, it has to mean something inspirational and hopeful. When mankind’s military and technological might is exhausted, our heroes are forced to go back to basics and Kalendorf must use his natural gifts and an ancient strategy to turn the Daleks’ transmission network against them.
Unlike the first series which was thought up before they even got the Doctor Who licence, Dalek War is very clearly a post-9/11 series where the Mentor’s rule of absolutes is all too reminiscent of Dubya, the sight of a terraformed Jupiter is as shocking, incongruous and unprecedented as the collapse of the towers, the disaster with the Varga plants is a blatant statement of the stupidity of sending our troops into Iraq. Morli’s proclamations of unquestioning loyalty and willingness to die or kill in the service of the Mentor are a deeply tragic representation of the indoctrination of young suicide bombers. However Kalendorf’s overall battle to retake the Solar System and break the Dalek fort are inspired more by the events of Stalingrad than anything, right down to the unexpectedly harrowing moment when the front line Daleks’ requests for permission to retreat from a hopeless fight are denied by the pitiless Dalek Supreme, and we can’t help but empathise with the Daleks as they’re condemned to death, panicking in their shells but unable to disobey their orders, paralysed by their obedience and inability to make choices for their survival. Every bit of praise levelled at the revamped Battlestar Pedantica for being politically potent and brutally honest about war and the best sci-fi series since Babylon 5 is true of Dalek Empire.
The final scene between Kalendorf and the Mentor is strangely tender, like the prodigal son returning to his forgiving mother. It’s appropriate that the climax should take place in the Mentor’s universe. And ironically it’s the Mentor who gets to be the voice of moral outrage over Kalendorf’s destructive warmongering. His inability to properly grieve over his fallen comrades, coupled with his epitaph of how the Dalek war consumed and wasted his last years “My time is passed, I’m already just part of history” is justification enough for doing this series to really show what the unseen Dalek wars were like on an emotional level, and really provokes the question of how the Doctor could ever have believed all this could have led to a greater good.
As with the first series, the characterisation is superb and deeply organic. The utopia-minded Mentor matches the psychology of a compulsively-driven control freak to a tee, to the point where it seems like she honestly can’t stop herself from being the tyrant she is. Her ability to read Kalendorf’s mind is clearly a mirror of Davros’ ability to smell Gharman’s treachery, except that it defines her just as much as an empathising and concerned friend, as a shrewd enemy. Thus her own Daleks are an extension of herself that instantly convey a hopeful, forward looking ideal of total pascification and serenity, and this makes this factional Dalek war into a truly idealistic conflict. It would have been nice to see her character return in one of the Unbound stories. More importantly Kalendorf’s betrayal is shocking, but in such a way that it’s also completely believable and in character, in that everything you knew about him before leaves you in no doubt that he always was capable of this and he’ll see it to the end (again in a way that shows up Eric Saward’s insincere character assassinations of the Doctor for the cheap shock tactics they are). Indeed it’s evidence of the sublime characterisation of Kalendorf that we can envision his last years spent in penance on Veleyshaa without this ever being stated.
This is very much a vision of the future where human beings are under such constant pressure, pushed beyond endurance that they’re forced to become blinkered and bullishly unstopping mechanised workaholic control freaks who can see only their noble ideals and goals and can never look back upon the damage done or stop to empathise with anyone, and what makes this story so modern and effective is that one look at our work-dominated, crisis-driven, aggressively fast paced modern society confirms that this future has already arrived.
It’s partly because of the way each character is properly defined and immediately engaging, and the way each scene stands up well by itself, but it’s actually possible to follow and enjoy Dalek War without having heard Dalek Empire beforehand. Though for followers of the whole range, the very mention of worlds like Lopra Minor and Vega VI will no doubt provoke memories of the massacres that took place there, as if those worlds are still haunted by the ghosts of the dead. Infact with the parallel universe thread and the presence of the Mentor, the Daleks are redefined as a technological inevitability that must exist in every universe, whatever their origins, firmly allowing the series to stand alone in its own right, unsupported by and liberated from the greater Doctor Who continuity, in much the same way as City of Death can. It’s accessible in a way that makes it truly timeless. This may be a defunct quality for a niche range, but it effectively means that you can appreciate the series in its own right, divorced of any tainted feelings about Doctor Who.
All in all, as a two season miniseries, Dalek Empire and Dalek War make an absolute masterpiece, a work of perfection and a craft of love. The final conclusion is hard to beat in any case, and really they shouldn’t have bothered, it was never going to get better than this. Nick’s liner notes hints that he had an instinct that ending the story on a high would have been wiser than carrying it on till it lost all its potency, and it’s a shame he didn’t heed that instinct. Much like how 1980 would have been an ideal end point for Doctor Who, it’d be nice to pretend Dalek Empire had simply ended here before it all inevitably went downhill.
DALEK EMPIRE II: DALEK WAR
CHAPTER FOUR
It often takes a series several episodes to find its feet, and several more to hit its first home run. The Dalek Empire series bears this out — while it took until the second series, Dalek War, to stand upon firm ground, it took until the final chapter, Chapter Four, to produce the first truly brilliant play of the run. After three episodes of mostly plot-oriented sci-fi action, Nicholas Briggs abruptly changes focus, telling the entire final chapter in flashback and recasting the entire series as a parable about humanity and the freedom to choose. In Kalendorf’s final, brilliant scene with the Mentor, we see one of Doctor Who’s central themes revisited in spinoff form: the true wonder of humanity is its unwillingness to submit to control, and its endless fight for survival in the face of insurmountable odds. We see Suz kill Alby in desperation, a shocking moment that stands in keeping both with the characters and what the play seeks to say about desperation. And the “present-day” sequences with Siy Tarkov (Steven Elder) and Saloran Hardew (Karen Henson) elevate the play to its greatest heights. The events of the war are reshaped into legend, with Kalendorf now standing as a mythical Bringer of Death. The Daleks are now seen as a faceless enemy, threatening humanity from a faraway place — and now that we understand that these Dalek/human conflicts are regular occurrences, we can view the Daleks as a force for change, a means through which humanity can rediscover its purpose and driving force. Chapter Four is amazing stuff, arguably the best Nicholas Briggs play I’ve heard to date, and the mere fact of its production justifies the Dalek Empire series as a whole.
10/10