AZIMUTH DEPARTMENT OF RE-EDUCATION
REMINDER: TO ALL CITIZENS
There are no Daleks on Azimuth. There have never been Daleks on Azimuth.
Twenty years ago, the Daleks did not invade Azimuth. There was no war. There were no death camps. A man named ‘the Doctor’ did not help liberate Azimuth.
There are no such things as Daleks. They do not exist. There are no Daleks among us.
UPDATE: TO ALL CITIZENS
A strange blue box has not appeared in Monument Plaza. Off-worlders named ‘the Doctor’, ‘Elizabeth Klein’ and ‘Will Arrowsmith’ are not at large in the city. For your own safety, should you not see any of the above, report at once to the Department of Re-education, Azimuth Central.
NEVER REMEMBER
DALEKS AMONG US
In 1984, during Doctor Who’s 21st season, we were presented with “Resurrection of the Daleks,” a jumbled, confused mess of a story that thought mixing as many disparate elements together as possible was a good substitute for drama. If not for the (possibly) inadvertent connections to the fifth Doctor’s character arc, there would not have been much to recommend that story. So here we are, nearly thirty years later, and we have Alan Barnes channeling Eric Saward with “Daleks Among Us,” a jumbled, confused mess of a story that lacks the redeeming qualities of its predecessor.
Let’s start with a simple question: what, exactly, is this trilogy about? Is it about the Persuasion Machine, Kurt Schalk, and the quest to find and control them? Is it about Klein and who she really is? Is it about the Doctor getting to know his latest companions? It seems to be about all of these things, and yet it fails to provide a satisfactory answer to any of them. Start with Schalk and Persuasion, the thing the Doctor, Klein, and Will have apparently been pursuing for three stories. After focusing on it for most of the opening episode, it’s basically pushed to the side in lieu of Klein and the events on Azimuth – why? Wasn’t this the focus of the trilogy to this point? And the revelation of the Daleks’ plans for it is hilariously underwhelming: they’re going to use it to persuade everyone… to die! Ho-ho! Bet you didn’t see that one coming! Didn’t we just have a fourth Doctor story in which the Doctor confronts a Dalek about the increasing stupidity of these plans? Didn’t we do this on television? Hell, didn’t we do this back in “Jubilee?” The thing is, these Dalek schemes aren’t interesting anymore. We know they want to slaughter everyone that isn’t a Dalek. We’ve been over and over and over that point. “Daleks Among Us” shows us nothing new about them, nothing new in their interactions with the Doctor – nothing new whatsoever.
Worst of all, though, is the juxtaposition of the Daleks against actual Nazis. Since their very first appearance fifty damn years ago, the Daleks, with their passionate hatred for the unlike, have been a thinly veiled Nazi allegory, something that’s been repurposed throughout the history of Doctor Who to underscore their menace. But this is the first time I can remember that an author has been so unimaginative as to put the Daleks on the screen with the Nazis themselves. Even “Victory of the Daleks,” set in World War II and featuring Daleks, managed to avoid this obvious catastrophe. Look, here’s an actual Nazi leading a squad of Daleks? See how similar they are? See how he takes so readily to the word “exterminate?” There’s even a tasteless reference to Mengele to underscore what absolutely everyone who has ever seen Doctor Who already knows! But lo, the Daleks have betrayed him, and declare, “We are the true master race” before exterminating him! Boy, they sure showed him, didn’t they! I suppose I should have expected this from Alan Barnes, who has been Big Finish’s most crushingly unsubtle writer from the very beginning, but it boggles the mind that anyone thought this was a good idea.
Still, I’m sure this makes for some great drama with Klein, right? Wrong! The last Klein trilogy – the one that started with “A Thousand Tiny Wings” – was wonderful, putting an actual Nazi in the TARDIS with the Doctor and largely addressing the difficult questions such a pairing would naturally raise. But that series ended with Klein “rehabilitated,” and we even got a taste of her new life in “UNIT: Dominion” before this trilogy came about. Evidently, Big Finish felt that this was a situation that required further explanation, and so we get “Daleks Among Us.” Evidently, a time-traveling Nazi who travels in the TARDIS before being changed into an alternate universe version who works as UNIT’s scientific advisor isn’t enough. No, we also need to learn that Klein was a clone, apparently genetically engineered to operate the Persuasion Machine! This is neither dramatic nor interesting. This is a long-running series spinning its wheels and mining its own continuity in order to generate false conflict where none previously existed in a desperate attempt to extend its lifespan. This completely fails to live up to the standards set by the previous Klein trilogy – in fact, it makes you wonder if Barnes even understood that trilogy in the first place. And honestly, Kurt Schalk is Klein’s father? Really? Naturally, this explains many loose ends from the last two stories, elegantly tying togeth—oh, wait, no, it comes completely out of left field and doesn’t elegantly complete anything but my headache.
Further questions abound. Why is Davros in this story? What does he contribute? Why does he have a clone “child?” Sloppy foreshadowing of the Klein/Schalk relationship? Does he serve any function other than to lob one-liners back and forth with the Doctor? Isn’t he on the same level as the Dalek plan to invade Gallifrey in the aforementioned “Resurrection” – an unneeded distraction? And how about Will Arrowsmith? I enjoyed – and joined in with – the fan speculation about how this had to be a fake persona of some sort, because surely Big Finish wouldn’t seriously present us with a companion apparently modeled on Jeremy Fitzoliver. But no, it turns out that’s exactly what Big Finish did, as he’s as effete and ineffectual as ever in this story. “Now make sure you don’t tell the Doctor what I look like!” says Davros, and of course Will listens to him, but it doesn’t matter because the Doctor gets hauled in front of Davros about three minutes later anyway, and oh Christ why am I still listening to this?
The production is fine, I suppose. The pace, surprisingly, doesn’t flag, thanks largely to Ken Bentley’s kinetic direction, and the sound design and score from Wilfredo Acosta match the epic feel of the play. Overall, though, “Daleks Among Us” is a sloppy failure. It’s cluttered, it’s clumsy, it’s obvious, it entirely misses the point of its central character, and it doesn’t even know what it wants to be about. It’s not obnoxious or idiotic, which saves it from reaching the bottom of the barrel, but it’s still a failure. What is going wrong with the main range? Why are stories like this becoming more and more frequent?
Don’t bother.
3/10