An Hour of Who a Day: February 13: "Evolution of the Daleks"

Now "Evolution of the Daleks" -- that's a title! Shame about the rest of the episode, though.

All right, that's not fair. There's a lot that this episode does right -- the "evolution" mentioned in the title is particularly interesting, and the suggestion that the Daleks might in fact dramatically change their way of life is fascinating. "Do you trust [Dalek Sec]?" Laszlo asks the Doctor. "I know that one man can change the course of history," the Doctor replies. "Right idea in the right place at the right time, it's all it takes. I've got to believe it's possible." In fact, for a while it looks like we might actually get a fundamental shift in the nature of the Daleks (or, alternatively, we're waiting for Dalek Sec to reveal his true colors and show that he's duped the Doctor -- but either way, drama), but the supreme nature of the unmodified Daleks takes over and we get a version of the original plan (make humans that are actually Daleks, even though they look externally human). Still, the idea was fascinating for a while, and it's neat that they decided to push ahead with it as long as they did. There's also an interesting subthread about the Doctor seeming to want to die (twice he basically orders the Daleks to kill him and braces for the shots that never come), as if he's finally decided that he's had enough and doesn't want to keep dealing with Daleks anymore.

The problem, however, lies in the sheer amount of technobabble that writer Helen Raynor (hey, our first female writer for the show since Rona Munro and Survival!) has to employ to get all her pieces in the right positions. The DNA splicing between humans and Daleks is bad enough (and what, exactly, makes Dalek DNA spiky?), but fine, maybe there's some special chemical/technique we just don't about that would make this work. But it's the moment where the Doctor is struck by a gamma radiation lightning bolt which passes his DNA down the cables to all the waiting would-be Daleks that makes you just throw your hands up in despair. Unknown techniques are one thing, but electricity transmitting DNA sequences? Those are two different things we know enough about to realize that they're completely incompatible. That's a piece of technobabble too far, and it's so blatant a move to get us to a deus ex machina ending that it's incredibly frustrating as a result.

That's a shame, because for large chunks this story works surprisingly well. We get some exploration of a new direction for the Daleks, we get some nice period stuff in New York, and a lot of the acting is top-notch. But the resolution does overshadow everything, weakening the final product. "Daleks in Manhattan" / "Evolution of the Daleks" is likely to be remembered more for that than any of the moves in its favor.