An Hour of Who a Day: 09/13/21

September 13: "The Archive of Islos" / "The Sentinel of the Fifth Galaxy" / "Planet of the Mechanoids" / "The Deadly Ally" / "Day of Reckoning" (Daleks!) / "U.N.I.T. On Call"

The pandemic threw a lot of things into disarray and confusion, with lockdowns and strict safety procedures and complicated requirements regarding work and life and such. One thing, however, that didn't get subsequently delayed was a cross-platform project that BBC producer James Goss had been quietly working on: an ambitious multi-Doctor story called Time Lord Victorious, taking its overarching title from the tenth Doctor's declaration at the end of "The Waters of Mars". This involved the tenth Doctor taking on the mantle of Time Lord Victorious (y'know, the thing that they sidestepped when they got to The End of Time), while an enemy from the Dark Times of ancient Gallifrey appeared. There were a lot of tie-ins to this story (including comics, audios, books, and even little toy figurines), but for our purposes there was also a five-part webseries released on YouTube called Daleks!

I admittedly haven't followed the Time Lord Victorious storyline too closely (since it's very complicated; Goss was at one point suggesting that one way to experience it was to simply pick a character you were interested in and just check out those stories), so I don't really know how much this ties into the larger plot. But from what I can gather, Daleks! is a pretty early part of the arc, which means that there's not much foreknowledge required to appreciate this (probably by design, since this is just about the most easily accessible part of Time Lord Victorious). And so instead what we get is a fully CG animation, featuring the Daleks fighting a mysterious entity.

The most immediate thing you notice when watching this is that it's been rendered at 60 fps -- over twice as fast as standard Doctor Who. The other thing you notice is that, although they do a good job with what they've got, this isn't a prestige project but rather something they've put together with the resources they have available. Generally this doesn't matter too much, since the majority of what we see are Daleks and Mechanoids and other robots which don't need lots of fine-grained curves and such, but the times when such things are called for (such as the various explosions that happen, most of which resemble large overlayed geometric shapes of varying degrees of transparency), it does pull you out ever so slightly. In fact, the overall effect of this, combined with the smoothness of the motion and various camera moves, is one of watching an Xbox 360-era video game cutscene being rendered in real time by the game's engine. It's sometimes hard to shake this feeling, in fact.

But in terms of the actual storyline, Daleks! feels like it's something of an homage to the classic '60s Dalek comic strip. The most obvious tell is the Dalek Emperor, who looks not like the Emperor from either The Evil of the Daleks or Remembrance of the Daleks but instead like a Time War version of the TV Century 21 Emperor, complete with golden spherical dome. It's even got the same number of rows of Dalek bumps on its skirt. We also get a Dalek Strategist, resembling a Dalek from the very first story (no panels along the mid-section), and some other Dalek variants. The storyline also feels like it's paying tribute to the classic strip, with conniving Daleks that you're meant to sort of root for fighting strange new aliens, invading planets, and having battles with Mechanoids (the robots from The Chase that also were seen in the TV Century 21 strip). In theory this should be the best thing ever, with loads of Daleks and Mechanoids filling the screen while the Dalek Strategist gets to be devious while dealing with this mysterious Entity that comes from a different dimension and is determined to wipe out the Daleks. But at times it feels a bit unengaging. Now perhaps that's because there aren't really any humanoid faces throughout this (even the strip regularly gave us people to relate to while the Daleks carried out their plans), and so we're stuck looking at various robots and robot-esque Daleks for over 65 minutes, with little in the way of emotion to engage with.

But it also sometimes feels as if Daleks! is playing things slightly safe. We don't get crazy huge machines or much in the way of counterplots from, say, a small band of people trying to defeat the Daleks, and so in that respect it doesn't quite feel like the comic. What we get is interesting in terms of watching the Daleks try to outmaneuver both the Mechanoids and the Entity, but it's lacking a certain flair. Watching the Dalek Strategist put its plan into motion to, say, trap the Mechanoids in a position where they have to aid the Daleks is interesting, but when it only involves a small handful of Mechanoids actually doing anything beyond flying and spinning in the background, it feels a bit like a missed opportunity. And the fact that this mysterious Entity pursuing the Daleks is never explained satisfactorily also leads to a vague sense of dissatisfaction. And occasionally the dialogue is silly ("The damage is incalculable," one of the Islos Archivian robots states. "Calculate it!" the Chief Archivian commands), but Daleks! doesn't lean into this purple prose the way you might hope, so it sometimes devolves into Daleks and Mechanoids stating dry facts at each other.

So I dunno. Perhaps this works better in the context of Time Lord Victorious, with the Dalek Emperor and Strategist both getting more to do there, but on its own Daleks! never quite reaches the heights it's aiming for. I can appreciate the craft that went into making it -- this could have easily been excruciating to watch, and it's never that -- but the overall storyline is brought down by its lack of ambition; it's true that their reach doesn't exceed their grasp, but you kind of wish it had. There's nothing particularly wrong with Daleks!, and indeed some might find it extremely enjoyable (and, judging by the YouTube comments, there's more than a few such people). But for me, it's just a touch uninvolving.

But before we go, we've got a Lockdown video to mention: "U.N.I.T. On Call", which was actually released between the first and second parts of Daleks! in response to the second UK Lockdown in November 2020.²⁹⁷ This one's a little more openly heartfelt than the previous Lockdown videos, concerned less with expanding our knowledge of Doctor Who and more with chatting with the third Doctor, the Brigadier (both admirably played by Jon Culshaw), and Jo Grant (hooray! Katy Manning's back!), as they reassure us that things won't be like this forever here in 2020 and to keep focusing on the positive and not to lose hope. It's a worthwhile message.

²⁹⁷ Actually, there were a couple more Lockdown videos released around this time, but one's a fanciful rendition of Doctor Who's 57th Anniversary credits (which at one point features every credited actor to appear on the show) and the other is a Lockdown Choir version of Abigail's song from "A Christmas Carol" -- so as before, although they're well done, neither is a new narrative.