Hey Everyone, Just to give a heads up, I had quite a headache trying to get this through copyright. If there are sections with a bit of video that isn't directly related to what I'm talking about, it's most likely one of the edits I had to make to try and remove copyright claims. For the same reason, a lot of the reference clips used have been heavily cut down. This is definitely a compromised version of what I initially wanted to release, but hopefully it is still enjoyable.
You have some great quotes, especially "Dammit, Steven!", "The Slitheen were an over the top charicature and then we had Boris Johnson" and "Whatever the Jodie Whittaker era was supposed to be." I was also very excited to see the show's new direction Post-Moffatt and the disappointment was obscene.
Omg finally a video essay made for me and my kind. I think the major flaw of the daleks is their obsession with being the supreme power of the universe and realising they have no plan after succeeding what they want to do to the universe. Also I think we just need a more terrifying desing.
@@captainramius5047Their goal is only to kill everything they think isn't a perfect Dalek. They're irrational, hateful xenophobes They probably think their plan for if they ever win is simply to live out their lives in a perfect society, but really they'll just turn on each other, until only one miserable Dalek is left
They understand that the destination isn't the point, and that they likely won't ever fully succeed. If they did, there's a few things that might happen. They either: Go into a form of "stasis" or zero-sum themselves; Redefine the laws of reality itself, then see what happens when letting the universe run under those conditions, and even test different conditions on themselves, trying out things like allowing themselves to have individuality and all emotions etc., then making it such that each time the universe is reborn, they will always develop somehow, becoming as much of a natural constant as gravity and temperature gradients; Create enemies to fight and test themselves until they evolve into pure energy, transcending physical forms; Fully rewrite history until only they ever existed, then eventually redevelop back into Kaleds over an infinite number of iterations by which they realize their ultimate goals are flawed; Destroy each other until even they no longer exist, leaving reality completely uninhabited by even microbial, quantum, or energy-based life or intelligence. The last one is highly unlikely. They are geniuses, and are aware they've fought each other before, and will always survive civil conflict and go on to avoid repeating it. They learn and change, even with their obsession with "purity." Regardless, things always default back to equilibrium, no matter what. The universe would not stay horrible 100% of the time if they won, as eventually THEY would change into something more balanced and better, and the cycle would repeat, every facet reasserting itself. Eternity, perpetuity etc. is the great power of all things, and once you start to fathom that, you'll see that in the "end" whoever wins doesn't matter.
here's what could of made it better. don't have it be humans fighting the recon dalek. have it be silurians, ice warriors, and venusians. in a pre-human society.
To be fair to Chibnall, I see what he was trying to do. Seeing a Dalek outside its shell and at its most vulnerable still kicking ass, that's a good idea in concept. He also fixed my main issue with Moffat, which is that Daleks never killed anyone. Chibnall at least understood that Dalek episodes have body counts. Unfortunately, any time he built the Dalek up as a threat, he immediately did something else to humiliate it, like the Doctor blocking a Dalek gun with her fucking sonic, as if she's ever been capable of that, and as if the Daleks wouldn't have made their weaponary immune to their greatest enemy's most commonly used tool.
I agree, Resolution and Eve of the Daleks both have quite interesting ideas that give a new perspective on the daleks. It's a shame that the great ideas end up getting weighed down by the writing and plot conveniences because there genuinely is quite a good story somewhere in there. But hey, hopefully we will see them being well utilised under Russel T Davies
Oh, I hate the Chibnall era in totality but I have to hand it to the man, the idea of a lone Dalek mutant hijacking and ‘driving’ an actual human ‘meat suit’ and then subsequently heading to a storage site to recover a Dalek weapon (and maybe some other misc. Dalek tech), and then invading a scrapyard to rebuild a makeshift travel machine out of metal junk was actually significantly better than Robert Shearman’s ‘Dalek’ I’d say. ‘Resolution’ was possibly the first episode / serial since ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’ to emphasize that a Dalek mutant in lieu of its casing was not merely physically dangerous but also possessed of equal cunning and guile. Some weird story elements needed ironing out (that ‘four guardians’ thing and the mutant ‘teleporting’ back together was unnecessary, even though I liked the idea of Daleks having an affinity for ultraviolet), and Chibb’s dialogue was as clunky as ever . . . But the locations were amazing and that dawn Dalek _vs._ Army firefight amid the wind-farm towers and pine forest was the highlight of the episode - something about the fundamentally northern rural nature of this episode just really popped on screen! I don’t even particularly mind the ‘sonic laser signal blocking’ thing; after all, if the Doctor is going to perennially revamp the sonic screwdriver then it makes sense that it’d be able to stonewall a Dalek that isn’t even firing on all cylinders yet. This is the Doctor after all - of course a Dalek-proof sonic screwdriver, to whatever extent possible, is going to be required! Even then it didn’t take the creature longer than a few seconds to overcome it, so . . . 🤷♂️
I know this video isn’t really about Moffatt, but I do think his era of Daleks is interesting to discuss. I’m actually a fan of his era and defend a lot of his episodes, but honestly Moffatt kinda reads to me as someone who knows the Daleks are an iconic part of the show but doesn’t really like or understand them. I’m actually glad his finales do t use Daleks as the main threat as that was getting kind of repetitive, but he really only had two good uses of the Daleks and that’s in The Big Bang and Into the Dalek. The Big Bang just uses a partially restored Dalek to terrorize the group during the episode so there is some active threat, but the Dalek is at least threatening in this episode. Into the Dalek is good cause it uses the Daleks to explore the Doctor’s own hatred towards the Daleks. Victory is just bland land Asylum is just bad, like it should have been the Cyberman episode and was only created to celebrate 50 years of Daleks. The Magicians appearance and Witches Familiar could have been a good Davros episode exploring the Doctor’s relationship with his old enemy and even show Davros in a more sympathetic light. The best scene is Doctor and Davros laughing together as Davros is on his death bed (the modern series hasn’t really screwed up Davros like the classic series did). The Dalek sewers are dumb and the Daleks just aren’t threatening in this episode (also who is the snake man?). Moffatt just couldn’t commit to killing off Davros, but at least he redeemed himself by doing the same thing Missy but actually committing to the redemption and killing her off (Chibnall’s the one who brought them back without mentioning previous incarnations).
I think that the best way to do Resolution would have been if it started with a Dalek crashing to earth and, this time, breaking as it did so. It got burried in the dirt and years later gets uncovered by the same two people whos names I can't remember because of how useless they are. Then the Dalek itself gets revived in a somewhat similar way as, like you said, having it so you cant even stay safe around a dead Dalek is a good idea. But, its not UV lights, it'd be something else, not sure what. This reserection would give off a unique electrical signal and the Doctor goes to investigate, excited because its something new. Her and her companions look around but the creature has dissapeared and so has the woman. This is because it has stolen her body, but in doing so essentially killed her, using her as a puppet. The Doctor finds some of the goo and analyses it in the TARDIS, but when she realises it's a Dalek she doesnt tell her companions and then sends them home so she can search for the Dalek on her own, as shes scarer they'd get killed by the Dalek. This gives us a way to have the Ryan and his Dad's arc, and also give them more time to grow more. And, with the Dalek itself, it'd be doing something like what you said, it'd be swapping bodies to get to higher ranks so it can gain access to the most powerful radar station on earth, so it can call the Daleks to earth to rescue ut and destroy Earth. The Doctor would be trying to find out where the Dalek is, but we wouldnt dwell on her much as theres not much to show, and we'd need more time with Ryan and his dad as well as the Dalek. The episode wouldn't have the Dalek get it's armour back, instead it'd be stuck hijacking bodies the entire episode, not just because it needs to get access to somewhere with lots of security, but also because the bodies decay quicker with the Dalek on it. The Doctor realises she needs her companions after a short arc of her own, so she gets their help, Ryan bringing his dad to try and reach out to him, to get him to understand him. The Doctor tries to reason with the Dalek, but when it refuses to listen, the Doctor then uses her Sonic to blow up some of the servers, noting how she has had to set nack human soace travel development by a few years to stop the Dalek. The Dalek gets angry and runs into the TARDIS, planning to use it to get back to Skaro. The Doctor and the companions all try to stop the Dalek but, as they can't get close to the Dalek in risk of it latching into them, they instead have to just start pressing random buttons and pulling random levers. This leads the TARDIS to land by a black hole, but thr Dalek believed it had landed correctly, so it goes to open the doors but realises just as its about to. Ryan is then put in danger as the Dalek goes to steal his body but Ryans dad runs and holds onto the Dalek, pushing it out of the door into the black hole, going with the Dalek, dying saving his son. Thats how I'd do the episode instead. Theres still issues here with mine, but this is the best i can do rn, lol
Given how often Chris Chibnall writes father figures and resolving generational trauma (Brian, Graham, Aaron, Dan) it really makes me wonder what his relationship with his own father is like...
“Doesn’t realise she’s the Doctor” this is because as they say in the episode it’s one of the first Daleks to leave Skaro, before they really widely knew the Doctor. This however makes the episode even dumber because the Dalek depicted in the painting of the past is clearly a time war era bronze Dalek and the recreated casing is clearly based on this design. Idk why he did this it would’ve been easy to just draw a 60s Dalek and make the new casing more classic-esc but idk guess that effort wasn’t worth it. Also despite being an early Dalek the mutant itself is far more powerful than any shown before in the new series, as you mentioned it hacks the TaRDiS which is ridiculous for a Dalek from allegedly before the Dalek Invasion of Earth timeline wise- they hadn’t even cracked time-travel themselves yet
I was debating about adding a line about them saying it was one of the first to leave skaro, but given how blatant they are with showing the time war era Dalek in the picture, like you mentioned it just makes the episode feel dumber and like it hasn't done its homework. Also, it's been a while since I watched the episode, but I do seem to remember it having a reaction to when 13 tells it she's the doctor after it scans her. But the whole thing is pretty wibbly wobbly timey wimey in about the most nonsensical way possible 😅
I mostly agree with this more or less, but I think you were forgetting that the Dalek shell in Resolution is made out of scrap (somehow), not a fully functional shell of dalekanium
Great video! a really good idea for a case study that highlights the flaws of the Chibnall era whilst also doing justice to the most iconic Doctor Who villian. Would definitely like to see more Doctor Who content in the future. Sorry you had to cut out so much footage and that you it meant you had to compromise on the end product. Looking forward to watching more of your vids future!
I do admit the ideas presented in resolution for the scout/reconaisance dalek does have potential, just not in the way Resolution itself takes advantage of, maybe even go in a venom direction with it, though i feel that would only work if its either a mutated dalek or a host sympathetic to its cause as well as having a death wish.
When I was watching it to review for this video, it kind of surprised me how many interesting ideas Resolution touched on and then didn't use. I don't know if they should revisit the concepts, but there were definitely a lot of ideas there, with each one being enough for an episode on its own. I guess that's kind of the the problem with Resolution, it has all of these ideas but only uses them for plot convenience rather than developing them as interesting concepts.
indeed, if it does get revisited as a concept, it would probably need to do some retconning to explain why such a machine was felled so easily, i do remember thinking before hand it was one of the older models, then the historical depiction in the deus ex machina book (you'd think something like that wouldve been kept hidden, then later declassified or something) showed dalek casing that looks kinda similar to the current Bronze Time War/RTD era dalek@@banquo
Oddly this video sums up chibnall well. He's a Soap Opera writer. He's used to drawn out series with low costs and overheads where he can spend 10 episodes on one plot and everything is character driven. His historical pieces always worked well, but as soon as he tried to add Sci fi tropes it all fell apart!
It’s always the same you get some amazing big brain 🧠 stories that expand on the terror of the daleks or the surprising depth of their tragic lives as machine creatures aaaand then it’s back to bad guy shows up says “exterminate “ blows up and the doctor making fun of them and not taking them seriously 😒. Also we never to this day have had a dalek live long season we get emperors strategists fucking time strategists supreme daleks and they all just kind of die off usually in the exact same couple of episodes they appear in Also they have never won ever any victory they have had has usually been totally reversed or the consequences don’t matter in the end I don’t know 🤷♀️ how the daleks can survive the writers ✍️ constantly trying to assassinate their characters it’s like they want them to be written out but keep them because they’re too iconic to just remove
The recon Dalek laughing is positively the most awful thing in Dalek history, as well as Clara's speech being conformed by the Dalek casing. As we know, the Daleks are genetically engineered to be the way they are, they simply wouldn't say things out of line with that, so the casing needs no filter function. And a Dalek laughing is simply out of the mental ability of a Dalek. Hardcoded since inception, the speech they display in later episodes should simply not be possible.
I think one of the top three problems with Resolution is that it's heavily dependent on the audience filling in the gaps it didn't bluntly state through assumptions. The closest analogy I have to describing this episode in a funny way is this --> if any of ya'll seen that meme/reddit or twitter post bout how a puzzle company uses the same stamp for multiple puzzles so it ended up resulting in people being able to make low-effort van-go art; well this episode is effectively the puzzle image designer presenting four potential new puzzles to the board already stamped out with the same stamp and all the images are invisible except when you shine a expensive blacklight on it, the board member assembling the four puzzles and the designer shins the blacklight on it to reveal the mess the board made. . the first two being best described as TV static (the prolog and representation of the episode) but a lot more irritating to the eyes somehow, the third one being somehow Choo Choo Charles (the Dalek part of the episode), and whatever remained as the fourth puzzle (the companion part of the episode), with the latter two being somewhat comprehensible. *OKAY!!!!* That took a lot longer than I thought it would ta type that out so I'll just skip towards the assumptions we had to make for the Dalek. 1: Sense it's a recon-scout Dalek was not a standard Dalek Drone it was likely not given a combat focused casing, there for a helluva lot weaker than what we're used too; but was also granted a range of abilities standard Daleks are not given to make it more effective outside its casing if it was ever destroyed. 2: The fact that three and maybe more armies from across the globe was called up to stop this one scout Dalek most likely meant that even in a Dalek's equivalent of civilian plate body armor to their mech suits for their actual infantry, it was whooping humanity's collective ass so much that this prototype of U.N.I.T. *needed* to be made in order to finally stop it, and when they did they weren't taking ANY chances of it coming back, so they split it into three pieces and took those pieces to as far away corners of the world as they could; bla bla bla, ya get the point. 3: During that acid trip of what's her name and the mutant, the Dalek must've undoubtedly saw that we humans just have our military capability plainly available to pretty much anyone with a basic internet connection, so using it's designed advantages to gather information it scowered the internet for the best bet to find its casing pieces and went from there. 4: It stuck with her because not only did it likely over hear those two stating that they have a relationship with each other and used her as a constant hostage negotiation chip, but was also trying to lower the trail of bodies it was leaving behind so that The Doctor or the local cops won't show up and dome the girl. 5: Dan and his lover, what's her name, were probably hired by whatever dumbass government or corporation managed to dismantled U.N.I.T. to uncover any possible remnants of the organization for their own benefit and thus was allowed to have awareness of certain classified info not available to the wider public. 6: The explosion we see happen as the scout was exterminating that battalion of British troops was likely from the missiles it was shown to have a few seconds earlier and used to take out the tank after it exterminated that battalion; Daleks were already shown to let humans pepper their casing with bullets to show them that they're weapons are useless as a intimidation tactic so that's probably why it stopped for a few moments when it killed the first guy; and the stray bullet at the end of the shootout was probably from one of the soldiers using the last of their strength to try and kill it. 7: The scouts scrap-casing was melted so easily cause it wasn't a normal microwave oven, but an uber charged one, yet another thing on the surprisingly long list of details that a lotta fans seems to've missed, like for example the reason why Old Who Daleks got their Dalekanium asses kicked by Earth bullets and a baseball bat is because the bullets fired from the gun shootin at the Dalek were bullets specifically designed to penetrate the casing's armor called Bastic Bullets, and the baseball bat was heavily enhanced by the Hand of Omega. Alright this comment is way to damn long at this point as I'll stop right here, I think I made my point and I'm very sorry if this was a complete waste of your time, also yes I'm aware that there're several misspelled words here, I wasn't given the best education on how to properly spell words growin up and usin Google ta help is as useful as flat-printed braille is to a blind person. Have a nice day everyone.
Why does Chibnall just forget that the Daleks and Time Lord's fought a war. Even if you say the Daleks in resolution are pre time war Daleks, which is possible I guess as what the time war was is never really established(though that would he a cool episode and now since cannon doesn't matter you could even do it without breaking continuity). But still it's frustrating that everyone just forgets what happened. Tbh someone should write an episode that explains like a time-line for the Daleks. Hopefully explaining at what point in Dalek history events occur, so we can know things like why the Daleks at trenzelore were suprised 11 could regenerate, when exactly Caan was able to go back into the time war(and also how as that's established as something the timelords couldn't even do) idk I guess it's just frustrating there is a villian that has interacted with the doctor so much but how all that happened is never explained.
The Baseball bat was altered by the Hand of Omega in the story, but the special effects didn't really live up to the expectations of a cosmic baseball bat (Which I guess was to be expected with the budget the show was working with). The problem with remembrance of the daleks in particular (I do like this story don't get me wrong) is that the daleks get blown up by bombs, or human soldiers in 1963, to the point where they come across as being weak. My point about the baseball bat was mostly meant as a joke, with the idea that a school PE kit would be enough to defeat them, but the point I was making was that the Daleks had been defeated so often and by increasingly mundane means that it was becoming very difficult to take them seriously as a threat. This was part of the struggle when it came to reviving Doctor Who and it's one of the reasons I hold the episode Dalek in such high esteem.
Great video and a really excellent analysis of the strengths of RTD as a writer and the weakness of Chibnall, whilst reminding me that I used to like modern Who. I'll be interested to see your comparison of current era RTD with his younger self some 18 years later :)
Also while I agree for the most part on you Moffat criticism of Dalek use into the dalek in my eyes is one of the better one I love the ideas it brings of the Doctor and daleks and it expand on the beat set out in dalek
So happy this video exists especially good reminder to never watch that era of DW and to treat it as a fever dream, despite it having one or two ok to decent concepts
FINALYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!! SOME SENS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm sure that when the series was being ressurected, RTD said that they were going to have the Doctor explore all of time and space. Then he mainly explored London instead. He said something about nobody likes it when the adventures are on alien planets, but most of Tom Baker's stories were. And that was an era of peak ratings.
You are amazing for quotes: "Except for whatever the Jodie Whittaker era was supposed to be." "DAMMIT STEVEN!" "The Slitheen were an over-the-top charicature and then we hand Boris Johnson."
So who do you blame for 13's failure???? Chibs for writing her so badly or Jodie the actress. I like Jodie as the doctor. The scripts she got were more often bad than good.
At the end of the day even the best actors and actresses can fall flat if they're given poorly written material, and unfortunately for Jodie, pretty much all of her tenure was poorly written. I don't blame any of the actors for how those seasons turned out. For me, the blame lies pretty much entirely at chibnalls feet, especially given his attempts to completely rewrite the history of doctor who, without any understanding or substance behind it.
I never got round to watching Broadchurch, but I remember people being excited because they'd liked it and thought Chris would be great going into Doctor Who. Needless to say, I was quite confused when season 11 happened 😅
@@banquo Broadchurch 1 is an easier concept to get right than Who and Chibnall did very well in setting up the various suspects and showing the impact on the Parents and small town setting. However, he blew the landing (I couldn't buy it) and I think it was a twist that was really prepared for along the way. If youre going to "subvert audience expectations" than the surprise has to give you the "I should have known that beforehand" as well as feeling "right". However, if you'd suffered through the second and third series as well (and most of Chibnalls previous Who and Torchwood episodes) then his failure didnt come as a surprise. I too gave up after S11 and haven't returned since. Nothing RTD did in his first 2023 special works for me. Even if you can live with the current day woke elements, it seems to be a rerun of Aliens in London thematically although the whole thing is some sort of flawed Trans allegory in practice, with (in Chibnalls Doctor set-up) the only real Trans character (the Doctor now a literal He/She) being dissed by RTD, whilst recycling one of his lowest quality scripts from his first run.
well, a lot of people really enjoyed Broadchurch it was narratively quite clever, and had some really compelling characters and performances. they felt like real people none of that seems to have translated to his run in Who, not even his few good moments in Torchwood seemed to trickle down
It occurs to me that this might have worked if the 'scout darlek' was one of Davros' upgraded Imperial Darleks - 'a bionic blob with bits on'. Things like being able to hack it would make sense if it was fused full of mechanical hardware. Having abilities we've not seen before would make sense in that context, while tying it back into the old lore rather than feeling like 'the old lore wasn't cool, look at our new shiny shit!'
Russel kept the villains challenging to defeat but you knew how much of threat they were by the doctors actions, Moffat did rule of cool too far, it was enjoyable but ruined villains in the long term, chipnal didn't know what to do with the villains but wanted them threatening again I believe, not that he got that to work
It’s a bit hard to watch a critical analysis video when you’re so fiercely biased against one side. I was going to try to get through it, but literally every other line about Resolution is you making cheap shots and trying to dunk on it rather than trying to look at it through an unbiased critical lense.
Yeah, I remember watching 'Dalek', and thinking RTD had genuinely severed them from the show. It was a little deflating for them to show back up in the finale...
