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Evolution of the Daleks

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Directed by
  
James Strong

Script editor
  
Lindsey Alford

Incidental music composer
  
Murray Gold

Written by
  
Helen Raynor

Produced by
  
Phil Collinson

Executive producer(s)
  
Russell T Davies Julie Gardner

"Evolution of the Daleks" is the fifth episode of the third series of the revived British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 28 April 2007, and is the conclusion of the two-part story begun in "Daleks in Manhattan".

Contents

The Cult of Skaro's plan is in full force. Dalek Sec is reborn in a half-human form, and the Pig Slaves launch an enormous assault upon the Central Park Hooverville along with the remaining pure Daleks. The Doctor, Martha Jones, Solomon and the others must fight for their lives, while the future of humans and Daleks alike is being decided underneath the Empire State Building.

According to the BARB figures this episode was seen by 6.97 million viewers and was the seventeenth most popular broadcast on British television in that week. The story is set in New York City in 1930.

Plot

After the creation of the hybrid Dalek-human, The Doctor confronts the Cult of Skaro and uses his sonic screwdriver to help the others escape. Dalek Caan and Dalek Jast discuss their lack of confidence in Dalek Sec, hinting that a change of command may be needed. The Doctor and Martha return to Hooverville, where The Doctor warns Solomon that the Daleks are planning an attack. Solomon believes he can reason with them, but he is killed during the attack. The Doctor confronts Dalek Caan and provokes him, but Dalek Sec orders The Doctor to be brought to him alive.

At the Dalek lab at the Empire State Building, the Doctor learns that the Daleks are planning to combine their DNA with humans and create more hybrids. The process requires more energy than can be generated with the technology of 1930, so the Daleks plan to use gamma energy from a solar flare. The Doctor agrees to help once he realizes that the human subjects are already brain dead and cannot be saved otherwise. He also offers to take the new hybrids and the Daleks to a new planet in the TARDIS so they can start over. Daleks Caan, Jast, and Thay stage a mutiny, chaining up Dalek Sec. The Daleks then decide to replace the human DNA completely with their own, making a new race of Daleks. The Doctor and Laszlo regroup with Martha, Tallulah, and Frank. Martha has analyzed the building plans and tells the Doctor he must remove the Dalekanium panels on the mast of the building to stop the energy collection. The Doctor climbs up, telling Martha to stay behind and fight. As the Doctor struggles to remove the panels, Martha lays out pieces of metal from the framework of the building to connect with the elevator. The Doctor fails to get the panels off in time and ends up holding the mast as the strike hits. The energy flows down the building, electrocuting the Pig Slaves in the elevator but also awakening the new hybrids.

Martha and the others help the Doctor down and then return to the theater with the human-Dalek army following them in the sewers. In the theater, the Doctor pleads with the others to listen to Dalek Sec and let him help. They refuse, attempting to kill the Doctor but Sec steps in between and sacrifices himself. The Daleks order their army to kill the Doctor, but find that the humans are resisting. By exposing himself to the gamma strike, The Doctor caused some of his Time Lord DNA to transfer to the human shells. The human-Dalek army turn on Thay and Jast, killing them. Dalek Caan activates a termination sequence to kill the rest of the army. Upset by this act of genocide, the Doctor returns to the Dalek lab to face Caan, but Caan escapes once again via emergency temporal shift. Laszlo's heart begins to fail due to his partial transformation as a Pig Slave. The Doctor finds a way to stabilise his condition, but cannot restore his human appearance. Laszlo and Tallulah are reunited, and learn from Frank that the people of Hooverville will take Laszlo in despite his looks.

Continuity

  • In "Smith and Jones", the Doctor referred to his having received an electric shock when helping Benjamin Franklin fly his kite. In this episode, he again proves resilient to high levels of electric current. This ability was also demonstrated in Terror of the Zygons, "World War Three", Genesis of the Daleks, "The Idiot's Lantern" and the audio stories Spare Parts and Blood of the Daleks.
  • When hurrying to the vaudeville theatre, The Doctor says "Allons-y"; the second time he uses the catchphrase after "Army of Ghosts".
  • The idea of humans being the "great survivors" re-surfaced in "Utopia".

    • Daleks

  • This is the first episode to use the "_____ of the Daleks" titling scheme since 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks. The scheme was started on screen with The Power of the Daleks in 1966, although the earlier The Dalek Invasion of Earth (which had no onscreen title) had The Return of the Daleks as a working title.
  • Several other Doctor Who stories have featured Daleks and human beings being combined in different ways. These include:
  • The Evil of the Daleks: humans are infused with the "Dalek Factor", and Daleks infused with the "Human Factor"
  • Revelation of the Daleks: human beings kept in suspended animation, pending the discovery of disease cures, are instead converted into Daleks
  • "Dalek": a Dalek extracts human DNA to regenerate itself, and is altered in the process
  • "The Parting of the Ways": the Daleks in this story are all created from humans by the Dalek Emperor
  • The Doctor Who Quick Reads book I am a Dalek: The Dalek Factor is added to humans in the Roman era
  • "Asylum of the Daleks": Oswin Oswald, a human, is fully converted into a Dalek and several other humans are made into Dalek Puppet slaves.
  • At the climax of this story, the Daleks are defeated when the human/Dalek hybrids turn on them. The Daleks are similarly overthrown by their creations in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, in which the Doctor's companions turn the Robomen, humans conditioned to serve the Daleks, against their masters.
  • The Daleks' creator Davros is mentioned for the second time since the show's return in 2005 (the first having been in "Dalek").
  • Dalek Sec refers to the emergency temporal shift that they activated in "Doomsday", explaining that the Cult of Skaro escaped being sucked into the Void by this method. Dalek Caan also initiates an emergency temporal shift at the end of this episode. In "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End", it is revealed that the temporal shift at the end of this episode takes Dalek Caan into the Time War.
  • Once again, the Daleks use a 'battle computer' to direct mass operations on Earth, as in Remembrance of the Daleks. On that occasion, it was controlled by an altered human girl; here, it is operated by a direct link to Dalek Caan.
  • The Daleks state that they first attempted to reproduce themselves in New York by creating Dalek "embryos". Dalek embryo technology and an "embryo room" were previously seen in Genesis of the Daleks. The idea of Daleks being genetically replicated was previously seen in Power of the Daleks.

    • Outside references

  • "Happy Days Are Here Again" by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen is heard on the radio.
  • Martha makes a reference to the 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl starring Marilyn Monroe and Laurence Olivier, adapting it to Laszlo and Tallulah's situation as "The pig and showgirl".
  • When the Doctor arrives in the lift, he says "First Floor, Perfumery", in the manner of a department store lift attendant. This method of announcing both floor and departments found thereon is also used as the basis of the theme music to the BBC situation comedy "Are You Being Served?". Since Britons typically use the phrase "ground floor" to describe what Americans would call "the first floor", the line is an ostensible Americanisation of the "Are You Being Served?" theme's first verse, which begins with the words, "Ground Floor, Perfumery".

    • Production

    The theatre sequence was filmed at the Parc & Dare Theatre, Treorchy. Scenes set at the Hooverville shanty town were filmed at Bute Park, Cardiff. Some second unit filming for this story was done in New York City. It primarily consisted of static shots of landmarks and landscape views, many of which were digitally altered to remove architecture created since the story's setting. This constitutes the second time any filming for Doctor Who has been conducted in America. (The 1996 TV movie, although produced in Vancouver, Canada, included establishing shots of San Francisco filmed by a second unit; an earlier story, The Two Doctors, was originally to have been filmed in New Orleans, but the budget of the time would not allow it.)

    The presence of the Daleks in this story was reported by the News of the World on 12 November 2006, and confirmed by the BBC in late December.

    References

    Evolution of the Daleks Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA