Episodes

Episode 23: The Romans

/ Kari / Leave a comment

The First Doctor and his team go to ancient Rome and hang in Nero’s court.  But does the Daleks Aren’t Robots!? team feel this serial has the favor of the gods…or cast it to the lions?

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Tardis falls off a cliff and the team LEAVES HER THERE to hang out in an Imperial-era Roman city as a vacation. The Doctor and Vicki go to Rome out of curiosity, the Doctor assuming the identity of a murdered lyre player on the way to Nero’s court. Meanwhile Barbara and Ian are kidnapped by slavers.

Ian ends up as an oarsman on a galley and Barbara gets creeped on and sold to Tavius, who works for Nero. An assassin tries to murder the Doctor, and gets his butt roundly kicked and tossed out a window by Vicki.

Nero creepily chases Barbara around and the show thinks this is funny (it is not), and Nero’s wife Empress Poppaea tries to kill Barb with poison. Vicki almost poisons Nero but the Doctor saves him and then fakes playing the lyre in a hilariouos Emperor’s New Clothes scenario. Nero decides to feed the Doctor to the lions because his playing is TOO GOOD.

Ian fights in the arena in front of Nero and Barbara and escapes, and then returns to rescue Barb. The Doctor accidentally sets Nero’s diagram of Rome on fire and Nero decides to burn Rome down so he can build it to his liking.

Tavius helps Barb and Ian escape and is revealed to be a Christian (because he has a cross around his neck). They all return to the Roman villa they were squatting in and then depart the era, the Doctor revealing that the Tardis is stuck somewhere and being dragged down.

OUR TEAM

This is so the Doctor‘s serial. He has SO many moments when he’s at his trickster best in this one it’s actually amazing.

  • When an assassin attacks him, he defends himself adequately and actually gets irritated with Vicki when she comes and helps him out because he was having fun beating the crap out of the hapless would-be killer.
  • He skillfully deflects an attempt to get him to play by buttering up Nero and deferring to him with great respect and admiration.
  • He pulls an AMAZING “Emperor’s New Clothes” stunt and plays “so delicately no one can hear him” and everyone admires it… and it works too well, convincing Nero to have him killed because HE’S TOO GOOD AT THE LYRE.
  • Finally he “accidentally” (it is not clear if it is an accident) burns Nero’s plans for a rebuilt Rome and inspires Nero to burn down the city himself. (Nero was accused of burning the city down but these accusations are not exactly reliable as Nero was hated by the upper class at the time. He also allegedly blamed Christians for the fire but that ALSO may not be correct. Honestly Rome didn’t need help to be on fire, it was on fire ALL THE FUCKING TIME regardless; there’s a reason Crassus got as ridiculously wealthy as he did, you know?)
  • And he has this amazing evil laugh when he realized HE CAUSED THE GREAT FIRE OF ROME at the end.

Vicki doesn’t do a LOT here but she has a couple good moments. I’m actually starting to like her!

  • She is demonstrably curious about Rome and excited to see new places and times, and has a bit of a mischievous streak like the Doctor’s. He’s probably a bad influence.
  • When the Doctor is being attacked she doesn’t hesitate to help him and ends up pushing the attacker out the window kind of.
  • When the court poisoner is going to poison a slave (unbeknownst to Vicki it’s Barbara) she switches the goblets to kill Nero instead, only stopped by the Doctor.

Ian has finally relaxed.

  • Barb changes his hair to look more Roman. He seems pretty happy and cheerful at the beginning of this, and also at the end, and he has a lot of great chemistry with Barbara, joking around with her. He doesn’t hesitate to fight at any point either so we get lots of Action Physicist here.
  • It super bugged me that he was wearing a TOGA and it appeared to be a toga with a stripe, too? That’s usually something fancy worn by someone of rank, OR A CHILD, like a toga praetexta would mean that you were an IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE GOVERNMENT, like a consul. They would not try to enslave an adult man wearing those clothes who spoke perfect Roman Latin. That is a posh person and you don’t wanna go there.

Barbara gets the short end of the stick in this episode.

  • She was much more proactive in the Aztecs, and while she doesn’t exactly lie back and think of England here, she’s slow to attempt escape and she isn’t as smart about it as she has been in the past. She does look great, and she does have plenty of pluck, but that’s it. She’s not as devious and ruthless as we’ve seen her in the past, and that’s a pity.
  • Her outfit is also a bit more of a Halloween costume than anything a Roman lady would have worn. There’d be about two more layers probably, and if not it would probably just be a tunic since she isn’t married.

OTHER CHARACTERS

  1. Nero is the emperor, and for the most part it’s a pretty good rendition if it weren’t for the fact that he’s presented as a silly buffoon. He does personally kill one person and chases Barbara around which is EXTREMELY horrifying but the show doesn’t seem to realize it. He’s a lot less gay than he should’ve been too. At one point Nero married a man and played the bride.
  2. Tavius is a servant of Nero who purchases slaves for the household and also encourages an assassin to come and kill Nero. And he also seems to kill someone himself in order to keep the assassin (who the Doctor is masquerading as) safe. This is not really in keeping with the Christianity of the time! Yes, he is revealed to be a Christian by a cross around his neck (which was not a symbol Christians used at that time IIRC). Tavius is an interesting character, kind of the Varys of the piece, but it is not super clear what his goal really is or why.
  3. Poppaea, Nero’s wife, who is jealous of slave girl Barbara for SOME UNINTELLIGIBLE REASON when in real life I would think she’d be glad someone ELSE had Nero’s attention. Then again IRL she and Nero were both married to others when they got together so…. sure, I guess? Later she died, either because Nero killed her or in childbirth, who knows.
  4. Locusta, the court poisoner. Supposedly she helped kill the previous emperor, Claudius. She is eventually executed by Nero’s successor Galba so good on her!
  5. Some dumb, evil slavers and the guy the Doctor masquerades as, and Ian’s slave friend who helps him out a couple of times.

THE SETTING

  1. Imperial Rome in Nero’s era. I don’t know how accurate the geography is since they’re kind of vague about a lot of it. The costumes aren’t great, though they do look nice for the most part. The mores aren’t especially well-represented either, but that’s probably because it’s a kids’ show and that much gay and sex and violence wouldn’t be great for them (though apparently implied attempted rape is OK).
  2. Nero has painted toenails I think? Is that realistic?
  3. Also he uses thumbs down to indicate a gladiator should be killed, which is PROBABLY wrong. Thumbs up is killing them and a closed fist is sparing them.

THE SHOW

  1. Hartnell flubs a line or two here but he’s magnificent overall. How was his health doing at this point?
  2. Did any stuff from the Greekish part of Keys of Marinus get reused here?
  3. What did Vicki, Maureen O’Brien, think of her first full serial?

General

Reviews

Interviews with cast and crew

Locusta

Nail Varnish

Episode 22: Inferno

/ Kari / Leave a comment

We return to the Third Doctor to finish his first season with a bang!  The Doctor battles nuclear werewolves, evil counterparts, and evil scientists in this classic serial.

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Doctor goes to ANOTHER nuclear facility, this one powering a drill attempting to pierce the earth’s crust so that they can access a mythical magic gas that would provide essentially free energy for the world. (Bull butter.)

Stahlman, the scientist in charge of the project, is the obvious bad guy and is maniacal about getting through the crust ASAP regardless of safety. Hot green goo starts coming up during the drilling; a guy touches it and starts turning greenish-blue and growing hair, like some kind of Dracula in a low-budget foreign film. He kills someone and acts like an animal.

The Doctor tries to get the Tardis console to work with the power from the reactor, and argues with Stahlman when the power is taken away from him, then fixes it on the sly. During his second attempt to use the console it takes him to an alternate universe where the Brigadier DOESN’T have facial hair but an eyepatch and a scar, and where Liz has a dark bob and isn’t a scientist. Also fascists, they are all fascists.

In the evil mirror universe the drilling is further along and they pierce the earth’s core despite the Doctor’s attempts to stop them. This begins a chain reaction of lava or something that will inevitably destroy the world. The Doctor can’t save it but persuades some of the survivors of the Turkish Dracula Disease (which has become the Turkish Werewolf Disease) to help him get back to the other world to save THEM.

He gets back and averts the disaster (barely). Then he tries to use the Tardis console again to escape, but ends up in the garbage dump. WHAT IS DIGNITY

CHARACTERS

  1. The Doctor, as usual, is great in this one. He’s arrogant and rude to Stahlman, who deserves it, but it bites him in the butt when Stahlman reacts by pulling his power. He’s still trying to use the Tardis to escape Earth, so he hasn’t given up on that.
  2. The Doctor does say that he has heard the weird sound the creatures make early on at the eruption of Krakatoa, but this doesn’t really ever get explained. Probably for the best.
  3. He gets to make some great faces in this one, particularly when he kind of has a bad “splinching” experience early on trying to use the Tardis.
  4. Liz is great in this one and it’s a real bummer that this is her last serial. Though the real Liz spends a lot of her time running a couple spurious errands for the Doctor intended to get her out of the way, Caroline John also gets to play Evil Liz, who has a short, dark haircut and is in the fascist military of her world. She’s still scientific minded, though, and studied physics in college–she comes to believe what the Doctor says and is good enough to help him get back to the other world to save it, knowing she and all her world is doomed.
  5. Briggie also really shines in this episode. He’s his stuffy, mostly-harmless-seeming self in the normal world, showing the Doctor a picture of himself without a mustache which comes back later when his evil self is mustacheless. Evil Briggie is a great villainous type–he’s still brave and stalwart and does not flinch when he has to defend the others against the Turkish werewolves. However, he’s super fashy and shouty and also looks exactly like Arnold Rimmer. He also tries to force the Doctor to take him and Liz with when he goes back to the real world, likely because he doesn’t trust that the Doctor is telling the truth about the other world being destroyed if they go.
  6. Benton! Is a character here at last. He’s kind of just a UNIT mook, but he has a name and he does some stuff, and his evil counterpart is brutally turned into a Turkish werewolf.
  7. Bessie exists in the alternate universe. Is she any different, I really couldn’t tell.
  8. The Tardis console is still dismembered and unfed but she still tries, poor girl. At least she’s in a garage now and not that HIDEOUS room of grandma’s awfullest knicknacks.

THE OTHERS

  1. Stahlman, the very obvious villain, who is obvious. He’s hellbent on getting the drill through the crust. Why is never really explained other than that it’s his project. He’s even worse in the evil world, and beardless there just like Briggie. Both versions turn into Turkish werewolves and die.
  2. Petra, the assistant director of the drilling project, a pretty blonde girl who is extremely competent, professional and loyal to Stahlman. When Sutton hits on her she enforces her boundaries with no equivocation, but after that he starts treating her with respect and she ‘s into him. The evilverse Sutton also hits on her, she enforces her boundaries there too and they also are super into each other.
  3. Sutton, an oil guy brought in on the project who wears a horrible ascot and hits on Petra. I thought he was just going to be a pig and that the story would be OK with it, but he isn’t. He helps out at one point and then tells Petra there is SOMETHING she can do for him… and we all went OH NO, but he follows it up by 1. call me by my first name, and 2. help me convince Stahlman about safer drilling procedures. His evil version is actually also good and helps the Doctor escape to save the other world.
  4. Sir Keith, the bureaucrat who’s barely in the show. He tries to reign Stahlman in but isn’t successful; his evil world version dies before we see him.
  5. The Turkish Draculas, who then evolve into Turkish Werewolves. They are hilarious, with greenish-blue faces and loads of hair. They’re bestial so they’re not really characters, just menaces. It’s not really explained what the hell is going on with them and it’s also just assumed they can’t be fixed or cured.

THE SETTING

  1. Earth of the 1970s, specifically a nuclear facility drilling down through the earth’s crust.
  2. The lab is a garage now, MUCH better than the hideous granny knicknack room.
  3. THE EVIL WORLD. We don’t see a ton of it, but it’s clearly fascist. There are some nice nods immediately that tip us off we’re in a different world, with barrels being in different places. It has a dictator–who is it? UNIT goose-steps in it, and is if anything slightly less quick to shoot people here. People have fashier titles too. Love that!
  4. The Tardis console ends up on a trash heap. 😦

THE PRODUCTION

  1. Caroline John’s last episode. We’ve talked about it a little before but what happened?
  2. Venusian Karate, what prompted that? It’s pretty hilarious looking but it works and it’s not as overtly violent as… most of the rest of the show at this point honestly! Is it inspired by anything real?
  3. I see a lot of Third in Eight–from the outfit to the actiony orientation to the VIBE to even the doctor Companion.
  4. The science is hilariously garbage on this, and mostly that’s OK, the magic slime doesn’t bug me. But people at a nuclear facility find an object that’s hot and don’t reach for a Geiger counter? Really??? They don’t check ANYTHING for radioactivity, not even once!
  5. Generally I’m noticing a pattern here too, there’s a “science” facility powered by nuclear stuff and something goes wrong, sometimes because Man Should Not Meddle (this one) and sometimes because Man Sucks (Ambassadors of Death) and sometimes we Dug Too Deep (this one and Silurians). Is that going to keep being a thing? Is that the show now?

General

Other stories considered as season finale

Project Mohole

Cast and crew interviews

Caroline John/Liz Shaw retrospectives

Jon Pertwee as radio announcer cut scene from British broadcast

Pertwee Intelligence agent meeting Churchill and Ian Fleming

Reviews

When the World Screamed by Arthur Conan Doyle

Episode 21: Aliens In London + World War 3

/ Kari / Leave a comment

Jumping back to 2005 (or 2006, depending on your point of view) the Daleks Aren’t Robots crew meets the Slitheen for the first time.

How do Kari and Justin react to the fat, flatulating family of felons? Find out! (Badly. We react badly. It’s bad.)

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Doctor takes Rose back to visit her mom, but it’s been 12 months and not the 12 years they thought it was. Rose has been missing 12 months, and her mom is glad to see her but very worried, and unimpressed with the much-older Doctor. Mickey has been under suspicion of murdering Rose, too. Why can’t they just pop back in the Tardis and go back a year? Anyway, an alien ship crashed into Big Ben and then into the Thames in London. We see three fat politicians meet in 10 Downing Street, one of whom is farting, and they all laugh evilly over the briefcase with the alien invasion emergency plans for Britain in it.

It turns out that the fat people in these two episodes are the Slitheen, a family of evil exhibitionist fat gay incestuous hunter capitalists who want to, get this, irradiate the earth with our own nuclear weapons and sell the radioactive bits as spaceship fuel. The farting is because they have to compress down to get into even fat human skins, and Mickey saves the day by launching a missile, stopping others from intercepting it and blowing up 10 Downing Street with the aliens in it. After so many “farts.” So. Very. Many.

OUR TEAM

The Doctor is right most of the time in this one, which is annoying, but he does have some good moments. At one point the Slitheen vivisect a pig into a bipedal creature to fake an alien crash landing, and the Doctor legitimately tries to help the pig, by just bossing Unit around like a King Karen. It works but ultimately he’s unable to save the pig from the gun-happy UNIT. He does care.

He also does legitimately have concerns about putting Rose in danger. REMEMBERING ADRIC ARE WE. He calls Mickey Ricky whenever he’s around and Mickey when he isn’t, but in the end he does invite Mickey to come with and help keep Rose safe (Mickey says he can’t). He also is kind of a brat about taking Rose with him in a few hours rather than waiting a day after the crisis is over.

Rose is OK in this one but unfortunately, she’s more of a sexy lamp than anything. Her return influences the plot a lot more than she does–Jackie was devastated by her disappearance, Mickey was accused of murder and had a very difficult time. Rose is brave, though.

Mickey shines the brightest in this episode. Last time we saw him he was having an anxiety reaction of exaggerated cowardice. In the past year he’s done extensive research on the Doctor and UNIT, and he’s become very level-headed and good in a crisis. He’s the one who successfully bombs 10 Downing Street to kill the aliens. He’s upset about the Doctor but he does not hesitate to work with him, or to save Jackie’s life even though she hated him. When the Slitheen come for Jackie and him he grabs a baseball bat and gets ready to fight.

It’s a shame about the actor. >.<

Jackie is also great. She slaps the daylights out of the Doctor at one point, which is well-deserved, and she consistently expresses concern about Rose throughout the episode, worries about her relationship with the clearly older Doctor and then about the safety of her journeys with him. She’s clearly compassionate, but opinionated and fierce too. Jackie is the one who gathers the vinegar solution to throw on the alien. Which explodes with a fart sound. Siiiiiiiiiigh.

THE OTHERS

Harriet Jones is the principle one, a politician from a British backwater who gets caught up in events. She figures out that there’s something off about the Slitheen politicians and approaches Rose about it. She’s very upset but keeps a cool enough head to reach out to Rose and the Doctor for help. She even distracts the Slitheen away from Rose in a pinch. The Doctor says she becomes Prime Minister and ushers in a golden age for Britain.

The Slitheen: A family of evil aliens who can wear human skins as a suit, provided they’re the skins of fat humans. They’re evil and stuff. With extra evil, fat and farting. They’re capitalists and want to irradiate the earth so they can sell the radioactive bits. They’re all evil. That’s it. This is definitely a downward trend from previous NuWho and previous Classic Who where a lot of aliens have good and bad people in their groups. The Slitheen are the worst.

A bunch of boring politicians and others we don’t care about.

THE SETTING

  1. Earth in 2006. Why did they put in an alien invasion attempt in 2006? They had to know that would make the show out of date in a year.
  2. It’s London and some of it is in Downing Street. Is it filmed on location? It looks good but I don’t know how close it is to the real Downing Street. At the end it gets blown up.
  3. Obviously nuke access doesn’t work that way.
  4. Pretty sure British elections don’t work that way either.
  5. The Slitheen plan is a very underpants gnome plan. That’s not how nuclear fuel works normally, I guess they could have some sort of magic alien tech, but it’s dudmb.
  6. THe Doctor has a corded phone.
  7. There were a couple of good comedic beats, like when the cop evacuating the building opens the door to see a bunch of the Slitheen and then just apologizes and closes it again.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. The special effects on the Slitheen are… not great. The zipper on their foreheads are stupid looking. The babydoll faces are icky but not as creepy as the original autons were, or in fact, as actual baby dolls. The discrepancy between the men in suits and the CG aliens is vast and awful.
  2. Evil fat gay people who fart constantly, huh. Thanks. 😦 And the main actor had an eating disorder at this point.

General

From Davies’s Book – The Writer’s Tale: The Final Chapter

Eccelston and Boak

Contemporary reviews and news articles

Reviews

Muriel Frost

Girl’s Aloud Influence

Homophobia Analysis

Interviews

The Noel Clarke Situation

Locations

The Whoopie Cushion

The Original Slitheen Design (?)

Episode 20: The Rescue

/ Kari / Leave a comment

Welcoming special guest Blue aboard the Daleks Aren’t Robots TARDIS (DARDIS, if you will), we look at the first episode with the First Doctor’s new companion, Vicki.

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Tardis lands on Dido (so I guess a woman immolating herself for a man DOES feature). There Barbara and the boys (Ian and the Doctor) are separated when a spiky looking alien fires a weaponlike object at Barbara. There is a crashed ship on Dido with a girl named Vicki and a man named Beckett in it; both of them fear someone named Koquillian, who sounds like he might be a native to the planet. Barbara meets Vicki, who tells her the Didoans killed ALL the other people on the ship who didn’t die in the crash. Barbara accidentally kills Vicki’s pet, Sandy, mistaking it for a monster.

The Doctor has been to Dido before and knows the people there, a small population that’s friendly and cool. It turns out that Bennett is Koquillian and he murdered a guy on the ship, and killed all the other survivors AND a bunch of Didoans to cover it up. Vicki didn’t know about it because she was a kid. Bennett has been using a Didoan temple and their holy gear in his masquerade; the Doctor confronts him there and almost dies, but two surviving Didoans intimidate Koquillian off a cliff. They take Vicki with them when they leave.

OUR TEAM

The Doctor: He’s a bit sad in this episode, clearly missing Susan. He’s a lot gentler to Barbara and Ian than usual, and he’s also super kind to Vicki. He might be seeking to fill the granddaughter-shaped hole in his heart. At one point he’s about to order Susan to open the door, says her name and then gets this sad look on his face. He’s very sweet with Vicki.

He figures out Koquillian isn’t who he seems. He also has a near-fatal moment of overconfidence when he confronts Bennett in the Didoan temple and Bennett kicks the crap out of him, until two Didoans come and save the day.

Ian: Ian is JOVIAL and cheerful in this episode. Maybe it’s just an effect of the Doctor being nicer, but he’s really grown a lot and removed the stick from his ass over the past season and a half.

Barbara: Barbara makes a rare mistake in this one, and kills Vicki’s pet monster when she mistakes it for, well, an actual monster. She grabs a flare gun and straight up murders the thing. She isn’t as apologetic as I would have expected, when she finds out it was a pet, which seems out of character for Barbara.

Vicki: The new girl! She seems more childish than Susan–is the actress younger as well? She’s also kind of… well, it was SUPER obvious that Bennett was Koquillian almost immediately. She seems kind of gullible.
She’s mad at Barbara for killing her pet, but that’s totally reasonable (even if the show doesn’t seem to think so). She does immediately have a rapport with the Doctor, and she’s pretty brave–she helped Barbara and hid her from Koquillian, and helped treat her wounds. She’s apparently an orphan (her father was in the wreck) and she’s from the future (she left earth in 2493 after her mom died).

She’s independent minded and doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her. She does have kind of a hysterical crying fit at one point, but it IS right after her pet was killed, so…

THE OTHERS

Bennett: The bad guy. He’s a murderer who killed the crash survivors AND did a genocide in order to hide his murder. He is not as scary as Reegan, but I was legitimately worried for the Doctor when he was trying to kill him at the end. His monster suit is pretty good, and for once there’s a damn good reason it looks like a guy in a suit!

Two Didoans: They don’t say anything, they just stop Bennett from murdering the Doctor and intimidate him off the cliff. They’re just wearing white coveralls with capelets and boots.

A couple of ADORABLE monsters who are obviously just a guy in a lobster/lizard suit lying on the ground. I’m sure there are no toys of it for STUPID reasons. The monster-pet that Barbara kills is named Sandy and it appears to have light-up eyes.

THE SETTING

  1. There are some adorable miniatures of the broken spaceship.
  2. There are some rad Indiana Jones style traps in the cave where the Tardis lands, and they are escaped very sensibly too. There’s kind of a neatly-made wall that looks like a monster’s face–the monsters we see, maybe.
  3. The spaceship wreck interiors look good; the planet Dido looks OK too. I didn’t notice anything all that unusual or special about them.
  4. The temple set at the end looks cool, with some pillars and a chest I think?

THE PRODUCTION

  1. Why Vicki? Why did they choose that actress? Why did they choose that character? How old is the actress? How will she be different from Susan? What did fans think of Vicki?
  2. Was it meant to be obvious that Bennett was Koko?
  3. The mini spaceship was adorable, is this from the same miniaturist that made the other minis? It’s so charming and cute.
  4. They have kind of a large, cool looking flashlight at one point, is it a normal flashlight?

General

Vicki

Contemporary Articles

Sean Connery (no, really)

Episode 19: The Ambassadors of Death

/ Kari / Leave a comment

A look at the Third Doctor’s third episode.  An investigation into a failed space rescue takes a turn when the returned astronauts seem to be something quite different than they were before. 

How does the Daleks Aren’t Robots team react to it?  Find out!

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

An astronaut is being sent up to retrieve the astronauts of Mars Probe 7, which has been silent for more than 7 months, but the rescuer hears a nasty noise up there and then goes silent himself. Because we are not on our earth, this is an AU.

The Doctor sees it on the TV and goes to help. It turns out it’s a message and a group of people on Earth is replying to the messages; when Briggy sends guys there there’s a huge gunfight and half of UNIT dies.

Eventually we retrieve 3 guys from space, but it turns out they’re radioactive aliens that can kill with a touch and NOT the astronauts. The astronauts are being held hostage by aliens who want their ambassadors back–it turns out that a bunch of crappy humans kidnapped their ambassadors and mindcontrolled said ambassadors into committing crimes for them.

The ringleader is Carrington, a military bad guy who is basically a xenophobe and wants to nuke the aliens, and his dragon, metaphorically, Reegan, is a frighteningly competent asshole helping for the paycheck. Carrington wants to fake an alien attack so that earth’s governments all nuke the aliens, but the Doctor and Liz rescue the aliens and then it ends and YES IT IS ACTUALLY THAT ABRUPT.

OUR TEAM

  1. The Doctor is great in this one. He Karens his way into the bowels of the space center right off the bat, traps a bunch of baddies by somehow magnetizing their hands to Betsy (I mean it’s magic but whatever) and even actually goes to space to talk to the alien leader. He is short with people and at one point he gets knocked out, which was hilarious, so it’s nice that he’s not immune to things happening to him.
  2. Liz is kidnapped in this one, but she’s still actually pretty great. She struggles to escape physically and then when she DOES escape, only to be recaptured, that doesn’t stop her from trying to get out yet AGAIN. And she actively helps the Doctor make a signal device to get help from UNIT when he too gets captured, as well as a gadget for being able to actually talk to the Ambassadors of Death. At one point she sarcastically promises the baddies not to hurt them, which was hilarious.
  3. Briggy can’t hit the broad side of a barn and leads from the front, which is pretty stupid since he’s probably the only one who knows what’s going on. That said he does OK in this episode mostly, and backs up the Doctor when given the chance. So far he does always act within the constraints of his role in the military, i don’t know if that will continue.
  4. The TARDIS has been FUCKING DISMEMBERED. Not that we are explicitly told that in this episode. I thought that he and Liz were IN the Tardis as there’s a scene with them at the console, but apparently the Doctor REMOVED THE CONSOLE. LIKE A GODDAMN MANIAC. YOU DISMEMBERED HER YOU GODDAMN VIVISECTIONIST PRICK!

THE OTHERS

Loads of one-hit wonder characters in this one, most of whom don’t really have personalities.

Carrington, Evil Military Guy: He’s basically a caricature, and he’s doing this because the aliens accidentally killed his coworker when he went on an earlier Mars mission. He’s explicitly called out as being mad in the show, and claims that it was his moral duty to nuke the aliens. Sure, Jan, nuke the scary brown I mean blue people who literally came here as ambassadors. You bet.

Reegan, Terrifying Competent Dragon of the Big Bad: This guy was actually pretty spooky. He absolutely does not care about alien life but he also doesn’t care about human life or anything, apparently, other than money. He was almost certainly planning to screw Carrington over and use the Ambassadors to commit robberies, and he’s not even ruffled when he gets caught at the end.

Cornish, Competent Bureaucrat: This guy is just like the bureaucrat in the Silurians except he’s not evil, he doesn’t suck at his job and he’s totally cool under pressure. So basically exactly the opposite of that guy. This guy had a lot of charisma for kind of a thankless part, he did a good job.

Taltalian, AKA Evil Beardo: Bad guy scientist, turns out to be a mook and is then blown up by his own boss.

Lennox, AKA Wormy Scientist: Scientist who tries to care for the Ambassadors as much as he can, even though he’s working for the baddies technically. He tries to help Liz escape, escapes himself and is then horribly murdered by radiation.

There are some other guys, like a reporter who’s got 80s style a few years before the 80s, but I don’t really care about them.

The Ambassadors themselves? They’re not characters, and neither is their alien captain. They are just plot devices. Only for a very little portion of the show are they able to act under their own power and they don’t really talk about how traumatic it’s been to be forced to murder people or anything. There is SO LITTLE RESOLUTION after this show. It’s even more abrupt than the Silurians, who at least got blown up. These people are gonna be super traumatized! They were mind controlled and dazed and zombielike for a long time! They were forced to murder people on a weird planet! They’re gonna need SO MUCH THERAPY.

Also they are tinsel mummies.

THE SETTING

  1. Earth of the 1970s.
  2. Also they dismembered the Tardis and put her controls in the UGLIEST ROOM EVER CREATED, GOOD GAD. Everyone went spontaneously blind in the 1970s, I’m pretty sure.
  3. There are some cool location shots, like some sort of factory with many pipes and walkways and stuff, that are nicely used.
  4. The space scenes actually looked pretty good. The alien ship had some greenscreening which was VERY unconvincing but not unusually so for the time and budget, but the design of the human spacecraft and control room was pretty good, considering it was probably mostly sheet metal and paper clips.
  5. The alien spaceship looked OK. Not super distinct, but there was a scene where the astronauts were watching an alien TV showing light blobs but they saw a football game, which was satisfyingly creepy and well-executed.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. That’s the most 1970s music I’ve ever heard. That sir is no krumhorn, thank god. It’s GOOD music and once we figured out what was going on with the ambassadors, their eerie, slow harp-like music fit really well. I liked it, but O M G SO SEVENTIES.
  2. The 80s news guy is weirdly ethically void. Like, he doesn’t even argue about what he should do, just shrugs and whatevers his way into almost being responsible for genocide.
  3. When do we find out that the Doctor dismembered the Tardis?
  4. Why are we on an alternate earth? What’s the deal with that? Is NuWho in the same alternate earth?
  5. There’s a whole part where the Doctor sends himself and then Liz 15 seconds forward in time, and then it comes up again when he hides a macguffin from a baddie that way. CAN HE JUST DO THAT NOW??? I had to literally stop the show to WTF over that, does that literally EVER come up again?!
  6. Is UNIT based on a real thing? They don’t seem like it.
  7. UNIT likes to shoot but they also GET SHOT like a looooot. How many UNIT guys get shot or get dead in this one?
  8. Were there rewrites in this? There were some loose plot threads, like we never did find out where the Doctor had heard the Ambassadors’ signals before this episode. And the episode ended SO SUDDENLY.

General

Novelization

Reviews

Locations

Restoration

Doctor Who Kits carcinogenic

How they reconstructed the episodes for what we see today

UNIT

Episode death count

BTS photos

Episode 18: The Unquiet Dead

/ Kari / Leave a comment

The Daleks Aren’t Robots team return to the Ninth Doctor in our first modern Who episode not penned by Russel T. Davies.

How do we feel about the new writer, and can Kari handle the story’s portrayal of Charles Dickens?

Find out!

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Look for us where all podcasts are found.

See more at https://daleksarentrobots.com/

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

We see a dead old woman come to life and escape the undertaker and his maid, killing her grandson; the undertaker and maid The Doctor and Rose aim to go to Naples in 1860 but end up in Wales in 1869. They meet Charles Dickens and stumble across an undead woman, who then falls over.

Rose is kidnapped by the undertaker and the Doctor pursues with Dickens. They get to the undertaker’s house.

Rose learns the maid, Gwyneth, can read her mind and has “the sight.” The specter appears and says they’re the Gelth and they can’t exist properly there, and if Gwyneth opens the way for them they can possess dead bodies and survive that way.

They were all killed in the Time War.

There’s a brief argument about whether allowing them to possess bodies would be OK and Gwyneth opens the way. The Gelth turn out to be evil, they kill the undertaker and Gwyneth explodes the house with her in it to stop them, the second woman to immolate herself on behalf of the Doctor in a row.

OUR TEAM

Rose:

  1. I like Rose in this one. She stands up to the Doctor as much as she can, and doesn’t let him bully her. Her misgivings about Gwyneth helping the Gelth prove correct.
  2. Her hair looks really period appropriate in this one. The dress isn’t quite right, but that might be more in the way it’s worn than the dress itself.
  3. We learn her dad is dead.
  4. She does get locked in a room and menaced again, this time by zombies, and the Doctor saves her by grabbing her hand and yanking her five feet or so, just like in the first episode.

The Doctor:

  1. The Doctor is kind of a jerk in this episode. He wants to give people’s corpses to the Gelth without their consent, and he’s also kind of nasty to Rose about it.
  2. He DOES apologize to Dickens though, which was nice.
  3. I have no idea how he knows the stuff he knows. He just seems to know things intuitively for some reason.
  4. He does seem to have ADHD or something as well. Is this a non-neurotypical Doctor?

The Tardis:

  1. Still sounds hungry, and was referred to as a “shed” in this ep. 😦

THE OTHERS

  1. Charles Dickens is a main character in this, but I’m not sure why. It’s a ghost story and it’s December 24th but Christmas doesn’t come into the story at any point. Dickens is portrayed as a skeptic, how close is that to reality?
  2. Sneed is the Undertaker, he’s sort of an ordinary person. He is killed.
  3. Gwyneth is the maid who lived in the house on the dimensional rift that the Gelth “haunted.” She’s a nice ordinary girl but she grew up tied to the rift and her mom told her she had The Sight. She can communicate with the Gelth, has a strong sense of morals and is very Christian. She believes the Gelth are angels and she helps them, then sacrifices herself to save the world.

THE SETTING

  1. The Doctor says that history can be rewritten in a snap. So they CAN change things? Or is he lying. Or was First lying? Or is Doctor Who continuity a laugh and a half, amIrite.
  2. Cardiff in Wales. Which apparently is a terrible place or a joke or something? The dialogue twice implies “ew, Cardiff,” and as a nonBrit I don’t know why, it seems perfectly nice to me.
  3. Generic Victorian.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. How accurate is Dickens?
  2. “What the Shakespeare”? Why the weird fake swears?
  3. “Prevaricate”?
  4. Do the Gelth come back? At one point I said “Because the Doctor killed them!” Then they said it was the Time War so… DID the Doctor kill the Gelth?
  5. How many women have immolated themselves for the Doctor? Is this gonna be a trend?

General

Lawrence Miles “Review Issues”

Reviews

BTS

Phantasmagoria

Ghost Club Dickens

Dr. Who Confidential

Too Scary

Mark Gatiss Interview

Cast Information

Mark Gatiss Video Diary

Episode 17: Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D.

/ Kari / Leave a comment

This week on Daleks Aren’t Robots!? the team looks at the second and final Peter Cushing Doctor Who film.

How do they feel it compares to the serial it’s based on?

Find out!

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Look for us where all podcasts are found.

See more at https://daleksarentrobots.com/

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

Same as the show, mostly… mostly.

For this outing the team is Dr. Who, his neice Louise, granddaughter Susan and a cop who accidentally ran into the TARDIS trying to call the station for backup after a robbery. They head to 2150… for some reason… and the Tardis is immediately buried in rubble when Susan kicks a thing. Tom the Cop rescues Susan and then keeps her safe when it happens so we know he’s all right.

They split up and find Daleks have occupied the planet, meet a resistance that’s pared down to three guys and a bunch of extras, and head to a mine where the Daleks are forcing humans to dig a giant hole so they can detonate a bomb, suck the core out of the earth and use it as a spaceship to go back to Skaro and occupy THAT. Are these Daleks still fighting the war against the Thals?

Hijinks ensue, but in the end the group thwarts the Daleks with the help of some sticks, magnetism and a whole lot of ridiculous “science.” Earth is liberated, Tom is sent home to in turn decisively thwart the robbers who beat him up at the beginning and we all wonder why the hell Louise was even in this story.

THE TEAM

  1. Dr. Who is the kindest, gentlest doctor still. He adores his niece, he’s super smart but not at all arrogant about it, which means he sometimes totally fails to grasp that other people totally fail to grasp what he’s saying. It’s cute. I felt really sorry for him when he beat the escape room and then got caught because he wasn’t being a jerk about it.
  2. It’s nice to see this without the “Susan is departing” baggage. Also this Susan is a great little kid. She’s smart, but still a child and occasionally does silly kid things that get her into trouble, like kicking the thing that causes the rubble to fall, or saying BOO to Wyler while evading Daleks. But she’s also a very sweet little girl. She apologized to Wyler about the “boo” thing, and she also fetched a towel for him when he was washing his face after he came back from the disastrous battle with the Daleks. Her chemistry with the Doctor and with the grumpy Wyler is great.
  3. Louise is the Barbara stand-in, but she really does very little in this story. Initially I thought they were going to pair her off with Tom or maybe still David but they didn’t even do that. She doesn’t get any of Barbara’s boss actions, but she also doesn’t get anything new. Waste of a part really.
  4. Tom is the Ian stand-in, a policeman who gets into the Tardis thinking it’s a police box and then faints due to his robber-inflicted head wound. He gets taken with. He’s pretty brave, he DOES try to protect his fellow people and is willing to risk himself to do so, and he’s also bemused a lot of the time which is cute. He’s pretty likeable, and kinda stands in between real Ian and Other Movie Ian as far as personality goes. There’s a good slapstick physical comedy moment with him as he pretends to be a robo-man, and it’s genuinely pretty amusing because it looks like he really is trying to keep up with them and not just goofing around.
  5. The Tardis. Buried in rubble for most of the movie, poor thing.

THE GUEST STARS

The rebels are a LOT better now. They condensed them!

  1. Dortmun is David Boreanaz now! Seriously, he looks like a 60s David Boreanaz, it’s kind of great. Also, I apologize for calling him Wheelchair guy last time; that was pretty insensitive and ableist. I’m very faceblind and I have a hard time telling people apart in movies, so I usually pick the most obvious visual cue like hairstyle or clothing. Unfortunately I picked the wheelchair and was accidentally super ableist. Sorry guys. Anyway, Dortmun is Angel and he’s actually much cooler here; his speeches are briefer and more actually inspiring, his bombs work perfectly well against robo-men (though not against Daleks) and when he sacrifices himself he does take a bunch of Daleks with him. He was cool.
  2. Tyler the rebel I didn’t care about became Wyler, a rebel I DID care about. He was gruff and pessimistic and a little bit scary when he came and barked at Louise and helped her to the rebel hideout at the very beginning. He ends up getting injured in the attack on the Daleks and then helps Susan look for her grandfather. He shields her with his body when the Daleks photon torpedo a van they were riding in, and is genuinely pretty caring if a bit curmudgeonly. At the end I wished they’d take Wyler with them, it’s almost like they split the Doctor into two people, a sweet old man and a grouchy but still very cool one, and I liked it.
  3. This David is way more charismatic than the other one. He’s a quieter rebel, but he’s also insistent on saving people despite risks every time it comes up, even strangers they don’t know. He’s got a bit more dynamic of a personality and he helps the Doctor get to the mines.
  4. The two women who betray our people now betray Susan and Wyler–a CHILD and a wounded man–instead of two capable adult women, and then they laugh smugly about it, so they’re definitely evil this time.
  5. The War Profiteer/Black Marketer is not eaten by the slyther since there isn’t one. Instead he is EXPLODED by Daleks after he betrays hte Doctor.
  6. The Daleks are… not really Nazis here, although they’re definitely still the bad guys. I feel like a lot of the Nazi stuff got filed off for the movie along with the location-based stuff and the grittier, more opressive atmosphere.
  7. The Daleks still come in many colors, including red and black and silvery, and while they don’t have tiny satellite TV dishes anymore they do have hoverskirts like Tom Servo.
  8. People talk about Daleks and stairs but in this one, a ramp murders a Dalek. And then a Dalek is thwarted by putting a tarp over it, like it’s a hawk.
  9. The Robo Men are now all wearing motorcycle gimp suits and this includes a motorcycle helmet and reflective sunglasses. Why?
  10. The robo-man drowning at the beginning is gone, but the robomen do still have whips and we even see one deployed a couple times. Was the body removal part of the overal removal of the Nazi stuff or was it due to complaints?
  11. Also why are all the robo men men? Are the Daleks sexist? Are women too smart to fall for the escape room trick?

THE SETTING

  1. Why ARE we going to 2150 London? They never say.
  2. The on-location stuff seems to all be gone, alas, I kind loved that.
  3. The Easter candy aesthetic of the Daleks is MOSTLY gone but their flying saucer has some minty interiors and also some less beautiful but equally colorful and cool consoles. They also do still use shower curtains in their decorating.
  4. The flying saucers in this one are totally different than the adorable pie plate saucers in the TV version but the are GREAT. They are basically what roombas would have looked like if they’d been invented in 1965. Also the flying saucer HAS PHOTON TORPEDOS.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. WHY IS LOUISE?!?
  2. I realized on the second watch through that this movie isn’t Doctor Who, it’s Escape the Bronx’s sequel, Escape the London.
  3. The music is great in this, it’s so very 1960s and the krumhorn guy needs to go watch this to see how you do themes for bad guys and such, because the Robo Men’s theme is used perfectly. Did this guy do anything else?
  4. I didn’t think I was gonna see the doctor in a rubber gimp suit, but here we are.
  5. Even the movie acknowledges that the Daleks’ plan is insane. How did the Daleks’ plan get MORE messed up for the movie??! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE!?
  6. The Daleks use the term “rels” a couple times, what is that?
  7. Remind me why they didn’t make a third one?
  8. Was this movie successful?

General

Peter Cushing Sick

Daleks

Cushing radio play

Radio play pilot reconstruction with original script

Rels

Terry Nation Army

Dalek Origin

Contemperary Reviews

Third Movie

Fake Trailer

Episode 16: The Dalek Invasion of Earth

/ Kari / Leave a comment

On this episode of Daleks Aren’t Robots!? we return to Hartnell and to the Daleks as we also say goodbye to a companion who has been with us from the beginning.

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Find us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Look for us where all podcasts are found.

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Tardis FINALLY reaches London but it’s not the London Ian and Barbara came from. We know this because there’s a sign that says “Emergency Regulations: It is forbidden to dump bodies into the river.” Despite this a guy immediately dumps himself into the river.

Susan gets hurt trying to figure out when they are, the Tardis’s door gets blocked by rubble and the men go off to look for a way to remove the rubble. Some rebels show up and there is a flying saucer that is adorable. The boys find a whip and a guy packed into a box, which like… no comment.

Then a Dalek comes OUT OF THE WATER. There are aquatic Daleks now? WHAT.

It is the future, 2164. The Daleks are “masters of the planet,” are digging under Bedfordshire, and are able to turn humans into robots, but there’s still human resistance. The boys get taken onto the saucer, the girls meet more resistance people and the rebels plan to attack the Daleks. There’s a LOT of stuff with the rebels, a lot of whom die, and/or become robo-men. Eventually they go to Bedfordshire and find out the Daleks utterly absurd plan, which is to replace the planet’s core with an engine and turn the whole thing into a spaceship, which is not how any of this works, but whatever.

Barbara runs some Daleks over with a truck, a tiny alligator in a sewer menaces Susan, and a Dalek keeps a hilariously adorable monster called a Slyther as a pet. Everyone is reminded that the Daleks ARE the Nazis, actually, right down to firebombing London and being very fashy.

Eventually they manage to use the Daleks’ system to tell the robo-men to turn on the Daleks, there’s a massive rebellion and the Daleks are either killed or chased away, exploding into stock footage.

One of the rebels asks Susan to stay and she doesn’t want to have to choose between him and her grandfather, so the Doctor chooses for her and locks her out of the Tardis. She doesn’t object, though, and Susan leaves the show.

The end.

THE TEAM

THEY STOPPED SPLITTING UP ON PURPOSE.

  1. Susan leaves the show in this episode, which kinda sucks. While I can totally buy that she falls for the rebel David, there’s not enough of this relationship shown to make it plausible. Also, she’s given a few lines about how she doesn’t really have an identity, which is bull, and that they always just leave planets when there are problems. The thing is Susan HAS an identity and a pretty great character… when the writers bother with her at all. If only she’d stayed as smart and cool as she was in the first serial!
  2. The Doctor has some great moments in this one. His speech at the end to Susan is really touching, and he doesn’t ACTUALLY take the decision wholly out of her hands–had she said anything to stop him he probably wouldn’t have left her. He says some condescending stuff to her earlier on but in a way that makes it clear that he doesn’t really believe it, about how she needs to be “taken in hand” and stuff. There’s also a great series of scenes where he solves a Dalek puzzle and brags about how smart he is, only to be dragged away by the Daleks because he just proved he’s smart enough to be a robo-man. Oops.
  3. Barbara is a boss here, as usual. She bravely escapes from the Daleks, helps the rebels out regardless of what that entails, and bowls for Daleks while driving a massive freaking truck, which was awesome. She’s paired with a rebel woman for a lot of this episode and she’s by far the more active and decisive of the two. She even bullshits the Dalek leaders to try to get to the transmitter so she can tell the Robo-Men to rebel, but this doesn’t work. Eventually this plan IS used to win, though!
  4. Ian is also pretty great in this episode. He has come a LONG way, and not only does he use his Action Physicist powers to good effect, evading Daleks and the Slyther, but he ALSO is responsible for the ultimate failure of their plan, because he puts some sticks in the way of their “destroy the core” capsule thingy.
  5. The Tardis. Is mostly under the rubble in this episode, probably because no one has fed her. Why do they keep parking the Tardis in the worst possible places?

THE GUEST STARS

Honestly there are a lot of rebels and most of them aren’t that memorable but at least do have a couple character traits.

Rebels

  • Not Churchill Guy: Is a “smart” rebel and makes bombs to use against the Daleks, but ends up killing himself when he thinks he’d stop Barb and Blondie from escaping. His bombs don’t really work–are they meant to be an analogy for what if we didn’t have the atomic bomb?
  • Blondie: The most prominent female rebel, she has been resisting the Daleks a long time and is kind of worn down from it, but she’s still doing it and she’s still brave and smart.
  • David: The guy Susan stays behind with. He’s brave and seems nice but like… we don’t know him that well. They have a couple good moments together but it’s not enough and he’s not compelling enough to make it work because the actor just doesn’t have the time to do it.
  • There are a couple other rebels that get nice vignettes, like the guy who is just looking for his brother, who finds that he has been turned into a robo-man and then is killed by said robo-man brother. Then there’s a greedy war profiteer black marketer who is killed by the Slyther. And a couple others.

Other Humans

There are two women living in the woods who betray Barb and Blondie to the Daleks and receive food from it. While the show clearly doesn’t approve of this action they aren’t portrayed as negatively as they could have been.

Daleks

  • Clearly my comments about the Daleks from the previous episode went back in time and Terry Nation heard them because this episode really hammers it home: THE DALEKS ARE THE NAZIS. They firebomb London. They have a leader called a Commandant. The Daleks make a Selection from their prisoners to decide who becomes robo-men. They enslave and brainwash people and use them against their fellows, like the sonderkommandos. Some of the imagery looks like it could have been taken directly from the actual Blitz and I think this would have hit home MUCH HARDER with audiences that fresh from World War II and the Nazi bombings they would have experienced or heard their parents talk about.
  • I feel like Nation really asked himself “what would a British resistance have looked like?” and just made that. Everyone has a stiff upper lip, even those who are exhausted by all the fighting and only one guy seems to be genuinely villainous. Even the women who betray Barb and Blondie are mostly just desperate.
  • The Daleks now have air power and can submerse themselves in the river. They are no longer bound to roll only on metal and seem significantly faster too. They also come in multiple colors now, including black and striped, though it’s still black and white so it’s kind of hard to tell what other colors they are.
  • There is now a Dalek leader with a voice slightly different than those of the others. Is this where Trek got the Borg Queen from?

THE SETTING

  1. Well, we’re back in London. The scenes of the group sneaking around London and evading Daleks and robo-men are amazing and wonderful and I love them.
  2. It’s also a decayed London. Some places look pretty decayed, others don’t, it just kind of depends, but overall they did a great job. The “It is forbidden to dump bodies into the river” sign is kind of iconic.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. What were the connections with World War II in this movie?
  2. There was some stock footage in this movie and I wondered if they actually used any real footage from World War II?
  3. Why did Carole Ann Ford leave? What was her career like afterward, and how did she feel about being part of the Who phenomenon?
  4. Why did they write Susan leaving as they did?
  5. How many Daleks did they have for this serial? I can tell there are more but are there more than 4? What color WERE they IRL?
  6. What locations did they shoot at and what was done on set?
  7. Were there toys? What about soap? Dalek soap? Is there Dalek soap?
  8. DALEKMANNNIIIIIIAAAAAA.

DALEK SCORE

This episode drags a bit, and honestly there are too many characters. They should have cut some of the rebels and given more time to David to make Susan’s departure more plausible. Overall, though, it’s pretty well paced and beautifully filmed, especially given the budget they were probably working with, and so I’d say 4/4 Daleks for this one. It’s everything I want from a Doctor Who so even though it sometimes drags a bit things are still HAPPENING during the dragging parts.

Sources Include

Dalek Product Pictures

Episode 15: The Silurians

/ Kari / Leave a comment

On this episode of Daleks Aren’t Robots!? we meet another of the Doctor’s famous adversaries, the sympathetic Silurians.

This episode opens us up to such topics as genocide, misinformation during an epidemic, the hazards of nuclear power…and an adorable pet dinosaur.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Find us on Buzzsprout: https://daleksarentrobots.buzzsprout.com/

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Look for us where you get your podcasts!

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

Two guys in spelunking gear are attacked by Godzilla. It turns out an “atomic research center” is experiencing power losses described as “leaks” and UNIT, including LBS, Liz and the Doctor, are brought in to find out why.

They eventually find out that the Silurians are the culprits–they are lizard people that resemble the Gill Man, native to Earth, that put themselves into suspended animation a long time ago because they believed an asteroid was going to hit earth, and now that they know it didn’t they want to wake up their whole population and take over the earth, as they were legitimately here first.

The Doctor spends most of the episode trying to convince the Silurians not to murder all the humans and trying to convince the humans not to murder all the Silurians.

Unfortunately, the Silurians have an internal power struggle a lot like that of the Sensorites, but it ends in a Silurian murdering the peaceful Silurian leader and releasing a plague on the humans that seems to have a 100% kill rate and an incredibly rapid spread. Literally incredible, as we see a TON of people die and the disease spreads to France and likely the whole world.

The Doctor finds a cure to the “bacteria” that cause the disease but it’s not penicillin or some other antibiotic. Nothing about producing enough of it for everyone quickly enough or distributing it, and apparently UNIT managed to cover all this up SOMEHOW even though a massive number of people in London and elsewhere have DIED, which is absurd.

There’s some power jockeying with the Silurians, they take over the atomic research center, the Doctor manages to scare them all back into hibernating by convincing them the whole area will be irradiated and he expects to come back and study their setup.

Then LBS commits genocide by blowing up the Silurian compound and sealing the door shut. And the Doctor and Liz are sad and I’m confused about why a kids’ show just showed the good guys genociding some lizard people, and sad and angry that we just watched The Sensorites but with a really depressing ending that again, is the GOOD GUYS GENOCIDING SOME PEOPLE with no consequences shown and barely any discussion of the fact that the GOOD GUYS GENOCIDED SOME PEOPLE.

THE GENOCIDE

  1. I’m actually not sure on a second watchthrough that it WAS genocide. Maybe he just bombed the entrance to close it off? It doesn’t sound like it.
  2. I just… what… THIS IS A CHILDREN’S SHOW.
  3. WHAT THE HELL SHOW. I’M TRYING TO LIKE YOU. STOP MAKING IT DIFFICULT.
  4. Here’s the thing. The episode ENDS with the genocide and it’s BARELY addressed. Does the Doctor stop working with UNIT after this? Does Liz? Does LBS get called up on war crimes? Does ANYONE?

OUR TEAM

  1. The Doctor gets a lot of great moments here, trying to convince both sides to not murder each other. He also makes it clear that he’s not a human, though he claims to be several thousand years old (I think he’s lying but it’s not totally plain). At one point he does hide information and it does come back to bite him in the butt. Also the doctor wears a spelunking ascot and it’s adorable.
  2. Liz gets some good moments too, helping with the scientific stuff but also some of the skullduggery. She gets attacked (pushed gently) by a Silurian and has a pretty sensible reaction to it, particularly compared to the reactions of others.
  3. LBS commits genocide and also acts like an asshole throughout a lot of this one. Sometimes he’s reasonable but he’s also very jerky in a lot of it for no obvious reason. Also he should pay for his war crimes.
  4. Bessie is cute and cool and I like her. Tell us about Bessie.
  5. The TARDIS is nowhere to be seen and I hope someone is feeding her. Maybe she could eat LBS.

THE OTHERS

So many characters.

  • Combover: The lead scientist of the facility, he’s also an antivaxxer and doesn’t believe in the Silurians. He gets the plague and dies yelling at people about how the plague is totally fake you guys, which is hauntingly on point.
  • Martin Freeman: Another scientist who tries to use the Silurians to get scientific advances, ends up holding one captive and then is kind of killed by them, but actually had a heart attack.
  • Martin Freeman’s secretary: She helps Martin Freeman and after he is killed she advocates for murdering all the Silurians before they murder us.
  • Baker: A nut who wants to kill all the Silurians and also is patient zero of the plague. He dies.
  • Politician: He comes to figure out wtf is going on in the facility and basically spreads the plague to London when he tries to go home. and dies.
  • Silurian Leader: A decent person who is concerned about the humans but becomes convinced we’re intelligent and doesn’t want to genocide us. Then he’s murdered by another Silurian.
  • Mean Silurian: He wants to kill all the humans so the Silurians can have the whole world, even though they probably don’t want all of it because it’s too damn cold.
  • Fido: The dinosaur pet of the Silurians, who looks like a man in a godzilla suit, but is supposed to be bigger. It’s adorable.

Lots of others we don’t really care about.

THE SETTING

  1. Earth in the 70s. There are lots of caves and a research facility. The facility looks pretty sciency and the caves look pretty cavey.
  2. The Silurian area of the caves looks pretty neat, with green slabs of material made to a proportion humans wouldn’t make things, to accomodate their dino pets.
  3. There’s NO WAY the public doesn’t know about the plague with a death count that high. How the HELL do they cover this up?

THE PRODUCTION

  1. The plague. How did they come up with that and what was it based on? I knew the antivax movement was old but I didn’t know it was that old.
  2. The sets look really good here, are they sets or real?
  3. More about Bessie?
  4. Music.

Sources Include

General Sources

Contemporary reviews

Fan discussions and analysis

Bessie

BTS pictures and articles on production

Nicolas Courtney Acting

Carey Blyton Composer

Moon Origin theories

Silurian Hypothesis

Silurian Book adaptation Written by Malcolm Hulke

Episode 14: End of the World

/ Kari / Leave a comment
CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of transphobia, body dysmorphia and eating disorders

We jump back to modern Who with the 2005 episode End of the World.  As Rose jumps 5 billion years into the future to witness her planet be consumed by fire, we witness the continuing attempts of Russell T. Davies to make Doctor Who work in modern TV.  Does this attempt work better for us than his pilot episode? WILL ANYONE SURVIVE? ARE THERE KITTENS? (There aren’t.)

Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.

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This Episode on Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1612663/8515417-episode-14-end-of-the-world

Look for us where all podcasts are found! Also in the hearts of children everywhere. Their dark, evil and wicked hearts of darkity-darkness and ravenous TARDISes.

Podcast Contents Include

Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though.  – Kari

SUMMARY

The Doctor takes Rose to the End of the World, 5 billion years in the future, which is the worst idea for a first date ever. A bunch of rich people are watching the sun go nova, but one of them sabotages the space station they’re on. Rose gets stuck in a room while the Doctor saves the day.

OUR TEAM

  1. The Doctor is the star of this episode… to the detriment of every other character in it. It seemed super familiar to me but I couldn’t place it, and then I realized what it reminded me of: Twilight. In this episode specifically, the Doctor is Bella Swan and the other characters only exist to develop his character, to tell him how great he is and to flirt with him, unless they’re bad guys. Then they exist to be killed by him.
  2. I think it’s from the way that they basically hired fans of the Doctor to write the show. And they were fans of the Doctor, so at least in this episode, they did a fanfic, putting their OC version of the Doctor center stage to show off how cool he is. Like Twilight, it’s basically a canon fanfic, and not a good one. Every version of the Doctor I’ve seen has been arrogant, but the show KNEW it and didn’t frame it as a good thing, and allowed him to get his comeuppance from time to time. This show or at least THIS EPISODE doesn’t know it.
  3. I do like the characterization here of the Doctor as childlike and a bit giddy. He does murder someone on screen though, with nary a lampshade to be seen…
  4. After a whole episode setting up Rose as our POV character, in this episode she gets damseled hard at about the halfway mark and is reduced to lying down and whimpering while she waits for the Doctor to save her and everyone else. It’s not just that it’s kind of sexist, although it is, but it’s also bad writing. You spent that long setting up a POV character for the audience and then sidelined her to create a second POV character who is then incinerated? Sure, Ian. Sure.

THE OTHERS

This episode seems to have issues with women.

  • Jabe, the tree, exists to flirt with the Doctor, to feel sorry for the Doctor, and then to sacrifice herself so the Doctor can be a hero. It’s a shame, because her design is neat and she seemed like an interesting person. It almost seems like Rose was supposed to help the Doctor at the end but they replaced her with Jabe at the last minute or something.
  • Raffalo, the plumber, chats with Rose a bit but then is killed by the plot.
  • Cassandra, the “Last Human,” is heavily female coded but says she was a “boy.” She is racist. Her main trait is that she’s vain and has gotten plastic surgery so many times she’s just skin stretched on a rack with some makeup on it. On the bright side she did convince me to up my moisturization regimen, so there is that.
  • Jackie only appears for a few minutes but still manages to talk about how Rose should get her money back for something and tell her to pick her up a lottery ticket, because the greedy poors want the moneys, I guess.
  • The Steward is not a woman, but the plot kills him off pretty quickly to show that the spiders are a murder weapon for sure.

THE SETTING

  1. The Setting IS the characters in this one, mostly, and they are actually pretty great designs. Some of them look a bit silly, yes, but the designs are different and interesting, and it’s good to see the show taking advantage of its newly-acquired budget of more than pocket lint. The trees look really cool, and so did the giant face. One thing–Rose says they’re very ALIEN aliens and I just thought: no they’re not, they’re just people who look a bit funny. The plumber in particular was just like anybody but bluer.
  2. The observation room set Rose gets stuck in looks cool, and so do the images of the exploding earth and the sun. The engine room is a little bit dodgier, as it seems to be mostly composed of bad CG. It’s not bad enough to hurt my suspension of disbelief though.
  3. They do mention that there was a war and the Doctor’s planet was destroyed, and he’s the last son of Krypton I mean the last Time Lord. (Doctorgirl is gonna be a thing, right? Is there a Bottle City of Gallifrey?)
  4. The future is SUPER classist, and plumbers have to be given permission to talk even after being asked a direct question. And the motive for the crime here is money. Somewhere Marx is crying. They could imagine a future without religion but not without capitalism? Religion predates capitalism, guys.
  5. The three songs they bring up as “classical,” which are meant to be a joke? They’re all three actually really good pop songs. Sorry, but Tainted Love, Toxic and Disco Inferno are all pretty great songs in their own right, so that doesn’t read as a joke anymore.
  6. They explain the Tardis translation thing, which is nice.
  7. Psychic paper is stupid.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. Is Lady Cassandra a trans woman or what? What’s with the boy stuff? Queer coding villains, bleh.
  2. Were those dwarves or children?
  3. What WAS the budget on this?
  4. Do any of these alien groups come back or were they one-shots? I liked the trees a lot, I hope they come back. (Editor’s Note: The trees do not. 😦 )
  5. How much of this was Giant Rat of Sumatra stuff? It’s an incident mentioned as an aside in a Sherlock Holmes story and then never brought up again–are they going to do a fanfic thing and backfill it for continuity porn? I hope not. I don’t mind a little of that but sometimes a giant rat is better not explained.

Sources Include

General Info

Short Crespallion Actors

North/South England Material, Accents & Class Issues

Trans Issues in Doctor Who: Cassandra

Rose and Jackie’s Character

Russell T. Davies and Religion