gave this 6/10. It’s above average purely for its entertainment value. The production value looks slightly cheap especially in comparison to series 1s Empty child in the same setting. The colourful daleks don’t really bother me but aren’t ideal. The main flaw is the resolution but that is the case for a lot of doctor who. this episode is fun, and a nice continuation of the beginning of amy and the doctors friendship, but it’s nothing too special.
4 Likes
If you want the Paradigm written well, the 11/Valarie run is where they shine.
4 Likes
That’s exciting. Bought some of those recently and I’m looking forward to them as Eleven’s my fav. Not big on Daleks but interested to see what they do with these ones. Glad they did something at all!
2 Likes
Same. I find Daleks, especially on audio, boring as anything but they actually engaged me with those stories.
5 Likes
Time is indeed a great healer, or a great mellower at least.
Y’see, I just rewatched Victory Of The Daleks, believing my pre-existing dislikes and issues with this story would simply be confirmed. Now I don’t know if it’s the passing of time, nostalgia for a bygone time or simply a case of mellowing with age, but I actually quite enjoyed it.
Yes it’s incredibly silly, tonally all over the place and clumsily paced, but it’s the kind of throw everything at the wall, bonkers Doctor Who, I’m sure an eight year old me would have loved. I was fair bit older than eight in 2010 however, and many aspects of this story stuck in my craw at the time, and, in truth, some of those niggles still persist. Churchill is nothing more than a shallow collection of clichéd mannerisms and patriotic sound bites, the Paradigms are a wholly unsuccessful and clunky redesign and the story feels like it’s reached it’s conclusion with fifteen minutes to go. I’m still not sure about Bracewell’s romantic denouement either, I mean it’s a fookin explosive in a waistcoat and spectacles, how’s it supposed to establish a stable relationship with an attractive Scottish villager.
It’s silly.
But then, as stated, so much of this story is incredibly silly. It’s like Mark Gatis had too many sweeties and glasses of fizzy pop before settling down to eagerly tap away at the typewriter. It’s a frenzied checklist of ideas and incidents…‘Right, I want the Doctor helping Winston Churchill, and green, duplicitous Daleks in fatigues serving cups of tea and shooting down Messerschmitts, and then a whole new race of multi coloured super Daleks, and then Spitfires in space, and then a big bomb that can only be deactivated by remembering it’s pretend girlfriend’.
Some it works, some of it fails, but I’m at the stage now where I think…why not. Give it a go. It’s Doctor Who. He dragged the Earth back across the universe a series and a bit ago, so wartime dogfights in orbit…so what. I really enjoyed that particular sequence this time. I appreciated it’s nod to Independence Day and how Murray Gold’s accompanying score superbly echoed David Arnold’s soundtrack for the same film. It’s bold, exciting and gloriously over the top. Tongue in cheek with a stiff upper lip. Great.
Not so great are the Paradigms, and my issues with them remain constant. They’re ugly, plain and simple. They lack the grace and symmetry that made the original design so successful. When RTD updated Skaro’s finest he made sure the designers adhered to that recognisable silhouette. The shape and proportions remained fairly similar to what had gone before, because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Ed Thomas and his team merely made em look more robust, more tank like. He gave a convincing sturdiness to what had previously appeared to be plywood, plungers and plastic.
The 2010 ‘upgrade’ forsook that sturdiness and simply returned the Daleks to their flimsy looking plastic heyday. And for good measure it threw in a few colanders beneath the headpiece, to round of the kitchen utensil motif so ably embodied for many years by the egg whisk guns. Their rear ends jut out to far, and their added height just felt…wrong. Bigger isn’t always better, and sometimes beautiful malevolence sometimes comes in small packages.
Anyway, I’m trying to be positive now, so I’ll end by saying that Victory is a well intentioned foray into a untouched genre for the show…the Bank Holiday War Film. It’s got the requisite number of Broadswords and Danny Boys, bulldog defiance and blitz spirit. I suspect that somewhere, there’s a better version of this story, one where the Doctor’s and Churchill’s relationship wasn’t quite so chummy, one were difficult discisions appear to carry genuine weight and one where a robot doesn’t go scampering off to work in a post office.
Might not be as fun though.
6 Likes
KBO, of course.
2/10
Just awful, but it can get worse. My review below.
2 Likes