You can't space Daleks
How do SF writers get their genre entertainment? Well, lots read, but I don't–-I'm a TV and movie gal, and always have been. And I'm currently eating humble pie over the new Dr. Who series.
Did I grow up on Dr. Who? You bet. And I mean the first one--played by William Hartnell, watched on a tiny 14" Sobell black and white telly in a massive wooden cabinet. I never hid behind the sofa when the Daleks appeared, but I did think they were unspeakably cool. They were Vaderesque long before Vader was even a twinkle in the cyberneticist's eye. When the Doctor opened up the knobbly casing and that black slug thing emerged, I thought they were the Best Aliens Ever.
I wouldn't say I was a Dr. Who fan as a kid, though, or that it had a big impact on me; it certainly wasn't seminal like the magnificent A For Andromeda, which blew me away aged five, and to this day I have no idea how I assimilated the ideas in that series, but I did, and it shaped me. No, Dr. Who was fun. It was what you sat down an watched on Saturday at tea-time, a national institution.
As an adult, I still took a passing interest in it, and–-SF trivia moment–-I worked at a TV station alongside Mrs. Who a few times in the form of Tom Baker's wife. So when the series was finally resurrected, I wasn't sure what I was going to make of it. Dr. Who was part of my childhood, but it was also now part of what I did for a living-–the SF entertainment industry. As a writer, you can see all the strings. You judge things differently.
Well, I hated large chunks of the first series and loved others. I was disappointed in it. When I discussed it at Worldcon, I was sitting next to fellow pros who wrote the screenplay. It wasn't kids' stuff any longer; it was part of my industry, another media product. When the Doctor changed incarnations, I didn't think David Tennant would improve my enthusiasm for the series.
Okay, I was wrong.
What changed my mind? Well, oddly, it wasn't the excellent Mr. Tennant, who's just the best Who I can imagine now, a lovely blend of scatty goofiness underpinned by this ancient, lonely man who's "running out of mercy."
It was sitting down and watching the entire series again with the accompanying production diary documentaries on BBC 3 each night. Once I really looked at construction of the stories, and the themes, something clicked both at a professional and personal level. I loved it: I'm now addicted. Beneath the deliberately oh-this-isn't-real-science-don't-be-such-a-geek charm, there's a steely core of hard questions, awkward ethics and truths about interaction that's masterfully maintained.
The dialogue is breathtaking, too: you won't find finer lines anywhere. "This is my lover, the King of France," says Madame de Pompadour, whom the Doctor has the hots for. He stares at the King, curls his lip, and retorts: "Yeah? I'm a Lord of Time."
But I still love the Daleks best.
They remain wonderful villains, except they're now played no-holds-barred as genocidal master-race maniacs who can now--wait for it--negotiate stairs. "El-ev-ate!" somehow seems creepier even than "Ex-ter-min-ate!" Worse than that--they don't even need a spaceship. The scene where millions spew out of the Dalek mothership in neat ranks and fly through space to invade Earth is just...wonderful. Ripley might have seen off Alien by shoving her/him/it out into vacuum at least twice, but if she'd met Daleks, they'd have laughed in her face.
If Daleks laughed, that is. I'm sure they do, sometimes...
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