In which I rant about the Daleks.

I've been wondering how to phrase this. For a while I thought I was just experiencing different little bits and pieces of dissatisfaction, but I just rewatched the Series 1 finale recently and it made me feel fear - true fear - of the Daleks. Which I then realized was something I have not felt in a LONG time, and that means there is something wrong here.

So here I'm going to try and articulate my growing distaste for the Daleks as Who villains, which runs slightly deeper than the whole "taste the rainbow of extermination!" shit that's been bugging pretty much every Who fan I know.

Though, valid reason for Dalekhate is valid.

Now, I don't know anything much about the old Who and how they portrayed the Daleks, but my first introduction to them was in the series 1 episode of new Who, "Dalek". 

GODDAMMIT ROSE

 Just look at that manipulative motherfucker. It reads her in an instant and sees that she's a sappy, weak little human whose sympathies can be played on in order to get her timey-wimey power and blast its way out of its prison. And yes, okay, it did spare her life later on, but only in exchange for its own release. 

Being a new Who fan, and not knowing anything about the Daleks, my first introduction - the blue light glowing in the darkness, the ever-compassionate Doctor's almost maniacal glee at seeing this creature powerless and imprisoned - packed a hell of a punch. What creature could be so evil that even the Doctor would kill it before thinking twice? I was hooked. (It probably helped that I'm a huge fan of the Borg, so the whole I AM A CREATURE WITHOUT EMOTION I NEED ORDERS TO KILL really helped my nerdboner.)

So time went on, and I knew that for all its "last Dalek in the universe omfg" plot device crap, we'd see the Daleks again in some form or other. And I was excited. Sure enough, Series 1 saw their return with a heart-pounding finale that took all the menace of that one lone Dalek, multiplied it by an entire fleet, and added a chillingly insane Emperor into the mix.

"HAIL THE DOCTOR, THE GREAT EXTERMINATOR!"

The Daleks of the fleet were already killing left, right and centre. Just the sight of their little red figures moving up decks on the computer screen was enough to make my palms sweaty. And then you have this fuck you to organized religion insane leader with delusions of glory that still knows how to push the Doctor's buttons, to make him squirm over his own conscience. See, that's what made the Daleks great villains. They knew the Doctor better than his heroic companions ever could, and they reached inside him and twisted his goddamn hearts until he bled. When the Doctor fought the Daleks, he fought himself. 

Then Rose and the great deus ex machina - I mean TARDIS heart - saved the day, but whatever. You knew they'd find a way to come back; no villain that great gets beaten that easily.

And sure enough, yup, the Series 2 finale had them. Except they were...fighting the Cybermen? Okay, sure. And they had a weird spinoff cult? All right. And an Ark that could release a Dalek army? Okay.

And that was the problem. That's when they started being "okay". The first big problem, I think, were the names. You can't give a Dalek a name; what makes them terrifying is that they are nameless. And then you can't go the opposite route, and make them supremely nameless as an entire battle fleet whizzes out one little machine, because then it's just a CGI swarm. Sure, the fleet in the Series 1 finale was a CGI swarm as well, but there was a large group of them that interacted with the Doctor, so you got that whole interplay. Here, your brain was just telling you "look, it's just another big sci-fi army that goes pew pew and makes shit blow up". So I just settled back to watch the fireworks. They didn't hold any individual terror for me - if anything, the shit-my-pants award for that episode went to the Cybermen. But that's a story for a different post.

I'm not going to dwell on Series 3, partly because Martha is a useless sack of expressionless nothing and because we had this, which I think speaks for itself:

NO.

So...that happened. And then this happened:

*flail* *gigglemumble* *tentacleflick*

 And all the while, the Daleks went from "terrifying" to "ridiculous". I think the show even started to realize that, with Donna sending all the Daleks spinning like bumper cars in the Series 4 finale. They became a joke with every additional misguided attempt to give them "depth" and "soul". First with giving them names, all the way back to the Cult of Skaro in Series 2, and then taking away the leader's shell to show the almost intimately private workings of his diseased mind in Series 4. (I refuse to mention the "I'm a real boy!" bullshit that was the Human Dalek of Series 3.) 

So basically, the problem was: over the past four years, as they've developed the character of the Doctor and each of his companions, they've also developed the "character" of the Daleks. And I know that's important; after all, no self-respecting dramatic TV show gets by without development of its villains as well as its heroes (and don't try and tell me Doctor Who isn't a drama, for all its sciencey wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey). But if you're going to make a villain that is terrifying in its very inhumanity, develop it all you want - just quit trying to make it human. Because that takes away something precious. And when I see a Dalek on screen and my first instinct is to giggle, you're doing something very wrong.

Though if this is wrong, I don't wanna be right.