Writer: Helen Raynor
Director: James Strong
Script Editor: Lindsey Alford
Producer: Phil Collinson
After taking Martha to New New York, the Doctor brings her to the original New York where they materialise on 12st November 1930, right next to the Statue of Liberty. They find themselves amongst the dispossessed inhabitants of Hooverville in Central Park where they learn of a series of mysterious disappearances. They meet Solomon, who is a black veteran of the Great War and serves as an informal leader of Hooverville. He explains to them that that people disappear at night, leaving behind their few possessions.
Solomon
The Empire State Building is still under-construction at this time and Mr. Diagoras (Eric Loren) is impatient to see construction of the mast finished. When his foreman refuses to work any faster Diagoras summons his ‘Masters’ to have a word with him. Expecting to see some man in a suit, the foreman is instead confronted with a Dalek and two humanoid creatures with pig-faces. They drag the hapless foreman off and demand that Diagoras supplies them with more bodies for the ‘final experiment.’
Going up?
Mr Diagoras arrives at the Hooverville to take on workers to clear a collapse down in the sewers, offering a dollar a day. Fascinated by Diagoras’ candid statement that people sometimes fail to return, the Doctor accepts the job. Martha goes with him, along with Solomon and a young man called Frank. They are told the obstruction is half a mile through the dank tunnels, but they find no obstruction, just a lime coloured lump of alien flesh. They are just about to leave when they hear a noise from further into the sewers; they come across what appears to be a man slumped against a wall. On closer examination they find out he has the face of a pig. The Doctor is appalled and wonders who could have done this to him, however Martha and the others point to further down the tunnels where a large group of these pig-slaves have appeared and are now gazing at them with malice in their eyes. The Doctor and his group run away, pursued by a screeching herd of pig-slaves.
Meanwhile Diagoras is back at the Empire State Building insisting that his workers go up onto the mast at night to attach what appear to be panels from the back of a Dalek to the bottom of the mast. The workers object to going out there in such conditions, but Diagoras is indifferent to their plight and reminds them that he can recruit anybody he likes to complete this job and there is nothing they can do about it.
Diagoras
Dalek Caan, who appears to relate to Diagoras almost as if he were an equal, joins him as he looks out over the city. Caan explains that his home world was destroyed in a war; Diagoras is also familiar with war, being another veteran of the Great War and now a survivor in the Great Depression. Caan tells Diagoras he has ‘rare ambition’ and informs him that he will be rewarded for his loyalty. Diagoras is taken to Sec who introduces himself as the leader of the Cult of Skaro. Diagoras’ fate is to become part of the ‘final experiment’ and to his horror he is seized by two pig-slaves. Terrified that he is going to become one of them Diagoras protests his loyalty to the Daleks, however Sec informs him that the pig-slaves are primitive and that the ‘final experiment’ is of a much higher order. Dalek Thay interjects, stating that this is against the Dalek philosophy; Sec counters that in order to survive the Daleks must evolve and that they all had to make sacrifices (Thay has already sacrificed some of his panels from the rear of his casing) likewise Dalek Sec is prepared to sacrifice himself for the sake of Dalek evolution. His casing splits open to reveal ‘the true face of the Dalek’ and the terrified Diagoras is forced to kneel. The Dalek mutant lassoes Diagoras with its tentacles and distends its stomach to submerge Diagoras in its flesh before sweeping him into the Dalek casing and sealing it up.
The true face of a Dalek
Escaping from the pig-slaves in the sewers the Doctor, Solomon and Martha encounter Tallulah a showgirl who is about to go on stage in a vaudeville performance. She has also had someone very close to her go missing recently, her boyfriend Laszlo who disappeared two weeks before. Whilst she is on stage the Doctor jury-rigs a primitive DNA scanner utilizing an old radio and his sonic screwdriver. He learns to his horror that the alien material they recovered from the sewers originates from Skaro. Just as he uncovers this there is a commotion from the stage area. Martha had seen Laszlo, who has been half-converted into a pig watching Tallulah on stage; pursuing him she had been caught by other pig-slaves and dragged down a manhole into the sewers. Following her the Doctor and Tallulah encounter a Dalek, which the Doctor grimly explains represents a threat to them all. Shortly after this they find Laszlo, who is ashamed to meet Tallulah’s eyes. He had managed to escape the Daleks’ laboratories before he was fully converted and is able to think for himself still. The Doctor demands that he take them to wherever the Daleks have their base.
Back at the Dalek base the final experiment is nearing completion as smoke billows from Sec’s casing. Despite his fellow Daleks concerns he insists on proceeding and Dalek Jast administers an injection of ‘chromatin solution’ into his casing.
The Doctor, Tallulah and Laszlo watch as Martha, Solomon and a group of other captives are scanned by the Daleks. Those of lower intelligence are destined to become pig-slaves, the others such as Martha are allocated to the ‘final experiment’. Returning to the Dalek base the Doctor falls in with the captives. They arrive just as the experiment with Sec is nearing completion, then as they watch Sec emerges from his casing in humanoid form and declares.
“I am a human Dalek! I am your future!”
Sec follows this up in the next episode with the command that all the humans present would become just like him. The Doctor makes his entrance and is immediately threatened with extermination by the Daleks. Sec orders them to stop; the Doctor is fascinated by the emergence of a new form of Dalek. Sec explains that the Cult of Skaro had escaped his ‘slaughter’ (see Doomsday) by using an emergency temporal shift. This had left them weakened, forced to hide in the sewers whilst they engaged in experiments that had led to the Sec hybrid. Dalek Sec tells the Doctor that he now feels ‘humanity...everything we wanted from mankind which is ambition, hatred, aggression and war…such a genius for war… at heart this species is so very Dalek!’
The Doctor than employs a Bakelite radio and his sonic screwdriver in a diversionary attack on the captors. In the resulting confusion the Daleks crowd around Sec to protect him whilst the Doctor and the others escape. Pursued by the pig-slaves and two of the Daleks they manage to get through the manhole under the stage. Dalek Thay and Dalek Caan dismiss the pig-slaves and then discuss their doubts about Sec’s fitness to command.
The Doctor and his friends return to Hooverville where they quickly explain to everyone the nature of the threat they are under. There are dozens of guns in the camp and Solomon orders everyone to arms; they soon come under attack from a party of pig-slaves, who drive everyone into the centre of the camp. However the Doctor reminds everyone that these are just the ground troops, suddenly Daleks appear in the air and begin bombarding the encampment with their weapons.
Exterminate!
Solomon tries to plead with the Daleks (in a scene stolen from ‘The War of the Worlds’) comparing the Daleks with his own outcast people. However he is shot down for his troubles, back at the base Sec who has been watching proceedings is visibly shaken by Solomon’s death. The Doctor- full of disgust for the Daleks- strides forward and offers himself up for extermination, something the Daleks are all too happy to oblige him with but Sec puts a stop to it once again. He tells his puzzled comrade that the Doctor is a genius and could help them in their plans. An agreement is reached where the Doctor returns to the laboratories in exchange for the lives of those at Hooverville. As he leaves the Doctor slips Martha his psychic paper and thanks her for all her help.
Back at the laboratory Sec explains to the Doctor his plans for the Daleks’ future. When the Cult of Skaro had materialised in 1930 they had first of all tried to produce Dalek mutants from their own genetic material. But the creatures had been so weak that they had to abandon this line of research (the Doctor and Martha had discovered one of these rejects down in the sewers). That was when Sec had decided that they should concentrate their efforts on the planet’s ‘greatest resource’-it’s human population. The Daleks have been abducting hundreds of people and ‘formatting’ them, so that nothing remains of there selves. Sec is to use his genetic pattern as a template on which the others will be changed into human Daleks. However, in contrast to what has gone before in Dalek history Sec wants these new hybrids to have human emotions and not to be dominated by the urge to conquer. The Doctor is astonished by this statement and argues that the other Daleks will not simply stand by and let Sec do this; however Sec and the other Daleks state that as he is their leader they are programmed to follow his orders.
The Daleks plan to use the energy from a gamma ray strike that will hit the Earth in eleven minutes to power the conversion of their Human Dalek army. They have various technical problems that only the Doctor can sort out; he is convinced by now that Sec at least is in earnest and agrees that he will use his TARDIS to locate the hybrid Daleks on a new world after their conversion. However as the tubes feeding into the human shells fill up with liquid solution, it becomes apparent that the feeds have been tampered with. The other Daleks have rebelled, arguing that Sec is no longer a Dalek and therefore not fit to command. They have altered the feeds so that pure Dalek DNA goes into the hybrids.
Martha meanwhile has used the psychic paper to gain access to the top floor of the Empire State Building where she has finally located the Dalekanium fixed onto the mast. As the gamma storm gathers the Doctor goes up to the top of the building and attempts to use his sonic screwdriver to remove the panels. Martha, Laszlo and Tallulah meanwhile have to deal with a troop of pig-slaves who are coming up in the lift. Laszlo is by now much weakened (Pig-slaves it seems have very short life spans) and their chances of success are extremely remote. However, Martha rigs up an ingenious device to electrocute the pig-slaves using lightening conducted down the mast.
As she does this the Doctor drops his sonic screwdriver as he attempts to wrench the Dalek panels from their fixtures. As the storm (how the gamma storm manifests as lightening is not explained) gathers pace he clings onto the mast; meanwhile the Daleks are counting down in rels to the gamma strike and Martha and co. are waiting for the pig-slaves to arrive in a lift. The Doctor screams as the mast is struck by lightening, simultaneously the lift arrives and the pig-slaves are electrocuted by Martha’s rig-up. Down in the basement an army of Dalek-Humans awakes from its slumber.
Martha is appalled with herself for taking the lives of the pig-slaves; Laszlo reassures her that they ‘were already dead’. They find the Doctor collapsed on the scaffolding at the top of the building. He has survived, but they realise that the Dalekanium was still fixed to the base of the mast.
Downstairs the three mutinous members of the Cult of Skaro now have an army of willing soldiers and issue them arms in the shape of Tommy-guns with Dalek blasters attached to the business end. Dalek Caan takes command and is wired up to the Dalek battle-computer. They now plan to take Manhattan and use the island as a base for conquering the world.
Meanwhile the Doctor and his friends have retreated to the theatre, where the Doctor decides to bring the Daleks out into the open. He uses the sonic screwdriver to signal to the Daleks where he is. Sure enough his signal is detected by Dalek Caan, who despatches the Dalek-Humans plus Jast and Thay to the theatre.
As the Doctor and his friends are encircled by Daleks, Thay and Jast burst on the stage, bringing Sec with them in chains. The Daleks demand the Doctor comes forward; they tell him that they wish to make Earth into a New Skaro. Sec tries to plead with them that ‘if you chose death and destruction, death and destruction choose you.’ The Daleks are not impressed with them and threaten again to exterminate the Doctor, Sec pleads with them but is exterminated.
The Doctor confronts the Dalek-Humans with this evidence of their masters’ ruthlessness, back in the base Dalek-Caan issues a warning to his comrades that the Dalek-Humans have increased levels of serotonin. The Doctor issues a challenge to the Daleks to issue the command to kill him to the Dalek-Humans. They do so, but then the Dalek-Humans fail to follow through the command, instead one of them asks ‘why?’ repeatedly. The Doctor explains that he got in the way of the lightening strike, therefore adding his Time Lord DNA to the mix. The Dalek-Humans do not identify themselves as Daleks and will not obey orders, so Jast and Thay open fire on them. A fight breaks out between the two factions, the Dalek-Humans energy weapons proving effective against their masters’ casings; Jast and Thay are exterminated, Dalek Caan however is still wired into the battle-computer and issues a signal that destroys the Dalek-Humans.
Appalled at this genocide the Doctor confronts Dalek Caan in his base. Dalek Caan is now the only Dalek left in existence and the Doctor tells him that he has already witnessed one genocide today and doesn’t want to be responsible for another. He offers to help Caan instead, but the Dalek refuses to listen and engages an emergency temporal shift instead.
Tallulah asks the Doctor for help, because Laszlo is dying. The Doctor uses the Dalek Genetics lab to save Laszlo’s life although he cannot restore his face to what it was before.
As the Doctor and Martha leave New York Martha wonders whether they will meet up with Dalek Caan again, the Doctor has no doubt that they will.
Helen Raynor is the first woman to write for the new series and the first woman ever to write a televised Dalek story. Previously she has written an episode of Torchwood (‘Ghost Machine’) and worked as script editor on Doctor Who.
This was also the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who to be filmed partially abroad, a small crew was dispatched to New York in order to get stills and backdrop footage which was later married to live action footage filmed in Wales.
Helen Raynor was given a shopping list of items to include in her story: “New York 1930s, Pig Men, sewers, showgirls, the Empire State Building-and Daleks.” ((Radio Times 21-7 April 2007)
Tallulah’s name and personality were inspired by the character with the same name played by the very young Jodie Foster in the 1976 film Bugsy Malone.
Although the production team were careful to remove any anachronistic buildings from the New York skyline (unlike ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ where a modern block of flats is visible in 1963) there was one place where they were not that successful. The Statue of Liberty is shown with the all gold-leaf surface torch that was put in place in 1984. In 1930, the torch was made of glass panes mounted on a copper frame.
The Doctor and the Daleks previously visited New York when they made a stop on the Empire State Building during ‘The Chase’. In BBC’s Doctor Who Confidential Russell T. Davies (with tongue very firmly in cheek) declared that he likes to think that the Empire State Building was stored in the Dalek memory banks during this visit, and that Dalek Sec intentionally shifted there at the end of ‘Doomsday’. Although why Sec would choose to maroon himself in 1930 is of course another question.
There have been many stories that have involved the line between Dalek and Human being blurred in Doctor Who history. The scenes in the second episode of this story where the Dalek Humans question their orders are similar to some of the scenes featuring the humanized Daleks in ‘The Evil of the Daleks’.
The concern that Dalek Thay expresses about Dalek genetic purity in part one of this story echo the theme of the Big Finish BBC7 8th Doctor ‘The Blood of the Daleks.’
Contrary to some commentaries, The Cult of Skaro are not the first Daleks to have names. There was Zeg, the indestructible Dalek in the TV Century 21 Comic strip and there were also Alpha, Beta and Omega, the three humanized Daleks from ‘Evil of the Daleks’.
When Laszlo escapes with the Doctor, he says, “The lift is here.” In American English a “lift” is called an “elevator” and, as an American, Laszlo should have said “The elevator is here.” This is doubly ironic given that American actor Ryan Carnes who was born in Illinois plays Laszlo.
I have mixed feelings for this ambitious two parter from Helen Raynor, script editor on the new series. Whilst the first episode is certainly impressive and does its best to set the scene and crank up the level of excitement, weird inconsistencies and sloppy writing that tends to grate beset the second episode. Murray-Gold’s score doesn’t help either with his chorus singing ‘this is a Human Dalek’ or ‘this is a Dalek Human’ as if the viewer needed additional help in following what was going on.
There has also been some criticism of the Daleks use of pig-slaves rather than robomen or some other kind of servant. I don’t think this argument is very well thought through for a number of reasons. To the Daleks, using hybrid pig-creatures maybe just as effective as robotising people and it is interesting that whereas the robomen were generally the smarter humans the Daleks picked out, the opposite is true of the pig-slaves. They are, quite literally, the grunts-the people who pick things up off the floor and who hold prisoners down whilst there masters experiment on them. The fact that they are a hybrid life form is of course a wonderful thematic link with the central plot of the story and therefore is justified in terms of foreshadowing.
The story itself can be seen as a reworking of ‘The Evil of the Daleks’ with some cute references to Boris Karloff’s original Frankenstein, King Kong and just about anything with Busby Berkeley and Bakelite in it. The Daleks are at their best prowling around in the sewers underneath New York and riding Art Deco elevators in the Empire State Building.
Apparently this story grew out of a ‘shopping list’ given by RTD to Helen Raynor: What this list left out, according to Davies (Doctor Who Confidential) was the Great Depression, which Raynor to her credit remembered was going on at the time. From this we get the ramshackle inhabitants of Hooverville and the characters of Mr. Diagoras (Eric Loren) and Solomon (Hugh Quarshie). ‘Daleks in Manhattan’ spends a great deal of time painting these two who represent divergent responses to both the Great War and the Great Depression. Diagoras has learnt from the war that people are just animals and that the most pressing priority for him is to survive. Solomon has learnt the opposite, that the only way to survive is by finding a common cause with your fellow creatures. Poor Solomon even tries to reason with the Daleks in this vain, telling them that they are ‘both outcasts’ and should work together for the good of the universe. Their response is, predictably enough, extermination and one can’t help but feel shocked by his death. This is all credit to Hugh Quarshie, who paints a convincing portrait of a man who is the natural leader of the chaotic and dispossessed survivors of the Wall Street Crash in central park.
Similar praise must go to Eric Loren whose character’s fate is scarcely less shocking than his counterparts; in this case his fate is both to be kissed and to be killed by a Dalek. Dalek Sec requires his flesh so that he can be ‘joined’ with him to become a Dalek that can walk on the earth. The Radio Times decided to advertise this major spoiler to all and sundry by splashing the Sec hybrid ‘Human-Dalek’ on the front cover, much to the chagrin of some fans. The Sec Hybrid’s emergence from his casing at the end of ‘Daleks in Manhattan’ is both high camp and oddly amusing, putting one in mind of the musical as Sec is born again to Murray-Gold’s heavy-handed chorus. Thankfully rather than bursting into song, Sec dryly rasps that he is a ‘Human-Dalek’ and that he is the future, following this up in the next episode with the command that all the humans present would become just like him. Enter the Doctor who engages the Sec hybrid in customary Doctor/Dalek mode for several minutes before employing a Bakelite radio and his trusting sonic screwdriver in a diversionary attack on the captors.
Despite this entrance the Sec hybrid soon turns down an interesting new path, grasping that Dalek survival is contingent on them dropping certain fundamental principles of Dalek ideology, such as their presumed superiority to other life-forms. He even questions Davros’ (not mentioned by name) decision to remove all emotions from Daleks apart from fear and hatred. He sees this as a weakness of the Daleks rather than a strength. He tells his fellow members of the Cult of Skaro that the Daleks must change or face extinction. This unfortunately doesn’t go down too well with Jast, Fey and Caan who start plotting their leaders downfall in a wonderfully sneaky way. Although there is nothing new about Dalek schisms the way this particular schism in the Cult of Skaro is mapped is certainly very unique. Rather than revert to open warfare the other Daleks engage in sneaky whispers in the corner and craftily turn Sec’s army of Human-Daleks into a deadly army of Dalek-Humans. Apparently the switching round of the terms in this way makes an awful lot of difference, Sec being an hybrid with a tendency to become human, while the ‘formatted’ human shells the Daleks have been accumulating in their underground transgenic lab are destined to have ‘spiky’ pure Dalek DNA pumped into them. This doesn’t turn them into squid-like creatures however; it leaves them with a human form but a Dalek mind. Sound familiar?
“We imagined you irrelevant!” crows Dalek-Caan to a defeated and chained up Sec. Apparently dry-wit and sarcasm are attributes of the Cult of Skaro, remember Dalek-Sec telling the Cybermen that killing them was ‘pest control’ and that they were only superior to Daleks in their ability to die? That must have had them cracking up in the aisles on Skaro and soon the Daleks are on stage with Sec in tow crawling on all fours like a subdued basset hound, his tentacles quivering with rage. How the mighty hath fallen!
With a not inconsiderable body count it is hard to understand why Russell T. Davies thinks that they always good for a laugh. Some light is introduced into the shade with Tallulah, played by Miranda Raison who somehow gets away with the most shaming ‘noo yoirk’ accents one can imagine. Perhaps it’s that she looks so good in a blonde wig and white angel wings; opposite her, watching from the shadows is Desperate Housewives’ actor Ryan Carnes who plays Lazlo. He is the beast to her beauty, being half-converted into a pig slave by his Dalek captors. The Doctor can save his life at the end of the episode but cannot return him to his former state before his pig conversion. Fortunately Tallulah loves him and the people of Hooverville agree to take him in.
Of the two main leads, David Tennant both excels himself at times whilst still going OTT in his performance. However, this is a slightly calmer, emotionally more reserved Doctor than last year. Martha (Freema Argeyman) certainly feels left out in the cold by the man she seems to be falling in love with. But it is an unrequited love, something she confides into Tallulah who tells her that all men are pretty strange anyway. One of the most telling scenes is when the Doctor escapes from the Daleks and returns to Martha. “I’m pleased to see you as well!” she says to the Doctor who gives her a fulsome hug in return. He slights her unintentionally only moments later when he sees that the lift has gone back down to fetch up the pig-slaves. “Never waste time on a hug!” he exclaims in disgust, leaving Martha and the others to hold off the pigs while he goes to unscrew Dalekanium panels from the top of the Empire State Building. Poor Martha, she must really be wondering what she has let herself in for, falling in love with somebody as dangerous and unstable as the Doctor so obviously is. If that wasn’t enough to worry about he’s always coming back from the dead, so far this series he has been drained of blood on the moon, exposed to lethal dosages of hydrocarbons in one city and here he is again, getting struck by lightening at the top of the tallest building in the world.
Whilst I am dishing out the accolades, all credit must go to Nicolas Briggs for his faultless grating into the ring-tone modulator. Where would the Daleks be without there distinctive voice? During this story Mr. Briggs shows just how versatile this voice can be, the best examples being mostly in the first part when Sec is arguing with the others about the necessity for Daleks to evolve. I did enjoy Sec telling Diagoras to ‘cease talking’ in such a chilling tone, especially as he had just had such a friendly tête-à-tête with Dalek Caan.
Full marks to James Strong for his direction; he seems to have learned all the important lessons of how to film the Daleks from such classic stories as ‘Genesis of the Daleks’. He uses lots of nice close shots of the Daleks as they skulk around the sewers and back lights them so there shadows appear enormous on the walls behind them.
This story is the fourth to feature the Daleks in the new series. Interestingly Russell T. Davies describes this as the first ‘proper’ Dalek serial, “Every other time, they’ve been great big, ratings grabbing event appearances,” (Radio Times) which begs the question of what he calls a major spoiler on the front of the Radio Times. Still, he does have a point, in that in this story the Daleks are much more complex creatures than they have been so far in most of the new series stories apart from ‘Dalek’ itself. Robbing the last four Daleks of their power and virtually marooning them in a ‘ignorant age’ as Sec calls 1930s New York, makes for some interesting motivation. This is what made this story interesting, that and Eric Loren’s performance as first of all Diagoras and later as the Sec hybrid. He does well to bring depth to such a camp monstrosity of a creature who at first sight seemed so disgusting yet laughable. That we actually feel like mourning his death at the plungers of his former comrades is something I take my hat off to.
In summary, this story is certainly one of the strongest this season, although wasn’t helped in places by some funny science and OTT from Mr. Tennant. A pastiche plot and excellent production values make this a very contemporary form of Doctor Who. All in all, the story aspires to more than it can deliver, but has a cracking good time in the process.
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