It is a testament to the concept and damning praise on the episodes themselves, but I can easily name most of the episodes in the three series I’ve covered so far. This double-bill isn’t quite so easy. I wondered while I drafted it if one of them is “Daleks Take Manhattan,” something like that, or if I’m going for the most generic name possible. As I have said, I love the concept of the episode where a villain is a reason something in history happens. Though it isn’t a particularly good story or one you think of with great pleasure. It wraps up something that could have been a whole arc itself, however, we haven’t had that happen since season 1.

As you might have guessed, we’re no longer on New Earth Dorothy, just plain and simple old New York, New York, Earth. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” As Emma Lazarus reluctantly wrote for an auction to give an oxidized copper statue a plinth to symbolize hope and prosperity for immigrants and the downtrodden. We’re in 1930’s New York, at the height of what is still the greatest economic downturn in history (over two days.) Thus the tired, poor, huddled, and homeless were told to get in the bin.

I think this is why I look at the episode as such an interesting one. There is nothing flashy about Hooverville; The name of shanty towns which in turn are named after the then president. I mean, other than the pig slaves, showgirls, love story, and space Nazis. One of the space Nazis is trying to evolve the race forward, and all those listed things make things a bit more flashy, but we’ll get to those in a minute. At the end of 1930 and the start of 1931, there was one big thing being built for what would now only cost $555-million, The Empire State building. Yet in the 90 or so minutes of the episode, very little of the show is set up at the top. In fact very little until the end really sits up there with steadfastness.

Most of the story is grounded by moments in Hooverville, such as the theater Tallulah dances in, the sewers the pig slaves run around in, and the basement that the Cult of Skaro have sat festering in. It is all this lovely shouting in parks, closed off rooms and catacombs, talking about the ethics of genocide, I like that. The shouting ethics at each other bit, not the genocide. It all turns a bit cartoonish when Mr. Diagoras is forced to crawl inside Dalek Sec, to which Sec melds with him and becomes the most pleasurable alien sex toy for 1930. At least the most pleasing since the Daleks were last around during “The Chase” in 1966.

I like the Cult of Skaro as an idea, but they never really got a proper arc that made them more interesting than what they were posed to be in the first place. A secret order of Daleks that rule from behind the curtain, kept alive in a bubble found by Torchwood of all things. That’s at least a U.N.I.T. job if I’ve ever seen one. Either way, the collective of four Daleks fell back through time again, kidnapping homeless people and spliced the genetics of humans and pigs to create a symbiotic slave race to kidnap more people for their grand plan. Did I mention these are the space Nazis?

It is all a bit dark and grim, but it needs to be for what I’m about to say. I’ve never retroactively hated someone so much as I do Frank. I want him to jump off the unfinished Empire State Building and watch him make a “splat” sound. Look, I don’t mind Emma Stone, because I like some of what she’s done, but Andrew Garfield can get right in the bin and stay there. If I never have to watch Marc Webb’s awful Spider-Man reboot ever again, my life will still be devalued greatly for sitting through that tripe once. To make this bit darker, the pig slaves only live two or three weeks. I forget whether Frank is turned into a pig-man or not, I had hope for a moment.

I like Tallulah and Laszlo, that’s a happy little story of love conquering what the space Nazis did to him. Though I’m more concerned about their American accents, which are as well maintained as the brake pads on a pensioner’s wheelchair going downhill. What surprised me is that Ryan Carnes (who plays Laszlo) was perfectly fine in Desperate Housewives as the gay guy who tried to sleep with Eva Longoria. The entire story is filled with that, a bunch of actors from the UK doing cartoonishly bad American accents to explain that the episode is set in 1930’s New York.

Once again, Martha is showcased as having the wherewithal to come off as a smart companion. It might seem like I’m overstating how important that is, but given what we’re about to head into with the coming series, she’s naturally showcased as smart. Given some have sudden sparks of brilliance when it is convenient, Martha’s the good one. Again, some acting is overdone with the Diagoras sex toy and pig slaves, but given how much of a 6 PM prosthetic horror show they are, I can understand why.

In general, I don’t know why exactly, but I have fond memories of this story even with all that’s annoying or wrong with it. Yet watching it back, I was just hoping it would end. It began to drag on and felt like it would never stop. The concept of a Dalek leader (at the very least) attempting to evolve the race from the angry genocidal pepper pots, only for a coup d’etat to happen is interesting. I just wish there was something with a bit more brevity to it to make this one exciting or fun. Instead, with a genetically modified sub-species of human, mass poverty seen in Hooverville, and the overall feeling being grim, it is dark and horrid.

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Doctor Who "Daleks In Manhattan" & "Evolution Of The Daleks"

7

Score

7.0/10

Pros

• Tallulah and Laszlo's love story.
• A failed attempt to change up the Daleks.
• Just how dark the episode is willing to get.
• The grounded nature of the story, instead of making it flashy.

Cons

• Andrew Garfield.
• How cartoonish some segments are.