Review: Doctor Who, The Time of the Daleks -- Adilbrand Noblesword's Hall of Warriors

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Date Posted: 19:30:52 10/23/02 Wed
Author: Omega
Subject: Review: Doctor Who, The Time of the Daleks

The 8th Doctor's first encounter with the Daleks is an entertaining and creative Dalek story, which takes elements of some of the earlier, 1st Doctor Dalek stories, and add some unique twists to them, in order to develop an interesting story -- albeit, with what seems to be a somewhat disappointing (and confusing) ending. There is also a strong connection to the 2nd Doctor's "The Evil of the Daleks" in this story...

In Star Trek VI we see Klingons quoting Shakespeare, now in The Time of the Daleks, we encounter Daleks who quote Shakespeare. The story begins with the Doctor finding out that his companion, Charley, has never heard of Shakespeare when he makes a parody on "To be or not to be," and then remembers his encounter with Orson Welles, where Orson also did not know who Shakespeare was. Something is wrong with the time line, and, by looking into the time-stream, he sees that there seems to be an odd connection between the 21st century and something in the 21st century causing problems in Shakespeare's time and ending with the destruction of Shakespeare.

The Doctor goes to investigate, and finds that in England, that the destruction and removal of Shakespeare from time was not entirely fulfilled: some people know who Shakespeare is, and others do not. The ruling "dictator" of England is trying to protect her rule against rebels, but also, in trying to find out what is happening to english culture, where it is known that Shakespeare is slowly being removed from history and slowly more and more people do not know who he is. To solve the problem, she has created a time-travel experiment, which, it turns out is very similar to the Evil of the Daleks, using mirrors and electricity and multiple clocks to act as a quantum control over time itself.. the Doctor realizes that there is some element of power that could happen with the experiment, but that it also needs to be aided by Chrotons (time particles). He then is disturbed to find out that the experiment had worked, once.. and had brought "help," help that the dictator says came from the most "enthusiastic of Shakespeare scholars." Right afterwards, the Daleks appear.. and explain they are trapped, and need the Doctor's help to get a ship out of the time vortex, and they say that, if helped, they will let the dictator to go back in time, and find out what has happened to Shakespeare.

This is basically the end of the first 40 minutes of the story.. which becomes a long, interesting, but also somewhat confusing storyline. You hear Daleks quoting Shakespeare, you see a rebellion which is taking place in two time zones, and you find out that there is a larger Dalek problem -- their whole fleet with the Emperor is trapped in the time-stream..

Without revealing all the twists and turns of the plot, I can say that the Dalek connection with Shakespeare is itself epxlained fairly well, but the ending itself is better explained in Neverland...

The story itself is in general very entertaining, except for a few points of confusion, and I will give it a B+. It is well worth listening to, although, once again, not until after listening to some of the other 8th Doctor stories.

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Replies:

Re: Review: Doctor Who, The Time of the Daleks -- Adilbrand, 20:12:14 10/23/02 Wed
- Re: Review: Doctor Who, The Time of the Daleks -- Omega, 11:22:48 10/24/02 Thu