Evolution of the Daleks

186b - Evolution of the Daleks
Cast
Doctor David Tennant (Tenth Doctor)
Production
Directed by	James Strong
Written by	Helen Raynor
Produced by	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner
Production code	3.5
Series	Series 3
Running time	45 minutes
First broadcast	28 April 2007
Chronology
← Preceded by Daleks in Manhattan Followed by → The Lazarus Experiment

Evolution of the Daleks is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 28 April 2007, and is the fifth episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series. It is the conclusion of the two-part story begun in Daleks in Manhattan.

The story is set in New York City in 1930.

Synopsis

The Cult of Skaro's plan is in full force. Dalek Sec is reborn in human form while the Pig Slaves are launching an enormous assault upon the Central Park Hooverville, along with the remaining pure Daleks. The Doctor, Martha, Solomon and the others must stay and fight. Time is running out, for the future of humans and Daleks alike is being decided underneath the Empire State Building. The Doctor must form an unholy alliance to save Manhattan, but at what cost?

Plot

File:Evolution of the Daleks.jpg

"I will be the one to destroy our greatest enemy! Exterminate..."

Human Dalek Sec wants humans prepared for hybridization, and then reveals that he can feel humanity. The Doctor intervenes and uses a radio to send out sonic waves that cause Sec pain, with the Daleks protecting him. The prisoners manage to escape from the lair. Two Daleks discuss their doubts about Sec’s methods and plans. Back at the Hooverville camp, the Pig Slaves attack the settlers to reap more bodies, with two flying Daleks backing them up. They demand surrender from the humans. Solomon addresses the Daleks, with Sec admiring his courage via a visual link. Solomon puts down his gun and tries to reason with the invaders. However, he is exterminated much to Sec’s shock. The Doctor offers himself to the Daleks, but Sec orders them to keep him alive. The Dalek struggles to obey, craving the glory of killing their greatest foe. The Time Lord is taken to Sec, but slips Martha his psychic paper. Sec, when asked why he saved the enemy, explains that The Doctor is a genius who might be able to save the Dalek race. Sec tells Doctor the deaths - especially Solomon’s - were wrong. He then shows him that a thousand human bodies are stored for the purpose of turning them into a new race of Human Daleks, their minds wiped and near to death. Their minds will be filled with Dalek ideas. To activate them they need the energy from a solar flare that will strike the Dalekenium panels at the top of the Empire State Building. Martha works out that The Doctor wants her to use the paper to infiltrate the Empire State Building, which she does so with Jack and Tallulah. They check the architectural plans and notice a recent change at the top. Sec argues with the Daleks about their purpose, saying they must change otherwise they deserve extinction. The Doctor is asked to help construct the new friendlier race and transport them to another planet using his Tardis. Laszlo also learns from the Time Lord that his pig transformation cannot be changed. In the basement, the new race is being prepared and the bodies are fed the genes in advance of the solar flare. The Daleks overide the gene feed, declaring both Sec and the Doctor enemies and restrain them. They pump the bodies with 100% Dalek genes. Laszlo helps the Doctor to escape and they head for the roof to dismantle the Dalekenium. However, the pig slaves are sent to thwart his efforts. Jack, Martha, Tallulah and a fatigued Laszlo prepare to fend off the pig slaves, with the medical student hatching a plan to conduct a bolt of lightning using metal poles to fend off the pigs. The Doctor drops sonic screwdriver on the roof and is unable to remove the Dalek panels. He clings onto the metal conductor as the flare hits, with the energy passing through him to the basement. The human Dalek army awakens. Martha’s plan works and the slaves are killed, although she feels remorse for her actions. The Human Daleks are told to assume battle positions, take the Dalek guns and conquer Manhattan - then the world. The Doctor and his companions head to theatre, using his sonic screwdriver to alert the Daleks to his presence. The Human Daleks then arrive on the scene and surround them. On stage, two Daleks appear accompanied by Sec crawling in chains. Sec is exterminated after begging his former inferiors to spare The Doctor. Back in the basement , the remaining Dalek notices the human exterminators show increasing signs of serotonin. They refuse to obey orders to kill, questioning them. The Doctor explains that the army has absorbedTime Lord DNA through the lightning strike passing through him. The Daleks open fire on the hybrids - who fire back. Both Daleks are ultimately destroyed. The remaining Dalek self destructs the surviving human Daleks, much to The Doctor’s anger as he says it was genocide. The Doctor confronts Delak Caan - saying he might be willing to show him some compassion as he is the last in his race and he doesn’t want another genocide. Caan uses an Emergency Temporal Shift to escape. Laszlo seems to be nearing the end of his life span, but The Doctor intervenes and saves his life, although he can’t change his looks. The Doctor and Martha bid farewell to the others and leave New York, with the time Lord admitting that one day he will encounter the sole surviving Dalek again.

Cast

• The Doctor — David Tennant
• Martha Jones — Freema Agyeman
• Tallulah — Miranda Raison
• Solomon — Hugh Quarshie
• Laszlo — Ryan Carnes
• Frank — Andrew Garfield
• Cult_of_Skaro#Dalek_Caan — Eric Loren
• Myrna — Flik Swan
• Lois — Alexis Caley
• Man #1 — Earl Perkins
• Man #2 — Peter Brooke
• Hybrid — Ian Porter
• Dalek Voice — Nicholas Briggs
• Hero Pig - Paul Kasey
• Dalek Operators - Barnaby Edwards, Nicholas Pegg, David Hankinson

Continuity

• Smith and Jones demonstrated that the Doctor's Time Lord physiology is resistant to Rontgen Radiation (saying that they play with Rontgen bricks in the nursery). In this case, he proves resilient to large amounts of electrical currents (also demonstrated in the audio story Spare Parts).
• This is the seventh episode (and the fourth overall story) of the revived series in total to feature the Daleks. They previously appeared in Dalek, Bad Wolf (briefly), The Parting Of The Ways, Army Of Ghosts (very briefly), Doomsday and Daleks in Manhattan.
• The Big Finish audio play Invaders from Mars features an alien invasion of 1930s New York, under cover of Orson Welles's The War of the Worlds broadcast; however, the aliens were not Daleks.
• This episode includes the first location filming outside of the United Kingdom since Doctor Who's return in 2005. Several classic Doctor Who stories included location filming outside of the UK: City of Death (1979) included filming in Paris, Arc of Infinity (1983) included filming in Amsterdam, Planet of Fire (1984) included filming in Lanzarote, and The Two Doctors (1985) included filming in and near Seville. Also, the entirety of The 1996 Doctor Who TV movie was filmed in Vancouver, apart from some stock footage of San Francisco and world capitals.
• Several other Doctor Who stories have featured Daleks and human beings being combined in different ways. These include:
  • The Evil of the Daleks: humans are infused with the "Dalek Factor", and Daleks infused with the "Human Factor"
  • Revelation of the Daleks: human beings kept in suspended animation pending the discovery of disease cures are instead converted into Daleks
  • Dalek: a Dalek extracts human DNA to regenerate itself, and is altered in the process
  • The Parting of the Ways: the Daleks in this story are all created from humans by the Dalek Emperor
  • The Doctor Who Quick Reads book I am a Dalek: The Dalek Factor is added to humans in the Roman era
• This is the first story using the familiar "_____ of the Daleks" titling scheme (which began with The Power of the Daleks in 1966) since 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks.
• The Daleks once again show a weakness to their own weapons. Daleks Thay and Jast are destroyed by a constant barrage of laser fire from the weapons wielded by the hybrids which are hand-held Dalek guns. The first time a Dalek was destroyed by its own weaponry was in The Five Doctors when the First Doctor and Susan pushed a Dalek down a hall of mirrors. The Dalek promptly opened fire and the lasers reflected off of the mirrors destroying it.
• The Daleks plan to turn Earth into New Skaro; this is similar to the plans of the Cybermen in Silver Nemesis, where they planned to turn the planet into New Mondas.
• In this story, the Daleks turn against and exterminate their leader, as they did in Genesis of the Daleks.
• Davros is referred to in this episode and in Dalek, but has yet to actually be named in the new series.
• The Daleks count in rels, the Dalek unit of time, about the same length a second, first introduced in the non-canon movie Dr. Who and the Daleks, and reused in Doomsday.
• The speech given by the Doctor to Dalek Caan is similar to the one the Seventh Doctor gave to a Renegade Dalek Supreme at the end of Remembrance of the Daleks.
• The Doctor climbing the Empire State Building echoes the episodes The Idiot's Lantern (in which the Doctor was also struck by lightning) and Logopolis.
• Dalek Sec references the "emergency temporal shift" that it activated in Doomsday, explaining it to be the method by which all of the Cult of Skaro escaped being sucked into the Void, unlike the Genesis Ark, the other Daleks and the Parallel Earth Cybermen. Dalek Caan also initiates a similar shift at the end of this episode.
• Dalekanium, referenced in this episode and Daleks in Manhattan, was first referred to in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
• The Daleks used a battle computer on Earth in Remembrance of the Daleks. On that occasion, it was controlled by a human girl.
• The Doctor says the French phrase "Allons-y", meaning 'let's go'. He last said the phrase in Army of Ghosts, and in that episode commented that he should say it more.

Production

• Helen Raynor is the first woman ever to write a televised Dalek story and the first woman to write a story for the revived series.
• Some filming for this story was done in New York, although not with any cast members.
• The presence of the Daleks in this story was reported by the News of the World on 12 November 2006, and confirmed by the BBC in late December.
• This episode has been nicknamed "Sec's in the City" (a reference to New York-set Sex and the City) by Digital Spy's Ben Rawson-Jones, after being given such a tagline on the official Doctor Who website.

Cultural references

• As with the first-part of this story, Daleks in Manhattan, The Island of Doctor Moreau, Frankenstein and The Phantom of the Opera were amongst the horror novels and films that served as inspiration for this story.
• "Happy Days Are Here Again" by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen is heard on the radio.