Universe of the Daleks wraps up at An Archive of Our Own

The story is set in the Tenth Doctor era, mashed into a First Doctor story, thanks to an insolent Dalek Time Strategist hijacking that narrative. 

Timey-whimey, you know.

Much of the Dalek's appeal is due to the incredible design work of Raymond Cusik, who deserves at least as much credit as Terry Nation. 

Originally, the Daleks were just horribly mutated survivors of a nuclear war. They were selfish and nasty, but hadn't yet been limited to being the one note villains they ultimately became.

Don't get me wrong: they're awesome one note villains! 

Yet, to me, the Daleks were stuck in a creative loop, revisiting the same underlying story over and over. 

Here I attempt to give them a little greater depth. 

I had fun fleshing out the Dalek mindset; the story features several distinct Dalek characters and gets into their headspace, which obviously isn't possible in the TV show. Named Daleks may not be canon, but I wanted to break out of the show's limitations and go a little deeper. Put more meat on the bone, as it were.

You can check it out here.

Unleashing chaos: The US attack on Iran

Many people are wondering about why the USA invaded Iran.

So am I.

The US government has floated more than half a dozen reasons. Of them, regime change seems the most comprehensible. After all, didn't they 'obliterate' the Iranian nuclear program last year?

My issue with regime change isn't a lack of clarity. 

My concerns are: 

1) Regime change has never been accomplished solely through air power. Pre-1945 military theorists waxed eloquent on its efficacy and potential; Post-1945, theorists expounded endlessly on its limitations. The US firebombed German cities; it dropped more bombs on Vietnam than in the entirety of WWII, but both fought on, despite millions of deaths. 

The best case for air power remains the nuking of Japan. That, however, was not conventional air power. Second, the little known (in the West, at least) Soviet invasion of Manchuria captured millions of Japanese troops and hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of territory, occupied Sakhalin island, and threatened to invade Japan along with the Americans. It was a catastrophic for Japan, and it is arguable this had as much, or more, impact on the Japanese surrender. 

2) Mountainous regions like Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Scotland, the Southern Appalachians, and Iran produce highly tribal, honour oriented warrior cultures. They are relatively isolated in mountain valleys, so defeating one has little impact on another. They are notoriously difficult to conquer. 

3) Iran has one million men under arms. This is something of an occupation force, meant to keep local minorities subdued than an outward directed one. But it is massive. It knows the terrain, and has tens of thousands of drones for which the Americans have no ready defence. Defeating the Iranian army would likely take a force larger than the first and second Gulf Wars combined, cost trillions, and cause unthinkable civilian and military casualties. 

4) Ensuring a friendly regime is installed and maintained would require millions of occupation troops. Even with that, I doubt subduing all of Iran would be possible. Chaos would engulf everything outside core, US occupied population centres. The US military struggled to subdue Afghanistan, which had far fewer resources than Iran and a small fraction of the population, and ended in disaster and defeat.

5) Loss of central control in Iran would atomize the country into dozens of competing factions. It would make the internecine fighting in post-invasion Iraq look like a picnic. State support systems and infrastructure would collapse, leading to humanitarian disaster. Iran has 90 million people. This is at least 3 times as large as Iraq, and that was mostly flat desert. This will be more like a turbo-charged Afghanistan. 

6) Regions that fall into chaos and anarchy tend to produce terrorist groups and violent political movements, for obvious reasons. That will sow chaos around the world for decades to come. They also produce huge waves of desperate refugees that destabilize other countries. 

7) The Strait of Hormuz is in Iraq's backyard. They occupy one side of the strait! Securing passage for giant explosive tanker targets is going to be all but impossible. The damage to the world economy and supply of fuel to both Europe and Asia will be devastating. The US doesn't seem to have considered this. At all. Hegseth just said they didn't have to even worry about it. Breathtaking! Mind you, Iran is letting tankers bound for China through safely. That will reduce the global impact of the blockade on oil prices.

8) Trump's call for 'unconditional surrender' suggests he is living in a fantasy world where he can appropriate the glory of the Allied victory in WWII and make portentous declarations that shape world destiny, except this time without even an iota of wisdom. They say history repeats: first as tragedy and then as farce. We're in the farce stage now.

9) The dead Ayatollah was apparently against getting a nuke. His son, on the other hand, is a proponent. Iran is now highly incentivized to get nukes. Some pundits say they have the material to make 16 bombs already, and the US doesn't know where the material is. Peachy.

10) The American goals do not match their strategy. Any of them. Worse, they cannot end the war without Iran's consent. Sure, Trump can declare victory and walk away, ignoring the Iranians. That doesn't help the oil tankers trying to get through the Strait of Hormuz, and it leaves the Middle East a chaotic mess. Trump, of course, delights in chaos and destruction. 

11) The US is not dependent on Middle East oil, but they do take a good deal of their fertilizer inputs from the region. That will impact American farmers, and drive up prices further. Former American Allies will be hit much worse. Combine this with the disruption to world food supply caused by the war in Ukraine, and things could get dicey. Ukraine exported a lot of wheat to Africa.

12) Iran could hit the desalination plants of the Gulf States. Without them, the population will have to disperse or die of thirst. The US can block missiles, but not the swarms of drones. 

13) The US claims it has eliminated 90% of Iran's missiles and 95% of its drones. I am very sceptical of this claim, but even if true, the Iranians can produce new drones in a local garage. It should also be noted that German aircraft production peaked in 1944, at the height of the Allied bombing campaign. A campaign that was ongoing and cost the lives of thousands of airmen and even more civilians. Is the US going to be pummelling Iran for years to come? 

I hope I'm wrong, that I'm ill informed, that it will all work out for the best. Iran does have a weak point in Kharg island, which processes most of their oil. The Americans may try and occupy it, or hit it with missiles. That would escalate the conflict and prompt the Iranians to hit key infrastructure in the Gulf states.

The US attack looks like a disaster in the making.

F1 vs Weapons

F1 is about something. 

Weapons... not so much. Or at least, it's not about anything in a way I found very compelling.

The main theme of F1 concerns our need to prove ourselves, and the damage we can do in blind pursuit of validation and status. Only by relaxing that laser eyed focus on dominance can one truly excel. We collaborate to compete more effectively; fighting your own team because your ego can't handle, at any point, not being number one, is a losing strategy. 

PJ is the young turk driver in F1, out to prove himself to a tiresome degree, and Hayes is his old veteran foil. Cue lots of old man jokes. 

PJ is an unlikeable ass at first, which is naturally is key to his character arc. 

I'm not a big fan of racing movies, but F1 is sumptuously shot, races are phenomenal, and (joy oh joy) advance the character arcs. It's not just an excuse to film cars going fast. Well. Maybe it is, but there's more than enough character to keep you invested, even if you're not keen on the cars.

Through the scaffolding of car racing, the old codger finds his state of grace, the car designer proves her detractors wrong, and the young buck learns to let go of ego primacy. 

Sweet. 

Now that's a movie with something to say. 

Weapons... has no discernible character arcs. None. Everyone is the same at the beginning as they are at the end.

Unless they're dead.

Frankly, I'm not sure being turned into a vegetable by a witch counts as a character arc.

If you're looking for jump scares, this isn't the movie for you. 

This is a classier kind of horror flick, not a slasher, and it's full of atmosphere and tension. All of that is fabulously well done.

It's unpleasant, but then, it is a horror movie. 

The actors are great, they sell their characters well, but... none of them is very likeable or interesting. 

The villainess is properly nasty and menacing, but also shallow. She needs more depth to be compelling.

Both movies are solid entertainment, but odds are F1 will stick with you longer. 

Villain stagnation and the Universe of the Daleks: Chapter 3

One thing I found frustrating as a kid was how stagnant the Daleks were. They were cool but limited villains, stuck in a repetitive loop of stories that rehashed all the same elements and added little. Good stories, mind you, but it felt like they could go further. Of course, one of the key traits about villains is that they are incapable of growth, instead doubling down on flaws. 

One of my absolute favourite Doctor Who Classic stories is Genesis of the Daleks. This one retcons their origins, but it also moves them forward the furthest since their introduction. It also introduces Davros, an absolutely fantastic character, played to perfection by the fantastic Michael Wisher. Davros has been described as Hitler crossed with Stephen Hawking (basically, a physically crippled yet frighteningly brilliant mad scientist-eugenicist), although that's not how I'd put it. 

Recently, Davies retconned Davros and made him physically abled. Why? Because he felt evil was being associated with disability. I don't agree, and find the retcon patronizing. Not to mention that, despite disability, Davros is one of the most dangerous and compelling villains to ever grace Doctor Who. That said, I get the sentiment. 

Beauty as good and ugly as evil is a trope in the same vein, which runs through fiction and particularly fairy tales. Goblins, trolls, witches, demons, devils, monsters, etcetera are all evil and ugly. Elves and angels are beatific, and therefore good. 

Underlying this logic are biological imperatives: beauty relates to youth and fertility, while the long noses, big ears, and wrinkles of witches and orcs code them as old. So favour the future generations, and discard the old and defunct. Old is dross, young is desire. 

So, should we redo orcs and goblins as beautiful, and elves as ugly, to fight this trope? 

Personally, I'd rather not mess with oodles of originals, and prefer just setting earlier work in context, rather than to 'fix' it. 

I do enjoy NEW work that plays with all manner of tropes. Something I wanted to do more of in future volumes of Dragon Garage. 

Anyway...

Mashing together WWI, space Nazis, eugenics, V2 rockets and body horror into a cracking good story, it also features Tom Baker at his dramatic best, supported by two of my favourite companions. 

True, the effects can't, and don't, live up to the narrative ambition, and the attack of the immobile giant clams is somewhat less than convincing, but the acting and the narrative sell it for me. I don't think kids these days can appreciate it anymore, they're too dependent on glitzy special effects to consume narrative with a less slick surface, but the story really fuelled my imagination as a child.

Heck, I accepted dinosaurs that were obviously hand puppets.

Story editors rejected several Terry Nation scripts because they were repetitive, which pushed Terry to come up with Davros. Stories after Genesis relied on Davros like a crutch, leaving the iconic villains in the background as glorified minions. 

And so, the Daleks remained one note villains: excellent at that one note, but little else. 

No flesh on the bones, so to speak. 

One of my goals with Universe of the Daleks was to flesh them out a bit, show the inner life of Daleks, while at the same time remaining true to their nature, and the thematic and moral purpose they serve in storytelling as villains.

One possible reason for their stagnation could be rights related: they're licensed from Terry Nation's estate, so what can be done with them may be very limited. On the other hand, the god-awful rainbow chiclet Daleks, Moffat's so-called 'new paradigm', would seem to refute that thought. 

You can catch chapter three of Universe of the Daleks over at an Archive of Our Own here. 

Give it a gander and let me know what you think.

I'm releasing a new chapter every Saturday afternoon, matinee time. 

Seems appropriate.

It's a proper old Hinchecliffian tale in style, with (some) banger cliffhangers, and an admittedly slower pace than the more frenetic reboot. 

Mind you, it does star the Tenth Doctor, who's fabulous fun to write for. 

Did I succeed? Did I fail? You decide!

Universe of the Daleks.

It's admittedly not kinky (AOO's real jam). I may post it here eventually instead.

NOTE: I found out there's a Dalek Universe line of stories, so changed the title to Purity of the Daleks, only to find someone has a Purity of the Daleks story out there already, so I changed it back. 

Doctor Who and the Universe of the Daleks: Chapter one

I wrote a fan fic! 

I kid you not. 

Eleven chapters.

The first one has a grand total of 2 views so far!

Two!

Millions cannot be far behind.

It's an old school Doctor Who story, a little Hinchecliffian (my fav era of the show, naturally). 

Talk about back to the future... 

I've never tried Fanfic before, unless you count spec scripts. 

I suppose that's fanfic in a way.

Archive of Our Own posting rules for date of publication: you can't schedule to post in the future (that'd be helpful!) but you can pick any date in the past, so if I want to publish in 1896, I can! 

I don't get it. 

Maybe people are reposting old stories from other places?

Check out the first chapter here.

Plur1bus season finale and recommendation

Plur1bus is visually stunning. The framing of the last few episodes especially so: many shots were so striking and beautiful it was distracting.

In the season finale, Carol has a brief sojourn into bliss with her romantic ideal, Zosia, before The Hive rudely pulls her back down to earth and smacks her head into the pavement a few dozen times. 

Figuratively speaking, of course. 

We get a bevy of other info drops, learn where the signal originally came from, and some strongly hinted at vulnerabilities of The Hive.

Vince Gilligan’s team of writers doesn’t have everything worked out yet, but from the interviews I have listened to, I have confidence they’ll stick the landing. 

This is one of the sharpest, best written shows on air today: I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Give it a watch.