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.

Andor season 2: 3 BBY (episodes 4-6)

The second wave of Andor season 2, possibly the most political sci-fi show since Battlestar Galatica, continues to focus on Ghorman, a planet out of the old WEG Star Wars Role Playing Game. It suffers a very ugly fate.

Simpering Syril is on now planet as head of the Imperial Standards branch, while Cassian gets dispatched there by Luthen to evaluate a local rebel group.

Dedra is watching over the Ghorman operations from afar, and Mothma argues with Krenick over Ghorman at an art show. 

It’s all slice of life material, focusing on the day to day of anti-fascist movements (and their antagonists) in a galaxy far, far away. 

This is part of the problem I have with this season: the previous season saw Cassian become a rebel, Luthen plotting a great robbery to fund the rebellion, and the Imperials plotting to catch them. This season? Not a peep about all the money Luthen stole, or the plans that might have been hatched out of it. Luthen is reactive, attending weddings, dispatching Cassian places, and worrying about listening devices being revealed. He doesn’t feel very proactive, unlike last season. He doesn’t seem to have any plan now, and while his assistant mentions having many balls in the air, we don’t see it. 

Gilroy is taking a different tack here, and it looks like everything is built around the horrors that the Empire has planned for Ghorman. As such, Luthen’s other plans fall outside of the main narrative focus, whatever my irrelevant wants and wishes might be.

The theme of sacrifice, on the part of the rebels, is hammered home over and over again. You can’t miss it, from Luthen’s fantastic speech last season to the horrific wringer Bix has been put through in this one. No one in the main cast has been through worse. Well. Other than the characters who are gunned down by the Empire. 

The Rebel characters must hide their true selves in a society that is literally out to get them, hiding in dive safe houses, or in plain site like Mon Mothma, who’s situation is arguably worse, because she has to hide within herself. Same goes for Lonni. Their lives are filled with stress and the constant fear of being discovered. They become ruthless and paranoid in response, their humanity getting worn away by circumstance. 

On the other hand, Syril is flying high as a kite, living out his life-long fantasy of being an Imperial agent of law & order, playing spy on Ghorman, tricking the locals and helping to suss out disloyal agents of chaos. 

There’s some sly writing here: when Syril’s in ISB headquarters making his report, he notes that the Ghormans are inexperienced but eager, to which ISB head Pendergast (X, who played a Machiavellian priest in Game of Thrones) remarks, “How often those characteristics align” and gives Dedra a knowing look.

They’re treating Syril like some kind of pet puppy, an over-eager novice, a mall cop who dreams of being an FBI agent. 

The two trajectories here are polar opposites: rebels going down into the depths of despair while Syril soars higher and higher into the clouds of ambitious fantasy.

Of course, Syril is being set up for a fall, and when it happens, it’s going to hurt. Pendergast even lays track for this when he tells Dedra that Syril must not know what’s really going on on Ghorman. 

Oddly enough, it’s Syril (Kyle Soller) who has the clearest arc happening in the show. Cassian is a bit of a cipher; he doesn’t show a lot of his inner emotions, other than concern over Bix. He doesn’t have any real character quirks. He’s no nonsense, like Luthen, except Luthen has much, much more going on his head. 

Luthen (Stellan Skarsgard) is agency writ large, or at least he was last season: a master galactic scale chess player. It’s sad to see him relegated to being reactive, but I’ll take what I can get. Beyond his calculation, though, there’s not a lot there. He’s been ground down by necessity to be what he has to be for the sake of the Rebellion, there’s nothing else left.

Syril, on the other hand, is a collection of quirks. He’s a weirdo, emotionally stunted by his overbearing mom and absent father, addicted to cereal, sullen and whiny yet wildly ambitious, he dreams of being a saviour, of being relevant, of righting wrongs and seeing justice done throughout the galaxy… between bouts of pouting on his bed. The gap between his ambition and reality is galaxy spanning. 

Yet this makes him arguably one of the most interesting characters in the show, and so far, he’s the one who has travelled the farthest, character wise. 

Mon Mothma started out hiding inside herself, as did Luthen, and now Cassian. 

Bix (Adria Arjona) is, to me, the only other character who’s had a comparable arc, but her’s hasn’t gotten as much focus as Syril (and it doesn’t have the same range, either). She’s had nightmares and moped in the safe house for much of the season. No dinner with the relatives for her. Fortunately, at the end of 2 BBY, she leaps into action against her inner demons. That was great, and it sets her up to be more active in the concluding half of the season. 

That being said, we all know which side she is on, and that’s not going to change.

With Syril, there’s a kernel of doubt: he may, in fact, eventually turn on the Empire. Personally, I thought that door closed last season when he went all stalker on Dedra; now that they’re a duo, it seemed even more unlikely. 

Yet he’s being used, and more importantly, Syril is an earnest true believer: he does believe in justice, even if it’s a rather twisted, naive version. 

In a fascist society, however, law is a chimera. It’s of convenience, imposed upon the populace, and changed and violated on the whim of the powerful, whenever it suits them, sans accountability or criticism: mistakes by underlings are covered up, the dictator does what they will, and the masses suffer what they must. Abuse is endemic. Even in (ostensibly) law and order governed Western democracies we see abuse by those in powerful institutions. In a dictatorship, corruption is a feature, not a bug. 

Rather like this: 

Oh wait, that's America. My bad.

As such, the only real character question I have concerns… well, Syril: will he eventually see the true nature of the Empire, and turn on it? It’s possibly the big statement brewing under the narrative’s surface.

Everyone else’s course is set. Having Syril eventually realize the monstrous nature of the regime he’s embraced so thoroughly would be an effective conclusion for his character.

On the other hand, he could veer into total fascist fanboy. 

Either way, it makes a statement.

Another standout: Forest Whitaker’s tour de force performance as Saw Gerrera, a mix of savvy ruthlessness and batshit insanity. When he comes on screen, he’s as liable to hug you as shoot you. It’s a mesmerizing performance, although I suspect it’s best in small doses. 

As they say, it’s the villains and crazy characters who are the most fun to play, and I think that pans out here, except for Luthen. Everyone is on point, I have no criticisms to level at the cast, they’re all doing fabulous work with what they’ve been given. 

I expect Syril’s upward trajectory, in such total contrast to the hell the rebel characters are going through, to take a very sharp and nasty turn.

A couple of bits of grit in the Andor eye: I found the Coruscant TV shows jarring (they look like bad local cable TV, the kind government regulations force them to make), and the very overt connection of Ghorman to the French WWII resistance is so on le nez you’d expect it to serve baguettes. The cafes, waiters, bellhops, and vaguely French accents shout, or at least hum, La Marseillaise. I half-expected someone to exclaim, “Mon Dieu, c’est l’Empire!”

It’s fun, yet heavy handed. 

On the plus side, the story is gaining steam and taking shape. I look forward to BBY 2. 

(Incidentally, dating things from the Battle of Yavin seems really bonkers. What the heck was the year before Yavin happened? It’s a silly system that only makes sense from a meta perspective…)

Stunning trailer for 28 Years Later

 Complete with a Yeats poetry reading voiceover from... 1905! Talk about daring!

The artistry of this, and the willingness to do something strikingly different and impactful, bodes well for the film. 

28 Days Later I liked, although it was extremely bleak and had an implausible ending. 28 Weeks Later felt nihilistic, a film in which every act of love was rewarded with destruction and death.

Sadly, given the outlook of the film's creators, I suspect the new iteration will be even darker and more annihilating; whatever the case, it'll be compelling cinema.