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Original Transmission
Cast
Crew
Plot Outline by Wikipedia Before the stage show Tellulah and her boyfriend Laszlo make arrangements for meeting the parents at the weekend. As Tellulah leaves for the stage, Laszlo notices a movement down the corridor and hears an odd grunting noise. Progressing into the props store, the door slams and he finds himself face to face with a pigman. The Doctor and Martha arrive at the Statue of Liberty. Taking a look at the Empire State Building, the Doctor tries to estimate the date before Martha comes across a newspaper dated 1st November 1930. The Doctor notes the headline 'Hooverville Mystery Deepens' and reads about people going missing. He then takes Martha to Central Park where a Hooverville is located. There, they meet Solomon, leader of the Hooverville, and ask him about the disappearances. Solomon tells them that it's true; people go missing in the night, never to be seen again. Solomon tells the Doctor about the Empire State Building, and that rather than helping out the poor and starving, people would rather build the tallest building in the world.
Mr Diagoras arrives at the Hooverville to ask for workers in the sewers. A young man named Frank informs Solomon, so Solomon, Martha, the Doctor and all the homeless gather before him. He says he'll pay a dollar a day, and all the homeless refuse. But the Doctor accepts the job, with Martha going with him. Frank and Solomon also agree to go. Mr Diagoras tells them to go half a mile down to fix a collapse. The Doctor and co travel half a mile down to find a green lump of flesh. The Doctor begins to examine it, and puts it in his pocket. The Doctor, Solomon, Frank and Martha realize that they have yet to find a collapse. Martha spots somebody sitting on the floor, and the Doctor goes to investigate. He examines the lone Pig Slave, only to be joined by a lot more Pig Slaves. The Pig Slaves chase the Doctor and co. through the sewers. Mr Diagoras tells his work-force that they must attach strips of metal (which are strips from a Dalek base, complete with 'Dalek Bumps') to the base of the mast before night. After questioning their orders, Mr Diagoras tells them that if they don't, he'll replace them. The workers pick up the sheets of metal, and get to work. Dalek Caan joins Mr Diagoras again, and asks how construction is going. Mr Diagoras tells him that all is well, and the two strike up a conversation about war. Dalek Caan tells Mr Diagoras that his planet was destroyed in a war. Mr Diagoras tells Dalek Caan that he fought in the war, and that he promised himself he would survive. Dalek Caan notes his strange motives, and he goes on to say how he wants to control the whole city. The Daleks note Diagoras is most like them in mentality, and want him to be a part of the final experiment. Dalek Caan takes him down to the basement, to meet Dalek Sec. The Daleks have their Pig Slaves seize him.
Meanwhile, the Doctor and co. manage to escape the sewers, but Frank is captured. The Doctor and his friends come up through a manhole in the theatre before being confronted by Tallulah with a gun. She questions the Doctor and co, asking what they did with Laszlo, who has mysteriously disappeared. Dalek Sec states that to survive, the Daleks must evolve. Dalek Thay questions the results of the experiment, arguing that merging with humans (an inferior race) is directly against the Dalek philosophy. Dalek Sec states that after everything that has happened, there remain millions of Humans but only four Daleks. In order to survive the Daleks must evolve and he decides to sacrifice himself for the survival of the Dalek race, just as Dalek Thay sacrificed the metal from his casing. Dalek Sec opens up his casing and uses his long tentacles to grab Mr Diagoras. He pulls him towards him and envelops him in his own body before dragging him into his casing to begin the 'evolution'. At the theatre, the Doctor earns Tallulah's trust, and he asks her what she makes of the flesh he found earlier. She does not recognise it, so he decides to try and scan its DNA himself. The Doctor and Solomon search for equipment they can use, while Martha and Tallulah talk to each other about Laszlo. Solomon confesses that he let Frank be caught because he was scared. He then says he'll go back to the Hooverville to protect everybody. Tallulah tells Martha that Laszlo leaves her a rose on her table every day before the show, and he still does after disappearing. Tallulah asks Martha if she's worked on the stage before, and Martha says "only Shakespeare."
Back at the Hooverville, Solomon tells everybody about what happened to Frank, and that they must now fight. "Arm yourselves! Come on!" Back in the Dalek lab, smoke begins to billow from Dalek Sec's casing while he shakes violently. His comrades urge him to cancel the experiment, but he refuses and asks for an injection. One of the Daleks plunges a syringe into his casing then stands back and observes. Back at the theatre, Martha is watching Tallulah dance, but she notices a Pig Slave watching over on the other side of the stage. She tries sneaking behind the dancers to reach him, but he runs away. She notices he's more human than pig. She follows him into the prop store, where he disappears down the manhole. Pig Slaves then sneak up behind Martha. The Doctor finishes scanning the flesh, and works out the DNA's planet of origin. "... Skaro!" He rushes to find Tallulah, who is shocked after seeing the Pig Slave. The Doctor then hears Martha scream as she is seized by Pig Slaves. The Doctor runs into the prop room where the man-hole is open. Tallulah decides to follow him, but he tells her it's too dangerous. But the Doctor grabs her and hides in an alcove as a Dalek glides by. The two then find the Pig Slave who Martha saw, and discover it's Laszlo, who managed to escape the Dalek lab before being fully mutated and mind-controlled.
Martha is thrown in with a parade of captives, and meets up with Frank again. The parade is met first by Dalek Caan, and then Dalek Thay who reports that "the Dalekanium is in place." The two Daleks use their plunger arms to scan their captives' brains. The Doctor and co. witness this from behind a corner. Laszlo tells them they determine their captives intelligence and categorize them this way; the smart becoming a part of 'the final experiment', and the lesser becoming Pig Slaves. Laszlo urges Tallulah to go back while he and the Doctor join the captives. The Doctor joins up with Martha, who was categorised as intelligent as they proceed towards 'the final experiment'. Tallulah runs through the sewers, but gets lost. The captive party reaches the Dalek lab under the Empire State Building,
where Dalek Jast is attending to Dalek Sec. The Doctor tells Martha
to ask what's going on; as he doesn't want the Daleks to realise he's
there just yet. Martha steps forward and demands that the Daleks tell
her what's going on, using the Daleks' own "Report!" to
get their attention. The Daleks tell her that they will bear witness
to the rebirth of the Dalek Race. She is told "The children of
Skaro shall walk again!" as the eye in Dalek Sec's casing slowly
deactivates, and the casing opens up. A creature wearing Mr. Diagoras'
suit steps out, flexes its new limbs and tells them "I... am...
a Human... Dalek... I am... your future..." as the other three
daleks recoil in fear.
Analysis from Cuisle The Newsround previewer had already said before it was broadcast that he thought this was a slow episode. What Lizo forgot, was that this was the first part of a double episode which adds up to the length of a feature film. That allows for the first part to be ‘slow’, establishing characters like Solomon, Tallulah and Laszlo, and even the Daleks themselves as characters. The long sequence with The Doctor and Martha walking through Hooverville fully satisfies the Reithian demand to inform and educate as The Doctor explained what happened to force hundreds of people to live in a shanty town in Central Park. In the space of ten minutes most viewers learnt more about the depression than they ever learnt in history lessons at school, just like we all know how old Madame De Pompadour was when she died and the name of Charles Dickens’ unfinished last manuscript and Shakespeare’s lost play. No harm in sugaring the pill of education.
The relationship between Tallulah and Laszlo was worth spending time on. I was almost sure that when she saw him as a ‘pig man’ she would be horrified in a Phantom of the Opera kind of way and back off. Rather, it was Beauty and the Beast as she accepted him as the man she loved regardless of how he looked. A cynical world needs examples like that. What will happen to Laszlo? Will The Doctor find a way to get him back to normal? Will he die nobly, fighting the Daleks and become yet another victim of them? It could go either way. Perhaps Tallulah would even accept him as he is and continue their relationship.
Diagaros, the Human collaborator with the Daleks is the latest of many people who had done so. He compares interestingly with Mr Ratcliffe in Remembrance of the Daleks. Diagaros makes himself a slightly more sympathetic character just before being taken by them for the Final Experiment. When he looks out over New York with the Dalek beside him and talks to it about his determination to survive, it is easy to understand him. At least until it is realised that he does so at the expense of others. But in that he is no worse than many other people in his situation. The contrast with Solomon, who also wants to survive, but does so while still retaining his humanity and his desire to protect the Hooverville people, is one of several such contrasts in the story.
Tallulah and Laszlo recognising the value of each other is another, contrasting to the cheapness of life everywhere else. Life was already cheap in 1930s America to being with. The Daleks cheapened it further by using people in their experiments, converting them to pig-slaves. But anyone who has ever read Steinbeck’s depression novels like Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men will know that they were only taking to an extreme what humans were already doing to each other. With such themes this is not a dumbed down story in any way. It is one for grown ups. The pig men are probably the only part of the story that seems to be aimed at children. The question has to be asked “WHY?” In the past the Daleks converted Humans into Robomen slaves or utilised the Ogron, who already looked rather genetically mutated. But why pigs? There seems only one good reason. The scene of the Dalek with two pigmen flanking it in the lift. This time next year we are going to have “Dalek/Pigmen Gift Sets” at £17.99 in Woolworths, probably in an Empire State Building lift shaped box. The pigmen were designed with the 5 inch action figure market in mind.
I rather expect that a “Dalek Sec/Dalek Hybrid” gift
set will also be in Woolworths next year. But the hybrid, which caused
a sensation on the front cover of the Radio Times was more than that.
It WAS a real extension of the Daleks. For the first time in 43 years
they are out of their shells. They clearly plan to create more hybrids
using the Human race as the genetic material. Unless The Doctor can
stop them, they will have come full circle from their Genesis as Davros’s
future of the Kaled race.
Diagaros being enveloped and converted into the Dalek hybrid was a truly horrific moment. Possibly there would have been more tension about what was going to emerge from the smoking black casing if the Radio Times hadn’t splashed it over the front cover. But their plan was never really a big secret. It was obvious what they wanted Diagaros for, and the hybrid emerging, crumpled suit covered in genetic material, mutated hands, and the amazing hybrid head, was still quite startling. Tallulah’s accent was a slight let down. It was excruciatingly false and slipped occasionally from working class/Jewish Brooklyn to middle-America to something else entirely. Possibly a bit of work on the voice might have been in order. But on the other hand, with the budget of a film like Far and Away, they couldn’t make Tom Cruise or Nicole Kidman sound genuinely Irish so maybe this is a bit of payback to America for all those stage Irish accents and their belief that all English people sound like Hugh Grant. The showgirl sequence with the song and dance routine might have seemed frivolous and even time wasting in a 45 minute one off story. But here again, the 90 minute scale of this allowed for it. And after the dark of the sewer scenes, the scariness of the Daleks, it was a splash of colour and splendour. Murray Gold’s 1930s show song was spot on. And one more piece of praise. There is a mere seconds of a scene of workers out on the girders working on the Empire State Building, that proved how well the research was. Because they managed to recreate in live action an actual still photo of the 1930 workers that appears on the Wikipedia page for the Empire State Building. And again, the panoramas of New York from the top of the building were beautifully authentic to the skyline of that period. A good set up for the second half of the story. Plenty of Human interest and a fantastic setting.
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