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Date 28th Apr 2007
Cast
Crew
Plot Outline from Wikipedia The Hybrid Dalek Sec finally comes face to face with the Doctor, who has revealed himself from the crowd. The other Daleks wish to exterminate him, but Sec orders them to stop. They attempt to capture him but the Doctor holds out a surprise: a radio. Using his sonic screwdriver, he causes the radio to emit a high pitched sound which disorients the Daleks and the pig-humans. The Doctor and the captured humans run back through the sewers, catching up with Tallulah on the way. As soon as they ascend the ladder and disappear out of sight, two Daleks (Jast and Caan) come into view, discussing their doubting Dalek Sec's orders ever since he became a human. The 'gang' arrives back in Hooverville, and the Doctor's stories are told to the crowd. Soon enough, a watchman sees one of the pigs and begins to call everyone to arm themselves. A fight breaks out between humans and pigs, but suddenly Daleks Jast and Caan arrive in the air and prepare to exterminate the assembled humans, as Dalek Sec watches from the Empire State Building via visual link. The leader, Solomon, tries to reason with the Daleks, saying that they are both outcasts and should work together to create a better universe. The Daleks promptly exterminate him. Furious, the Doctor steps out and demands they kill him instead. The Daleks prepare to do so, but are stopped by Dalek Sec, who requests that the Doctor returns to the Daleks' genetics laboratory. The Doctor agrees, noting that the Daleks have changed their minds for the first time in history, but only on the condition that the Daleks do not kill the residents of Hooverville. Martha asks the Doctor if she can go with him, but the Doctor refuses, saying that she should help the injured. At the same time, he slips her the psychic paper.
At the lab, Dalek Sec explains to the Doctor how he wanted to create a new race which combined Dalek DNA with that of humans by 'formatting' the human brain, ready for information to be loaded onto it, thus creating new hybrids. The Daleks planned to use a gamma strike from a solar flare (which will occur in eleven minutes) which will hit the Empire State Building as an energy source, but there were problems which only the Doctor's knowledge could fix. The Doctor has no choice but to help the Daleks. He prepares the gene solution, ready to be fed into the human 'shells'. In the meantime, Sec explains that the new race will have the intelligence of a Dalek, but the emotions of a human. He also states that the Daleks' obsession with universal supremacy must be removed. The Doctor is shocked that Sec is willing to eliminate the one thing that makes a Dalek a Dalek. However, seven minutes before the flare, as the Dalek DNA is pumped into the humans, a malfunction occurs. The other Daleks are overriding the system. Dalek Caan leads a mutiny, taking Sec and the Doctor hostage. They propose that Sec is no longer Dalek, and so they don't have to obey him. The two Daleks load pure Dalek gene solution into the humans. However, the Doctor and Laszlo escape to the elevator and ascend to the top of the Empire State Building. At the same time, Martha and Tallulah use the psychic paper to gain entry into the Empire State Building. Upon reaching the top floor, they scan the blueprints of the top floor, looking for any design and construction changes. They discover that the design change is at the top of the building where Dalekanium has been added. The Doctor and Laszlo escape up the lift and meet up with Martha, Frank, and Tallulah. The Doctor climbs up to the top and starts using the sonic screwdriver to loosen the bolts holding the Dalekanium. However, after removing one strip of Dalekanium and a bolt holding another, he drops the sonic screwdriver; all he can do is hug the pole as the lightning strikes. Martha has made a makeshift lightning rod from some spare pipes to divert the lightning onto the elevator, just as the pig slaves arrive, killing them. The Dalek humans awaken, and Dalek Caan designates himself the new leader, Sec states that he was to be the controller, but Dalek Caan deems him unfit and orders them to take up arms (Thompsons retrofitted with standard Dalek laser weapons). The army goes into the sewers, and the Doctor, Martha, Tallulah, Frank and Laszlo head for Tallulah's theatre.
At the theatre, the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver to let the Daleks know where he is, and the army breaks in. Daleks Thay and Jast come in, with Sec bound in a chain and crawling like a dog. The Doctor tries to tell the Daleks that what they have done to Sec is wrong, because he is the most intelligent Dalek who ever existed. They attempt to exterminate the Doctor, but Sec begs them not to and blocks their fire, which kills him. This angers the Doctor; he again tells the Daleks to order the Dalek-humans to kill him, but one Dalek human repeatedly asks "Why?", and eventually states that they are not Daleks. The Doctor reveals that, because he hugged the pole as the lightning came through, some Time Lord DNA was mixed into the hybrids and gave the Dalek humans freedom. Jast promptly kills the Dalek human who openly questioned orders. However, the other Dalek humans return fire. Thay and Jast kill several more Dalek humans, but are eventually overwhelmed and destroyed under the sheer volume of fire power. Back in the building, watching via the visual link, Caan states that the Dalek humans are a failure and commands "Destruct." All the Dalek humans suddenly clutch their heads in pain and collapse dead on the ground. After witnessing this genocide, the Doctor arrives at the Empire State Building, and confronts Caan and offers to help. He tells Caan that he is probably the only person in the universe that would show him any compassion, because he has seen enough death today - they are now both the last of their species and he does not want to see another genocide. Caan replies with "Emergency temporal shift" and, as the Doctor lunges forward to stop him, vanishes.
Meanwhile, Laszlo is on his deathbed (the pig-slaves could only survive
for a few weeks), so the Doctor starts to work on a solution to save
him, stating that "there's been enough death today. A whole race,
wise old men, and age old enemies!". Later, Laszlo (still a pig
slave, but alive and healthy) and Tallulah are in the park. Frank
comes and tells Laszlo that he talked to the residents of Hooverville,
and that they will take him in and give him a home; as always, Hooverville
is the place people go when they have nowhere else. As the Doctor
and Martha are about to enter the TARDIS, Martha says there's somebody
for everyone. The Doctor says "maybe." Martha then asks
the Doctor if he thinks he will ever see Dalek Caan again, and the
Doctor responds "Oh yes... one day". 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 of the Cult of Skaro. 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. Will the Doctor cope with joining an unholy alliance?
Analysis by Cuisle This second part of what adds up to a 90 minutes feature length story was strangely balanced. There were climactic events that in any other story would be the finale midway through. There were, indeed, several such climaxes. The first was the battle of Hooverville, Then there was The Doctor’s struggle at the top of the Empire State Building that mirrored the climaxes of Logopolis and Idiot’s Lantern, putting him at the top of a tall building in a life and death struggle. In both of those stories that was the final action scene. In this story, we weren’t finished yet. The finale was The Doctor standing up to the Daleks in the theatre, facing them down and breaking the programming of the hybrid Dalek-Human-Time Lord people.
But back to the plot. The idea that the Human-Dalek Sec was going a step too far for the other Daleks was seeded in last week’s episode. It was inevitable that Sec was going to be opposed by the other Daleks. His ideas were TOO Human. His fate interestingly mirrored that of Davros, the Dalek’s Kaled creator. He, too, found that the logic of the emotionless and pitiless Dalek was his downfall. The main theme of this story – the theme of the whole series – is what it is to be Human. The sub-theme was courage. Laszlo, he mutated Human-pig, showed a lot of it. Solomon, standing in front of the Daleks, asking them to have compassion, showed it in abundance. The Doctor, of course, had plenty. Twice in this episode he faced his most deadly enemy, his greatest enemy, unarmed, vulnerable, ready to be killed by them to save others. The ultimate act of courage, to lay down his life for humanity. And incidentally, that makes this week’s Christian analogy. The Doctor was prepared to be the sacrificial lamb.
Ironically, it was Dalek Sec who saved him both times. The first, when he still had control, was simply to use his genius. The second, when Sec was a prisoner of the other Daleks, might well have been an act of courage on HIS part. Sec put himself in the way of the Dalek rays and was killed instead of him. This episode was packed with action, and between the action some deep philosophy about Humanity, about Time Lords, about Daleks and what it is to be one or the other which may have gone over the heads of those who tuned in just for the battle scenes. It broke all the rules of conventional narrative. It was unpredictable in many ways. Although I could have predicted a couple of things. I KNEW that the Human Daleks would turn on the two Daleks. That was clear from the way they were lined up around the theatre. There are a couple of examples in film history of firing squads turning on their commanders instead of the condemned that this scene was mirroring. What was unexpected was the mass murder of that new species with Dalek, Human and Time Lord DNA in it.
The Doctor’s reaction to that was interesting. Anger, but restrained anger and a desire to stop the last Dalek from joining the death toll. One genocide was enough for him. He offered the hand of friendship to Dalek Caan. The Dalek answer was the predictable one. It refused his help and escaped through the temporal shift. But The Doctor still didn’t want any more death. His sudden animation and passion as he promised to save Laszlo caught the excitement back up when it should have gone down. Strangely, the scene cut very quickly to Laszlo alive and well in the park with Tallulah. Even though the counter was on 44 minutes I would have expected a little more of Laszlo being saved. I think I would like to see the deleted scenes in the box set. I am sure there was more of that bit, cut to make the 45 minutes. This was one example of an episode that had almost too much going on and the story was nearly sacrificed for it.
And yet, Tallulah and Laszlo in Central Park, Laszlo alive, but still a mutant, Tallulah accepting him for what he is, still loving him, was a nice touch. Apart from anything else, the fact that it was Central Park put anyone over the age of thirty immediately in mind of the TV series, Beauty and the Beast in which Linda Hamilton meets a disfigured man living in the sewers under the park and begins a relationship not unlike that which ‘the pig and the showgirl’ have before them. If anything had to be cut, possibly the last scene with The Doctor and Martha returning to the TARDIS could have been. It wasn’t really needed. The only thing it added was one more shot of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan, and The Doctor rejecting Martha’s comment that ‘there is someone for everyone’. The fact that he was bound to meet the last Dalek again SOMEWHERE we could have taken as read. I would have cut THAT sequence and put a bit more of Laszlo’s recovery in.
That apart it was a colourful, spectacular episode with enough action for those who complained last week was too slow and enough thought provoking dialogue for those who see beyond monsters and explosions. And for those who adore David Tennant, that close up of him looking wonderfully vulnerable as he lay on top of the Empire State building with his adams apple throbbing. What more do you want? Incidentally, rumours that this episode was going to be called “Sec’s In The City” are untrue.
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