This may be a short-lived series, but I've been analysing the things I watch more critically in recent weeks and I'm starting to look at the stuff I don't like and wondering how I'd write them so I like them. Today I want to look at an episode from David Tennant's run as Doctor Who: "Daleks in Manhattan".
A brief rundown of the plot: Martha and the doctor arrive in Manhattan, 1930. Learning of strange disappearances throughout the city, they arrive in a shanty town to look for clues and end up taking a job in the sewers to further investigate. This leads to their discovery of the pig-men, human-pig hybrids created as a slave army. Shenanigans follow: Martha is kidnapped by pigmen, the doctor discovers daleks are in the Empire State Building (still under construction) and the short-lived reign of human-dalek hybrid Dalek Sec begins. It's a two-parter which ranges from shanty-town Hooverville in Central Park, to the city's sewers, to the top of the Empire State Building, and in general it feels unfocused and confusing.
So how would I fix it?
First, let's clear up the plot confusion because there's too much going on at once here. Pig-men? Dalek-human hybrids? A whole depression-era plot about bad working conditions and tent-villages and corrupt businessmen? There's too much going on, and it all blurs together.
How about this? The daleks are kidnapping workers on the empire state building and experimenting on them, creating genetic hybrids which they then kill and dump in the sewer. This is all covered up by the corrupt businessmen overseeing construction, who are in the pockets of the daleks. So far, not much deviation. But I want to get rid of the pig-men right out of the gate, because they don't add much to the story beyond the Laszlo/Tallulah subplot, and at this point I'm not sure I want to keep that in, so we'll keep the pig-men but have them dead for now.
So what are we doing with those other elements? Well I want to keep the corrupt businessman in so we can still bring Dalek Sec into hybrid form easily, whilst giving him the motivation to be ruthless and actually evil. The genetic hybrids are there as experiments, to test the hypotheses. Now, do I want Hooverville to stay? Again, I think this is a superfluous element; let's keep it simple with the sewers and the Empire State Building. Perhaps there's another story in the paper, about mutilated bodies being discovered in the sewers; this leads the doctor and Martha there, where they discover some mafia stooge dumping a pig-man body. They confront him, and he smugly tells them about his "bosses" at the top of the Empire State Building. The doctor sends him on his way (probably with some speech or another) and heads for the ESB, wondering who these "bosses" are.
Entering the ESB is a simple matter; kitted out in some 1920s clothes, the doctor pretends to be a construction worker and heads for the upper floors. There, where the building is still under construction, he drops the act as he discovers the daleks' makeshift genetic laboratory. And is promptly cornered by daleks. In the meantime, Martha has been checking some of the genetically altered bodies for clues and has been kidnapped by mafia thugs. The daleks reveal her as a bargaining chip against the doctor, and their original thug body-dumper appears to gloat before being flanked by two other goons and dragged off. As Dalek Sec works on becoming his hybrid form, the other three daleks force the doctor to work on their genetic formula (honestly it's the only reason I can think to keep him alive right now). Only instead of creating human/dalek hybrids, the idea is to turn humans into new, improved daleks like Sec.
The doctor does his work, of course, but he mixes some of his own DNA in there too - maybe his blood or some skill cells or something. As he works, we overhear the daleks talking amongst themselves about how these will not be true daleks, and by extension neither will dalek Sec.
Here we run into the first problem with this plan: there's no one for the dalek-humans to fight. Well, we have construction workers and mobsters, and these episodes are about humanity and revolution against tyranny; who's to say the mobsters don't turn on the daleks, or the construction workers don't rise up against them? This provides two solutions: point one, it keeps things isolated to the Empire State Building in the second half; point two, it gives it a more personal feel whilst still cementing the human angle. Going from the Empire State Building - where the people of Hooverville were already somewhat contained by the daleks - back to Hooverville always made Daleks in Manhattan feel very all-over-the-place, there were so many elements when they had the ingredients within the ESB. It might not have the punch of Solomon's speech in "Evolution of the Daleks", but the imagery of downtrodden workers uniting against oppressive corporate forces is still a powerful message, and one relevant to the time period.
So I think we can safely establish a worker uprising, rather than a mafia betrayal. But we have to get there first. Dalek Sec reveals himself, and his first act as a dalek-human hybrid is to awaken all of the others. So now, instead of an army of humans, we have an army of Dalek-Secs - don't worry, we'll be budgeting less for the pig-men and no Hooverville so it all evens out - and they're all ready to face the doctor. Except Martha's been detained with the workers and she's incited them to riot - then it almost becomes foreshadowing for the series finale, see? - and they bring the fight to the daleks and the mafia, and when Dalek Sec orders his army of human-daleks to attack, he finds they are unable to attack humans OR the doctor, on account of the doctor DNA inside them (which still makes more sense than lightning-DNA-transference).
This doesn't eliminate all the problems of "Daleks in Manhattan" - it still has the ridiculous pig-men hybrids, but I suppose they could be substituted for early attempts at human-dalek hybrids, and I feel like it's still too crowded with unnecessary plot, but at the same time it's difficult to resolve all the problems without making it a completely different episode (an episode which would probably hew closer to "Victory of the daleks" in terms of re-imagining or upgrading). But I want to keep as many of the ideas I like as possible - the dalek-human hybrid, the genetic experiments, the people vs daleks. I want to make that on a bigger scale, and give Dalek Sec a better end than the ignoble sacrifice he made in "Evolution of the Daleks".
So here's where it goes instead. The mafia and daleks are overwhelmed by the construction workers. As they realise they are losing, the daleks destroy all their hybrids. Dalek Sec laments their loss and the other three loudly denounce him as no longer a true dalek, and reveal they planted failsafes within him too. However they fail to kill him, only cripple him. In the maelstrom the doctor heads back upstairs to deal with the genetics lab, but Sec sees him go and follows, severely weakened.
Upstairs, the doctor has barely started tallying beakers and bunsen burners to be smashed when the elevator dings. Out steps Dalek Sec, into the semi-darkness of the building as the lightning storm rumbles outside. He holds a dalek gun nervously, he's twitchy - he can feel himself dying and he's rushing, he's paranoid. The doctor starts to speak from the shadows, moving around the edge of the room behind half-finished walls and crouched in the shadow of girders. He talks about humanity, about how Dalek Sec might have been a dalek originally, but humanity is so much more than the brutality he sees. He speaks of compassion, kindness, charity... Dalek Sec protests that he knows nothing about these things, but we can all tell he doesn't quite believe it. He is seeing these things, feeling them inside him - he felt the pain of every dalek-human hybrid as it died, and he feels it inside him again! But he is dying, and desperate, and he cannot give up; he raises the gun, and comes closer to the edge and the open, windowless expanse into the night.
And suddenly the doctor is there, in front of him, standing right on the edge, and he's unarmed. And Dalek Sec wants to shoot him, but he can't bring himself to do it, he's too human. He steps closer, and when he's right in front of the doctor the gun clatters to the floor.
Dalek Sec falls to his knees. He is truly an evolved dalek. He has evolved beyond just war and hate, into something more human, and he knows the daleks will never again accept him.
And the doctor stands there, and offers him protection. We'll find a place for you, somewhere you can be free and learn, somewhere you'll be safe. And Dalek Sec stares at him, and all there is in that one Dalek eye is pure hatred, and before the doctor can do anything he has thrown himself from the Empire State Building.
The fight comes down once again to the doctor and Dalek Caan. This time, he's right on the rooftop, searching for Martha. The other two daleks have been destroyed by workers who managed to grab some dalek guns and fight back; Dalek Caan decides that if he can't kill the doctor, he can at least kill his companion. Martha is hiding in the shadows around the spire, trying not to touch anything as the lightning crackles all around her, hoping the Dalek can't spot her.
As it does, the doctor arrives. He threatens the dalek: after all, if Caan kills Martha, there's nothing to stop the doctor from killing Caan (maybe not technically true, and I'm not happy about that particular bit, but hey: the doctor lies). Caan gets the hint, and time warps out as lightning strikes the tower nearby.
The doctor and Martha return to the TARDIS as the sun rises, but the doctor is preoccupied. Finally, Martha asks him what's up. He confesses how he was unable to save Dalek Sec, and his frustration that there's still a dalek out there, one who got away. His anger at the unvanquishable enemy, and his sorrow at seeing what they could have been, mixed into one night.
Series three really feels about humanity to me, it's the story of the doctor finding his way again after losing Rose, and Martha is his fixed point. From the first, the doctor has been a man on the egde - in "The Runaway Bride" he almost lets himself die, it's only the intervention of Donna that saves him. In Smith and Jones, he lets himself die to save the hospital, and it is up to Martha to bring him back from the edge. He "kills" himself in "Only Human" and lives a life as John Smith, human and stupid and afraid, and he can't bring himself to turn back into the doctor. What I want to show in "Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks" is a turning point for the doctor, the sense that Martha is having an effect, reminding him of the common humanity that lives within him. It's the first time he refuses to kill the daleks. It's the first time we see him having hope, even for them. And that's what I want to show: The doctor, at the mercy of Dalek Sec and Dalek Caan, and having hope that both of them can change. The big finale, the return of the Master, is foreshadowed even from Episode 3, and the doctor by that point is hoping desperately that the master will change, will agree to go with him, partly out of a sense of duty, but partly out of loneliness.
One other note: I think I'd change the running order in this series and put "The Lazarus Experiment" before the dalek episodes. The story of genetic manipulation gone wrong with Lazarus's fountain of youth feels like an offshoot of the genetic experiments the daleks were performing in the 1930's, and I think it would be neat to tie those episodes in together and have the doctor slowly realising that he's seen this sort of gene splicing before, only more refined.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on how to improve "Daleks in Manhattan" and "Evolution of the Daleks", they're two episodes I want more than anything to be great, but they just aren't and it's a shame. This was an interesting little side-project and I might revisit this as a series in future. Until then...
Adieu!
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