Review:
Doctor Who: Victory of the Daleks

503: Victory of the Daleks

‘Would you like some tea?’ – Dalek

Oh dear. Oh bloody dear. What a total disaster this is. No words can really do this justice – this episode of Doctor Who is a complete and utter shambles.

Called back by Winston Churchill himself, the Doctor and Amy find themselves in World War 2 London, where a scientist claims to have invented a secret weapon to battle the Nazi war machine: the Daleks. Naturally, it’s all a cunning ploy to resurrect the Daleks back to their former glories, one that the Doctor must intervene in.

If that paragraph made it sound like there was a plot in this episode, then it’s entirely the fault of the writer. There isn’t actually a narrative: things happen, the Doctor does stuff, credits roll, audience looks around wondering just the hell happened.

The Daleks' master plan this week is pitifully hilarious – they’re going to TURN ON THE LIGHTS during the Blitz. Yep, that’s it in its entirety. Apparently they’ve also planned to somehow wait for the Doctor to show up so that his voice will reawaken the single piece of pure Dalek DNA and so bring back the master race and – oh, what’s the point? It doesn’t make a single lick of sense.

Why would Churchill bother ringing the Doctor if he’s happy with the weapon? What do the Daleks hope to achieve by turning on the lights of London? Why do the master race Daleks look like cut-price Mac Book Pros crossed with embarrassing sex toys? Why does the Doctor spend the whole episode standing around doing nothing? Why does the Doctor not just transport the bomb to the Dalek ship? Why does the Doctor call off the attack on the Daleks? What’s the deal with the girl worrying about her lover, who has gone to war? How can one scientist turn three Spitfires into fully functional, laser-firing spacecraft, and get them to the moon, all in the space of less than seven minutes?