Previously on Doctor Who, the Doctor killed all of the Daleks at the sacrifice of his own people.

Then the last surviving Dalek killed itself.

Then more Daleks came, and Rose wiped them all from existence.

Then some more popped up from the void between the universes, but the Doctor and Rose shoved them back into the void.

Then a handful wound up in 1930’s New York, but they killed themselves.

Then one survivor defied the laws of time travel and brought back the creator of the Daleks, who created a new Dalek race that was eventually wiped out by the Doctor’s half-human clone.

And thus the Daleks were dead FOREVER, NEVER TO RETURN!!

Damn it to hell

When we last left off, the Doctor got a phone call from Winston Churchill, asking him to come back to the 1940’s to investigate something. It’s World War II, and we’re once again visiting the London Blitz. It was such a tragic time in European history, but Doctor Who insists on exploring those days more than the History Channel.

The Doctor and Amy arrive about a month after Churchill called for them. You gotta love time travel. Anyway, Churchill has something he wants to bring to the Doctor’s attention, so they head to the roof. It being the Blitz, these are desperate times; Great Britain will take anything it can that’ll help fight off the Nazi menace.

And what does Churchill show the Doctor up on the roof? It’s a Dalek. Of course, it doesn’t identify itself as a Dalek. It’s acting like some sort of drone with base level intelligence. A man named Professor Bracewell claims to have invented them, and he calls them Ironsides. Needless to say, the Doctor isn’t pleased. He tells the Dalek to give up the farce, but it plays dumb. He tries to convince Churchill than they’re really of alien origin, but he doesn’t believe him. It doesn’t help that the Daleks are being completely obedient and courteous.

“Would you care for some tea?” -Actual quote from this episode

Even stranger, when the Doctor tries to get Amy on his side, she says she has no clue what the Daleks are. Why is this strange? The plot of the series 4 finale episode involved the Daleks invading the Earth and moving the planet to the other side of the universe. And unlike the series 3 finale, there was no reset button that made the Earth’s population forget what happened. Literally everyone on Earth should be aware of the Daleks in Amy’s time. Yet here Amy is, blissfully unaware of what a Dalek is.

The Doctor eventually flips out, grabs a comically large wrench/spanner that was lying around, and proceeds to smack around one of the Daleks for a little bit. I mean, he goes off. He even kicks one across the room. However, the Daleks don’t react until he says, “I am the Doctor, and you are the Daleks.” They recorded this quote, and gave up the pretense of being created by some scientist from Paisley. When Prof. Bracewell objects to their behavior, they shoot off his hand.

Let’s give ‘im a ‘and (’cause he’s only got one).

It’s a okay, though. It turns out Bracewell was an android created by the Daleks. The Daleks then declare victory, and teleport back to their ship. The Doctor runs to the TARDIS with the intention of tracking down the Daleks’ ship. He leaves Amy behind, telling her to stay in the relative safety of the London Blitz.

The Doctor lands on the bridge of a badly damaged Dalek ship. It turns out there are only three Daleks aboard. The Doctor’s clone wasn’t as thorough in wiping them out as he thought, but it could be worse. The Doctor waltzes in front of the Daleks, claiming he’s holding the TARDIS’ self-destruct button in his hand, and he’ll blow them all up if they make one false move. It’s obviously a cookie he’s holding, but let’s just assume the Daleks are so badly damaged that they can’t tell the difference.

The Daleks want to restart their race, but the machine necessary to do so won’t work for them. Why not? Because it doesn’t identify them as pure Daleks. I don’t know why. This batch of Daleks were created by Davros himself, from pieces of his own body. He even bragged that they were pure Daleks. However, for some inexplicable reason other than the convenience of this episode’s plot, they’re not pure Daleks. Whatever.

It turns out they needed the testimony of their greatest enemy, the Doctor, to identify them as Daleks. And that’s where this episode begins to completely fall apart. The Daleks’ master plan was to get the Doctor to identify them so they could use a machine to create more of themselves. That’s all well and good, but why did they think their plan would work? Their plan to lure the Doctor to WWII London relied on three highly unlikely assumptions that the Daleks made:
1.) That Winston Churchill knew the Doctor personally.
2.) That Winston Churchill would be one of the very few people on pre-2009 Earth who could get in contact with the Doctor whenever they wanted.
3.) That Churchill would even see a reason to call the Doctor just because, from Churchill’s perspective, some scientist from Paisley created a couple of robots.

That’s the flimsiest plan ever conceived, and it was literally their entire plan. Now that they have the Doctor’s testimony, their only goal is to make more of themselves and leave. That’s it. So let’s see these new Daleks.

Amazing. They somehow look LESS threatening now.

The Daleks, just because they’re evil, send a power surge through London that lights the city up like a Christmas tree. In case you forgot, London is currently a battlezone. With the city lit up at night, the Nazis prepare for another major strike. Amy and Churchill realize that Bracewell, being a Dalek creation himself, has to be as clever as the Daleks. One of Bracewell’s listed inventions is something called a gravity bubble, which would allow them to send something into space. In yet another nonsensical turn for this episode, it takes Bracewell all of five minutes to create his gravity bubbles and wrap them around a handful of fighter planes. That’s right, folks; their plan to stop the Daleks involves sending fighter jets into space.

By the way, I’d like to point out that the Daleks’ ship in on the other side of the moon. It takes these planes less than a minute to reach the moon. The Doctor runs back into the TARDIS and maintains communication with the pilots fighting the Dalek ship. The Doctor manages to disrupt the ship’s shields so the pilots can shoot the device on the Daleks’ ship that’s beaming the power surge down to London. London goes dark again, obscuring them from further Nazi attack.

Before the Doctor and the last remaining fighter pilot can take out the Dalek ship, the Daleks point out that Bracewell is also a bomb powerful enough to destroy the Earth, which the Daleks made for an emergency, and they’re about to detonate him. The Doctor returns to Earth and lets the All-New, All-Ice Cream Colored Daleks get away.

The Doctor runs up to Bracewell and uppercuts him to the floor. The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver can’t stop the bomb in his chest from going off. So the Doctor turns to his next plan: Making Bracewell think he’s human so he’ll fight his programming. This doesn’t work either. But then Amy gives it a try by making Bracewell remember a woman he once fell in love with. And it works. Love stops a bomb from blowing itself up. A bomb with no control over its actions, at that. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a profoundly stupid moment.

The Doctor disassembles every bit of technology that Bracewell invented (strangely without any protest from Churchill). Bracewell assumes the Doctor is going to deactivate him, but the Doctor tells him to run off and live the rest of his days as a normal human. The Doctor and Amy go back to the TARDIS to find yet another adventure. Now that Amy knows that the Doctor not only travels in time but has enemies, he asks her if she wants to stay. But he simply can’t get rid of her. The episode wraps up with the Doctor worried, however. Why the hell didn’t Amy know who the Daleks were?

Oh, and there’s yet another crack in a wall.

This episode was disappointing on so many levels. I’m disappointed that Mark Gatiss (who wrote the 2005 episode “The Unquiet Dead” as well as a fun 8th Doctor audio titled “Invaders from Mars”) would turn in such a stupid script. I’m disappointed that new headwriter Steven Moffat would approve of this script as-is. I’m also disappointed with their portrayal of Churchill. We’re talking about a man who was known for his sharp, tactless wit; in this episode, he was like a fuzzy-yet-stern grandfather. The Daleks’ plan made no sense. The squad of fighter planes they sent to fight the Daleks was a stupid idea, or at the very least utilized incredibly poorly. I don’t even mind what the new Daleks look like so much (the BBC gots to sell toys, man), though I am very tired of them constantly getting killed off and resurrecting themselves on this show.

I really could’ve done without this episode. I didn’t even want to rewatch it to write this review. When I get the DVD set, you can bet this will be an episode I’ll skip every time– not unlike “Daleks in Manhattan” and “Evolution of the Daleks.”