[ SECRET POST #5490 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5490 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 32 secrets from Secret Submission Post #786.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. https://i.imgur.com/m9k6q6I.png

[(Anonymous)]

...But Daleks are like. The weirdest thing you can use for this, because they were literally invented for the sake of galactic conquest by a guy.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, I agree with the overall frustration, but Daleks have a pretty good in-universe reason to be an “evil” race (where evil=ruthlessly genocidal).

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah like. They're space Nazis. You're complaining there aren't nice Space Nazis.

[(Anonymous)]

Doctor Who has a... strange relationship with recurring alien races in general. The two most popular and recurring ones - the Daleks and the Cybermen - both have backstories that make having good guy versions of them really weird to pull off. I mean, Daleks are genetically engineered to be Nazis and Cybermen are dudes with all their emotions taken out.

Most of the other recurring alien races have far fewer stories in general, but on the other hand have a rather more complex portrayal as well. I mean, the Silurians were all direct parallels to the different humans in the story they first appeared in, the Ice Warriors have gone from generic warrior race to twist non-villain to perpetual Empire metaphor, the Zygons got a complete makeover in New Who after one completely evil story in Classic, and even the Sontarans were mostly represented by Strax until last season.

It's a really odd situation in general - these other species ARE more complex, but because the Daleks and the Cybermen show up so much more often they kind of overwhelm the way that recurring aliens are portrayed on the show.

[(Anonymous)]

I get where you're coming from, and I don't think you're wrong, but I don't agree.

The thing is, for me, Doctor Who mostly functions on the level of weird goofy mysticism, not in terms of any kind of realism (it's cliched to say that it's fantasy rather than science fiction, but I don't think it's wrong). So in that context, I think it makes sense to think of the Daleks not as a race, but as a mystical force in the universe which represents not just evil but the opposite of the Doctor. But that's just my point of view on Doctor Who, and if you're looking at the Daleks as a race, I think your point is probably right on.

[sparklywalls]

When the show was first revived I remember 'Dalek' getting a lot of praise for depicting a lone Dalek in the way it did, because that Dalek was as lost as The Doctor. And then you got the whole thing where Rose's input changed it and it decided to destroy itself rather than live as something its not.

I feel like that sort of story was fine when the show had just come back and you wanted to introduce some nuance for a new audience. But now it's like the writers have to tie themselves in ever tighter knots to maintain the "they're just irredeemably evil" thing while also introducing concepts that suggest there's capacity for change.

Personally I'm fine with the Daleks being straight up evil, it's generally how they were for most of the show's history and for what they are it just makes sense. I think that (perhaps) with the modern show we're experiencing that stagnation that comes with overusing a particular enemy and the fact that it's been fashionable for a while to have very grey areas in good-evil battles.

It's a while since I watched Twelve's run but iirc Davros himself kinda ended up dancing this line too.

[(Anonymous)]

ngl, i know it's the done thing nowadays but i'm kinda over the gReY aReA

there's times i wish we could go back to "here's some good guys, here's some bad guys, now fight to the death" - i'm fast losing interest in tragic villains on oh so complex paths of redemption

i mean can you imagine how pathetic it would be if we ended up with a dalek as a companion

[sparklywalls]

I won't lie either, I love the villainous shades of grey but sometimes it's just not needed. Sometimes I don't need a tragic backstory or a rebellion against a creator. Sometimes things just ARE. I don't need shades of grey with Daleks.

Didn't we already kinda get the companion thing with Handles the Cyberman? I know he was reprogrammed, not truly a Cyberman and didn't do anything beyond Plot Requirement, but I always found it a bit odd Eleven was able to essentially find companionship in something that resembled something that had abused him so much. I mean, he basically turned Handles into Wilson from Cast Away.

[(Anonymous)]

For me, a better example of my frustration with Doctor Who’s treatment of entire species is from Demons of the Punjab.

Jay Exci talked about this in their YouTube video, but the Doctor’s “lesson” in that episode could have easily been “not all members of a species are evil”. And [spoilers!] instead the problem is just that the Doctor has an outdated stereotype for the species. Now they’re all uniformly nice and serene instead of uniformly ruthless killers.

[meadowphoenix]

This reminds me of that secret about fantasy villains being irredeemable evil, in that the problem is that people aren't actually clear about what evil means philosophically and so static tropey characterization ensues as a shortcut. But anyway, i think Dr. Who was or is a kids show. And I don't mean that it's viewership is intended to be children, I mean that it's themes were meant to invoke and instill cultural values in the simplest, but also very fun and sci-fi-y, way possible to its audience, so the shortcut evil villains were more useful overall.

I don't necessarily like it either, but I think with this type of show, you know what you're getting going in, and I wouldn't assume that any showrunner wanted to challenge that basis really. It doesn't help that the Daleks are nonsensical, in that engineering that "removes" types of emotive social responses and increase non-social responses would destroy any actual coherent attempt at domination. But it doesn't matter because that's not the point, is it! The point is that world domination is evil and only creatures devoid of what makes humans "good" would persist in it, and they're aliens so you don't even have to get into whether that actually makes any sense because it's an alien perspective not ours no matter how much the alien is inspired by us. It's not like people extrapolate from art/media or anything!