Totally Frakked: Doctor Who -- Squeal Like A Pig
Doctor Who
Title: "Daleks In Manhattan"
First Aired (US): 07/27/07
After the trip to New New York, The Doctor and Martha find themselves in old New York. New York in 1930, to be precise. The duo find themselves in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, with a nice view of the not-quite-finished Empire State Building. We all know what that means... British actors doing hilariously bad American accents.
Hey, at least it's not just us.
In the teaser, some poor stagehand (with a bad American accent) gets kidnapped by some kind of humanoid pig, so we know that all is not right in Manhattan, but The Doctor and Martha are off to visit the slums of Hooverville. He picks the best vacation spots.
As you've know doubt cleverly surmised from this week's episode title, there are Daleks in Manhattan. In the Empire State Building, to be specific. The pig men are their slaves, and they've put their human servant, a businessman named Mr. Diagoras, to work recruiting more "bodies." You can always count on the Daleks to be up to something really sinister.
Diagoras goes to Hooverville to recruit, and catches The Doctor and Martha in his net. He takes the twosome, along with a few other red shirts, into the sewers to clear an obstruction, but all they find is something that looks like a rubber jellyfish and a bunch of pig men, who dutifully kidnap one of our red shirts before toddling off. The Doctor, Martha and another Hooverite manage to escape into the theatre, where a bubbly blond showgirl named Tallulah tells them about her poor kidnapped boyfriend with the silly accent.
At this point, it's back to the Daleks to see more of what they're up to. The Daleks bemoan being the last of their kind, and announce their exciting new plan, which apparently involves strapping their casing -- made of Dalekanium -- to the outside of the Empire State Building, and feeding the hapless Mr. Diagoras to their fearless leader for some kind of creepy absorption. As you might guess, this is a hotly contested strategy among the "racially pure" trashcans.
After a pig man pops up at Tallulah's show, Martha trails him into the sewers where she gets nabbed by the pig slaves. At this point, I imagine she's starting to suss out that The Doctor's companion is mostly around to get kidnapped and scream to bring The Doctor running, which is just what she does. The Doctor, followed by Tallulah, discovers that the peeping pig is Lazlo, Tallulah's stagehand boyfriend. Lazlo managed to get away before his transformation to pig guy is completed, and leads The Doctor to where Martha is being held.
In the end, or rather, in the "to be continued," the Daleks have The Doctor and Martha in their clutches, along with a host of other Hooverites, and they do the obligatory villain thing, and announce their devious plan. They're melding with humans to strengthen their faltering race, as is exhibited by the squid-headed Dalek-Man that steps out of the head Daleks' trashcan.
Now, I love the Daleks. They're a perfect example of the ingenuity of the Doctor Who creators; if you don't have the money to create a scary looking alien, put them in a giant trashcan and give them terrifying metallic voices. It's worked well in the past, and the Daleks have remained one of Who's most enduring villains. We've had glimpses of the actual Daleks before, but I preferred the nebulous uncertainty to the pin-striped humanoid thing -- Cthulu in a suit -- that stepped out at the end of the episode. Oh well, I have high hopes for the second half of the two-parter, perhaps we'll see an end to this version of the Daleks, though I'd hate to lose those good old trashcans.
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