"…it means… I don’t know. It means, basically, that some movies are clearly being made by Invisibles and they contain messages for other Invisibles. Invisibles talking to each other in ther own secret language… the movies are signals, they let us know that others are out there…”
"Counterinsurgency was stylish, and exciting - and it suited JFK's needs perfectly."
- PBS' Explanation for the Vietnam War.
"This was the metastasis of the cancer, the shift of the Venetian Party from the Adriatic to the banks of the Thames, and this has been the main project of the world oligarchy during the past five centuries.
The Venetian Party, wherever it is, believes in epistemological warfare.
The Venetian Party knows that ideas are more powerful weapons than guns, fleets, and bombs. In order to secure acceptance for their imperial ideas, the Venetian Party seeks to control the way people think. If you can control the way people think, say the Venetians, you can control the way they respond to events, no matter what those events may be.
Since the days of Aristotle, they have attempted to suffocate scientific discovery by using formalism and the fetishism of authoritative professional opinion.
We can identify the Venetian faction which has been responsible for the most important of these scientific and epistemological frauds. They can be called the “dead souls” faction, or perhaps the “no-soul brothers” of Venetian intelligence.
This is because their factional pedigree is based on the belief that human beings have no soul.
Their factional creed is the idea that human beings have no creative mental powers, are incapable of forming hypotheses, and cannot make scientific discoveries."
How the Dead Souls of Venice Corrupted Science
Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
ICLC Conference, September, 1994
"Why did you have to be a solider?"
First off, Moffat is one of the only people in British television to understand that in the past fifteen years, beyond the vast, traumatic break in national consciousness that proceeds from it as an inevitable consequence, we have become a nation of traumatised, over-medicated War Criminals, survivors and perpetrators of atrocities on a mass scale, for no good or morally consciable reason.
We, who stand for nothing, and believe in less; we are The Daleks.
And these people come home and then get released straight back into society - as teachers.
Nurses, lawyers. Glamour models.
Policemen.
Myths.
And most of the rest of us have absolutely no comprehension of that, or what it means... Either at the personal, or at the societal level.
This is a STRATEGY OF TENSION.
Membership of the (Jewish Defense League (JDL)-sponsored English Defence League) increased FOURFOLD in the fortnight following the Woolwich Incident, during the push to war in Syria.
Was it not ever thus...?
Lethbridge-Stewart is Dead.
" Atta in particular had mastered the fine art of getting himself noticed and remembered when he wanted to.
One witness spoke of Atta as a menacing presence: "He just stood back and glared at you with his dark eyes. It gave me a frightening feeling you wouldn't want to be caught in the parking lot at night with him."
Another specialty was a nasty shout of "You do not speak to me unless I speak to you first" for anyone who approached him. "
His bit, the thing he does with the pizza box and the paper carrier bag - that's pure genius.
Watch the footage, you'll see what I mean.
In keeping with Moffat's limited enthusiasm for Dalek episodes, and as a further departure to normalise their continuing existence in-continuity, following RTD's elevation of the Dalek Saga to "Permanent, Rolling Ragnarok" status, Into the Dalek presents an altogether different and much more relatable depiction of Dalek War than we have yet seen come close to being brought to screen anywhere esince.... Probably around about 1974, thinking offhand.
"Dalek War" is a meme that gets bandied around, especially in spin-off or supplementary media, but rarely one that gets addressed head-on as the primary focus of a TV episode, and with good reason, although RTD took at least three or four solid cracks at it. The problem is, when confronted by an unfeasibly vast horde of attacking Daleks, quite literally to only thing you can do subsequently to progress forward dramatically and escalate the stakes is to add still yet even more more Daleks (or, in a variation, a single, much LARGER Dalek Emperor), until by Stolen Earth, you have a situation where the dramatic demamds of the audience's expectations can only be met and surpassed by conjouring up an entire starsystem populated by them (every last one of them, so we are told, grown and mutated from flesh Davros pulled from his side and fashioned from his own left rib) - which then all have to be destroyed again at the end, because the plot says so.
In the midst of all this, though it was ultimately a failure, the Daleks Take Manhattan interlude was a brave and well-conceived effort (by a writer other than RTD) to tell a genuinely interesting and different Dalek story, by showing just how truly depraved, desperate and self-destructive they can can get so very quickly when placed in extremis. And though it was ultimately a failure, it never fully properly came together for reasons entirely beyond its own control as a mid-season two-parter; had much more been made from the very start of the Dalek's all-encompassing obsession with preserving the absolute perfection of their own racial purity, both in terms of their perverted mutant genome, their cybernetic technology, and moreover, their actual own doctrine of Dalek thought, it would have made their utter willingness to abandon each and every aspect of those core fundamental principles just to survive and conquer, and exact vengence without mercy all the more horrifying.
The idea of the Daleks themselves creating a Human-Dalek hybrid, for the sole purpose of expanding the realm of possible survival strategies beyond the narrow limits conceptual of their own thought, then deciding that the solution he offers them, which they are incapable of contemplating on their own, is itself unacceptable in terms of Dalek survival, and that they would instead much rather have a race of zombie Dalek-human drones that could ensure the survival of Dalek THOUGHT and Dalek "ethics", whilst consciously sacrificing what were then the last few pounds of original, mutated Kaled flesh from long-lost, vanished and destroyed Skaro is at once galling and astonishing, but at the same time, entirely in character for them - they care of nothing else but preserving their own culture and their own genome, and wiping out totally absolutely everything else in the universe.
But again - during the RTD era, that was a rare break in the Constant Rolling Dalek Ragnarok cycle interspersed with deus ex machina routine under Russell - more choir, Murray, and Louder - we're onto Series Four now, for goodness sake... Give it some cowbell, even, if you have to.
Moffat's primary gripe regarding Dalek stories is essentially the same, and he's right - how do you make them interesting, tell an original story and stay out of falling into the Dalek War trap?
As others have noted, it's telling and revealing that straight away, Moffat had Mark Gattis impose the infamous Make a Toy of Me "New Paradigm" Power Rangers Daleks, only to then almost immediately completely disappear them, quickly reverting back to the iconic and by-now quite beloved copper/brass finished Drone type Daleks in nearly all instances, with little desire shown for a contiguous or ongoing narrative between appearances - consequently, Asylum of the Daleks was one of the most rewarding and original Dalek tales in years (perhaps since Rememberence), even if the first five minutes are incredibly silly and redundant, and the BRILLIANT last five minutes were completely thrown away as part of the utter train-wreck that coalesced and came to a head eventually on the fields of Trenzalore. Fortunately, it seems those rules and that status quo may actually be back, but more on that later. As an introduction, this begins to rival War and Peace. Or Love and War.
Oh, well now, where was I...? Oh yes, the Prologue:
"Although, it was quite amusing to see the longest queue for Starbucks IN THE WORLD, in that churchyard, amongst the tents, in midst of the protest against Capitalism..." - Dingbat Former Conservative MP Lousie Mensch
'You don't need to return to a barter system of Stone Age ecconomy to complain about the cuts and the financial crisis...' - Hislop
'If you buy coffee, have a tent and use an iPhone your opinion is worthless...!?' - Merton.
You also shouldn't let the fact you only were meant to be doing the coffee run deter you from intervening in a low-intensity, deeply entrenched frontier conflict on the edge of Earth Space in the far future to spontaneously save the life of a single, sobbing colonial marine just as her scout-ship begins to disintegrate
But only JUST the one - Moffat clearly enjoys the delicious ambiguities he heaps upon this impromptu errand of mercy.
In particular, it's actually very difficult and a tribute to both the subtlety and skill of the writing and Capaldi's performance that you really don't quite know what they are going for here, or what direction it might be leading us in; whatever the truth if the matter may indeed be, the answers, as they begin to come, will prove instructive as to the true solution to the riddle of the Missy enigma - but more on this at the appropriate time.
For now, as shot, as assembled and as performed, this deep-space rescue from the first raises far more questions than it answers.
Firstly, at the most superficial level The Doctor's actions and manner reflect that instinctive desire that all actors in the part and all producers inevitably gravitate towards like Magnetic North, when establishing the character of a newly regenerated Doctor - let's make him unpredictable, devoid of what we would recognise as any mortal concept of personal feeling or compassion, wild, often rude, acid-tongued and bad-tempered... Even downright unlikeable, much of the time.
We might call this the Saward Dramatic Homing Instinct - and, as anyone who ever has sat down and watched Caves of Androzani followed by The Twin Dilemna back to back, for those who might attempt such a bold dramatic statement, you really are playing with fire, unless you know exactly what you are doing, where it is you are ultimately headed and all points to be navigated in between necessary to allow you to get there.
As Colin Baker, and all revivalist fans and supporter of Ole' Sixy will attest, off-kilter, lop-sidedly scheduled attempts at such a take, either done to excess or served up as cautious half-measures in piecemeal fashion can all-to-easily place both the actor's portrayal and the show itself, orbiting as it does around the leading man's characterisation as the show's central axis straight away into one humongous mother of a self-dug hole, straight out of the gate.
Back in the day, all of this began (as so many other awful, awful things did in that era of Doctor Who, and increasingly so, almost exponentially so for a while, subsequent to this one in particular) as just one more example of John Nathan-Turner's disasterously ill-conceived "Super little ideas" that in essence added up to just a string of every-more outlandish and more often than not, unashamedly tacky publicity stunts designed to generate maximum column inches in whatever rag he could persuade to publicise that week's given gimmick.
This, even though Peter Davison, who had been advised by Pat Troughton "only do three years", and had been contracted to do three years and three whole series as the Doctor (with the Five Doctors being a special case) did indeed find himself asked if he wouldn't mind actually just doing very slightly just LESS than three whole years in the part, waiving his expected final four episodes of the series in favour of giving the next chap the chance to hit the ground running the following year, by beginning his first year with The new Doctor's on-screen persona already established and familiar in the minds of the audience in such a way that next year, his new Doctor would really hit the ground running, and the writers, Directors and other creative personal would go into the planning and pre-production phase already with a clear basic sense of the new Doctor's character and what he was about to use as a starting point going forward around which to tailor their own story ideas and characterisations from that initial template.
And the Grimding Engines of the Universe, obviously.
Thus, fatefully, the bulk of the Sixth Doctor's erstwhile on-screen legacy is rightly remembered, quite accurately, as being the era most closely associated with people standing about in the TARDIS console room, having an arguement.
And not even arguing properly, just mutual irritation and snippiness, and endless bad-tempered non-sequiturs.
Lt. Hugo Lang of the Undercover Division.
Whilst wearing some really quite indescribably awful clothes - because that's exactly what Twin Dilemna was like throughout all four of its episodes, and from that writers took their brief to produce scripts on the presumption: "Here, now there - look at that. This is just the kind of thing we fully intend to do more of, just almost exactly like that."
Never Got There.
Likely still in his first 48 hrs following "The Whopper"
- 5 mins later, still not knowing who he is, he runs out to pick up coffee.
"Am I a good man..?" He really has no idea yet.
So far, we could go with rude and not ginger (again).
"No - not that way."
The essential problem with Dalek War, and by extension Daleks themselves is that there is absolutely no variation, no adaptation to situation or circumstance, and of course, no mercy.
Daleks arrive, they attack in huge numbers with overwhelming force, and they absolutely do not so much as pause for lunch until you and everyone you have ever loved, everyone you know or have ever met is annihilated.
The end.
Real wars are nothing like Dalek War.
Real wars never end.
Time Wars even more so.
"Am I a Good Man, Clara..?"
We already know that that's somebody else.
PTSD must be a real humdinger when you live forever because you killed everyone else.
How are you supposed to get any therapy..?
Of course, we know that the (Non-Time Lord) soldiers of Gallifrey just have all their traumatic combat memories deleted by their implants - there is of course (naturally) a real-world name for this procedure, as it relates to programmable assassins:
RADIO-HYPNOTIC INTRACEREBRAL PROGRAMING (RHICP)
And
ELECTRONIC DISSOLUTION OF MEMORY (EDOM).
And so the question remains... Why didn't he save Jenni Blue's brother when it's obvious that he so easily could have - he had a whole second to work with...!
And why does he seem to be systematically and purposefully sending people to Heaven...?
Or "Heaven".
The most likely reason is due in some sense to the fact that that's where Gallifrey probably is:
They seem to like drinking Tea and cakes in Heaven.
"Hello! My name is Missikobongibunga! Would you care for a scone?"
We are told that The Void is "Hell".
This is something else - more though, it seems, much like Limbo than Heaven...
