mllelaurel

Finally got this episode to play, after it stalled out on Saturday.

My immediate reaction to the climax was "that ain't what Milgram says." Studies show that humans tend to obey when given orders, more often than not, authority overriding morality. If just one or two of the hybrids had rebelled, I'd have bought it, even if the presence of an obeying mass is more likely to cue mob mentality. As it stands? With all of them refusing to fire? No.

ETA:...Although I suppose you could also argue reverse mob mentality. One rebels, two rebel, others follow. It seemed a wee bit simultaneous for that, though. They all refused to go homicidal, without intercommunication.

My point is, sadly, blind obedience is not a striking difference between humans and Daleks. It's a similarity. I could argue that the bit of Time Lord DNA made the critical difference, but did Gallifreyans strike any of you as a nonconformist people, last we saw them?

I could fanwank further and go with Cartmel's 'not just another Time Lord' argument, which, I suppose, could make the Doctor's personal DNA just special enough to work. But we still shouldn't need ~~three~~ four paragraphs of fanwank simply to justify the episode's climax.

This is a rather good capsule summary of the whole two-parter, actually. "Good solid try. Too much idealism to be entirely believable." I'm not saying everything should have been bleak and dark...

Actually, it's a Dalek story. Maybe bleak and dark should have been the way to go. Also, I'm not sure who gave Raynor the idea of America as a more idealistic place than Britain. Because that is really the subtext I'm getting. Don't we all wish.

It may be time to give the Daleks a vacation, as they're getting less and less effective with each appearance. And not just because Shearman set the bar scary high.

Overall score: 2

I'm still entirely enamoured with Martha, however.