Days 749 to 750 - Daleks In Manhatten / Evolution Of The Daleks

Spiderman is in this one! Well he's not Spiderman but Andrew Garfield who plays Spiderman in the most recent movies has a part in this episode. That's quite exciting. The casting of this show has come a long way since Ken Dodd!

It was in the last episode that the Doctor finally revealed the truth to Martha about how he was the last of his kind after a huge war with a race called the Daleks. It's pretty handy that he told her this as the very next story features the return of the Cult of Skaro from the last series!

Escaping the last story through the use of an emegency temporal shift they have found themselves in 1930s New York where they are hiding out under the newly constructed Empire State Building. The building has been designed to their specifications in order that the gamma strike which is soon to hit the Earth can be captured and used in "The Final Experiment"

The Final Experiment is the Cult's last ditch attempt at the survival of the Dalek race. They are the final four Daleks in existence and yet humans are the great survivors who go on and on. Therefore their plan is to combine their DNA with that of humans and turn themselves in to Dalek/Human hybrids. As one Dalek brillantly puts it, "A life outside the shell, the children of Skaro must walk again."

Daleks have been in the show for a very long time, almost from the very beginning, and therefore I welcome any story which allows them to develop or at least give them something different to do. Seeing the Doctor chatting to a humanoid Dalek, one is beginning to show real emotion and compassion, is fantastic.

Some other aspects of the story work less well. For example, the scene where the Daleks explain their plan to the captured humans that they soon plan to convert. The Doctor is "hiding" in the background but he's still clearly visible to all the Daleks! How can not a single one of them notice that their greatest enemy just happens to be in the room with them!

By the end of the story only one Dalek remains alive. In all the universe, just one. Unfortunatley he escapes using another emergency temporal shift but the Doctor knows that he has not seen the last of this lone Dalek.

750 days done, with only another 150 to go! The end will be here before I know it...and then what the hell will I do??