The Evil of the Daleks: Episode 5

As we approach the fifth episode, I worry that the story is going to be one of the stories where my opinion changes the greatest and not in a good way. After four episodes we find that the TARDIS has been stolen, Jamie and the Doctor go back 100 years to help the man who took them there find a way of helping Daleks win wars and hope that they let his daughter go. That all happened in the first two episodes but the problem has been that nothing else happened.  It comes to the fifth episode before we actually get something substantial from Deborah Watling. She explains what has been going on from her point of view and it fills in some of the blanks that have been forming over the last couple of episodes.  They are continuing with the Mollie part of the story where they go to the trouble of hypnotising her to forget about seeing Victoria.

There is a weird ‘OBEY’ chant that sounds like a Dalek. It pops up once or twice and it seems like one of those things which would look great on TV but sadly on audio it lacks something.

I like the rather formal relationship between Jamie and Victoria. I like how Jamie calls her Miss Waterfield and I think that we should enjoy this whilst we can because it will soon be a lot less formal. Jamie is quite active in this episode and seems to have lost some of his annoyance that he had when he was talking to the Doctor. He gets to be the hero here and even when he reunites with the Doctor there isn’t any of that nasty feeling which I wont miss.

It feels like the story is moving along and making up for the lack of development in recent episodes and that’s a good thing. The experiment to include the human factor in the Daleks is also progressing and it seems like the end is nigh (in a way it almost is). What is quite odd is how Edward Waterfield has a massive change of heart which is at odds with the previous episodes and I just think that it’s an odd turn of events. Another reason why it’s a shame that this episode doesn’t exist on TV is that the cliffhanger would have been rather fun to see. The Daleks pushing the Doctor around for a game is not something that happens very often and so we have to imagine in our minds what this would look like.

This episode has restored my faith after a recent run of so-so episodes. It feels like the story is progressing towards something and things have moved on character and plot wise. I think that the final two episodes will determine whether this episode was a fluke or the beginning of a good run of episodes. Fingers crossed.