Media Essays: Dalek vs. The Star Beast

Written by The Wandering Fox

Freddy and Teddy were finishing off a last thread of their newest creation for the Wandering Fox.

Freddy: This should work for a blog entry like this.

Teddy: Yeah, no need for the Cynical Crown.

What’s that then?

Teddy: Heh. We just finished it. It’s a new gift for you.

Oh? A gift?

Freddy: Yes. We heard what you’d be talking about today and we thought this would suit you.

They then showed it to him. A crimson square hat like a mortarboard that was worn at universities. The Wandering Fox’s whole face lit up under the mask. He took it and rested it on top.

Thank you! I’ll pay you guys as soon as I’m done!

Freddy: That’s really kind of you!

Teddy: You just give your lecture now mate!

That I will. Hello everybody it’s me the Wandering Fox again and I’m here to talk about a matter of two episodes from Doctor Who, the pair of them both being remembered rightly and wrongly for different reasons. That being Dalek and the Star Beast. The two episodes respectively starred Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant and saw the return of the Daleks and the debut of Beep the Meep. Of course for those of you who don’t know, these stories were in fact adaptations of previous Doctor Who works, that being the audio Jubilee and the Star Beast comic, which saw the Sixth and Fourth Doctors in those stories. While I was doing some reflecting on Doctor Who I realised how much Dalek and The Star Beast have in common, that being their adaptations and saw old characters return. But the matter is this: I think Dalek did a far superior job at adapting Jubilee while being it’s own story unlike the Star Beast which went far too far from its own source and was instead filled with cringe. Of course this is my opinion. If you loved the Star Beast episode, fine by me, but I didn’t love it. These episodes strongly show just how far apart the quality of Doctor Who has sunk since Dalek, and ironically both episodes were overseen by RTD.

Where do we start? Let’s begin with:

Dalek

That story worked so well for a lot of reasons and I think among those reasons was the pressure they were under at the time. Doctor Who was coming back after a long time off the TV and not only did they have to win people over with a new Doctor and companion, they had to recreate that magical element of the Daleks. By the eighties the Daleks were a punchline despite Remembrance of the Daleks being a good story, they were seen as a joke by the public. RTD and the team were under a lot of pressure to get this right or they’d be booted out on their bums. With that Robert Sherman was brought in to write the Daleks’ return to the series and they made a good choice with him, having written a few Doctor Who stories for the audios including The Chimes of Midnight and, as we will talk of, Jubilee. Jubilee is a Dalek story and I’ve listened to it. What a great story that was, I strongly recommend others to listen to it. Robert knew well he had to try and approach the matter of the Daleks coming back as carefully as he could, he had to avoid making jokes of them, make them a true baddie to be frightened of. So he adapted bits of Jubilee into Dalek.

He didn’t copy and paste it as if he did that it’d be far too complex for a new audience. Jubilee saw the Doctor and Evelyn land in an alternate timeline where the Daleks tried to invade the Earth in 1903 but were defeated and because of that humanity became far more evil. I talked more of the audio in my previous Doctor Who entry so go check that out. But having listened to Jubilee you can easily hear what was taken out of that and put into Dalek.

The Doctor walks into a dark room where the Dalek starts talking after years of silence, wanting to kill him.

The Dalek tells the Doctor to keep away from it as he comes closer to it.

The companion has pity for the Dalek.

The Dalek has been imprisoned and tortured by a rich man.

The rich man has strings he can pull to get political figures replaced.

The Dalek wants orders.

The Dalek begs the companion to kill it.

The Doctor is sorry to the Dalek.

That’s all transplanted into Dalek, really well in fact. But where Dalek differs from Jubilee is how smaller scale it is which works incredibly well in its favour in establishing this new era for the Doctor, Rose, the lore of the series and the Daleks. With Jubilee dealing with an alternate timeline, the Doctor being immortalised as a legend, the mockery of the Daleks, and ending in a big battle, Dalek is smaller with it set inside an underground museum with the Doctor, Rose and the Dalek as the core characters and deals with the topics of war, trauma, control, grief, empathy. While the action plays a big part of the episode, like the Dalek massacring anybody between it and Rose or flying up the stairs, it’s conversation with the Doctor in how it’s the last of its species just like him does great character work that affects the Doctor throughout a big chunk of the modern series, as well as its tries at gaining sympathy from Rose and its confusion as to what it is after Rose touched it makes a tragic story we see on Doctor Who. This all comes from a combination of good writing, a good director and the actors giving it their all. Dalek also does touch upon Jubilee’s insight in how the Daleks were mocked, where that audio explored how society sanitised them, Dalek explored how the common jokes we had about Daleks don’t work anymore like the plunger arm. Many joked about that but come Dalek we see now how the plunger itself is in fact a weapon, it’s strong enough to crush somebody’s skull, it can hack a door panel in a few seconds. Or of course the stairs. Yes, Remembrance of the Daleks did the flying above the stairs first, but oddly enough not many people recall that, whereas here we have Adam quip of how the Dalek is defeated by stairs. That’s until it shouts “ELEVATE!” And slowly flies above the stairs, cornering the woman and killing her.

Jubilee’s resolution is a sad one as the Doctor accepts the Dalek has suffered and is sorry to it and thus the Dalek meets its end, whereas the ending in Dalek sees the Doctor and Rose have their first true clash. While they had bickered a little in previous episodes this was different. It’s the Doctor giving into his fear and trauma, having watched and heard the Dalek killing so many people, it brought back so much painful memories where he thought the only way out was not through empathy, brains or reason, but with a gun. Whereas Rose has no prior experience with the Dalek though she’s frightened she knows the Dalek is in agony and desires to be free and is confused, thus we get this scene where the companion gets through to the Doctor of what he’s doing. It forces him to accept that in the end he and the Dalek are the same, they are the last of their peoples, they’ve survived so much and in this moment instead of being eager to destroy each other, there’s only talk and reason. It’s all through Rose. Evelyn does get through to the Doctor in Jubilee though the difference is that she met the Daleks before that in the Apocalypse Element and thus we see her go through her own character growth of seeing that this Dalek has been tortured and it’s wrong. With Rose we truly see it through the eyes of a youngster who can see now it’s empathy the Dalek needs now with all it’s suffered.

What helps further is that it tells its story beginning to end with heart, seriousness and careful thinking.

Like I mentioned earlier, even some of the dialogue is similar all be it changed just a little but once you listen to Jubilee you can easily hear it. What Robert Sherman did was bring the hard work he did with Jubilee, took it apart and stuck in the bits that could work within an episode without giving way to cringe, to humour, to over the top acting. He introduced newer stuff like Van Statten having control over the cure of the common cold, the influence and freedom of billionaires, the preservation of life with no respect for it. It’s a clever subplot worked alongside the story of the Dalek without being too out of place, especially in how we see the Doctor and Van Statten be total opposites in their first scene together. Where the Doctor handles the music instrument with care, Van Statten tosses it aside. How does the Doctor react? Does he yell at Van Statten? Does he call him a selfish idiotic git? No. It’s easy to see. The Doctor looks at the instrument tossed aside, his face falling in annoyance at how Van Statten just treated the object he told him to be delicate with by tossing it like it was a worn out rubber. It’s a great subtle performance by Christopher Eccleston who says with a more sterner tone “I’m the Doctor, who are you?”. Just a great moment with the Doctor. It does get to the point where after it seems Rose has died the Doctor has enough and lashes out at Van Statten and it’s a well earned moment.

“I wanted to touch the stars!”

“YOU JUST WANT TO DRAG THE STARS DOWN AND BURY THEM UNDERNEATH TONNES OF SAND, AND DIRT, AND LABEL THEM! YOU’RE ABOUT AS FAR FROM THE STARS AS YOU CAN GET!”

It’s similar to how the Sixth Doctor called out humanity for becoming as evil as the Daleks in Jubilee in a fantastic speech, just changed but it gets its point across. In a way you can argue as well that as the years have gone by the Ninth Doctor has been re-evaluated like the Sixth Doctor, as Nine has gone from the “Sad grumpy Doctor” to fans remembering that “No, he wasn’t always like that”. It’s like how the audios did a lot of work to really help the Sixth Doctor’s character and I know if you listen to Jubilee you will get a great bit with the Doctor that makes you think twice about your thoughts of the Sixth Doctor.

In short Dalek works as a great spiritual adaptation of Jubilee. It takes certain pieces out and knows how it’d work on tv and with so much pressure on to revive Doctor Who, it was handled with far more care compared to what The Star Beast was. Of that we can now go onto.

The Star Beast

In a funny way like Dalek, The Star Beast had the difficult job of trying to get people back on board with Doctor Who after the divisive Jodie Whittaker era. But you see I think they knew but they took the lazy route out of it. The Star Beast had a lot to do: reintroduce David Tennant as the Doctor, having Donna return, and adapting the Meep’s desire to conquer humanity. Did it work? Well. I say it worked in certain aspects, like how they brought Beep the Meep and the Wrath Warriors to life. The rest of it? No.

You see, back in 1980, The Star Beast was quite different in which the Doctor and K-9 were just passing through in the TARDIS when it landed on the Wrath spaceship. The Wrath’s took K-9’s head off and stuck a bomb inside the Doctor, forcing him and K-9 into working for them and if the Doctor were to disobey they’d kill him. The Doctor would take a lead sheet and wrap it around himself to stop the bomb’s signal before investigating, with Beep the Meep taking the Doctor and Sharon on a chase through London and on a double decker bus until the Meep was finally defeated. Now while the tv episode shouldn’t copy everything, it took way too much out of that story and made it into a cringey episode that crushed much excitement for Donna’s return or the Doctor trying to find out how he’s got his face back. Where the episode focussed so much on the Nobles we lost a lot of focus on the Star Beast itself, instead turning Beep the Meep into a pantomime like villain and the Wrath Warriors are background pieces to just serve on a fight scene.

The episode was far more interested in the family drama of the Nobles which was out of place for a an anniversary story let alone an adaptation and even when there’s something interesting going on, like the Doctor getting to know the Meep is quickly replaced by a topic about pronouns. Before anybody calls me anything, what I mean is that there’s a time and a place for that to be talked about, but not with Doctor Who as they currently have an alien in the room, if I had an alien in front of me knowing it’s pronouns won’t be on my mind. Or how in the climax instead of treated to a good battle between the Doctor and the Meep we’re instead given Catherine Tate going full Catherine Tate and going back to the nastier side of Donna which hogs up the screen time and ruins the climax of the story with tarnishing the end of the Meep’s story and Donna’s meta crisis. The story just seemed to have been made to better suit RTD’s interests than the legacy he was working with, that being he wanted to have his Doctor back but make a comment on social issues, to throw in a jab at masculinity, to making all a joke and tainting the end of series 4. What I saw was not a triumphant return but a smug moron who thought he could get a couple of his friends back on screen and do what he wanted.

It doesn’t do the story any favours in tying the Meep into a story arc that’s either been aborted or will be rushed out this Christmas. It needed an ending but instead RTD left a little hook in with the Meep working for somebody. Why not just have the Meep be of its own instead of working for whoever the Boss is? That way it’s all done. But instead the Meep joins Davros, Sutehk, Omega, the Rani and others in being old baddies butchered by RTD.

This episode had no sense of pressure on it unlike in the first revival series, for RTD opted for a lazy way out of getting interest back by hooking Tennant and Tate back in and believed that’d be enough and throw in social commentary which had nothing to do with The Star Beast. It turns out Russel you need to do a lot of work. Were the Star Beast adapted more faithfully you’d have had the Doctor caught by the Wrath Warriors who’d force him to work for them in finding Beep the Meep. I personally would’ve adapted Sharon into the story instead of trying to bring Donna back just yet, give audiences a sense of fun and escape with the story adapting the comic as much as it can, that way we can attune to Tennant coming back and giving us a bit of mystery as we see him through Sharon, not through an old companion who’s ending was just tarnished. More time would’ve been devoted to the Meep and its wants and maybe resolving it without an old companion’s story taking over.

There’s also that feeling that these characters don’t feel “real” in this story. In Dalek you could see the characters felt a bit more real from the Doctor seeing the Dalek again to Rose’s empathy to the Dalek’s struggles, they were played straight out as Eccleston and Piper were taught to do. In The Star Beast there’s this flippant attitude to the Meep like how Shaun doesn’t seem that bothered by an alien in his house, nor does he seem bothered there’s a man from his wife’s past coming to see her. There isn’t even a sense of anything human in Donna and Sylvia’s portrayal in how the Doctor laments Wilfred, believing he had died which is then cut off by humour that doesn’t gel well with Sylvia. That is born out of a script written by a man who believed he could do just the tiniest effort and people would love it. Well you didn’t fool that many did you? It didn’t help that, like I said, Catherine Tate went full Catherine Tate upon Donna getting her memories back, for I wasn’t seeing her character, I just saw the actor. The reveal that Donna gave the money away to charity was the Doctor’s influence took away that development Donna had back then. Instead of her using a lot of the money to buy a nice place mortgage free and setting her mum and grandad up somewhere, then maybe giving some of the money away out of compassion, it’s instead due to outside influence and Donna is more angry she didn’t save up on the money. It just seemed far more inhuman compared to the Donna we had.

The Star Beast tried to make lore changes like Dalek did only unlike Dalek which had the help of previous episodes alluding to a war in between the TV Movie and Rose, The Star Beast just seemed to make these changes on the fly and the sense of arrogance is there in the script. I thought RTD would have approached such a thing carefully, but as we saw now with these seasons with the Ncuti Doctor, he doesn’t have that much care for it. Nor does Tennant seem to have that influence he once had, instead just standing there doing as his friend tells him. That isn’t what I call a strong comeback for a Doctor and a showrunner in my opinion.

The Star Beast also lacks what Dalek had, that being a sense to the action. Where we had the Dalek killing people making for a fine action piece that showed the ruthlessness of the Dalek, the Wrath Warriors battling UNIT seemed far more chaotic and expressive of the financial backing from Disney, as well as the Doctor’s sonic hard light that is brought up and never seen again, all spectacle over sensibility, just a way of somebody splashing their cash with no thought. While Dalek had soul in its action, the Star Beast’s magic was just lifeless.

It’s why in my opinion as an adaptation, Dalek does it better than The Star Beast. Dalek worked in squashing bits of Jubilee’s bigger story into a singular character driven episode whereas the Star Beast lacks respect, non for its source material, non for its characters the writer had made. Dalek does it better whereas The Star Beast should just be remembered as the epic comic that had the Fourth Doctor, not for the tainted try at adapting it like RTD did.

Hope that was a good lesson to all.

Freddy: I think it did the trick. I learnt well today.

Teddy: As did I. I like this side of you more, Wandering Fox.

I’ll try to keep this side of me more, Teddy. In fact, I might have it back next time for another essay…