The Doctor Who TV movie from 1996 tried to relaunch this iconic show and bring back the excitement! It had Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and even featured Eric Roberts as the Master! Even with that incredible star power, this reboot still had some issues!
Dalek Drama
While the show might be famous for those terrifying, evil, and iconic Daleks! The producers faced a big problem- getting the rights to feature these foes! The Daleks didn't even appear in this version of the show, yet they were woven into the story as a key moment and even caused a really big problem in the storyline. That storyline shows how the Master had faced a trial in front of the Daleks and was ultimately executed! This scene gave the fans a huge, significant plot hole!
A Merciful Dalek?
Modern viewers and Doctor Who fans knew there was something really wrong! They really are notorious for being incredibly evil and it appears the Daleks are seen showing some mercy!
The sounds themselves aren't perfect! The creators seemed to have changed the sounds so that fans couldn't even understand it! In an interview the show's creator Philip Segal even talked about this mistake!
- It doesn't really fit how Daleks act. It's known that these creatures are some of the worst in Doctor Who's universe!
- Their storyline involved an agreement that involved giving The Master's body to the Time Lords!
But fans wonder, how could the Daleks show mercy? What made this story more troubling is the storyline suggests a kind of mercy to The Master, and this completely changes things up from what is usually seen for Daleks! What really creates an impact! The producers did something that went against the typical behavior of these Doctor Who characters. There is a whole story and timeline about why Daleks don't show mercy!
Trying To Explain The Unexplainable
It turns out the producers and writers attempted to address the errors made in this specific episode by going down two different routes. A couple of novels helped!
- A book called Lungbarrow changed the story by suggesting that Daleks actually were forced to give up The Master because of some earlier agreement with the Time Lords.!
- The book even explains it in this way and implies it was an unspoken and un-revealed adventure for the Doctor.
A second adaptation seemed to take this and explain this story a bit further. There are issues, even considering how this impacts the overall Doctor Who storyline! This newer story had an event called the Time War. The Daleks and Time Lords wouldn't even have had any agreement like that because everything changed, permanently altering the way that both entities interacted.
What Doctor Who Tells Us
To add more weight to this argument about the way that Daleks typically behave, there is a notable Doctor Who scene that stands out.
In the story The Witch's Familiar,
- Missy, The Master attempted to fool the Doctor into harming Clara Oswald!
- During the confrontation Dalek uttered the word "mercy." This created quite a moment of disbelief, highlighting how strange this whole encounter was because the word "mercy" goes completely against everything Daleks ever stood for!
Even with these events and some explanations in other parts of the series. There still might not be much closure to the 1996 Doctor Who movie's storyline which remains unresolved. While Daleks might have used this word, a unique moment where fans questioned their very nature!
One thing that may give some hope for closure is the events leading up to The Human Factor (from The Evil of the Daleks), as it created a war that split up the Dalek colony and triggered massive conflict between different groups! This may have created new, distinct variations! They may have even gone through such massive changes, they are not completely Dalek-like which may have caused the different approach for this specific series!
However, for a long-running series, it appears there's a missed opportunity to not add even more mystery and lore. However, Doctor Who fans, they really do love this kind of lore! This might be the story of a big show where they really missed a step, but to many who have grown to love Doctor Who there's only one thing left to wonder and that's if the mystery will be solved! But whether or not this issue is addressed, there are plenty of exciting moments with all of Doctor Who's great iterations!
