Balthazar:
I thought this latest episode was much, much better than the last two installments of this new series — the rather clunking political-allegory-on-a-space-station, and the rather trivializing use of the London Blitz last week.
Ah, that's interesting, because while I agree with you to an extent about the
Beast Below, I thought the use of the Blitz was handled well - far better than Moffat's earlier war-time set
Empty Child/
The Doctor Dances.
I liked the idea of looking at the questions raised when good people keep bad company, if they think the end justifies the means; I thought that there was a deal of merit in that, and putting it in the recent past made the dilemma seem all the more real.
I also have less of a problem with wholly fictional, obviously false representations of the war, such as this and things like
The Eagle Has Landed and
Where Eagles Dare ("Broadsword calling Danny Boy!"), than I do with things like the truly awful
Saving Private Ryan, which worryingly many people seem to think is an historic event, to the point where it was being recommended as suitable for viewing in school history lessons.
Its visceral opening battle scenes are admittedly shocking, and as far as can be told give at least a hint of the horror of the landings in Normandy, but then they are grafted to an awful, trite, badly executed story of great banality, which neither properly honours the soldiers from many nations who fought in France, nor the true story of The Fighting Sullivans (who were in the U.S. Navy, in the Pacific) which apparently inspired it.
Balthazar:
I did like the kahki wartime Daleks in that episode, but my heart sank when they were replaced —permanently it seems — by those awful plasticky new Power Ranger Daleks!
I loved them! They were straight out of the
TV21/
Dalek Book/
Peter Cushing Movies pop-art, brightly coloured school of Daleks, like they should always have been! In my mind's eye the Daleks always were in colour, even when I was watching Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee in black and white, because that's how they were in the comics. Even the Beeb's own 10th Anniversary Special "Build Your Own Dalek" plans suggested multi-coloured liveries in red white and blue, and another in brown and orange (very Seventies, that last one).
Imagine my disappointment to discover that while the early TV Daleks were in fact dove grey and light blue, with the advent of colour recording they almost immediately went gun-metal grey and black!! The odd splash of colour crept in (a gold one here, a balck and gold one there), but what a missed opportunity!
Admittedly the
Dalek Book - a sort of annual my cousins had - did tell us Earthlings that Daleks were incapable of identifying the colour red, a fact demonstrated in the book with an illustration of a Dalek unable to see a pillar-box. This must reduce the effectiveness of the new red Daleks somewhat ("I say - lads - I'm over here!" "Who said that?"), and obviously the Doctor could just adopt the Glasgow red police-box instead of the Metropolitan blue to make the TARDIS invisible, but otherwise I'm chuffed that they are getting a spruce up!
If you are worried by the change, it is always possible that the make-over is temporary, if the alteration to the time-stream which has erased Amy's knowledge of the Daleks is somehow going to be repaired; it might all just ping back to normal, with the old Dalek design restored...