Thursday, October 31, 2013

Doctor Who - The Long Game and Bad Wolf (2005)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils Doctor Who episodes The Long Game and Bad Wolf.

What would make reality tv much better? Oh, wait. I did that on The Cabin in the Woods post. Well, this came years before that movie. You can't blame this for coping.

These are two separate stories that happen in same place and have same theme. The Long Game is mid-season episode, that came after Dalek. Bad Wolf is first part of season finale. I won't go into last episode of the season finale, because it doesn't have same theme than these episodes.

Year is 200 000. It is age of The Fourth Great Human Empire. Place is Satellite 5. Last best hope for... Sorry. I couldn't resist. Satellite 5 sends news broadcasts to earth. Doctor brings his companions to Satellite 5 to show greatest moment of human civilisation. But there is something wrong. There are no aliens on station and technology is 90 years from where it should be. When they investigate further, they learn about mysterious floor 500. Only selected few can enter to floor 500. On floor 500 they meet The Editor. Editor tells Doctor, his employers control humanity by sending false news. False news have turned humans against aliens and have stopped development to time when Satellite 5 started broadcasting news. Editor's employers see that they just let humans live on earth. Doctor and companions manage to stop Editor and his employers. Doctor expects everything to turn to normal and leaves.

If you are interested how news can affect people, you should search internet with terms "Fox effect" or "Fox news effect". There are studies how watching Fox News changes your view of the world and your opinions.

Bad Wolf happens 100 years after The Long Game. Events of The Long Game stopped news broadcasts and started age called 100 years of hell. When news broadcasts ended, humans become confused and everything went worse. Satellite 5 has been turned into Gamestation, which sends reality tv shows. Anyone can be kidnapped into reality tv show. Unlike today, in these shows losers are killed. Doctor and companions finds themselves in different reality tv shows. First they find this funny and strange. Then they learn about killing losing competitors thing. They escape from their shows. Rose is killed during the escape. Later we learn that competitors are not killed but send to different location. Different location turns out to be Dalek fleet when Daleks are building their army. Whole Satellite 5 thing was Daleks' smokescreen to build new fleet and army. Satellite 5 kept human controlled and they could do their thing peacefully and collect humans they wanted.

It is bold move from BBC show to have these episodes, which show tv something as harming that it could interrupt development. They even got actors from current tv shows to do their future counterparts. BBC is public service broadcasting company. These episode may indicate that private media companies may have more sinister agendas. Current development is that media is ending up into fewer hands. In these stories Satellite 5 was only news station. That is why they could have their control on humanity. Writers may have wanted to show that public media companies may have need even in these times.

Daleks in Bad Wolf survived The Last Great Time War and they are not only Daleks that did so.  Doctor will meet other surviving Daleks later. Doctor is not last Time Lord either. Later we learn that Master survived too and Time Lords have plan to return. But those are another stories. Next week it will be my favourite Doctor Who story. It may not be one you expect.

Monday, October 28, 2013

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This post spoils movie The Cabin in the Woods (2012). This is one of the best horror movies I have ever seen. This has to be seen unspoiled. I am not sure, if I should even write about this movie like this, because this spoils the movie. However here this post is. You should watch this movie before going any further.

What would make reality tv better? Yes. Contestants dying horribly. We get that in this movie, where Ancient Ones are the audience and we have to make reality tv for them. If we don't, they will destroy all of us. Ancient Ones want to have at least one sacrifice every year. Sacrifices are built like reality tv shows. Sacrifice stages are around the world and at least one must do the sacrifice each year.

This is story of american sacrifice stage. It is the cabin in woods. Cellar of the cabin has all kinds of items. There victims choose which horror monster will kill them. They don't know they are choosing anything. Production staff makes bets which monster gets chosen. Sacrifice and deaths are just part of the game for them. Production staff controls everything that happens around the cabin. When victims try to escape, they block the way out. They try to make the sacrifice go as planned. Every sacrifice stage has different sacrifice planned. This year every other sacrifice has failed. Cabin sacrifice is last hope to please Ancient Ones.

Victims are students, who are going to cabin for weekend or something. There are two athletic men, two girls for them and one stoner. They choose zombie family for their killers. Sacrifice has to follow horror movie clichés. When victims are not ready do what the are supposed to do, production staff uses gas and chemicals to change their minds. Stoner is only one, who seems realize, that there is something wrong. Others follow their roles. Zombie family starts to kill victims one by one. Every kill is part of sacrifice.

Production staff start to celebrate, when only the virgin girl is alive. She isn't actually virgin, but that doesn't seem to matter. Virgin can survive from sacrifice. Problem is that Stoner is still alive too. He saves Virgin and takes her to backstage of sacrifice stage. There they find all kinds of nightmarish monsters there. They realize what all of this was.

Production staff has improvise. They have to kill Stoner before Virgin. This helps Stoner and Virgin escape. They release all the monsters to backstage. Production staff gets their share of horror and death, when monsters start to kill them. Stoner and Virgin enter to sacrifice altar, where they are told, they had to die in correct order and Stoner has to die before sunrise or it will be end of the world. Monsters interrupt discussion. Stoner and Virgin decide not to complete sacrifice. This causes Ancient Ones to rise from below.

At first, this may look like commentary of reality tv. I see this as commentary of battle between generations. Production staff is older generation, who demands younger generation to sacrifice themselves, to let older generation enjoy their benefits of life. Modern day youth doesn't have similar future ahead of them that their parents had, when they were the young generation. They could have jobs for life. Today no-one can expect to have one job to last for life. Younger generation is living in totally different world than older generation. Older generation controls everything and tries to make everything to work for their benefit. Some members of younger generation has seen this and they have dropped out of the system. Stoner represents them. Production staff's methods didn't work on him and he finally took the system down. Younger generation may not like their role and may take the system down like Stoner and Virgin did in this movie. That would hurt older generation.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

Doctor Who - Dalek (2005)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils Doctor Who episode Dalek.

Fourth Doctor was most popular Doctor. Following Doctors weren't as popular and executives didn't trust the show. Series had delays and problems. It all ended 1989 with seventh Doctor. Next try was year 1996 with eighth Doctor, who only got one tv movie. Doctor continued his adventures in other media. Doctors from first to eighth are called classic Doctors. I don't know what Doctors from ninth onwards are called. We got our ninth Doctor year 2005. I am not sure was this new launch meant to be reboot or relaunch. You can't be sure watching the series and I didn't follow creative teams comment during that time. It was later established that new Doctor Who is same continuity as classic Doctor Who. If I don't remember totally wrong that happened first time in special episode after fourth season.

In story continuity lot had happened after eighth Doctor. There was The Last Great Time War between Daleks and Time Lords. The Doctor was only survivor of the both races. Or that is what we are told. Series drops more and more information about The Last Great Time War as it goes on. This is one of those episode that tells about it. Probably the 50th anniversary episode is another one.

This is episode that showed, what ninth Doctor's run could have been. Ninth's problem was that creative team didn't use Christopher Eccleston correctly. They tried to make him what they perfected with tenth Doctor, when they should have made ninth tougher man, who is trying to figure out that he had killed his race and Daleks to end The Last Great Time War. Man, who first takes a new companion to see destruction of companion's planet is not nice guy. When series progressed, creative started to change the tone of character into nice guy. Nice guy worked with next actor, but Christopher Eccleston wasn't like that.

Doctor enters to bunker, which contains the collection of alien artifact collector. Collection's crown jewel is living Dalek, who survived from The Last Great Time War. Doctor and Dalek meet as enemies but change during episode. Dalek makes Doctor to realize that they are both alone, because Doctor killed both races to end the war. Doctor reacts to this with anger and tries to kill Dalek. He blames Dalek for death of his people. Dalek is contaminated and starts to question what he is doing. Doctor comes more willing to kill than changed Dalek does.  Doctor's companion, Rose Tyler, stops Doctor killing Dalek. Dalek, who is used to following orders, finds his new freedom and questions too hard to bear. He ask Rose to order him to kill himself. Rose does that and Doctor wins The Last Great Time War, because is last one alive. I liked how two mortal enemies realized that they are last of their kind and how they reacted to that realization.

The scene I put as trailer showed how good Eccleston was at his best. It also shows the tone ninth Doctor should have had. Someone with power saw Doctor Who as kid's show and that tone is too dark for kid's show. Ninth's run was only one season long. Change between ninth and tenth wasn't as big as changes before. Tenth is almost what ninth was in last episodes. Now they had right actor for the role and Doctor Who started to have success of fourth Doctor's Doctor Who. Eccleston is good actor, but he wasn't used correctly. When he was, we got episodes like this one.

I am not sure, if I go to tenth Doctor next week. Ninth Doctor has episode that has same theme as next monday's movie. I might do that episode before going to tenth Doctor.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils movie Drag Me to Hell (2009).

If you have any plans to see this movie, please watch it before reading this. I have to spoil most interesting parts of this movie to make my point. When I watched this first time, I didn't have any intentions to write about this movie. Then I started to consider, if I should write about this. Now that I have horror theme month, I can do this and other horror movie, I have considered doing. Both are much better unspoiled and I will spoil both of them.

Our hero is Christine Brown, loan officer, who is looking for promotion. Her co-worker is also looking for that same promotion. Co-worker seems to spend more time to look good for their boss than actually doing his job. Older gipsy woman is late on her payments. Christine asks her boss, what she should do. Boss tells her, she has to do tough decisions, if she wants to have promotion. Gipsy woman loses her mind, when Christine tells her, she loses her house. She tells Christine that she will beg her later.

Christine has made preparations for big deal. If they can close that deal, Christine will have promotion. After Christine leave work, gipsy woman attacks her and puts curse on her. Demons will play with her, until after three days, they will come for her. Things start to go wrong. They lose the big deal, Christine starts to see things and things don't work out with boyfriend's parents.

Christine does everything to be saved. She tries to contact gipsy woman, only to find out she is dead. She goes to medio, but medio dies during session. Curse is for owner button. Her last change is to give button to someone else and demons will take that someone else to hell instead of her. The button is put into envelope and Christine goes looking for victim. She can't give envelope to anyone and time starts to run out. She can't even give it to her co-worked, who caused them to lose the big deal.

She realizes, she can give curse back to dead gipsy woman. She digs the gipsy woman out of her grave and ceremoniously gives the envelope to her. Next morning everything is better again. Her boss has found that co-worker caused them to lose the big deal. Weather is better. Christine and boyfriend are going to vacation. Boyfriend has envelope which has the button. We learn, Christine gave wrong envelope to gipsy woman. Demons come out of the ground and drag Christine to hell.

Now to the reason why I wanted to write about this movie. What is the message of this movie? Our heroine is woman, who wants to survive in tough banking world and be promoted to position she deserves. She always wants to do the right thing. She wants to help the gipsy woman, but her boss made her do the decision she doesn't want to do. She is damned to hell for doing her job. Then she fights backs and saves herself.

This is what we are told until Christine and boyfriend meet again in the end. There Christine is new woman, who doesn't let things just happen to her, tells boyfriend, she could have given the gipsy woman extension. Right after that demons drag her to hell. Does that mean, she should have given her hopes for promotion to help others? Was her role to be just stepping stone for less qualified others and she shouldn't have wanted better for herself?

I like movies that doesn't have happy ending. There are too many movies with happy ending. But in this case I would have liked happy ending much more. Movie told interesting growing story and in the end it didn't mean anything. Christine's life wasn't perfect at the beginning. She worked to improve her situation and as a reward she was taken to hell. What a nice uplifting story we got here.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

Doctor Who - Terror of the Autons (1971)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils Doctor Who episode Terror of the Autons (1971).

Third Doctor brought two major changes to series. It was shot on color. Previous two Doctor were shot black and white. Another change was that everything happened on current day Earth. Doctor was punished his actions in last story of second Doctor by disabling Tardis and exiling him to earth. Doctor started to working for UNIT, that was introduced in The Invasion story.

Writers of Doctor Who felt that Doctor needed his Professor Moriarty. They created The Master, evil time lord with hypnotic powers. This is episode that introduced Master to series. Horse-box appears inside circus. Man dressed in suit comes out of it. With goatee and sinister look, you know he is evil. He introduces himself as Master and hypnotizes owner of the circus. This is all introduction you need for character like Master.

In this story Master uses Autons, animated plastic dolls to kill human race. I wasn't sure what his actual plan was. He created almost unstoppable Autons and when The Nestene, power that animates Autons, arrives to earth, Doctor talks him out of his plan. Did he think he could control The Nestene and Autons? If he wanted to rule earth, why kill all humans? Master is like someone, who wants to do evil things, but in the end he finds out that he doesn't like the things he has done. Or then he is so excited being evil, he forgets something that let good guys win. Usually his goals are something that doesn't make much sense in long run. Doctor and Master are both outcast time lords. This gives them special bond. There are even times when they work together and when Master helps Doctor. hHen Master has change to kill Doctor, he hesitates, because he really doesn't want to kill Doctor.

Master can regenerate like Doctor and we have seen few incarnations of him. His personality hasn't changed as much as Doctor's has. Master had used all his degenerations during classic series, but managed to get more by taking control of a another body. Doctor is almost out of his degenerations. We might see something similar happening to him or they have to invent something else for him, if they want the series to continue.

I know I haven't talked much about Terror of the Autons. Story is not that interesting. Most of the story is used for establishing Master's character. Roger Delgado has such presence, that he makes all scenes he is in interesting even when story is not that interesting. I honestly don't understand why he wanted to kill humans with Autons and plastic based weapons. This is almost like The Invasion redone badly. So many things happen same way. In Invasion things made more sense than in this. Invasion was whole story. This is first act that introduces main villain.

This is all from classic Doctors this time. I might return to other stories from first three Doctors later. I already wrote about only story I have from fourth Doctor and others I don't have anything. I saw those stories from tv and didn't want to buy them on dvd. Next time it is time to see what happened to Doctor between classic Doctor Who and relaunched Doctor Who.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils movie Resident Evil: Retribution (2012).

I really liked first Resident Evil movie. It had interesting story. Interesting characters. Phasing worked. Every movie after that has been worse than previous. This is fifth Resident Evil movie. I have hard time understanding why these are so popular. I am one to blame, because I have these on blu ray. But I am movie collector who liked the first movie. Lousy hobby. You have to buy things you don't like to have complete collection. Problem of this series is that every movie tries to be more extreme that previous. Story has gone quite stupid by now. I haven't played the games, so I don't know how much of this stupidity is from games and how much of it is original to this movie series. I might do theme month or something when sixth and final movie is released. I already have done Dark Knight twice. I think I can do this twice too. Even when this is not as good as The Dark Knight.

Remember the cliffhanger at end of Afterlife. No? Well, that doesn't matter, because Alice is captured and everyone else is killed in few minutes. After that there is nothing from Afterlife. Alice wakes up as different person in normal life, but that doesn't last long because of zombie apocalypse. Alice and her husband are killed. Her daughter survives. Then we cut to real Alice, who is in high-tech cell. From this point on this feels more like watching someone playing video game than watching real movie. This movie series is based on video games, but I rather watch movie that someone else playing video game.

Someone boots the computers and Alice is released from cell. Like in video game, she doesn't know what is going on. On first level she witnesses zombie outbreak in Tokio. She barely escapes that and enter controlling room. There she meet Ada Wong with Wesker on monitors. Wesker has now changed sides and is on side of good guys. I have to watch Afterlife, if I wanted to rant how little this make sense in context of the movie series. So I leave that to when I do the series. I really don't want to watch Afterlife, if I don't have to.

Ada and Wesker tell Alice that they are on Umbrella testing facility. There are various testing rooms modelled after big cities and one for suburban. They tell that this all is controlled by Red Queen, who doesn't want to let Alice out alive. Ada and Alice have to go through testing rooms to meet rescue team. Needles to say that every room is like level on video game with different kind of enemies. All enemies are something that they shouldn't have any change against. Fight scenes are more posing and slow motion than anything realistic. We see many characters from past movies or their clones. I leave ranting, how little it makes sense of having clones of some characters from previous movies, to time when I revisit this movie. To be honest I am not sure that every old character made it out of previous movies. But to check that out I have to watch those movies again and I don't want to do it this time.

On one level we meet fake Alice's daughter, who thinks Alice is her mother. She is deaf. Without any explanation Alice can speak sign language. I don't remember she had done that before. But now she can do that like it is not a big deal. That was just stupid, because daughter didn't have to be deaf. If she was deaf for some reason, little explanation, why Alice knew sign language, would have been nice. Or was this hint that Alice was clone herself. Nothing else indicated that. And that would have made this movie much more interesting.

What should I tell you about final fight? It is kind of annoying, when movie shows with CGI, how our heroes break their bones and next second they fight like nothing happened. Because of that, I am not sure, if one of our heroes died during the fight or not. He is not in following scenes, but no-one acted like he died. I guess they were too busy posing unrealistically. After our heroes win final fight there is time to build up next movie. Heroes are flown to White House or what is left of it. There Alice meet Wesker, who injects T-Virus to Alice. Then he takes Alice and other to roof where he tells that this is last stand for humans. Then we see how White house is surrounded by zombies and dragons and other monsters. Our heroes pose like they didn't see this when they came to White House.

Every movie in this series has been worse than previous and I expect next to follow this trend. Where they can go from this? We have seen Red Queen capable of mass-produce clones and turn them into zombies and other monsters. Last humans are inside remains of White House. Does it sound like humans have change? Next movie is scheduled for 2014. Only one year and we know how stupid this will get.

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Doctor Who - The Invasion (1969)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils Doctor Who episode The Invasion (1969).

I chose this story to introduce Cybermen for several reasons. In this story we meet UNIT first time. This is one of those stories that have missing episodes and this is story from second Doctor. I considered doing alternative universe Cybermen origin story, but I already have two stories from tenth Doctor waiting. So it will be this one.

I always felt Cybermen were analogy of communism and Soviet Union. When I tried to confirm this, I could not find anything. I found Cybermen are based on question, how much cybernetic implants you can have, before you turn out to be something else than human. Cybermen are race of cyborgs. They were humanoids earlier. They started to use more and more cybernetic implants, until they were more machines than humanoids. They don't have emotions. Emotions are their weakness. They lose their minds and malfunction when they are exposed to emotions. All regular Cybermen look like each other. There are few special units, which look different and have different functions. Cybermen convert compatible humans into Cybermen.

This is first story including United Nations Intelligence Taskforce UNIT. They are led by The Brigadier. Brigadier and UNIT were reoccurring characters during classic Doctors' era. They were the officials Doctor dealt with while he was on current day earth.

Doctor and companions come to earth to fix circuits. They find International Electromatics has become most important electronic circuit manufacturer. Leader of IE, Vaughn has made deal with Cybermen. He help Cybermen to invade the Earth and after that Vaughn will lead Earth, Vaughn have other plans. Because he doesn't trust Cybermen, he tries to build weapon against Cybermen. He wants to destroy Cybermen after they have invaded earth and rule all by himself.

IE has added their electronic devices circuit that amplifies Cyber control signal. The signal makes people pass out. When the signal is transmitted, Cybermen rise from sewers. Doctor has managed to make protection devices for UNIT members and they can fight back. They can event stop first attack. Cybermen think Vaughn have betrayed them. They decide to kill all life on earth with Cyber megatron bomb. Yes. It is called that.

Doctor persuades Vaughn to help him to destroy Cyber transmitter. These names sound like 60's Batman. Doctor manages to destroy transmitter with help of UNIT, but Vaughn dies in process. Without Cyber transmitter, Cybermen has to come so close to earth, that UNIT can destroy them.

I mentioned missing episodes. BBC has lost several Doctor Who episodes due poor archiving policies. Wikipedia says that currently there are 106 episodes missing. From time to time some episodes are told to be found, but those are often just rumors. BBC has soundtracks for all episodes and some stills. The Invasion is eight episode long story with episodes one and four missing. For dvd release those episodes are animated using original soundtrack. This has been done for some other stories that miss some episodes. There are also other restoration methods used to bring those episodes back. Some use original soundtrack and still shots. Most missing episodes are from first two Doctors' era. Third Doctor also have couple missing episodes.

Next thursday it is time to obey your Master, when we meet third of top 3 Doctor Who villains.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Event Horizon (1997)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils movies The Black Hole (1979) and Event Horizon (1997).

Event Horizon is only movie I hate. There are much worse movies, but I don't care about them to hate them. Event Horizon has much that I like. First hour is mostly very good. It is like serious science fiction. All strange things could have serious science fiction explanation. But the explanation is anything but serious science fiction. In many ways this is like The Black Hole. This is the movie that took the worst thing of The Black Hole and made it main plot point.

Event Horizon is experimental space ship build for faster than light travel. It uses some kind of worm hole technology with artificial black holes. It goes through another dimension from one point in our universe to another point in our universe. Event Horizon disappeared on maiden voyage and reappeared seven years later. Movie starts when search and rescue ship Lewis and Clark go to search for Event Horizon. Like in serious science fiction travelling in our solar system takes long time. Like in serious science fiction there are no guns aboard and everything is like in real world, where they don't fight aliens. Crew has only rescue workers, not solders. Sets and models look good and realistic. Story telling is competent and everything makes sense. During first hour there are few hints that this could end up being terrible. But most problems they have are realistic, like breaking hulls and broken filters. Those hints could be explained realistically.

But they are not explained realistically. In ending of The Black Hole everyone goes through black hole. This sequence is strange dream like. Heroes managed to get though black hole safely. But villain is trapped inside robot and lands to hell. This sequence is short and strange. It doesn't change the movie too much. In this movie the hell is rubbed in our faces. The another dimension is literally the hell with torture, demons and fire. Hell is not science fiction concept and not realistic in anyway. Hell and demons work in fantasy, not in science fiction, where things should be realistic. For first hour this movie does everything to be serious science fiction movie. Even after another dimension is revealed to be hell, crew of Lewis and Clark acts like in serious science fiction movie.

It is not enough that another dimension was hell, that turned crew of Event Horizon instantly self-mutilating cannibals. Passenger of Lewis and Clark, doctor Weir is turned into demon. Weir is the one who designed Event Horizon. He is there to figure out what went wrong. He had visions of his dead wife and then he plugs his eyes out and become some sort of demon. He can see without his eyes and is stronger than normal human. There is no build up for becoming demon. He just suddenly loses his mind while having visions and then he is demon, that doesn't need eyes to see. Other members of crew have visions too, but they can still act normally. After Weir took his eyes out, he is sucked into space. We assume that he died. But he returns with more demonic powers and now he has his eyes back. He can shapeshift and do all kind of supernatural things. This was a movie that started like serious science fiction movie. Everyone except Weir still want to be in serious science fiction movie, but Weir and ship, with blood running in its pipes, make that impossible.

I hate this movie, because it is serious science fiction movie, that is turned into supernatural horror, that makes no sense. Star Trek episode The Naked Time showed, how you can do story where crew loses their minds in science fiction. Star Trek The Next Generation made it again in episode The Naked Now. You don't have to add hell and supernatural powers to make this kind of story interesting. I hade liked this better, if explanation was chemicals or microscopic life forms, that made crew crazy. But it was hell and demonic power.

I don't know, if ending was genius or stupid. More you get screen time in this movie, more likely you are to die before the end. Movie does this so far, that I had forgotten people, that survive at one point. They are so much off the screen, that you forget them. It is horror and action movie cliché, that once you tell something about yourself, you are going to die. This movie takes it further by killing all main characters. Only minor characters, that are mostly off-screen, survive. I like the idea, but execution didn't work that well. Survivors had too little screen time, that you care about them. For the guy who went insane first, it made sense he wasn't on screen after that, because he was in such bad shape. Other too survivors were sent to do something off-screen. Movie told what they were doing, but it was shown while something more interesting was going on.

I could rant about couple other things in this movie, but this is already quite long. This movie really makes me angry. It could have been great serious science fiction movie. Parts of it still are. But why add hell with torture and demons when it doesn't make any sense in science fiction story? Almost everything in this movie could have been explained with science fiction concepts. Weir's demonic powers were just stupid. Dropping them and hell, this could have been better movie.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Doctor Who - Genesis of the Daleks (1975)

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils Doctor Who episode Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

On planet Skaro two races, kaleds and thals, have fought each other for thousand years. Both societies are almost collapsing. War has consumed resources, both sides had to use older weapons and gear, because they doesn't have resources to make modern weapons. Planet is waste land. Use of chemical weapons has made race of mutants. Both sides see only one possible end to war, total extermination of the other side.

Time lords, race of the Doctor, sends Doctor to this time to make Daleks less hostile or destroy them completely. Daleks are machine like race seeking to be superior and only race in world. They are nazis of Doctor Who universe. By machine like I mean they are genetically engineered race that use famous robot like suit. This is their origin story.

Kaleds are Nazi race of planet Skaro. They care about purity of race and act and dress like nazis. It is quite strange, how easily they accept Daleks, genetically altered versions of them. Daleks are sold them as final form of kaleds. Daleks are creation of crazy scientists Davros. Davros wanted to create perfect life form. Perfect mean here, best possible for surviving in world by dropping all the weaknesses like feelings. Not perfect by way that they need armors to operate.

Every kaled are not happy with Daleks and how Davros programs them. Some are only upset about programming, but are happy to have Daleks, if they had feelings. Kaled leaders stop Davros, which makes him give thals way to destroy kaleds. Thals are happy to apply and they destroy kaleds, leaving only kaleds inside Davros' bunker alive. When thals celebrate end of thousand year war, Davros sends daleks to destroy them. These moves practically kill both races. We see only men inside Davros' bunker. Kaleds are definitely gone. Thals may have some change. Davros' goal was always to make sure daleks' survival. In the end that is what happens because daleks turn against Davros and kaleds for not being perfect race - daleks.

Story has would you kill baby Hitler to prevent holocaust and second world war moment. Doctor has change to destroy Daleks, but he has second thoughts, when he only need to connect two wires. More interesting scene is when Davros tries to force Doctor to tell him, how daleks have lost their fights to give that knowledge to daleks. That would change the future so that daleks would never lose.

Dvd cover says this is No. 1 Doctor Who story. I don't know when it was voted. I can easily understand why this has won. This has fan favourite classic doctor Tom Baker. It also has fan favourite companion Sarah Jane Smith played by Elisabeth Sladen. Sarah Jane Smith got her own spin-off tv-series when Doctor Who was relaunched. This is also origin story number one Doctor Who villains. Story is darker than regular Doctor Who stories. Michael Wisher is great as Davros and other actors do good job too.

Next week I will write about second favourite villains of Doctor Who. I am not sure which story I will do. Next week it will be time to upgrade yourself.