Exhumate! Exhumate!

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Publication: The Daily Mail
Date: 2005-05-02
Author: Christopher Matthew
Page: 45
Language: English

SATURDAY was the biggest night for years for Doccies (as Dr Who fans ought to be known, if they are not already.

The Daleks returned after aeons in spatial mothballs — or, rather, a Dalek did To be perfectly accurate, the last Dalek. The only survivor of the Time War between Doctor Who's people and the Dalek race.

'It must have fallen through time,' concluded the Doctor (Christopher Eccleston).

Whatever, the fact was it had finished up 53 floors beneath the soil of Utah, Imprisoned in chains as the prize exhibit in the extraterrestrial artefact collection of Henry Van Statten (Corey Johnson).

Why the Doctor and Rose (Billie Piper) had pitched up there, too, was not entirely clear. something to do with a signal taking the Tardis off course.

'Something's reaching out,' the Doctor had told Rose 'Calling for help.'

Not even he could have guessed that the creature in distress was none other than his oldest and deadliest enemy — albeit one in a state of considerable disarray, not to say pain.

Van Statten had by this stage shown himself to be an insensitive bully (anyone on his staff who dared to disagree with him was ordered to be taken away and hay(' his memory wiped and 'left by the roadside some place') So it was fair bet he couldn't have spotted Dalek at five paces.

Indeed, when the Doctor, to his disbelief, found himself face to face with his mortal foe, only to realise that the great space pepperpot was too clapped out to kill him, one might have known that Van Staten would make the fatal error sending in one of his heavies (Nigel Whitmey) to torture the poor creature.

'Make it talk, Simmons,' snarled, 'whatever it takes.'

He made an even bigger mistake when he realised that the Doctor is also an alien as unique as the Dalek, and tried to add him to his collection.

In the end it was Rose who put life back into the sick old Dalek by touching it. This created cellular reconstruction which enabled it to break free from its chains, but at the same time 'contaminated' it (the Dalek's words) with her DNA.

This was not good news for a creature which is basically a nightmare mutation, genetically engineered, whose sole purpose is to kill people, since it now began to question itself and started croaking about 'wanting freedom'

Not, however, before it had done battle with Van Statten's heavily armoured troops and disposed of 200 of them in a matter of minutes.

By the end, though, it had shot its bolt, having developed a relationship with Rose, and started to mutate all over again.

Thus, the Doctor's predictions that, if it were let loose, no one on the planet would be safe were proved totally unfounded, and the task of exterminating the exterminator was left to Rose.

At the Dalek's request, she simply ordered it to die — whereupon it rose a few feet In the air, its globes flew off and It vanished In a ball of light. Simple as that.

I can't pretend that I thought the latest — and, indeed, last — Dalek was a huge Improvement on its wooden ancestors.

True, one wouldn't wish one's worst enemy to be at the receiving end of its deadly sink plunger, or at beady blue eye.

And seeing the monocular mass of blubber lurking inside, one could only feel it was good riddance to bad rubbish when it went to the real Special Effects Unit in the sky.-

On the other hand, like Rose, one ended up feeling almost sorry for the poor old thing and slightly regretting that we will never see his like again.

Or will we?

Exhumate! Exhumate!

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