You'd be wrong.

In 1965, it was clearly established by a canonical source, that the world DALEK stands for:

• Destroy without pity
• Attack without fear
• Live without conscience
• Eliminate without worry
• Kill, kill, kill, kill!

I ain't even lying!

WTAF?

A few years ago, I picked up a copy of this - The DALEK World. A 1965 tie-in book published by the BBC. I've taken the liberty of scanning it and sharing a few images.

It is bonkers. And contains loads of facts for DALEK fans:

There are also some pretty good stories - most of which don't feature Doctor Who, but do contain some brilliant future-gazing.

I love the fact that someone in 1965 predicted pirating movies and home projectors!

But, back to DALEKs. There's this brilliant bit of continuity busting:

Doctor Who wouldn't meet the Yeti for another two years - where it was established they were controlled by The Great Intelligence. Although, as the story is missing perhaps there is some retcon that we're missing?

Of course, there's no metric system in the future:

There are also some quite baffling claims:

A year after publication, Doctor Who had a full colour movie which featured this - presumably invisible - DALEK.

The artwork is gorgeous - albeit with a rather limited colour palette:

What else do we know about the DALEKs? Well, for a start, they're communists!

Blimey! Luckily, the best way to defeat the DALEKs is... to implement planetary communism.

You think some of today's stories and tie-ins are a bit weird? The DALEK World is a wonderful little time capsule which shows what kids were devouring just a couple of years after Doctor Who first aired. If you can find a copy, I thoroughly recommend having a ruffle through it.

So, let's knock down some common complaints, eh?

iT's To POLIticALly CorREct wItH alL ThE GENdeR EqUAliTy

The very first episode of Doctor Who had two men and two women in the lead roles. It has always strived for gender balance. Even in the Peter Davison era there were two female and one male companion.

I don't think The Doctor has ever travelled with only a male companion. The audience has always been boys and girls who want to explore the universe. This isn't new.

This complaint is just so "Urgh! Girls!" Grow up.

It's jUsT a rIP OFF of iNDiaNA JoNES!

A recent episode featured the gang dropping into buried chambers, recovering ancient artefacts, and "travelling by map". The whole point of the Doctor Who show is to reflect tropes towards kids who are too young to have seen them the first time round. The classic Tom Baker story "The Invisible Enemy" is an "homage" to "Fantastic Voyage". The target audience of the time would have been unlikely to have seen the movie on its original run - so they get to experience it this way.

Similarly, how many of 2021's tweens have seen the original Indiana Jones' "travel by map" sequence? Precious few, I'd say. What a delight it will be for them when their parents or older siblings introduce them to it after this series.

Of course, Indiana Jones is "ripping off" a thousand old movies with this trope. But that's the point - Who isn't always about startlingly original stories. Mostly it's about retelling cool stories to a new audience.

WHY aRE THEy'Re all theSe ethnICs ON SCReEn?

Although Martha Jones was the first Black companion (shamefully late in the new era), she was preceded by (again, shamefully few) Black actors. Not least Angela Bruce who was kicking arse as Brigadier Winifred Bambera at the tail-end of the 1980s. God, were Whovians moaning about her in newsletters? I hope not! Behind the scenes, Waris Hussein (from India) was the director of the very first serial. The comics in the 1970s and 1980s also featured Black companions.

You know what, that's not a great record. If the next series features a Black Doctor, a Japanese companion, and a Cherokee enemy, that'd be great!

wHen DID iT bECOme so PoLItICaL?

After "The Village of the Angels", I saw someone tweeting that they were glad this episode didn't "shove politics down our throat." This is an episode which features a character saying the Angels are less terrifying than the horrors he saw when liberating Belsen Concentration Camp...

The DALEKs running around screaming "EXTERMINATE" - well, it doesn't take a genius to work out what inspired them! If you watch the 1970s "Genesis of the Daleks" they are explicitly racist fascists.

Jon Pertwee's "The Green Death" is, again, an explicitly environmental story.

Politics has always been a part of Doctor Who. But when you were 12 years old, you just absorbed it as part of the story.

thEir RewRiTIng coNtiNUiTY!

During the first Doctor's tenure, there's little to suggest that he's an alien. The Time Lord race are only mentioned at the end of Patrick Troughton's run! Regenerational limits are something which have been played about with endlessly. Romana could regenerate at will. Pertwee's Doctor said he was thousands of years old.

According to the official BBC merchandise, Daleks are the Yeti!

In a show about rewriting history, it's only natural that there should be very little "fixed" in the continuity.

alL ThEY dO IS tALK to Each OthEr BUT THeReS No CHARaCTeR DEvElopmETn

Like, have you watched any of the old serials? Endless rounds of talking because special effects are too expensive! Companions who stay as the same stock characters year after year. Exposition and monologues which go on for hours. Characters randomly deciding to do something stupid just to advance the plot.

Such is the nature of episodic TV. This most recent crop of companions have gone through such incredible emotional journeys. Something unthinkable in the olden days. It's refreshing to see characters talk about how their experiences have changed them.

Is there technobabble? Sure! But we all love a bit of polarity reversal, right?

And on and on...

I'm shameless in my love of Doctor Who. I think it is a brilliant way to introduce sci-fi to a new generation. To show them it isn't all shooting lasers at baddies and ultraviolence. To communicate that being clever is admirable and brute-force isn't the only way to save the day. To confuse them so much that they rewatch endlessly. To show everyone that there's a brighter future out there. To poke fun at pomposity, and be a beacon of hope for kids who feel a little different and a little left out. To be scary - but good scary. To save the day with a song in your heart and a mystery at your heels. To explore the infinite and still be home in time for tea.

If your main complaint is that it doesn't make you feel the same way as it did when you were twelve - then I suggest you pull your head out of your arse and rediscover your inner child.

The Doctor and Rose arrive in an underground vault in Utah in the near future. The vault is filled with alien artefacts. Its billionaire owner, Henry van Statten, even has possession of a living alien creature, a mechanical monster in chains that he has named a Metaltron.

Seeking to help the Metaltron, the Doctor is appalled to find it is in fact a Dalek – one that has survived the horrors of the Time War just as he has. And as the Dalek breaks loose, the Doctor is brought back to the brutality and desperation of his darkest hours spent fighting the creatures of Skaro… this time with the Earth as their battlefield.

In 1974, the same year as Death To The Daleks was broadcast, the philosopher Thomas Nagel published "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?"

In 2021, Robert Shearman reimagines this classic paper in the Target novelisation of DALEK. Can we ever know what a DALEK is? We know the stereotypes, we know what they do, and we all know what DALEK stands for. Right?

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Replying to @edent🇩 Destroy without pity
🇦 Attack without fear
🇱 Live without conscience
🇪 Eliminate without worry
🇰 Kill, kill, kill, kill

THE DALEKS ARE SUPREME!
THE DALEKS ARE SUPREME!
THE DALEKS ARE SUPREME! pic.x.com/CfRH1f1PoN

---

But this book gets to the heart of why a DALEK feels the way it does, how they are radicalised, and what it is like to be trapped in a metal shell of pure hate.

This is not a book about The Doctor and Rose. At times, they feel incidental to the story. All the text and subtext of their relationship is visible on the TV screen. The joy of a novel is in exploring things unseen.

In truth, this is more backstory than story. But, again, that's what we fans crave. Who is the mysterious guard that we see for half-a-frame? Why would a henchman (or henchlady) choose to work for a monster? Moustache-twirling villains become much more menacing - and a dab more sympathetic - when you understand their motivations.

I loved these Target novelisation. They remind me of the paperbacks I eagerly devoured as a young Whovian. Just like The Witchfinders by Joy Wilkinson this is written by the same author as the TV story. So there can be no cries about how the stories differs from the screen.

It's a lovely way to spend an afternoon - and gives us the appropriate sympathy for the devil.

This evening's Doctor Who - The Bells of St John - revolves around mysterious WiFi signals.

Alien SSIDs which, if you connect to them.... well, watch the episode to find out!

In the show, they look like these: So, can we do the same thing for our home WiFi network? Yup!

There are some limitations though. SSIDs can only have a maximum length of 32 bytes. Those are usually interpreted as 8-bit characters, so if you're using multibyte Unicode characters, you're reliant on the device doing the scanning interpreting the SSID correctly. You also rely on the device you're trying to connect being able to display the characters.

In this example, the Android device isn't able to render one of the glyphs correctly.

Depending on your WiFi router, it may simply not accept characters outside the "normal" ASCII range.

I picked a Unicode string of "╦┐◤︻㍕┻═▄" but you, of course, can choose one which matches the TV show a little more closely - assuming you can find the right characters in the ever expanding Unicode set.

If you want something approaching the WiFi name from the start of the episode:

You can use "┓┏ 凵 =╱⊿┌┬┐" Thanks to Nsurgnie on Reddit for figuring it out.

BONUS!

Update 2013-04-03. Want to scare people outside of your house? You can use Android's WiFi hotspot to broadcast the SSID wherever you go!

It's a Panopticon '93 Officially licensed TARDIS - similar to this one on RetroTrader.

Click to embiggen images.

It's a little scuffed, but nothing a lick of paint can't fix. Of slight - very slight - annoyance is that it's a fraction too shallow to hold standard DVD cases and have the doors tightly shut.  So I've decided to keep them open to show off my collection.

By my reckoning, each shelf can hold about 34 DVDs - so 136 in total.  With around 11 completely missing serials, from a total of 157, it looks like I might have to find a way to make this one ever-so slightly bigger on the inside...

Thanks to my ever loving - and ever patient - wife, Liz, for putting up with me.  She's a far better companion than any the Doctor ever had :-)

The BBC, however, need a few lessons in how to optimise the experience. As part of their Prisoner Zero page - the BBC have an awesome "Wanted Poster". Here's the teaser image.

Prisoner Zero - QR Code

Let's take a look at the full QR code. This is about the size it would be if the poster were printed on A4.

QR Code

There are three problems with this QR code which reduce its functionality and usability.

Firstly, the contents of the QR are

MECARD:N:Doctor Who;URL:http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/;;

Aside from the fact the character is named "The Doctor", this is a rather large string to place in a QR code.  The longer the string, the more complex the code, the harder it is for a phone to decode it.

Secondly, QR codes are primarily used on mobile phones.  This is reinforced by the use of "MECARD" - a method to add someone to your address book.  Yet the URL the BBC point to isn't suitable for mobile!

This is crazy. There's a wonderful mobile friendly version of the Doctor Who site - http://bbc.mobi/drwho - why not point to that? People will be scanning this code on their mobile and then being directed to the BBC's desktop site. Madness!

Finally, the colouring.  While QR codes can work in any colour, they're easier to scan if the contrast is high.  That usually means black squares on a white background.  It's not so important if you've got a multi-megapixel camera with auto-focus and all sorts of other technology.  However, the primary audience for Doctor Who is children and teenagers. Not the sort of demographic to have awesome camera phones.

Fixing The QR Code

Using my QR Code generator, I've created a faster, simpler, and more useful QR Code.

http://bbc.mobi/drwho

Have a scan - it takes you directly to the mobile site.

I'm a big fan of QR Codes, but they have to be used sensibly.  Remember to keep your URLs short and point them at mobile friendly sites.

Touchscreen

It's quite hard to see throughout the episode. It just looks like a standard touchscreen device in a rubber casing.  I had wondered if the props team had created a dummy phone to be used.

What Phone?

Annoyingly, the phone is almost always out of focus.

Except for this shot.

BlackBerry Storm

Aha! That's the BlackBerry Operating System.  That means it can only be a BlackBerry Storm or Storm2!

The Storm2 doesn't have separate buttons on the screen - so this must be an original Storm.  The BBC have taken the logo button off the front to prevent accusations of bias or commercial influence, no doubt.

As an aside, look how the Doctor sends the photos - MMS!

MMS

Better hope those aliens don't have iPhones!

Slight spoilers here, so wait until you've seen the show.

Towards the end, the Doctor is having a stand off with the Atari.  He's discussing the planet Earth and asks...

Is this world protected?

The Atari play a montage of various baddies the Doctor has seen off including the Silurians / Sea Devils!) - but take a look at these three images.

Ood

Everyone loves the Ood, right? But I don't remember them attacking Earth?  I suppose you could make the case that the Doctor saved the Earth when he stopped all the Ood going mad but a) we never saw what was happening on Earth and b) that was relative future to the episode and there's no indication the Atari can time travel.

Hath

The Hath are a different kettle of fish.  There is no indication that they were ever even on Earth, let alone a threat to it.  So what are they doing in the montage?

Library

Finally, I'm pretty sure that's the Vashta_Nerada - they exist on all worlds, sure, but they were only ever defeated in The Library.

That is literally the only thing I could find to complain about in the episode.  I thought the new titles were fab, loved the new assistant and think that Matt Smith - a fellow UEA alumnus - is outstanding.

Here's to the fifth 33rd season of Doctor Who!