"The timelines and canon are rupturing."
IN THIS ONE... The Doctor causes a paradox in Davros' lab.
REVIEW: The five-minute short that broke the internet during Children in Need, Destination: Skaro is the 14th Doctor's first adventure, and already we're in RTD/Tennant land. This Doctor, though we've been assured he's a different person, sounds just like Doc10. The comedy music bops around (though this is normal for something like this - they don't really write new music specifically for it). And of course, Mr. Naughty Showrunner throws us something designed to get us talking and freak out a portion of the fan base, mostly in his interview afterwards (Theories will take care of it).
In a nutshell, we return to the era of Genesis of the Daleks - which is a ballsy story to contradict given that it's always near the top of any Best Story poll, even in the current era - and Davros is perfecting his "travel machines" and isn't in a wheelchair or scarred (though he's still played by Julian Bleach). That set fandom on fire because Davies goes on to say in the making of that he's retconned Davros so that he is never disfigured or disabled, which in 2023, he considers offensive, especially for Children in Need (well, YOU chose the topic, sir). More problematic when it comes to canon is the bootstrap paradox that ensues when the Doctor shows up, blurts out the word "Dalek" (the Kaled marketing dude was gonna get there eventually), the catchphrase "Exterminate!" (uhm), and sticks a Dalek plunger arm into the socket of the nasty claw arm (a nod to the Dalek movies?) the TARDIS accidentally ripped off. It's that old saw about the hero creating his greatest enemy in retcon, and the moment could have a little victory, like acknowledging that he made his villains more ridiculous, which is helpful in the long run.
But do we necessarily have to take this bit any more seriously than the Sarah Jane Adventures skit with Ronnie Corbett as a Slitheen? The Doctor throwing out the word "canon" is all the indictment some of us will need. Davros is played for comedy, vetting branding ideas and falling in love with the plunger. The Doctor doesn't notice the Dalek in the center of the room when he walks out of the TARDIS. It's all very silly, beyond what could be considered Doctor Who's normal character humor. If we do take it seriously - and if we don't, we'll have to revisit these issues eventually when Davros makes another appearance, though really, there's no need to, and the Daleks themselves should warm the bench for a while - we might question what this gesture has actually done for the Daleks. What they symbolize - the Nazis specifically and xenophobic fascism generally - feels a little garbled. It's not so much the changes to Davros, as I think his appearance is still analogous to Hitler falling short of his own ideal - but casting his assistant as a person of color takes us away from it. Davros himself may just have been downgraded to run-of-the-mill "mad scientist".
THEORIES: How much of a problem is all this for the continuity-conscious fan? On the one hand, the on-screen changes are minor. Though having a healthy Davros contradicts Big Finish audios like I, Davros, the changes to Genesis aren't necessarily a problem. This might just be Davros before his accident, which is imminent and puts the project on the back burner during his convalescence. Genesis is some time later when work has started again (this is a Type III Travel Machine, Genesis' were Type IV). An interview is not canon. The producer's intent is not cannon. Only what is on screen. And what's on screen isn't too world breaking. But in any case, we're talking about the Daleks and the Daleks have been messing with their own timeline possibly since the beginning, and certainly during the Time War. It's quite easy to say that Daleks loyal to Davros went back in time and prevented his accident, thereby strengthening his ability to lead them. Alternatively, the Daleks who fight for the Emperor or Supreme Dalek or whoever might have done the same thing so that Davros isn't in a life support chair, and therefore doesn't survive to later eras, slyly taking him off the table. We are currently post-Time War, post-Big Bang 2, and post-Flux. The universe has been reordered many times, and the Daleks don't even HAVE to take a hand--I mean, plunger. Update your brains with the timeline, folks. This is as canonical as the TV Movie.
REWATCHABILITY: Medium - If RTD hadn't made that gesture, this would just be a bunch of jokes and we wouldn't have spent so much time arguing it, am I right?
Comments
In many respects, Mary Shelley raised the general phenomena 200 years ago in The Modern Prometheus meditation before subsequent plays codified it as the watered down frights of Frankenstein of popular myth, because everyone secretly loves their monsters (see the internet).