h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In fact, looking closely at the pic I'm not even sure the thing on its chest is even a 'C' only the top half is properly visible and the rest is in shadow.

I'm fairly sure it is a 'C'- zoom in on the image and it becomes clearer.

They *are* huge- look at the point where the arms join the hands. These guys aren't just tall, they're very heavy built too.

The sheet metal does look a lot like armour- as if the 'real' cyberman is the tubular bits we can see around the joints.

I did zoom in... still too much shadow to tell.

I guess the points that you have made regarding the design of the Cybermen costumes are good and valid. It just worries me a little how far Russell T. Davies or the writer of their debut two-part story may stray from established Cybermen facts and Cyber history.

Also, has nobody noticed how ridiculous the return of the Daleks was in the stories "Bad Wolf" and "The Parting of the Ways"? Think about it, if the Daleks were removed from time at the end of the Time War like Gallifrey and the Time Lords were, then how can they possibly exist in the future if they were removed from the past, present and future? I think Russell T. Davies has failed to answer that convincingly in the Dalek stories that have been broadcast so far.

It hasn't been established that Gallifrey and the daleks have been removed time. Okay, that's what happens in the BBC books/Big Finish continuity, but there's been no suggestion that it happened in the series. In fact Jack says that the daleks suddenly disappeared, to which the Doctor replies that they left to fight a bigger war. There's also hints in The Unquiet Deda that the war happend on some different plane from our 'normal' existence.

Ridiculous? Pah! It wouldn't be Doctor Who if they could resurrect a baddie who had apparently been utterly destroyed without giving a horribly inadequate reason for it.

Lost a n't, Mr. D?

Think of all the times the Master comes back. Never mind feeble excuses, he doesn't even *get* an excuse in Time Flight, just 'So you escaped from Castrovalva'

Hmm... the sentence makes sense to me. I'll put the n't in my wallet for emergencies.

"It wouldn't be Doctor Who if they could resurrect a baddie who had apparently been utterly destroyed without giving a horribly inadequate reason for it."


"It wouldn't be Doctor Who if they couldn't resurrect a baddie who had apparently been utterly destroyed without giving a horribly inadequate reason for it."

Oh, God, I need a little lie down. I'm not sure what difference adding the n't makes

Gods, I think we've entered the Grammar equivalent of the Twilight Zone.

Oh Hell, if we go too far in we'll end up in one of John Prescott's speeches .

The thing is, Russell is a fan too, and he knows that we fans love nothing more than to debate gaps in the text. But the explanation for the Daleks return is there if you want it. It's quite logical really...

One solitary dalek falls through a time hole and lands on Easter Island in about the year 2000. 12 years later, the Doctor finds it in Van Statten's museum under the desert of Utah. The Dalek is a cunning machine - it lies constantly. It lies to Rose to gain her sympathy and steal her DNA, then realises that it needs a hostage to ensure it can get to an opening to the surface. It 'befriends' Rose, plays on her sympathies to protect itself until it can get to the surface. At this point it pretends that it's going to self destruct. However, I don't believe it does.

It's a LIAR!

When we see the Emperor, it tells the Doctor that it fell through a hole in time - the only survivor of the Daleks. This is too close to the lone survivor in 'Dalek' to be a coincidence. It creates a new race of Daleks fused with human DNA - just as it is itself.

And besides which, they use the same kaled puppet for both daleks

So the answer to how these daleks survives comes from the fact that the Doctor turned up with Rose. Had he not been such a meddlesome know-it-all, the Dalek would have eventually died in captivity. Also, the human race would have not been enslaved by the Mighty Jagrafess (puppet of the Daleks), which in turn would not have led to 100 years of reality TV shows being used to harvest the contestants for mutation into Daleks (something I didn't realise was that on the Dalek ship, all of those reflective oval-shaped panels contain a mutating human behind them - urgh!).

I'd suggest that it's not a case of RTD messing things up - he just spoonfeeds us enough to tell the story in hand, but leaves us enough room for our own theories - just as some of the best classic stories did.

I mean, how did the Daleks survive being destroyed on Skaro after their first story? Eh? All that nonsense about their invasion taking place in the past is far too loose and convenient - the Doctor has no basis on which to make that claim, and Planet of the Daleks contradicts it later anyway

Maybe they weren't destroyed. Maybe they just stopped working for a while. When the Thals became technically advanced again, maybe the power that they generate re-activates the Daleks.

I believe the answer comes in from the line of dialogue mentioned by a Dalek about; "We were once the rulers of five galaxies". So these Daleks were interplanetary once, for all we know humanity might have been one of the many races to push back the Dalek onslaught. Explains why the Daleks pick out Earth out of so many others to form a power base, for revenge, plus their liking to exterminate humans.
So you could effectively put Dalek Invasion of Earth before The Daleks, as an advance group to take control of Earth, whilst the remainder fought on, hoping to cripple the enemy. Eventually they were forced back to Skaro.

Or...

After Genesis; the few Daleks that were active started to conserve power, they had been sealed into the bunker and the radiation was still active. Therefore they constructed the city, waging war with neutronic weapons while they remained safe underground. Then many centuries later, the evolved Daleks deduce that possibly only the mutos have survived, not extending any link to the Thals, possibly even believing that the Thals and Mutos have joined forces, become intertwined, hence their words to Susan that the Thals will be more mutated.

Therefore there would have to be something inserted between The Daleks and the Chase to explain how more advanced Daleks, fully mobile regained control on Skaro and developed time travel.

Jimster, just a thought- it would seem pointless for Gareth Roberts to write up a Doctor Who novel containing Daleks that would be released in May, if indeed they do appear in the season finale. So suddenly the shock of seeing Daleks then, as opposed to having them appear earlier in the book; "I am a Dalek".

Perhaps the "last Dalek" appears in that book, rather than goes onto become Emperor, if it had done, it teleported rather than was destroyed but where did it go to?

I could ask him, but he wouldn't tell me anyway. Best to wait to see how it works

Couldn't you bribe him with something?

Any chance potential spoilers could be avoided in these threads?

I think I would have to say that the Daleks were like the Cybermen during the early years of their existence, if you believe that the Cybermen sent out expeditions to colonise other planets (like Telos) and invade other star systems. After the extermination of Davros and the sealing of the Kaled dome at the end of "Genesis of the Daleks," the Daleks spent several years, perhaps decades, gathering up their strength, increasing their numbers and rebuilding their dome, turning it into a city and setting up the Emperor Dalek as a kind of replacement for Davros (but one who was a complete Dalek and not half-Kaled and half-Dalek, so was not seen as a threat to the Daleks with their xenophobic nature), then they decided to deal with the Thals once and for all by detonating a neutron bomb on Skaro (bearing in mind the Thals were not destroyed in "Genesis of the Daleks" and could be a thorn in the Daleks' side if not dealt with). The neutron bomb exploded and reduced Skaro to a radioactive wasteland, so the Daleks then thought that the Thals no longer existed. They then sent out expeditions to other planets and star systems, using the saucers on their rears to travel outside of their city, while the Daleks on Skaro had no need for the saucers and just travelled using static electricity. Perhaps that could explain how the Daleks arrived on Earth after their debut story in "The Dalek Invasion of Earth..."

However, the Thals had not been obliterated as the Daleks had thought, and realising their mistake, i.e. that blowing up the Kaled dome had led to the Daleks detonating a neutron bomb on Skaro, they became pacifists and stayed out of the Daleks' way for many centuries. When the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan arrived on Skaro, the Daleks still believed the Thals were extinct and then that leads onto their debut story, which I'm not going to describe as it would take too long! I think that the Thals called the Kaleds "Dals" in their debut story because it was the name given to them by the Thals (or perhaps even a nickname?) in their native language (the TARDIS translates alien languages into English). The destruction of the Kaled city at the end of their debut story destroyed only the Daleks on Skaro, but the expedition Daleks were already on other planets or star systems.

Funny how so much of Doctor Who comes down to continuity and Daleks.

Oh...the new Cyberman outfit?

Apparently designed by the artist who recently drew Iron Man for Marvel Comics. If you look at the designs, you'll see the echoes. I rather like the new Cyberman and have an odd feeling that the design we see will, as was mentioned, turn out to be a case for something else.

The original concept for the Cybermen was a race who had progressively replaced parts of themselves with technology to improve themselves...and then went too far. The current design doesn't really address that, but Jimster's evolutionary theory does. I felt that if they'd been looking to improve themselves they'd have gone for something beautiful as well as functional - but apparently raw pragmatism won out.

As for the Daleks...
...you're all a lot more learned here than I. But again, niiiiice theory about the last Dalek from "Dalek" with one small problem.
- the Dalek God says one ship survived.

Of course, we know Daleks are more than capable of lying and he could have been here. But while he was busy torturing the Doctor, wouldn't he have jumped on the opportunity to twist the knife by letting the Doctor know he'd blown the opportunity to wipe out the Daleks once and for all?

Are they gone for good?
The Discontinuity Guide makes mention of The Master's various escapes from certain doom, saying something about Anthony Ainley stepping out from behind a curtain and yelling "Ta-Daaaaaa!". I have a feeling that the Doctor hasn't seen the last of the Daleks.