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Russell T Davies on Daleks in Manhattan - Radio Times, April 2007 |
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The Doctor Who supremo chats to Nick Griffiths about the Daleks' latest appearance in the show - and the fine art of tantalising the audience without giving too much away.
On managing spoilers
"You
want to give away a certain amount,
to draw people in. But
you don't want people watching and
thinking they've seen it before. What
we try to protect are the endings of
plots - that's the important thing."
"It's partly the 45-minute format, which means that if
you reduce every single plot down to
its basics, it's very simple. If Anne
Reid says, 'I play a blood-sucking
Plasmavore on the Moon', the end of
that sentence is '… and the Doctor
stops me'. And that's the entire plot
given away. Even though that's
guessable, and exactly how he stops
her will be found out, it's just about
making people watch it, who don't
know what's going to happen."
On the Daleks of Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks episodes
"It's the story of the Daleks trying
to find a way to survive - that's what the whole plot is about. The key to it all, where the
whole Pig Men thing came from, and
the Island of Dr Moreau [HG Wells's
novel in which a scientist mutates
beasts into humans] feel to it, is that
the Daleks were born out of a genetic
experiment, and that makes them
great geneticists. And in an age of
GM crops and DNA experiments,
that strikes a chord with all of us.
I think we're all slightly afraid of all
that stem-cell research. It was time to
put the Daleks back where they really
belong - in that sphere."
"In a funny way, I see this
as our first proper Dalek
adventure. Every other
time, they've been great big, ratings-grabbing
event appearances. This
time they've really got a complicated
plot. They're really clever this time.
There are only four Daleks left
in the whole universe, but
they're so powerful, you have to
find ways of robbing them of
their power, and then they
become fascinating.
"You always underestimate
how clever the Daleks are.
They're not just nasty tanks,
they're brilliant scientists and
planners, too, so the weaker
you make them, the cleverer
and more devious they get.
That's my favourite sort of
Dalek."
On the Pig Men
"The Daleks do
have problems with those suckers,
bless them. There's a good tradition
in Doctor Who of them having slaves
to do their hands-on work. They had
the Robomen in the 60s, Ogrons in
the 70s, and I just wanted another
version of that."
**
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