Doctor Who review: Daleks Among Us has many great ideas but lacks execution
By James Aggas
Featuring character revelations and the resolution of a complex arc, Daleks Among Us is a Doctor Who story that crams in a LOT in its four episodes. But does that make it an enjoyable listen?
Daleks Among Us. What a great title. It implies a story about Daleks that are hidden in the shadows, working behind the scenes. Certainly, we seem to get that story when the Seventh Doctor and his companions travel to a world where it’s illegal to even mention the Daleks. As such, this story had some real potential to capture some of the greatness of David Whitaker’s Dalek stories – ones that were more psychological and built up the Daleks as a threat.
What we get is honestly disappointing by comparison. Daleks Among Us isn’t a bad story, but it is a frustrating one. One of its biggest issues is that it’s written as the third part of a closely connected arc that almost clashes with its standalone story entirely – one that’s heavily focused around a powerful machine created by a Nazi scientist due to knowledge he’d been given by powerful god-like beings… and yes, it is as complicated as it sounds. Honestly, you really can’t listen to this story without listening to previous audios Persuasion and Starlight Robbery first.
Much more important than that though is how focused the arc is on Dr. Elizabeth Klein. One of the Seventh Doctor’s most fascinating companions, Klein herself has a very complicated history. This story delves into that history – and honestly, it feels like the wrong story to do that. Klein travels back in time to Germany right in the middle of the story to find out about her origins. It’s an interesting idea, but just feels so out of place, and feels like it should have been saved for its own audio.
Davros has a key role to play in this story… or does he?
(Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
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Davros’s role
The big question, of course: what of Davros? How well does he fit into all this? Well, if I’m being honest…not very. To be even more honest, I’m not sure why he was included at all. You could easily have left him out entirely and not felt like you’d missed a thing. And that’s a huge shame, because a Davros story should always feel crucial for the character. Even in Remembrance of the Daleks, when he doesn’t show up in full until the very end, he has a huge role to play as the Dalek Emperor.
In this story, though? I can’t help but think it would’ve been much stronger if it had focused entirely on the Daleks in a story without their creator. (Especially as it kind of messes a little with the continuity established by Terror Firma, an Eighth Doctor story that explicitly takes place almost directly after Remembrance of the Daleks from Davros’s perspective. Still, we’ll just say that Seven is meeting Davros in the wrong order in this story.)
This is a key issue of Daleks Among Us altogether. There are so many good ideas included in it that don’t flow together. If Alan Barnes had kept both the Dalek and the Klein elements separate from each other, we could have easily gotten two great stories – a suspenseful Dalek story for the former, and a strong, character-driven story for the latter. As it is, there’s too much story crammed into four episodes, making this an audio that has flashes of greatness, but remains a very frustrating listen overall.
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Have you listened to Daleks Among Us? Is it a story you’d recommend? Or do you think it tried to do too much at once? Let us know in the comments below.