Doctor Who (2005–…): Season 5, Episode 3 - Victory of the Daleks - full transcript

The old enemy is back. Disintegrate!

And in a fetching new shade.
I think the blue one's my favourite.

Cleanse the unclean!
It's all-new Doctor Who.

What's the other thing we haven't
changed? Let's change the Daleks.

And all that stands in their way
is one man with a blue box
and one man with a cigar.

Go to it, Group Captain! Go to it.

My ambition with this episode
really, was to do a sort of
45-minute Bank Holiday war movie.

Mark Gatiss takes us
to Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms...

We don't know how lucky we are.

..for an inside view
on how the war was won...

I would urge anybody who can
to come and visit this place.



..and how Mark pitted
The Doctor's deadliest enemy
against the best of British.

It's like British icons shoved
together. Bizarrely, the Daleks
feel as though they're part of it.

Join us, as we see the Daleks
go bigger, badder and brighter.

They've improved. They're stronger,
more powerful, more brilliant.

It's exciting. It's sort of
what it's about, Doctor Who -

every monster gets
a bit better every time.

In a top-secret military
installation, the Doctor Who team

are filming the nerve centre
of the British war effort.

Can I just ask everybody
to go to their start positions?

B Camera.

And action!

Action!

At last! Are they ready? I hope so.

In the meantime...



..this will pick up
Dalek transmissions.

'We are the paradigm
of a new Dalek race...'

It's him! It's the Doctor!

Nice paint job. I'd be feeling
pretty swish if I looked like you.
Pretty supreme...

He's got company.
New company. We've got to hurry up.

Go to it, Group captain! Go to it.

Broadsword to Danny Boy,
Broadsword to Danny Boy,
scramble, scramble, scramble.

Danny Boy to the Doctor,
Danny Boy to the Doctor,
are you receiving me, over?

Ho-ho! Winston, you beauty!

Danny Boy to the Doctor,
come in, over.

Loud and clear, Danny Boy. Big dish,
side of the ship - blow it up.

You heard him, Group Captain -
send in all we've got.

Broadsword to Danny Boy, target
the dish and stop that signal, over.

Understood, sir. Over.

We're going in! Good luck, lads.

Direct hit, sir!

ALL CHEER

Cut. Cut!
This episode has been written

by long-time Doctor Who contributor
Mark Gatiss, who has been asked
to work his magic on World War Two.

I remember I took him out for a drink

and said "Look, I want you to do
the Daleks meet Churchill".

And initially,
he was sort of, "Yeah, OK..."

I don't think
he immediately leapt at it.

The Churchill bit, I went, "Oh..."
The Dalek bit I went, "Ooh."

Because... I mean,
it's thrilling, obviously it is.

So I just sort of
took a deep breath, really.

And I got very, very excited very
quickly about the idea of, first of
all, writing a sort of war movie,

of which I'm inordinately fond,
but particularly about sort of doing

my own Dalek story
and contributing...
continuing the mythos.

I wondered what sort of a match
he'd be for the Daleks, but actually

he's been a brilliant match
and absolutely adored writing them.

And it's so kind of Doctor Who,
that pan in...

It is, I know,
it sort of does something to you.

'To be in anything by Mark'

is, for me, a treat because I'm...

I'm really awestruck by him,

I'm really starstruck.

And he's such a fan of Doctor Who,
and he's so good in it.

In the episode he's in,
he's so good.

I grew up over there.

A tiny flat above a butcher's shop.

It'll have a blue plaque soon -
"Richard Lazarus Lived Here."

It's gone.

Destroyed in the war, the bombing.

Of course.

1940, do you remember?

Night after night,

explosions,

guns, firestorms.

And it's lovely to have such
a great big fan write the show.

Like Steven is a huge fan, like
Russell is a huge fan, I think...

that gives it great heart.

And I think Mark's episode
is full of heart.

I knew that he would write
Churchill really, really well.

I knew he'd do his research
cos Mark always does.

I knew he'd get that part of it
right and I knew he'd get

the feel of the wartime
characters brilliantly.

In his research, Mark visited
the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall.

Confidential took him back there
to experience the real nerve centre
of the British war machine.

So here we are, not in the room
where Doctor Who is written,
although it's very like this,

but at the top secret heart
of the war effort,

otherwise known, Cressida...?

This is the Churchill Museum
and Cabinet War Rooms,

which preserves
the original Cabinet War Rooms.

How far are we beneath
the beating heart of London?

Only about 10ft. Disappointing.

Yes. People here would have felt
they were a lot lower down.

And there is how much concrete
between us and the pavement?

There's about three metres,
there's a great big slab

with reinforced iron rails in it,
protecting us a bit.

They had the rooms ready before war
even broke out, in 1938, and they

moved in here more permanently
during the Blitz in 1940.

Before we go inside, tell us what
this is, because it's fantastic.

This, originally, was a light push,
but somebody has cleverly adapted it
to make a cigarette lighter.

You know, like in cars? So
obviously that filament lights up.

Cos this is the Map Room,
full of paper, and naked flames
just wouldn't have been a good idea.

You could actually
plug your sat nav into that.

Speaking of which, let's go inside.

So this is the Map Room? Yes.

Now, our version in Doctor Who
is considerably bigger,

and has one of those big tables
with a map of southeast England

and WAAFs pushing...
That obviously never happened.

Those are real, though,
aren't they? But not here.

Those would have been
in the RAF bases.

This was a sort of
combined services, bringing

all the different services together
and co-ordinating the information.

This was manned 24 hours
a day throughout the entire war.
Good Lord.

And it would have been, I suppose,
in a fug of tobacco smoke
and everything else?

Yeah, you can see the huge
cigarette end boxes. As far as we
know, pretty much everybody smoked.

It would have been horrible.
Gosh, it's amazing they
lasted through the war.

The map is absolutely covered
in tiny drawing pin marks.

Yes, this is the convoy map,

so it would have been plotting
the individual convoys of ships,

which were coming
across the Atlantic bringing

vital supplies and men,
battling against the U-boats.

So this... The entire place
was sealed in May 1945?

In September 1945,
after the end of the war with Japan.

And erm...
was left exactly as it was?

Yes, the most important rooms,
so this room and the War
Cabinet Room, for example,

were left exactly as they were
and very few people came down here.

A few people requested
to go on tours

and they'd come down with torches,
but it wasn't open to the public.

Spooky. Was it sealed up
because of the secrecy,

or because they had a sense
that it was an important place?

I think they understood
the historical value.
Yes. Extraordinary.

So on this noticeboard,
they were keeping the score of the
Battle of Britain from down here.

Somebody's painted it in
for September 15th, 1940,

which was Battle of Britain Day,
when the tide of the battle changed
finally in Britain's favour.

God.
Extraordinary thought, isn't it?

They were realistically
down here being aware that
they could be invaded.

There are rooms further down the
corridor where they were planning
the defence of the country.

What was it, rifles?
Down here they had rifles.

People working here would
have been expected to defend
themselves, defend the site,

but it's things like barbed
wire on the beaches and
things as well like that.

God. We don't know how lucky we are.

And Doctor Who, as usual,
found its own particular way

to pay tribute to those magnificent
men in their flying machines.

It was Steve's idea.
He just said, "We've got
to have Spitfires in space.

"How can we make that happen?"
Danny Boy to the Doctor...

Tally-ho!

I wanted to fly one of the Spitfires.
I get the TARDIS, it's cool.

It's such an icon, isn't it,
the Spitfire? It remains with you.

To realise the dream of Spitfires
in space, the team go into the
studio for some camera trickery.

I think you can go real RAF, "Danny
Boy!"... A little bit like that.

We shot a lot of the Spitfire with
the pilot against green, to create

the CG dogfight in space

between the Spitfires and their
pilots and the Dalek spaceship.

So what we did
in order to help with those CG shots

is to shoot the live-action element,

which is the cockpit and
the main fuselage of the Spitfire.

Cut there. Cut it.

Well, we have a World War Two
replica Spitfire here in the studio
today, in the green screen studio.

And this afternoon we're shooting
the live-action element

of what will become
a CG Spitfire dogfight in space.

Pull out, pull out! I wouldn't
want to go in a Spitfire.

I just had a look in the cockpit
and I just don't know how those guys

managed to fend off
the Luftwaffe in those things.

You look in that cockpit,
it's cramped,

the controls are confusing,
you can't see out of the cockpit

ahead of you, because the engine
is so high in front of you.

I just don't know how they did it.
There were amazing guys, those
pilots. Absolutely amazing.

Danny Boy to the Doctor,
come in, over.

With CG these days, you can pretty
much do anything you like, but
in order to get to that place where

it's believable,
you have to use the real thing.

And although this isn't
a real Spitfire, it's a replica,

it looks pretty amazing.
It's "Print the legend" again.

Everybody thinks of the Spitfire
as the plane that won us the war

and it's more or less true.
So it just had to be, you know.

Danny Boy to the Doctor,
going in for another attack.

Just to have a Spitfire in space,
only in Doctor Who

could it ever happen, which is why
this show's so brilliant, I think.

Spitfires in space

with Churchill and the Daleks
and a force-field round them,

and the TARDIS...

and really posh men going
"Danny Boy, over and out."

Only Doctor Who.

In the Second World War,
Britain needed a leader,
and that leader needed a war room.

So Churchill said he would
run the war from here?

Yes. How much of it did he?

Well, this is the War Cabinet Room
and he was here for one in ten
of all the War Cabinet meetings.

So it's 115 times
they met down here.

Blimey. It's amazing to think
what happened in this room.

Really important decisions
and discussions on the bombing
of German cities.

And terrible rows, I imagine.
Yes, I'm sure it was very heated.

This is Churchill's chair?

Yes, Churchill was
sat in the middle here.

And we've got scratches
on the end of the arms.

Apparently he had quite long
fingernails and a signet ring, and
he'd scratch the ends of the chair.

In sheer frustration. Yes. He was
apparently a very difficult boss,

but everyone was
utterly devoted to him.
Yes, they were very loyal to him.

But I think
he liked to have his own way.

The air is filtered
all the way round?

It's not actually air-conditioned
air, just forced air from outside.

Not filtered, so very dusty
and coming right down.

And so from Whitehall,
they'd be full of fumes, and
from the air raids, full of dust.

Yeah. Full of dust.
So probably better not to...

One of the typists who worked
down here, who's still alive, was
telling us that she got really bad

catarrh, and big problems with her
lungs, and had to stop working here

because of the fumes
from the filtration system. Amazing.

What I think you do get
very strongly from the whole place,
particularly a room like this,

is that everything is a kind of
nicotine colour. The light is so low

and the ceilings are so low,
and it's an amazingly evocative
place to be, isn't it? Yes.

I think more so than
many of the wartime museums, because

obviously there's much more of
our daily lives infiltrating them.

But this is IT, isn't it?

Yes, it's a real place where
they were making these decisions.

And so many people were working
down here as their daily lives.

Extraordinary to get
this close to history.

I mean, I would urge anybody who can
to come and visit this place.

It's a museum, but it's
an amazingly authentic experience.

I mean, I would be very,
very, very happy if people who

watched it and enjoyed
the episode would then come here
to find out more about it, because

I think, as I say, it's a testament
to an extraordinary group of people
and an extraordinary time.

And our fictionalised version,
I would like to think,
in the best possible way,

opens a door into
finding out about history and about
the Second World War in particular.

God, I think those who worked
in the real Cabinet War Rooms

must have had a tough time.
If it was like it was, you know,

it's not particularly pleasant
and there's people constantly
losing their loved ones.

German bombers sighted
over the Channel, sir.

And it must have been
utterly exhausting

and terrifying, but I imagine
quite exciting at times as well.

There's a great sense of victory
when there is victory, and I think
there's a lovely beat in the episode

where that happens, where there is
real jubilation at getting one up

on the Daleks, which are,
you know, as bad as the Nazis.

Direct hit, sir!

ALL CHEER

To recreate that claustrophobia,
the Doctor Who team take a trip
to an old army centre.

Episode Three was a joy,
to recreate the War Rooms.

We were just lucky that in Swansea
we found this old command centre,
in West Cross.

It's just an incredible space,

it hadn't been touched since the war
and it was sitting there empty,

and we were just able to move in

and recreate exactly what we
wanted to - repaint, redecorate
and create the fantastic space.

And then just to top it all off
with putting Churchill in there
was amazing, you know.

We're in the Joint Resilience
bunker at Swansea Council,

down in the Mumbles. It's...

It's a purpose-built sort of
command centre for during the war.

This was built
just after the war, I think,

and it's used as a training centre
for various military exercises.

There's an army bunker next door,
there's a TA centre.

We know of quite a few bunkers
around Cardiff and Newport

and we've used them in the past,
and in the script didn't
quite lend itself for this.

We were thinking of building it,
so we looked at various options,

and just did more digging around,
and just finally came up with this.

They were quite
miffed how WE found it,

cos they think it's a secret bunker,
but now it's all over Doctor Who.

Right, on action. Action!

At last! Are they ready?

I hope so. But in the meantime...

The tables, the phone... That's all
very authentic and real, that's

taken from the real place, you know,
down to the minute detail.

But the space...

the location, the actual room itself
is more of a command centre.

The mock-up of the War Rooms -
they were better than

the actual War Rooms, I think.
They were brilliant.

The art team did fantastically well,

and erm...it was quite dingy,
actually, and quite sort of damp.

And I thought, "I really wouldn't
want to be under here for two, three
months at a time." I just thought...

Those scenes have great energy. Lots
of people coming and going and stuff.

It was just really interesting
to think that

that's how things really were,
and I suppose it was quite

dingy, in a way,
but it had this real feel to it

that kind of
made it feel really real.

PHONE RINGS

Hello?

Sorry, who?

No, seriously - who?

Winston Churchill, for you.

The Doctor is called in
by Churchill, but he's late,
and they're old friends. It's...

One of the interesting ideas Steve
had is that instead of being the
time he meets a historical figure,

he actually has
an ongoing relationship.

Hello, dear! What's up?

Tricky situation, Doctor.
Potentially very dangerous.

I think I'm going to need you.

Send in all we've got!

Well, what does he expect us
to do now?

KBO, of course. What?

Keep Buggering On.

Winston Churchill is kind of this
great heroic role in the episode.

As he should be, it's Churchill.

My old friend.

Ha! Every time.

He has a lot of kind of...
similar traits to the Doctor,
which is why they get on.

He's ferociously intelligent,
quite dogmatic, very brave.

He and Doctor Who
have got a great...

relationship,
because they go way back.

They've obviously worked with
each other lots of times before.

Think of what I could achieve with
your remarkable machine, Doctor.

They're old sparring partners.

They get on very well,
but they're not afraid to say
a cross word to each other.

They're called Daleks. They are
Bracewell's Ironsides, Doctor!

Look - blueprints, statistics,
field tests, photographs.

He invented them.

Oh! No, no... No. Yes.

And I think the Doctor
actually really loves Churchill

and has a lot of time
and affection for him,

and will always go back
and visit him.

The world's got
Winston Spencer-Churchill.

Have a cigar.

No.

Action this day,
action this day. Yes, sir.

I kind of wanted to get
the Churchill from the posters,

and examine to what extent
that was true.

We will mete out to the Germans
the measure - and more than the
measure - they have meted out to us.

Churchill is
a mass of contradictions,

which is partly the reason
we're still so fascinated by him.

The Second World War, which people
call "the last good war",

needed a man
of his absolute pragmatism.

The extraordinary thing was
he became absolutely the man

and the hour, the perfect war leader
for the Second World War.

He's an extraordinary figure -

brave, tenacious,

a brilliant speaker...

We will have
no truce or parley with you,

or the grisly gang
who work your wicked will.

You do your worst...

and we will do our best.

He was simultaneously illiberal...

and curiously liberal in some ways.

He was vehemently opposed
to the Nazis from very early on,

and never wavered from that.

How long that wicked man
will torture and afflict the nation,

how often or in what direction

he will set his murder machine
in motion...

we cannot tell. I mean, he had
extraordinary people around him.

His generals were extraordinary,
I think, lots of them,

and it's just that
extraordinary thing
that can happen every now and then,

that the right person comes along.

He's not a universally loved
figure at all, very controversial,

so to some extent you have to be
very careful where you're treading.

I think in the end it came down
to sort of printing
the Churchill of legend,

because Doctor Who is not
the place really to examine
those sorts of things -

except wherever possible,
as it were,

in the gaps, in the shadows,
you can suggest his pragmatism.

So in this episode,
despite the fact the Doctor is
telling him that the Daleks are

the worst thing in the entire
universe, he thinks, "I can end
the war quicker, I can save lives."

So that sort of thing
was interesting to play with.
But I did...

You know, it just isn't the place
to try to have those conversations,
because it's an adventure series.

Churchill's pragmatism
leads the Doctor Who team
onto a roof in Cardiff,

to meet Winston's rather...
unexpected allies.

Action!

Ready, Bracewell? Aye, aye, sir!

On my order, fire!
LASERS FIRE

Show me what that was! Advance.

Our new secret weapon. Ha!

When the Doctor first sees the
Daleks on the rooftop, it's just,
you know, that frightening sort of...

..surprise and, you know,
you meet your greatest enemy
who is suddenly reformed,

and you're the only one
that knows, "No, there's no way
that this person

"could possibly be that kind
or that nice or that sensible
or that anything."

So it's fear and anger
and terror and annoyance.

This is one of my Ironsides.
Your what?

You will help the Allied cause
in any way that you can?

Yes. Until the Germans
have been utterly smashed?

Yes. And what is your ultimate aim?

To win the war!

They are appearing to be something
other than they are.

When they're first encountered,
they are khaki Daleks
with these Union flags on them

and they appear to be
a British secret weapon.

And part of the fun of writing them
like that is to give them things
they could never normally have.

They're servile and...

they offer people cups of tea.

Would you care for some tea?

To actually be able to write,
"Would you like a cup of tea?",

in a Dalek's voice box
is rather thrilling.

Can I be of assistance? Shut it.

# Because we are your friends

# You'll never be alone again

# Well, come on

# Well, come on

# Well, come on

# Well, come on. #

We seek only to help you.

I think Russell T Davies
has said that there is something
very World War II about them.

It is actually possible,
you know, because they don't
goose-step, but they do do that.

I think, essentially,
you can overplay it,

but I think that's probably
the root of them, definitely.

The idea of the original story

of them seeking
to destroy anything unlike,

anything other,
is a very Nazi concept.

And the concept
of total Dalek racial purity

leads to a new paint job
for the new kids on the block.

Ah, I love the new Daleks.

It's all-new Doctor Who. What's
the other thing we haven't changed?
Let's change the Daleks, too.

We wanted them bigger
and more colourful,
and we wanted more of them.

My heart skips a beat when I open
a script and it says, "The Daleks",

because you just know
it's going to be fun.

Behold the restoration
of the Daleks,

the resurrection
of the master race.

They're just magnificent,
they're really cool.

I think everyone's
going to like them.
The question is, what do we do now?

Either you turn off
your clever machine

or I'll blow you and
your new paradigm into eternity.

And yourself. Occupational hazard.

The blue one's my favourite,
and they've all got,
sort of, different classes.

There's a warrior,
there's a scientist, there's a drone,

and the white one is the Supreme, and
he's got the big, great deep voice.

You are the Doctor.
You must be exterminated.

Don't mess with me, sweetheart.

I must admit, I still can't quite
get my head around the fact that

I was the director that got to shoot
eight Daleks in one room together.

It's the best job
in the world, really,

for a director on Doctor Who,
to have the new Daleks.

Scan reveals nothing. TARDIS
self destruct device non-existent.

All right, it's a Jammy Dodger,
but I was promised tea!

They're cool, they're like these
massive... They are taller than me!

The original ones are smaller
than me, so they've made them huge

and they're all these primary,
bright colours.

These are the kind of Aryan Daleks.
They are 100% old-fashioned,

pure Dalek genome,
that's what the story is about.

The last of the Daleks are trying
to find their purest form.

So it gave us
an opportunity to restore them.

The Progenitor is activated.
It begins.

Having come back in the last five
years, they sort of go away again

and really, the idea was
to sort of make sure that,
you know, they're always with us.

By having a drone, who
sort of feels like the foot soldier,

a scientist, a strategist,
a supreme, obviously,
and an eternal - mmm...

Who knows? It felt like
you're sort of saying,

"This is the new team",
and from this you could, I suppose,

have a story that was
entirely staffed with red Daleks,
because they're all drones.

Cleanse the unclean.
Total obliteration.

Disintegrate.

Mark and I had great fun
making up names for the Daleks,
and we were particularly specific

that those names
must never reveal too much.

And Mark came up with four
and threw up his hands and said,
"I can't think of any more."

And I suggested Eternal. And he
said, "Well, what's an eternal?"
And I said, "I don't know."

I haven't a clue to this day what
the Eternal is, but it sounds cool
and I bet it's really important.

And some day, I bet you that Eternal
will be really important
in a future Doctor Who.

With a whole host of brand spanking
new Daleks to play with,

the new operators are put through
a Dalek driving school.

What we're doing here today is

we're trying out the new Daleks
for the first time.

We've got some new guys
to go inside them as well.

Barnaby and I are doing our best
not only to familiarise
ourselves with the new Daleks,

but to help the new guys out as well
in just some basic techniques
of travelling, turning, moving,

using the plunger and the gun
and all those sort of things.

Beautiful plunger action.
We are discovering things, of course.

A few little teething troubles,
but it seems to be going
really well, yeah.

OK, so let's start off with
some quite straightforward stuff.

Heads to the left.

Just glide between
these two white posts.

That's good, that's good.

OK, very good. Very good, indeed.

That's very well done.

Give it your best shot.

Beautiful. Textbook stuff.

Fantastic. You're doing really well,
guys, I'm very impressed.

Gosh, they're much bigger. We
haven't seen Daleks this big before.

And bigger means heavier, but also
I think they move in a much more

sort of menacing fashion

because they're just so big
and they're so heavy.

They trundle along like tanks,
and we're having difficulty
stopping them!

The stopping distance
is considerably...

I hope we don't have to come down
a big slope and hit them.

The good thing is there's
so many different layers,
like a wedding cake,

to take it all apart,
you all have to sort of look after
each other, and I think that...

Once you've been inside a Dalek,
you know how uncomfortable it is

and how awkward it is,
the great thing about the new guys
that we've had is,

they've instantly fallen
into a routine of, you know,
"Let's see if we get him out",

and, "I'll get the steps
and pull him out", and things
like that, so it's much better.

Yes. It's great camaraderie,
isn't it?

Oh, it is. Very good.
It's like a family.

It's like a little family
getting back together.

Right from the start,
I wanted them to be very colourful.

The Dalek movies seem to cast
a bit of a long shadow, suddenly.

But I think that's great because
for me, as a kid, those two films

were the only versions of those
two famous Dalek stories we ever had
apart from the books, you know?

I'm terribly fond of them.
And there's something
so gorgeously impressive

about those big, big bloody Daleks
with their colourful liveries.

They kind of look like Minis.
You kind of feel like you can
get in one and drive one around.

So, I just thought,
"Let's go for it." Happily,
everybody else thought the same.

You can't go too far
with that design.

We tried a few different things
that were a bigger departure

and you just go,
"Oh, it's not a Dalek now".

There are certain cues you need. You
need those strange baubles, you need
that dome, you need that eyestalk.

But it was time just to have
a different...a different...

a really, noticeably different
and more frightening Dalek.

We'd initially designed the original
Daleks for the new series

to be the same eye height
as Billie,

so that the eyestalk was
the same eye height as Billie.

On this, we had a much taller
assistant which means the eyestalk
could go up, you know,

which meant we could make them
much bigger.

So that's exactly what we did. And
there's a lot of Art Deco in there.

There's a lot of new angles,
shapes to them.

They're much stronger.
Most of the things are still there.

The sucker's there.

The eyestalk's there. The little
round bombs on the sides are there.

When you actually see them now
next to the Daleks gone by,

they are much more scary, I think.

Blimey. What do you do
to the ones who mess up?

Steve had a fantastic idea, which is
here, of giving them a living eye.

Just to remind people
that within this sort of tank,
there is this creature.

If you look at Terry Nation's
original script,

he does talk about the eye
being live inside there.
And it never really happened.

There's one or two moments
using an iris contracting.

I just thought, "Instead of just
a painted on blob or a light,

"why not actually remind people
there's a living thing in there?

"There's a nasty squidge of matter."

I imagined there's
an optical nerve all the way up
and through his eyestalk.

You have a living eye
sitting inside there.

It sort of icky and frightening,
but rather great, I think.

HE SCREAMS

The Daleks are scary.

I think because we're all aware
of the ruthlessness of them

and the fact that they will never
ever show any mercy,

and they will just exterminate
when they can.

I think that sort of knowledge
of them really scares me.

They're very exciting things
to be around because...

Look at them - there's one now.

I'm sort of in love with them.
That's the problem.

They're my arch, greatest enemy,
of course, but... It's like when I
saw the TARDIS for the first time

and the blue of it,
and you go, "Wow!"

It's the same with the Daleks.
There's something so striking.

Everyone in Britain
knows what that is, don't they?

It's like British icons
shoved together, you know?

Churchill's a British icon.

The Union Jack is a British icon.
Everything about the War somehow is.

It's our noblest hour
surviving that Blitz.

Bizarrely, the Daleks feel
as though they're part of it...

in their design.
They just look so right.

When you slap those Union Jacks
on them, it's scary
how right that looks.

And I'm going to prove it.

I'd been to that underground bunker
quite shortly before
we started work on that episode

and I couldn't get out of my head
that how seeing a Dalek
would look so appropriate

motoring around
those desks and maps.

We stand in a crossroads, Doctor.

Quite alone,
with our backs to the wall.

Invasion is expected daily.

I was just really excited to see who
was going to play him because he's
such an iconic figure in history.

And then Ian McNeice came in
and did this great version of him.

So I will grasp with both hands
anything that will give us
an advantage over the Nazi menace.

Ian McNeice was great.

Very funny. Me and Karen loved him.

I've never seen such a fine uppercut
in my life. My whole 65 years.

That's Winston Churchill telling
me that. It's true. It's true.

Since Rocky Marciano.

I think Ian just plays him
brilliantly and captures
all that stuff, all that iron,

all that grit,
all that determination,

all that class and humour,
and fun that's in there as well.

You know, it's very ironic
and quite funny and naughty.

I don't give a damn
if you're a machine, Bracewell.

Are you a man?

Rather than doing like
a Mike Yarwood impersonation,

I tried to get
the essence of the man.

He was such an incredible iconic
character that it's a tough call.

So not everybody
will get what I'm doing

but it's really the essence of the
man rather than an impersonation.

His humour, his wit, his bluster,

his...his courage,

his compassion, all those things
you've got to put into it

and try and give
an overall feeling of Churchill.

With someone like Churchill,

there's so much news footage
and stuff like that.

And all his speeches, as well. So he
has a special way of speaking, too.

So, yes, I mean, it's a challenge.

It's a huge challenge
to try and pull all that off.

Churchill had a journalist's eye
for a great quotation

and a way of speaking,
and a way of making words land
for maximum effect

which I think
he basically perfected
once he was into Parliament.

'We can fight in France.

'We can fight on the seas and oceans.

'We shall fight
with growing confidence
and growing strength in the air.'

The voice is based basically
on a lot of the speeches
that you can still hear.

'We shall fight in the fields
and in the streets.

'We shall fight in the hills.

'We shall never surrender.'

The cadences
go up and down like that.

It's that sort of feeling, really.

You know, it's very, sort of,
earnest, very ponderous,
very, very...

very Churchill.

'..so bear ourselves but if the
British Empire and its Commonwealths

'last for 1,000 years,

'men will still say

'this was their finest hour.'

When he gives that speech about
the coming of the Battle of Britain,
he times it like a piece of music.

You know...

the, "If the British Empire and
its dominions lasts for 1,000 years,

"men will still say,
this was their finest hour".

And he hits that so much,
you actually sit up.

And then actually it fades away.

He knows exactly where to hit it,
like a conductor, you know?

It must have been
an incredible thing to listen to.

They don't come along very often,
I think.

You only have to look
at how rarely a politician's speech

actually makes people
get stirred or emotional

or proud or anything these days.

Being a good politician requires
having good people around you.

Churchill recruits
the brightest of the bright.

Bracewell is a robot
and the Daleks have invented him,

created him,
to back up their story.

But he has
a sort of Pinocchio-like existence

because he remembers real things.

They made me. I can remember things.

So many things. The last war.

And the squalor and the mud and
the awful, awful misery of it all.

It came as as much of a shock
to him as it would to any of us.

And, of course, all that that means,
in terms of psychological trauma,

when you think you're one thing and
you're told you're something else,

I think that stands to reason
that he would be upset.

41. Take one, A camera only.

Background action. Action.

Doctor!

HE SCREAMS

Sorry, Professor, you're a bomb!
An inconceivably massive
Dalek bomb. What?!

There's an oblivion continuum
inside you, a captured wormhole
that provides perpetual power.

The Doctor is trying to get Bracewell
to engage with his humanity.

To remember that he's not a robot,
he's a human being.

And if he thinks human thoughts
that this bomb won't explode
because he'll be able to control it.

There's a blue wire
you have to cut, isn't there?

There's always a blue wire.

Or a red one. You're not helping.
It's incredible. He talked to us
of his memories of the Great War.

Someone else's stolen thoughts
implanted in a positronic brain.

Tell me about it, Bracewell,
tell me about your life.

When the clock is
at one minute to twelve, as it were,

Amy comes in with, "Have you ever
fancied someone you shouldn't?"

And it's really a sort of...

It's actually the one
that's most likely to make
you feel the most human.

It hurts so much.

Good, good, good. Brilliant!
Embrace it. That means you're alive.

They cannot explode that bomb
because you're a human being.

You are flesh-and-blood.
They cannot explode that bomb!

You are Professor Edwin Bracewell.
You are a human being.

Hey.

Paisley.

Ever fancied someone
you know you shouldn't?

What?

Hurts, doesn't it?

She saves the day again
in a very brilliant way.
But kind of a good hurt.

I really shouldn't talk about her.

Oh!

And she just very tenderly

allows Bracewell to remember.

What was her name?

Dorabella. Dorabella?! It's a
lovely name. It's a beautiful name.

What was she like, Edwin?

Such a smile.

Sometimes the Doctor
lacks a bit of understanding
of human emotions because,

at the end of the day, he is an
alien and he's from another planet.

And that's kind of where Amy,
sort of, makes up for that.

And that's why
they make such a good team.

Her eyes...

Her eyes were so blue.
Almost violet.

Like the last touch of sunset.

I'm very fond of it
as an ending because it's not
just about having a huge explosion.

You actually have all
the grandeur of the Spitfire
dog fights and the Daleks in space.

But, actually, in the end,
the thing that saves us is a piece
of common humanity

and slight embarrassment,
which is probably the most human
thing of all. Dorabella.

Before I wrote this script,
I'd read an awful lot of stuff.

Diaries and first-hand accounts
form the Battle of Britain which,

I mean, I admired enormously
anyone who'd been through that war.

But by the time I'd finished,
my admiration had gone
through the roof.

It's the most extraordinary period.
It's sort of... Almost everybody
was amazing in their small way.

However they coped or didn't cope.
It's the sort of thing
we simply can't imagine today.

The idea that you would
see someone like this

and then the next day, maybe
everybody else in this room is dead.

I was reading some extraordinary
things about the RAF.

Basically, in order to cope with
the loss of their best friends,

when they got back from a mission,
a lot of them would just get
utterly hammered.

Understandably. But the next day
they had to be back in the air.

So they used to get up the next
morning, go and sit in their planes

and put their oxygen masks on
just to sober themselves up.

This is the way the war was won
and it was a...

hair's breadth
between victory and defeat.

Absolutely extraordinary time.

I suppose it was a bit like
if everybody had a newborn child.

People would go to work
and they hadn't slept at all
because of the bombings.

Cumulatively, everyone got rattier
and more filthy and exhausted.

And then they got used to it
and then some people
got slightly more scared

and other people
got incredibly blase.

They started to quite enjoy it.

People go through
all kinds of odd things.

It's the sort of thing that,
in our existence,

it would traumatise you for the rest
of your life, and probably did then.

But as an accumulation of horrors
and extraordinary experiences,
it's an amazing time.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd