Terror Firma
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Big Finish Productions Terror Firma |
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| Written by | Joseph Lidster |  |
| Format | Compact Disc | |
| Released | 2005 | |
| Continuity | After The Telemovie |
| Starring Paul McGann, India Fisher and Conrad Westmaas |
| Synopsis: Centuries ago on the war-torn planet Skaro, a great scientist created the most evil creatures the Universe would ever know... Daleks. It was at their genesis that the scientist, Davros, first met and was defeated by the Doctor. Over the years and throughout space, they fought, a fight that ended with the Doctor's destruction of Skaro and the Daleks. Except... Davros survived. Alone. In the dark. With only houghts of revenge keeping him alive. The Doctor is back. Davros is waiting. Their destiny is now. |
A Review by Richard Radcliffe 11/10/05
There seems to be a general feeling amongst fans that Big Finish are tailing off in their story telling. Reviews over the web, ratings given on various websites present the latest offerings as nowhere near as impressive collectively as their previous output. I'm not quite sure of the reason for this (could it be the new series?), but I know what I think, and that is that Big Finish are just as good as they always have been. They are still producing top-notch Doctor Who stories. Their output is supremely varied in its story types, and the performances are consistently excellent. There might the odd story that doesn't quite measure up, but that's true of every era of DW, in any medium. It's a fact though that Big Finish never plunges the depths that TV and books and comics have plunged, and they consistently lead the way in effective and entertaining Doctor Who.
Terror Firma is something of a re-invention for Big Finish. The Alternate Universe Arc of the 8th Doctor/Charley and C'Rizz had to be curtailed because of the new series and the new fans that would bring on board. At the end of The Next Life the Doctor and companions did indeed return to our universe, and were promptly confronted by a load of Daleks - proof that they were indeed back in the traditional Doctor Who, our universe.
The Doctor celebrates this fact, and is gloriously exuberant throughout, despite the apparent trauma he experiences. He comments on how wonderful it is back being a Time Lord in the proper universe. He's rather modern here too, quoting popular sources Buffy-style throughout. Some come off, but some were cringeworthy (the Bond impression). For all his exuberance here though, McGann can still play the key scenes with the right level of intensity - and he bounces off Davros superbly. It's not quite in the Colin Baker league - but it's a good enough performance against one of the greatest DW villains.
Terry Molloy is monumental as Davros again - and no doubt he will be in further productions. He's completely nailed this part - and I find the whole character absorbing and intriguing, because of Molloy's brilliant portrayal. The way he switches from Davros to Dalek and back again is superb - the perfect union of voice artist and audio wizardry.
I expected great things from the Doctor and Davros, and their respective actors. What has surprised me here, and it's a pleasant surprise, is the intensity of C'Rizz (Conrad Westmaas). A violent streak emerges as he struggles to come to terms with our universe and its problems. His demands of Charley also indicate a deeper character than I had previously envisaged. I didn't want C'Rizz to survive the alternate universe - but now I am glad he has. Charley's part unfortunately is diminished as a result of this change of emphasis - let's hope it's only for one story.
Joseph Lidster's story is a strange one. There's so many things it reminds me of. There are echoes of The Rapture - his first Big Finish script. The boozy atmosphere is here, and in the character of Harriet we have another Caitriona. She emerges better, just, by the end. There's also a nod to early Dalek stories with the setting - Folkestone, not Bedfordshire - but similar type of conceit here. There's a stack of quotes from previous stories, and too many "and all that's" by the Doctor for the fans to complete the sentence. Interestingly however, there is also similar ideas to the new TV Series, especially the way the Daleks interact with human beings. Whether this is intentional homage to the Eccleston season I have no idea - but it instantly struck a chord. Maybe Big Finish and the TV series have merged in my own conscience thanks to the brilliant voice power of Nick Briggs.
There's similarities aplenty as well, with the characters of Gemma and Samson. They are supposed to be like Charley and C'Rizz - I think that's the point of it all. Davros' motives here echo another TV story - Evil of the Daleks - as he tries to understand the Doctor's motivations, and why he is so successful in his battles with his Daleks.
I've rather enjoyed the audios recently featuring Doctors 5, 6 and 7. There seemed to me too many 8th Doctor audios in recent years. There's been a little break now before Terror Firma, and it has done the whole 8th Doctor audios no harm at all. They have come back refreshed, if not as new and inventive as they have been previously.
There's a good Doctor Who story in Terror Firma. But it's a story that has been told before over many stories. Thus Terror Firma feels to me like a mish-mash of previous Davros/Dalek ideas all bunged together to create a reasonable whole. The only startling part is the hokey-cokey antics of the party, dominated by Harriet - and these grate, rather than fit in nicely to the narrative.
I couldn't help but quite like Terror Firma, especially the contributions of Terry Molloy, Paul McGann and Conrad Westmaas. Yet I was also quite disappointed by it, with its lack of originality. I'm convinced this TARDIS team can bring us some classic adventures in the future. The final few minutes of this release really point the way forward to very good times ahead. A restart for the series, yet with so much that is over-familiar. Mixed bag this one. 6/10
Ex-ter-min-ate! by Joe Ford 26/10/05
I cannot decide whether Joseph Lidster is the best of the worst writer
on the Big Finish payroll. He displays strengths and weaknesses in
abundance and they keep cropping up in every story he writes. He enjoys
languishing in dramatic angst and making his characters face terrible
choices and look hardat themselves which can result in startling drama
(the fascinating second episode of Master) but
alternatively can plunge into the depths of embarrassing melodrama (pretty
much all of The Rapture). He loves piling on twist
after twist until the listener has no idea where the story is going
( Someone turn me into a Dalek would they and then I could exterminate
those interminable bores Charley and C'rizz. They really are not
interesting; Charley needed to leave ages ago when the character ran out
of steam (ooh, about two seasons ago) but she trundles on and on, never
having much to contribute beyond the cliched companion hysterics. I have
no idea why the character (or the actress) has been kept around for so
long unless Gary Russell has some great master plan that will see her go
out in a blaze of glory. When she is asked if she wanted to keep
travelling at the end I groaned when she said somebody should try and stop
her (wish I could). As Terror Firma confirms she really has nothing
left to say that's worth listening to and it would make a refreshing
change to have somebody else join up with the Doctor. C'rizz is really
starting to get on my wick, especially in Terror Firma, which seems
to be implying there is something fascinating about the fact that he has
the ability to kill people. I can see what Big Finish are trying to do
with his character, frighten us to death with this silky voiced murderer
but the trouble with C'rizz is that his background and general personality
just aren't very interesting. So instead he's just a boring killer. The
final scene of this story is quite hilarious (unintentionally, of course)
where the chameleonic freak starts chatting away with all the people he
has killed (in his head of course, it's not like he's weird or anything)
and promises to deal with the Doctor and Charley later... ooohh scary!
Why can't the eighth Doctor get some decent companions? You know, a couple
of friends who don't break down and cry and tell him they love him or want
to kill him... just two nice people who complement him and make his life
fun? People like, ooh I don't know, how about Gemma and Samson? Before I
go into who they are may I just point out how utterly hysterical it is how
much more entertaining these two are when compared to Ms Melodrama (that's
Pollard) and Psycho Lizard.
We're back in revisionist territory here but this time Big Finish is
playing about with its own history, a somewhat new spin on what has become
a very tiresome idea. I rather enjoyed the sudden reveal that the eighth
Doctor had companions before Charley who we have never heard about and Joe
Lidster brilliantly constructs a history between Samson and Gemma and the
Doctor (including when they first met and many of their adventures). They
have a very relaxed chemistry together and sound as they have been
travelling together for ages, which certainly help to pull of this
intriguing concept. What I didn't buy was the second twist that Davros has
been watching the Doctor's adventures ever since he abducted Samson and
operated on him. While this does explain the "Doctor we have been waiting
for you! Ahahahahahahaha!" cliffhanger (still one of the worst moments in
Big Finish history, the point where they genuinely sold out) it seems
bizarre that Davros would go to such extraordinary lengths to hurt the
Doctor by meddling with his favourite planet whilst he's away in the
Divergent universe when he could just have killed him before he met
Charley. What if the Doctor was murdered in the Divergent Universe and
never got to see Davros'revenge plan? Davros would be watching through
Samson and go "Oh bugger, and I've gone to all that trouble of turning the
human race into Daleks and now he'll never see it! Dagnabbit!" So big
thumbs up for Lidster suggesting a history for the eighth Doctor that we
never knew about but thumbs down for him trying to fuck about with it the
second we learn about it.
Another silly twist comes at the end of episode three where the Daleks
are revealed to be the French resistance we have been hearing about for
the first three quarters of the story. The Daleks have turned against
Davros because he is mad? It never stopped them before! I refuse to
believe the Daleks would skulk about having secret meetings to try and
overthrow their dictator, more like they would swoop in en masse and kill
him outright. Equally bizarre is their acceptance of Davros the second he
drops his humanity and embraces his Emperor personality at the end of the
story... a personality shift that actually isn't that significant. And yet
the Daleks suddenly accept him, despite the fact that they were plotting
his downfall just seconds before. And what on Earth is all this madness
about C'rizz becoming Emperor of the Daleks just because he has taken a
life? Couldn't they have just chosen any casual murderer? Ideas, ideas,
ideas... no follow through. It is where a decent script-editor is required
but that position has been vacant (or it seems that way) for far too long
now.
Another annoying feature of this story is the amount of shouting every
character has to do. Charley is shouting about an Earth ruled by Daleks.
C'rizz is shouting about his dead missus (again). The Doctor is shouting
at Davros. Davros always shouts but he gets more than his average number
of melodramatic rants here. The Daleks can't help but shout. Nobody seems
to be able to communicate unless they are splitting glass with their
voices. The supposition seems to be that shouting equals drama. But, not
unlike The Rapture, shouting simply equals a big
headache. Whilst it is nice to have a story that pretends it is important
and has some amount of relevance on the Doctor Who universe (unlike
the rest of BF's output this year) it would be nice if everyone could just
calm down a bit and deal with the dramatic plot without bursting my
eardrums. I blame the director.
Paul McGann seems to appreciate the meaty dialogue offered to him and
gives his all round best performance since... Neverland! It's like this Divergent Universe thing
never happened (hurrah!). It is nice to see Big Finish capitalise on the
unexplained time between the TV Movie and Storm Warning and flesh out his era a bit more. If
only they would do the same thing with his current timeline, booting out
his two tedious companions and giving him something interesting to do
we'll be laughing.
It is a story that is far too interested in making a point to make a
point. I did enjoy the story because there were a lot of clever ideas
going on in there but I just wish there could have been a few less and the
ones chosen could have been treated more sensitively and in greater depth.
This is perfectly entertaining shock Doctor Who and pleasingly full
of important moments but it is still a long way from being excellent,
primarily because of the lack of subtlety.
With one or two re-drafts to iron out the rough edges this could have
been something really special.
"Don't be such a bunch of Daleks!" by Thomas Cookson
16/2/16
Terror Firma's my favourite audio story, providing a satisfying
endgame to the Davros trilogy.
It rides off the back of the 2005 series. It's a furious, almost
bi-polar celebration of life, and, like Series One, it's so raw it can cut
your face off. It's simultaneously dark and angry, yet also incredibly
feelgood. It never fails to feel fresh and cheer me up.
When New Who came back, Big Finish tried to gain popularity on
the back of the renewed interest in the show, to be accessible to
newcomers. The Divergent Universe arc was swiftly cancelled after eight
chapters, and Paul McGann and Charley were swiftly returned to the proper
universe.
Despite which, many fans still accused Terror Firma of being
inaccessible and overladen with continuity. It was my first exposure to
the McGann audios, and I was certainly in at the deep end in first listen.
I didn't quite understand it. It was confusing. I even wondered if the
Doctor was mistaken and they were still in this non-linear illogical
Divergent Universe they were talking about.
But once I reached the end, it all instantly made sense, like a
cathartic dream. I didn't have to listen to any prior stories to 'get' it.
C'rizz's telepathy and warped moral code were obvious. I didn't need to
listen to his introductory story. The whole thing was like a confusing
nightmare, where by the end suddenly the meaning of the dream all becomes
clear and it suddenly all seemed so simple.
I was surprised at reviews that expressed exhausted patience with
Charley, since Terror Firma was the point I fell in love with her
bursting enthusiasm and frantic concern for the Doctor. The sound and fury
melodrama all suited this nightmarish, confusing landscape. The urgency
and passion felt like it really came from somewhere deep within, like a
primal scream.
When I first heard this, it made Joseph Lidster seem a writer to look
out for. Having heard some of his other work, perhaps Terror Firma
merely caught him at his height, where his traits worked to a cohesive,
satisfying whole. Some of his other stories have left me rather hollow.
The Rapture was obviously rubbish and felt like
the audio equivalent of a really bad fan video full of pointless non
sequitors and no plot. The Reaping felt rather
hollow ultimately and tainted with a nasty, manipulative streak to the
Sixth Doctor; a rather thin plot stretched over two feature length
episodes; and rather cynical pointless deaths.
I think Joseph Lidster certainly has talent. Some of his character
moments are beautifully written in their authenticity. But with Terror
Firma it all comes right. Unlike those above examples, not a single
scene feels wasted. Everything feels like a crystaline delicacy and
everything has the right, concerted emotional thrust. It's fluid like
water. In previous Dalek releases, the intense or violent moments seemed
like forced attempts at urgency and made for bumpy listening that bordered
on unpleasant. Here everything flows in a homogenous stream. Action scenes
can work on audio. Creatures of Beauty, for
example, presents a personified melancholy landscape, and there's very
little action, but the moments of action feel like a desperate burst of
life in this dying, stale world.
I said there is something very feelgood about the story, but it's
contrasted with some of Big Finish's darkest material. Davros and The
Juggernauts were set in a futuristic colony paradise world, not unlike
the backgrounds from Beleweled 2. Terror Firma, however, goes more
for hell on Earth. It takes place in a decimated, hellishly confusing,
perpetually stormy world where constant downpour represents a constant
downtrodden existence and a world in tears. Yet strangely, rather like The Natural History of Fear, it's very much about
oblivious sanctuary communities where chaos reigns outside. There's
something especially disconcerting about a smalltown community surviving
untouched on a world crawling with Daleks. Amusingly, Harriet says "I've
had worse neighbours."
But generally the McGann stories up until here had been a very jolly
affair. Zagreus tried to do the NA introspective
melancholy thing and buggered it up, but generally the merry Eighth Doctor
of the audios couldn't be more different in spirits to the damaged, angry
Eighth Doctor of the novels.
In some ways, that's where Davros' resentment comes in, because the
Doctor and Charley here are initially at their smuggest and most flippant.
Doctor: "Charley you stole my line." The Davros audios have played very well on polarising the Doctor and
Davros as flipsides of the same coin, far better than the Doctor-Master
rivalry ever was. The question has been asked whether different
circumstances, different upbringings would have made a hero out of Davros
or a villain out of the Doctor. For the purposes of this play, the Doctor
is a positive force of light because he has good friends. Davros is a
bitter, hateful monstrosity because of his centuries of loneliness. That's
very true to life.
Loneliness makes people prone to a vicious self-perpetuating cycle of
all things unhealthy, nasty and entropic (like addictions). Any time after
hours, people on the street have often lived a quite lonely, desperate
life because they live nocturnally, and they're always angry and bitter,
and they have to be vicious and threatening just to be heard or to get
what they want. That's why the nighttime setting of this story is perfect,
right down to when Jenny encounters one of the Daleks' rejected
experiments. The confused man even seeming like a wino.
Davros was evil long before his stint of loneliness, but, for the
purposes of this story, loneliness is what motivates his villainy and is
presented as the reason Davros took a different path to the Doctor. If
this was the listener's first-ever experience of Davros, they'd instantly
get who he is and why he does what he does.
Davros' madness is reflected in the nightmare landscape of the story.
When Davros - amidst the stormy chaos of this confusing story - starts
losing his sanity, he declares "We need the Daleks; we need one universe,
one mind." It's the most chilling and sad line Davros has ever delivered.
Like The Face of Evil, it gives Davros all the
motivation he needs to bring about a monolithic fascist order to make
sense of his own madness.
As for the ret-con, it all flows in a very natural and fluid way.
Unlike War of the Daleks, it remains a story in its
own right, rather than an exercise in rubbishing another story. The
backstory of Samson and Gemma is by design one that requires only
listening to this story to understand who they are. Claims that this would
confuse first-time listeners are completely moot when all the information
they need is here, densely packed enough to even squeeze in their own An Unearthly Child-style introduction in the space of
two minutes. If you start the story not knowing who they are, you're by
default on the same page as the hero. You also get an immediate sense of
the incorrigible nature of the Doctors and his companions to meet and
adventure and travel together in the same cycles.
Davros being unwilling to simply kill the Doctor actually becomes
frighteningly believable here. The nasty glee with which Davros boasts of
how he nearly killed the Doctor when he was unconscious ("You were
helpless!"). It's clear that Davros's revenge can't be a quick kill but
has to be savoured one piece at a time. If Davros welcomes death as peace
and an escape from pain, he's hardly going to wish that luxury on his
enemy. Like how Dalek Empire constantly turns the cliche of 'we'll find an
excuse to keep you alive rather than just kill you now', into something
horrifying. Because there are worse things the Daleks can do than kill,
and what they put humanity through leaves the Daleks' usual exterminations
suddenly seeming a humane mercy by comparison.
Lizzie Hopley delivers a fantastic performance as Gemma. I was
surprised actually to learn that Lizzie also plays Davros's sister in the
deliciously twisted soap opera, I, Davros. Throughout Dalek Empire,
Jubilee and Davros, the
Daleks and their creator were presented as predators with a perverse,
stalkerish interest in a particular woman. Davros in particular, in his
masculine drive to renounce emotions, seems to regard women with hatred
for both their emotional nature and the way they provoke his affections.
So usually it's the young innocent female of the Doctor's temporary
companions who meet a nasty end to Davros.
And so the question arises concerning the Doctor and Davros being
flipsides of the same coin, titanic Gods who are slave to their morality
and can never rub the other one out. Does the mercy and compassion
separating the Doctor from Davros actually make the Doctor just as
monstrous for letting Davros live to cause more death? And here we
actually get the answer, where the Doctor must address whether what is
within his capabilities is enough or whether he must descend to Davros'
level. It's about morality, but it doesn't sermonise in the horrible way
Warriors of the Deep did. Here we are with the
Doctor, looking into the abyss with him, contemplating the deed, before
realising there are better, more patient forms of revenge than poisoning
your own soul with a terrible deed that offers no way back.
Davros tells the Doctor he got the idea of the virus from the Doctor's
suggestion in Genesis. Later, a broken Doctor
describes being given the virus capsule by Davros and taunted to press it
to end it all, and confesses to Charley "I wanted to do it!" The Doctor
started as merry as can be, and is brought down to a hell of misery and
guilt, his spirit broken. It manages to beautifully chart such a wide
range of emotion.
It's about how revenge can draw on our devious, resourceful and
determined nature. It can completely transform a character, which is what
makes the final confrontation so beautiful. The Doctor allowing himself to
be vulnerable before his gloating enemy, admitting that Davros briefly
won. "No one else could do to me what you have done." His words "you took
everything about me that I believed was good and twisted it", might as
well be talking to Eric Saward. Never has a confrontation with the Doctor
felt so therapeutic. For the Doctor, it's about being resourceful too,
clinging onto a sense of self, remembering what he still has in his
friends, which pulls him back from the brink. The Doctor getting his
revenge is such a punch-the-air moment. Even though everything falls into
the Doctor's lap, it's been about his will to make his choice with those
tools.
Amidst all the death and misery, there's hope. Charley talking Samson
out of killing himself is so authentically done, as she's trying to think
on the spot of reassuring cliches and mixing them all up. Yet, in her
scatty ramblings, she hits on the story's essence of how friends and loved
ones or even a stranger's act of compassion are there to pull us back from
the brink. Davros' downfall is that he sneered at love and compassion, so
no one pulled him back.
C'rizz's last scene really makes this masterpiece complete. Remembrance ended on a funeral. Here we have a seance
that provides the story's epitaph and closure. A beautiful acknowledgement
of an afterlife in a Whoniverse steeped in death, where even the soul of a
dead Dalek can find redemption. It's simultaneously poignant and chilling
and sublimely captures so many emotions and moods in a single runtime.
That scene alone is a work of art.
You Put Your Right Hand In, You Put Your Right Hand Out by Jacob Licklider
5/10/20
Well, this one is just plain complex. There's no other word to really describe the story. On the surface, it sounds like it is doing the standard Dalek-invasion-of-a-planet plotline, but then we get quite a few twists and turns that just sort of cause the complexities of what the story actually entails. The Doctor, Charley and C'rizz arrive on a planet invaded by the Daleks from the cliffhanger of The Next Life. Davros wishes the Doctor to help him create a clone or kill him as he has become insane, C'rizz is stuck going off with a Dalek agent called Gemma, and Charley gets herself stuck in a party on the planet where the people refuse to admit that the Daleks are causing any real threat to them. Now I really cannot go on without giving some pretty hefty spoilers about this story, as some reveals are made about the characters and the Daleks' plan that impacts the quality of the story.
Let's start with the plotline of the Doctor and Davros. The banter between Paul McGann and Terry Molloy rivals that of Tom Baker and Michael Wisher in Genesis of the Daleks. While it isn't as intense as that story, the dark themes of the story lead to the same feel, and it is increased in quality with Paul McGann giving one of his best performances in ages. He becomes extremely flippant to Davros and the danger he poses, not due to recklessness, but because he is back in his own universe he feels one thousand times better as a person. McGann is just having that sense of fun back in the performance, and I sincerely hope that it stays that way for the foreseeable future. Now that doesn't mean he is all lighthearted, as he gets to indulge in some brooding. When everything hits about halfway through the story, the Doctor is emotionally affected by some of the reveals that disappeared into his mind. Terry Molloy's Davros is also a delight as the creator of the Daleks, as for him this story picks up after the events of Remembrance of the Daleks where Davros has gone more insane than he was and developed multiple personality disorder. There are two personalities: the Emperor Dalek personality, which wants the genocide of the universe, which allows Molloy to flex his shouting muscles for some of the scenes, and the kind-hearted Davros who just wants to clone himself so he can actually attempt to change his evil ways. Of course, he doesn't actually wish to change his ways and still goes crazy by the end, but the performance is some of the best Davros has ever gotten.
C'rizz after the Divergent Universe Arc remained lackluster on his character, but Joseph Lidster reveals quite a bit about what is going through C'rizz's mind and what his faith believes about death. He only came to this universe because Charley and the Doctor were going home and he wanted to be with his friends. Now he is almost having second thoughts, as he feels extremely out of his element for the majority of the story, which is only made worse by the experiments done on him by the Daleks. They want him to become their new Emperor, as his DNA is compatible. Lidster puts him through hell in this story, which is great to listen to, leading to a final scene that just feels like development. Now here's a spoiler, but C'rizz as a priest has the ability to save people by what seems to be absorbing their souls into himself as he does with Gemma. Gemma Griffin, played brilliantly by Lizzie Hopley, is the Dalek agent who is along with C'rizz and is introduced as one of the good guys but turns insidious as the story progresses. She and her brother are the subject of the biggest twist of the story, which I will get to quickly. I do have some criticisms when it comes to this section of the plot. Mainly, Gemma's deception of C'rizz almost feels a bit forced, but not in the way you may think. The acting is fine, but it is the script that makes the twist come out of nowhere when the plotline is viewed on its own, as there are hints in Charley's portion of the story that are blatantly obvious.
Charley gets her own plotline where she infiltrates a party and tries to comfort Samson Griffin, played by Lee Ingleby, in a pastiche of her home time period in the 1920s. Charley's portions of the plot are the most enjoyable, as the reveal is that, before she travelled with the Doctor, he had two previous companions who fell into the hands of Davros. Davros then made the Doctor forget them and has been watching the Doctor's TARDIS ever since and used the two companions, Samson and Gemma Griffin, to conquer Earth. Yes, the planet that can't be Earth actually is Earth, and the party is the resistance, which allows for some great dark comedy, as the Hokey Pokey is used to show how they are keeping the Daleks off their scents. It is intensely funny and creepy, as the Griffin twins' mother Harriet is the leader of the party. Harriet is the leader of the resistance and a pastiche of the upper class in a really comedic way that Julia Deakin imbues into the performance. The reveal of Samson and Gemma being former companions is done really well, as we flashback to their first and final adventures, which allows them to have fleshed out characters. I won't give away too much more, as I will be ruining some great stuff.
To summarize, Terror Firma is a great story that shows just how good of an author Joseph Lidster is. While not as good as his magnum opus Master, the story does a lot right in my book, which is a great way for a story to be measured. 85/100
Charley "I think we're actually meant to be screaming or
perhaps proclaiming 'Daleks! All along we should have realised!'"
The effect somewhat makes us share in Davros' jealous resentment towards
the Doctor. I think really Dalek stories work best when the audience
somewhat sympathises with the Daleks' irritation and contempt for the
humans.