DR WHOS GOLDEN GOOSE: THE DALEKS

DR WHO'S GOLDEN GOOSE: 

THE DALEKS 

Isn’t there some saying about killing gooses laying golden eggs? Take the Daleks of Dr Who, for instance.

Dr Who’s bread and butter was the Daleks. It’s a fact. Without them, there would be no Dr Who. But a combination of red-tape, apathy and Spike Milligan, had reduced them to a laughing stock, that caused the series to be cancelled for 15 years. And here’s why.

PAKISTANI DALEKS

The problem stemmed from Spike Milligan making the Daleks the butt of all jokes. Something Dalek creator Terry Nation tried very hard to avoid but was hampered by BBC interference.

Milligan used a genesis Dalek for his Pakistani Dalek sketch in 1975 and likely without Nations consent. But since the BBC owned half the Dalek rights, there was little he could do about it. 

This seemed to have a knock-on effect on future Dalek appearances. By 1979 they were no longer taken seriously.

Several years before Terry Nation had attempted to make the Daleks super-international commodities across the pond, with the idea of launching the Daleks into their own Tv series and get the Americans on board.

But again he was hampered by archaic BBC rules and regulations. Convoluted red-tape meant that the BBC wouldn't release the Daleks from contract.

Yet Spike Milligan could do with them as he pleased.

DOUGLAS ADAMS

Throughout the 1970s, the Daleks were already being reduced to mere dustbins on wheels. And nobody seemed to give a shit.

Destiny of the Daleks is a notable turning point, which gave way to sloppy Daleks throughout the 1980s. Watch any 80s Dalek story and they just looked terrible. Lit badly, shot badly and generally shoddy in appearance due to disrepair. Plus the operators seemed half-asleep.

Gone were the heady days of Dalek Operators such as Robert Jewell, a veteran of the Dalek movies, when Dalekmania was at its zenith.

By the time Destiny Of the Daleks rolled along, Nation was pre-occupied with other projects and showed little interest in Dr Who. 

He submitted a rough unfinished script to the BBC and washed his hands of the affair, leaving it all up to Douglas Adams, who used the opportunity to ‘re-invent’ the Daleks as comical robots. However this idea backfired.

Subsequently, a whole new generation thought Daleks were just machines, only adding to the parody they had become. Overall, the Daleks became stereotypes of themselves.

Not dissing Douglas Adams. He did a great job of Terry Nations story but his comical approach to the Daleks was the shows biggest blunder.

UNPOPULAR WITH ACTORS

Most actors hated working with them, in particular John Pertwee and Peter Davidson. I once trundled up to a red-faced Colin Baker in a Dalek at a Comic Con, where he told me to Bog Off! Peter Davidson was even worse.

Ironic since their entire success was purely because of the Daleks. Without them, there would be no autographs for them to sign.

STEADY DECLINE

Without serious attention paid to the Daleks, Dr Who took a steady decline in the 1980s. Yet nobody considered fixing the problem. Instead, the producers and stars of the show figured celebrity status over Daleks was more important.

In their final screen outing, Remembrance of the Daleks, the Daleks were so so utterly banal, that it made Destiny seem like a blockbuster by comparison.

By now Dr Who was sinking into the abyss and nothing could save it. Not even the Daleks.

By 1989, the decision was finally made to pull the plug. Dr Who was finished.

SHORT SIGHTEDNESS

Being a children's program, there wasn't much call for attention for detail, (at least as far as Daleks were concerned) as these stories were never intended to be televised again.

Typical BBC policy meant a large bulk of early Dr Who stories were actually taped over with Gardeners World. 

Nobody felt that these stories had artistuc value or should be preserved. 

Nor did they think anyone might want to buy a copy of Dr Who episodes on VHS or DVD. 

And no one would have imagined that by the 21st Century, the Daleks would regain stardom after Russell T Davis’s reboot or that Daleks would appear at the Royal Albert Hall.

CONCLUSION

Always look after them geese laying golden eggs.

RFID IMPLANTS

 RFID IMPLANTS 

Imagine the future. No physical cash. No more having to carry loose change around or wallets or credit cards. No more waiting at check outs. No fumbling in your pockets for change. Doors everywhere open automatically as you pass through them, readers read your digital RFID implant and off you go. 

How convenient would that be? 

DOWNSIDES

Perhaps the biggest reason of all. Full government control of your money? To turn if off at will?

Look at it this way.

What does the gas company do if you don't pay your gas bill? They turn it off.

Now imagine you're behind with your mortgage repayments. They turn off your life. Literally. With no access to your bank you wont be able to pass through those automatic doors anywhere. No money to buy food or clothing or pay those bills.

CASH VS E-CASH

Horses for Courses:

CASH VS E-CASH

Why getting rid of physical cash is a really shit idea 

So what have horses got to do with e-cash? Nothing. At least not on the face of it. But on the other hand, one day a horse might be more important than your Ferrari, which you might have to sell for scrap. 

And will you except credit cards? Probably not. And heres why:  

Banks say we will be cashless by the end of this decade.  But only if we let it. 

Cashless might work for the high-flyers of the world, those on the hop, who don't want to flap with the tedium of finding a cash-point or catching germs off dirty coins. 

I must admit that the tap & go system has its merits. But its not convenient for everyone to use. Old folks for example, those who lived through the 2nd world war and the Cuban Missile Crises and beyond, struggle with keeping track of their finances unless they can physically see them. 

Internet banking is another issue for them, because they are less inclined to use computers. 

And why is that? Because bank tellers are becoming a thing of the past. More and more physical banks are disappearing on the high street, as redundancies are made to save overhead costs. 

Small towns are suffering the most. Forcing locals (with the luxury to drive combustion based cars further afield) to do essential banking transactions elsewhere. 

Meanwhile the twenty something tech-savy swipey-whipey youth shrug and don't see any problem. 'Jeeze Granmar, get with the fricken program' 

The irony being that at some point advances will overtake them as well. And we have no telling what the youth of today will struggle with in say 80 years from now. 

But you can guarantee that the youth of 2100 will look back at the swipey youth of today with candid humour, much as we look back at the youth of the 1900s. 

But I digress. 

Its unlikely a cashless world would completely happen anytime due to a number of factors. 

BAD RECEPTION 

The reception for tap readers is unreliable. So cash will always be a good alternative. 

I had a friend who uses those square card tapper things at book gatherings and it wouldn't work so he couldn't sell his books. It was fucking annoying because purse strings don't simply open on queue. And after spending most of the night entertaining patrons, only for his card reader to fail and come out broke. Had his patrons had cash on them, this wouldn't have been such a problem. 

TETCHY COMS 

A cashless system can easily be shut down for any reason. This is major issue for those travelling abroad. Its bad enough when Facebook thinks you've been hacked just because you went online in another town. Now imagine having your bank account turned off while you're on holiday in Spain or Moscow?  

NO SAVINGS 

You can’t save electronic cash, draw it out and put it in a jar, like you would real money. Thus its hard to keep track off spending. You then have to rely on credit which inevitably leads to high interest and the poverty cycle of debt. 

HACKING. 

Even if it is stored on a virtual cloud, your banking information is open to hackers. 

USELESS IN AN EMERGENCY

Imagine you're stuck somewhere and you've lost your mobile. No problem.  Just find a phone box right? But dang-it. I need change. But thats ok because the phone box no longer exists because everyone uses mobile phones. Fuck. 

See where I'm going with this? 

Now imagine the internet (that supplies the signal to your cashless world) has gone kaput. Now you have jack-shit. And not just you. Everyone else is in the same boat and its sinking fast. 

Cashless, relies on electricity duh, which in turn needs people to run more power to keep servers running day and night. As a result electric costs could sky rocket. Not to mention said servers are vulnerable to power outage. A few weeks ago Facebook crashed for several hours. Putting everyone at inconvenience. Imagine the inconvenience of not accessing your bank account?

How long would it be before the first shot is fired? Mad Max Director George Miller noted the fuel crises of 1977 as a pivotal landmark that inspired his post apocalyptic movies. 

HORSES FOR COURSES 

So yes, a cashless world is likely inevitable and will affirm the gulf between the haves and have nots. But those high-flyers cant fly forever as the very foundation of cashless living, teeters on a huge fundamental flaw that nobody wants to face. 

Much like the sudden jump between the Horse & cart to the automobile revolution, the rapid escalation of vehicles happened in a only a few decades. 

And why? Because people saw the benefits of cars and not the downsides. Horses crapped everywhere, needed stables, grooming, petting, black smiths etc. And when they died, owners left them to rot in the streets.

Then with the introduction of combustion engine cars, the horse industry was killed off overnight. Suddenly everyone had a car and you could drive almost anywhere. 

However, this created a whole new set of problems, stemming from fossil fuel dependency and the reluctance to switch to electric cars before exhaust emissions took their toll on our atmosphere. 

And with the fuel crises unresolved, and prices sky rocketing, this might well have a knock on effect on other things, such as cashless transactions. 

And we may actually see cashless come and go, in the wake of the world fighting over fuel reserves. For without fuel, we cant run machines and if we cant run machines then we cant have a cashless society. 

So in the end physical cash is probably gonna win out. And the horse will have the last laugh.