The Archive of Islos

This was pretty cool, to be honest.  Yeah, the animation was a little cheap, but I love the design of the three main Daleks we focus on here.  Usually it is hard to get much character out of these guys but I think they do a pretty good job at having a distinct sense of three slightly different versions of the character - the power-hungry Emperor, the ancient advisor the kind of sounds like Davros, and the crazy kill-happy executioner.  As much as the animation feels cheap, the production also clearly puts a lot of time and effort into bringing comic book Daleks to life, all the while telling a pretty neat introduction for a Time Lord Victorius thing.  And it does all of that in like 10 minutes while making the Daleks feel pretty creepy and dangerous.  I'm intrigued how the rest of the series goes now so I think this first episode did a good job overall.

📝6/10 = SLIGHTLY ENJOYABLE!

Time Lording through time and space, one victory at a time! This time: showtime of the Daleks, part I!

The Dalek fleet arrives on Islos to get to their archive and find information about the Dark Times. We meet the new, golden, and dome-headed Dalek Emperor properly, and Nick Briggs has a great time voicing him. The Dalek Strategist also appears here, so we get a good understanding of the hierarchy here.

The animation is crude, but the opening installment goes all in with a major battle scene and imaginative design, and we are shown the true power of the Daleks as they force the locals to surrender the archive. The Archivians are interesting new robotic creatures, sort of combinations between the Angel robots from Voyage of the Damned and the Daleks themselves. They also have quite a witty personality, which is fun.

The Daleks are betrayed in the end, as the Archivians and the contents of the archive escape to the Dark Times through a portal, leaving the Daleks as sacrificial lambs.

Very impressive for a freebie. I like the Archivians. They're very cunning, and have some funny witty comebacks against the Daleks (my favourite being "Do you have a membership card?"). The way they trick the Daleks at the end is very clever, although you would think the Daleks would have a bit more intelligence to realise they had walked into a trap.

I actually quite like the animation. It's miles better than 2009's Dreamland, even if the explosions do look a bit fake.