Carnival of Monsters: Dalek Sec Hybrid and the Pig-Slaves

Carnival of Monsters

Number 7: Daaaalek SEC and his Pig Slave minions

Let’s be honest here. There are many successes in Doctor Who and there are a fair few failures too. Some of these can best be described as noble failures, where the cleverness of the concept or the story is lost somewhere in transition from script to screen and nobody can quite work out where it all went wrong.

The Dalek Sec Hybrid is one such noble failure.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what went awry in his design. After all, he looks superb in photographs, to the point where Russell T Davies and the editors of the Radio Times felt confident enough to put him on the magazine’s cover. This decision caused the ‘Sec-gate’ scandal, as it effectively destroyed the climax to Daleks in Manhattan. Sec was compromised by his publicity before he even had his moment in the sun. Like the Moxx of Balhoon, who was also prematurely revealed, Sec’s sixty seconds of fame came before he actually appeared in Doctor Who. His emergence from the destroyed remains of his Dalek casing should have been one of the most memorable cliffhangers ever, but we all knew what was coming. It was like a surprise party inadvertently announced a week early and Sec was the main guest.

But we can’t hold that against the poor Hybrid. Daleks in Manhattan/ Evolution of the Daleks was conceived as a way of showing just how clever and creative the Daleks could be in ensuring their continuing survival. To remain a viable threat for the Doctor, they needed to prove how dangerously intelligent they were, and in that respect Dalek Sec and his Cult of Skaro are good value for money.

His grand entrance ruined, Dalek Sec is then poorly served by the story as he is immediately redundant to the Cult of Skaro. The Daleks waste no time in declaring him a failure and removing him from power. Sec may be the most intelligent Dalek ever, but he has nothing to offer beyond his odd appearance. He is ineffectual in his command decisions, questioning the Dalek reason to exist in the most inane manner. He pleads with the Doctor, the man who has only just succeeded in wiping the Daleks from existence, to help him in his truly insane plan to reinvent the evil pepperpots. We know from the outset is doomed to failure. After all, the Daleks are not going to be fundamentally altered, not after nearly fifty years. It just wouldn’t work, and the audience know this. Finally, Sec ends up chained to a wall and made to crawl on a leash in front of Dalek Thay and Dalek Jast in a disturbingly mid-boggling sadomasochistic image completely at odds with Doctor Who’s place as a family show. When he is exterminated it is almost a relief to realise that they aren’t intending to bring him back again.

Sec is not helped by a strange performance from Eric Loren. Granted the man is almost blind and deaf behind the mask and the servos operating his fake-looking tentacles. But a poor Dalek impersonator with an American accent just adds to the bizarre realisation of such a pivotal creation in Dalek history. Unfortunately he brings to mind another failed American incarnation of a loved Doctor Who baddie, and I don’t know about you, but the less I am reminded of Eric Roberts as the Master, the better. I wonder if Eric Loren ever sat down with Voice of the Daleks™ Nick Briggs and discussed Dalek inflections. Kids in the playground with their arms outstretched as plungers and gun-sticks do a better job than he managed.

Daleks in Manhattan/ Evolution of the Daleks is bad enough with one daft mutant, but unfortunately we also have the Pig-Slaves. What possible purpose could the Daleks have in converting people into porkers? We have seen before that the Daleks are quite happy to use slave labour to fulfil their nefarious plans, as they can replenish their supply of humans at any time. So what is the point in having Pig-slaves? We never see them do anything useful, apart from chase people and snort. The main stages to the Dalek plan, such as attaching the Dalekanium to the mast of the Empire State Building are carried out by human workers who are not even slaves. The Pig-Slaves don’t even last very long. And just how long does it take to convert a person into a pig? I’d imagine it is a fairly substantial drain on the Daleks’ already limited resources to alter physiology and rewrite DNA. For an alien race trapped on Earth during the Great Depression, the Daleks have an ironically poor understanding of cost-effectiveness.

 

 

It’s a testament to just how little regard there is for Dalek Sec when Doctor Who Magazine started to use him to advertise for subscriptions and the poor blighter ended up in some very poor company in this Doctor Whoah! Cartoon by Baxter from DWM 388, about eight months after his appearance on the screen.

 

(Baxter cartoon and subscription picture reproduced from Doctor Who Magazine).