The Mysterons Vs The Daleks

[shaqui]

the dr has a silly screwdriver and wants to spread peace like a hippy).

Um... and this is a bad thing?

[chrisbishop]

I cant beleve ppl are saying the darleks

You DID ask a question, Dandudd, so people are answering according to what they believe, know or are willing to argue. If they don't, what is the point of asking the question?

another reason why scarlet is better than dr who, Scarlet has a gun and kills mysterons the dr has a silly screwdriver and wants to spread peace like a hippy

I don't believe guns will make a hero better than another one. I don't know much about Doctor Who - being from Canada, I only saw a few episodes of the new series during my short stay last Fall - but if the method works to deal with villains, why not?

On another point of argument, basing my answer on the events from the Original CS series - I'm sure that if Colonel White - AND by extension Captain Scarlet - had been able to make peace with the Mysterons, they would gladly put the guns aside (ref.: Dangerous RendezVous).

[Marion]

DanDud88 said:
Yes but I also saw those boring movies when i was younger and i saw that they couldnt climb stairs or run fast or out like that.

None of that was relevent to the watching TV audience of the time. Here were aliens who looked nothing like men dressed in funny suits with false arms or comic make-up. They were mechanical psychopaths - and nothing had been seen like them before - at least not by me - who was about 5 or 6 when they first appeared. The fact that two films (I think) were made just about Dr Who and the Daleks - speaks for itself.
Of their time, the Daleks were the supreme aliens and they captured the imagination of a generation of TV viewers. As I said before - it surprised me how ingrained that uneasiness still was, when the Daleks returned to TV.
I think the Sci-Fi fantasy fandom is broad enough - and I would hope tolerant enough - to make room for the concept of aliens as widely different as the Daleks and the Mysterons - both excellent concepts and very effective baddies.
PERSONALLY - I feel that NCS did manage to reduce the scary-factor of the Mysteron threat slightly, by making their attempts to destroy us fail every time (or did they win one or two? I can't remember- the stories obviously made such an impact on me .) They implied that the Mysterons had tremendous powers and yet their attacks on Earth were almost amateurish at times.
Be that as it may - and it is a personal view - and always accepting the series was aimed at 4-9 year old boys, I guess they'd have to play down the scary-factor; the Mysterons remain amongst the most effective screen baddies - and the concept of unseen aliens who can kill and recreate exact likenesses of anything or anyone they want to - is breath-taking in it's simplicity and it's scope.
The nature of the Mysterons and the threat they present, is - I think - one of the reasons the Captain Scarlet TV show survived and still has a loyal fanbase.

(Climbs down off soap box and goes to get her breakfast...)

[Kinggodzillak]

PERSONALLY - I feel that NCS did manage to reduce the scary-factor of the Mysteron threat slightly, by making their attempts to destroy us fail every time (or did they win one or two? I can't remember- the stories obviously made such an impact on me .)

Aside from the obvious damage they did (killing dozens of people and trashing some vehicles) they won in Enigma, wiping out a third of the world's fuel reserves...while Spectrum wasn't looking...

[steviep]

PERSONALLY - I feel that NCS did manage to reduce the scary-factor of the Mysteron threat slightly, by making their attempts to destroy us fail every time (or did they win one or two? I can't remember- the stories obviously made such an impact on me .)

Aside from the obvious damage they did (killing dozens of people and trashing some vehicles) they won in Enigma, wiping out a third of the world's fuel reserves...while Spectrum wasn't looking...

Arguably, you can also say that the Mysterons foiled the peaceful faction's plan to give secrets away to Spectrum by killing Winters in Achilles Messenger, as well as seeming to regenerate themselves after Scarlet tried to destroy the city in Dominion.

[chrisbishop]

In two of the posts above, we can find arguments that, like his original daddy, NCS was willing to make an effort for peace, without resorting to using weapons:

- "Achilles Messenger", when Spectrum was ready to talk peace with the less warrior-like faction of the Mysterons.

- "Enigma", where Scarlet was willing to make the sacrifice of Destiny for a chance to reverse History.

[steviep]

- "Enigma", where Scarlet was willing to make the sacrifice of Destiny for a chance to reverse History.

If I'd have been Scarlet, I wouldn't have hesitated either....

[chrisbishop]

So THAT was the hidden reason...

[Clya Brown]

In order to decide which species constitutes the better villain, I think you have to ask a few questions about the nature of evil. Is the better villain the one who has more powerful weapons, or is the better villain the one whose philosophy is more diametrically opposed to your own? I'd say there's a bit of both in there.

In the TV dramatisation of the Nuremburg trials of 1945, a member of the American legal team commented that he'd often wondered about the nature of evil, commenting that after he'd witnessed the horrors of the concentration camps he'd come to the conclusion that it was rooted in the inability to empathise with a victim: the consequence being that one could perpetrate any and all manner of cruelty without any restraining sense of guilt. That definition could certainly be applied to the Daleks, whose guiding philosophy as outlined by Terry Nation in "Genesis of the Daleks" was based on that of the Nazis anyway, and which was expanded upon in the recent story "Dalek", in which the Doctor observed to Henry Van Statten that a Dalek is honest, inasmuch as it genuinely believes that anything different to Daleks is wrong - a view that totally justifies exterminating any non-Dalek life-form without a second's thought.

Terrifying though that view of the world is, it is of little or no relevance if the subscribers to it lack the means to enforce it. It's not difficult to think of people we've seen on TV or the Internet who have similarly warped views, but most of them are small-minded individuals with large chips on their shoulders - in short, they're of no consequence. They're also the sort of people who should never be placed in positions of power, and who likewise should never be handed a gun. It's the same combination of factors that have to come together to enable a classic murder mystery to unfold: motive, means and opportunity, and it's that combination of a spectacularly arrogant philosophy coupled with an awesome arsenal of weaponry that makes the Daleks villains of the very highest order.

Now consider the Mysterons. They effectively possess the means to subvert any technology ranged against them and use it for their own purposes - which makes them all but invincible. To that extent they outrank the Daleks in terms of firepower, because as has already been pointed out, a Dalek can be Mysteronised (or at least we assume that it can). Any adversary of the Mysterons - including the Daleks - would need to address the problem before engaging them in battle of to neutralise that advantage, because if they fail to do so, then they'll lose. The only alternative would be to destroy the Mysterons so convincingly that they cannot self-retrometabolise. We don't know whether the Daleks possess the firepower needed to do that, but if as commented earlier they could actually destroy a planet, then it seems likely. Having said that, the Mysterons do appear to have an uncanny ability to discover plots being hatched against them ("Shadow of Fear") and to take decisive pre-emptive action to counter those plots, so even an adversary's ability to destroy Mars may not be enough, if the Mysterons realise early enough what's going on. But that leaves us with the question of the Mysterons' philosophy of life. And there I have a problem, because they don't appear to have one - at least, not one that make any sense to me. They have two of the prerequisites - means and opportunity - for making credible baddies, but do they really have the motive?

I don't feel it's enough simply to assume that they're vindictive. There ought to be a basic driving force behind their actions, and I don't see one. We have a driving force - it's our instinct for self-preservation, which we share with the Daleks ("We are programmed to survive. We have the ability to develop in any way necessary to ensure that survival", as one retorted to Davros just before exterminating his entire scientific retinue.) If the Mysterons share the same basic instinct for self-preservation, then they're demonstrating it in a very strange way, it seems to me, given that they clearly possess the technology needed to destroy us utterly, but only appear to use it to give Spectrum a serious headache every now and again.

On the balance, I don't feel that the Mysterons cut it. Colonel White tried talking to them once: he could try again, and then again. Eventually he'll probably manage to calm them down - after which they'll go back home to Mars and stop bothering us. Somehow I don't see that strategy working with the Daleks.

[Marion]

Doc Brown said:
But that leaves us with the question of the Mysterons' philosophy of life. And there I have a problem, because they don't appear to have one - at least, not one that make any sense to me. They have two of the prerequisites - means and opportunity - for making credible baddies, but do they really have the motive?

Even in the original CS series, the motivation of the Mysterons was always slightly suspect. Their decision to wipe out all life on earth was initially , perhaps, understandable - they'd just been obliterated, after all. But, they never seemed prepared to carry it out - prefering to target specific things or people.
This led to the speculation that they were 'just testing' the human race...
The NCS Mysterons seem a far more warlike set of beings - given that they admit there is a 'peace faction' amongst their kind, which they then proceed wipe out themselves... However, given their superior fire-power, if they were totally serious about blowing us up - they could do it - no problem - but they don't...?
I doubt that the Daleks would give us a second thought, and, were it not for the Doctor, we would be a planet of smouldering ruins

[steviep]

This might be a thread-drift but:

If the Mysterons were not so easily destroyed when Black ordered the missile launch, why didn't they retrometabolise and then say "Look chaps, I think we got off on the wrong foot there. Let's start again..." because as we now know, they can shrug off pretty much what gets thrown at them.

Are they simply accelerating what man would do to himself to get rid of us a little quicker? Are they just of a nasty disposition? It doesn't seem to be the actions of an enlightened race. Perhaps they are just machine relics, after all.

[Sage]

OK will probably be yelled out for heresy, but it surely needs saying. For all the fancy theories (which are great, and sure help with the fic) about the mysteron/dalek motivation, ultimatly it boils down to one thing...
It's a TV show

You couldn't make a series if the enemy just randomly anihilated everyone in the pilot, always managed to suceed* or whatever. It wouldn't make for good stories. The villans are essentially a plot device and work the story arc; gloriously simplistic as they are, but that's the charm.

*which in part is 'good triumphing over evil', a stalwart of fiction since at least the middle ages.

[Marion]

Sage says:

For all the fancy theories (which are great, and sure help with the fic) about the mysteron/dalek motivation, ultimatly it boils down to one thing...
It's a TV show
You couldn't make a series if the enemy just randomly anihilated everyone in the pilot, always managed to suceed* or whatever. It wouldn't make for good stories. The villans are essentially a plot device and work the story arc; gloriously simplistic as they are, but that's the charm.

Absolutely agree - it is a TV show - and follows a forumla laid down in narrative story-telling since before writing - probably. Baddies are bad and Goodies usually win - the skill lies in creating characters that can make the simple formulas seem fresh and interesting - however they're dressed up.
Discussing and comparing how those formulas are presented, is part of the fun - and that's what I thought we were having?
After all, people make a living out of interpreting classical texts and Shakespeare and such stuff - we're only doing the same - albeit with - in my case - my tongue firmly in my cheek
I also happen to find this more interesting than discussing the specifications for vehicles or weapons or whatever... and as you say it can help with the fic!

[theMysterons]

YOU ARE RIGHT, EARTHWOMAN. IT IS HERESY TO CONSIDER US SIMPLISTIC. IT IS ALSO HERESY TO CONSIDER THAT THE DALEKS MIGHT HAVE THE ABILITY TO DESTROY US.

THEIR CHANCES RATE AS MUCH AS YOUR OWN...

WE, THE MYSTERONS, FEAR NO-ONE...

[The Daleks]

what-ever-you-do-is-fut-ile-You-will-be-ext-er-min-a-ted.
The Daleks