Quote:
Originally Posted by
Jason Thompson
Except that they needed materials that the humans would supply.
Which they could get for themselves.
Quote:
But surely that fact that they do in the story is strong evidence that that's how they do think?
Well, the point originally made was that in terms of how they're usually presented, it differed.
Quote:
Like I say though, even one could probably wipe out two or three people in a room without too much difficulty within a few seconds, before anyone had the chance to turn anything off.
The one that was reactivated managed to kill one person before being switched off.
Yes, but if it had swizzled round in a few seconds it could probably have finished them off.
Quote:
Even with a full army of them, the Doctor was able to use a bunch of guards as a diversion so he could overload their power. A siongle Dalek could be distracted by a mass assault on it, which would allow at least one person to shut off their power.
That doesn't prove that they would believe that though. I'm thinking of claims made by Daleks in both Evil and Doomsday, that one Dalek would be able to finish off everyone. Whether that belief is accurate or not is irrelevant here, it's what they appear to believe at any rate.
Quote:
Equally, if we assume that they are alien and therefore do not reason as we do then we have no basis for claiming their behaviour is out of character for the simple reason that we cannot presume to know what their character is if they do not share our reasoning. It is fallacious to assume that something that does not reason in the way humans do automatically reasons in the exact opposite way.
You're missing the point here, it doesn't have to be the case of them "reasoning the opposite way", it's simply an example of their determination to kill anything like them I'm referring to. This is NOT an "alien" motivation anyway (unfortunately), it's genocidal thinking, and people or beings determined to commit that are always likely to spend as little time as possible thinking up complex plans involving prolonged contact with beings they're just determined to get rid of as soon as possible, when faced with what they would see as just a minor difficulty. In my view, in a situation like Power,their priority would most likely be to ensure the humans lose control of the power supply sufficiently for them to carry on their work.
Since you also mentioned "Death", I'd point out that even in that story they're still inisisting they be obeyed even when their guns have been shown to fail, and have to be pushed into a temporary alliance, which even then, they kill off as soon as possible. That's a sort of example of what I was thinking.
I'd also add that this isn't a major problem for me in "Power", which was why I only made the comment in passing, rather than attempt to slam the whole story on those grounds. It doesn't make much, if any, difference to how I feel about the story, and I've only written at length about it now because you chose to take it up.