#2 (8.2): Into the Dalek.

The Doctor prepares to venture into
the most dangerous place in the universe...

1 episode. Approx. 49 minutes. Written by: Phil Ford and Steven Moffat. Directed by: Ben Wheatley. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.


THE PLOT

The Doctor uses the TARDIS' transmat to rescue Journey Blue (Zawe Ashton) a soldier whose ship is about to be destroyed by Daleks. He takes her back to her command ship,a converted hospital vessel under the command of Morgan Blue (Michael Smiley), Journey's uncle. The soldiers show the Doctor their patient/prisoner - a Dalek, dying from an unknown malfunction, who insists that its only desire is to destroy all other Daleks!

The Doctor isn't sure what to do, so he makes a short hop to Coal Hill School to pick up Clara. He asks if he's a good man. When she can't answer, he takes her to the ship and shows her this "good" Dalek, whom the Doctor nicknames "Rusty." With Clara's encouragement, he agrees to help - if only to find out how it's possible for there to be a Dalek with any sense of morality. He, Clara, Journey, and two other soldiers are miniaturized and then sent into Rusty's casing to find the malfunction that's killing the Dalek and repair it.

But once the malfunction is repaired, the sense of morality is purged with it. What remains is pure Dalek: Deadly, uncompromising, and determined to destroy all life in its path!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: The Twelfth Doctor is not only blunt, he's downright callous. When Ross, one of Journey's soldiers, attracts the Dalek's antibodies, the Doctor throws him something to swallow. The man does so, trusting that the Doctor is saving him. He's not - What Ross swallows allows the Doctor to trace his bio-matter after he is killed, to get the rest of the party out of the line of fire. When the others act appalled at this behavior, he spells it out: "(Ross) was already dead. I was saving us!" He reveals to Rusty that when he first ran from Gallifrey, "Doctor" was just a name. It was after his first encounter with the Daleks that he truly realized who he was - a realization that gets turned on him to superb effect in the final scenes.

Clara: Describes herself as the Doctor's "carer." Which earns his response: "She cares so I don't have to." She does fit into that mold in this episode. She's as appalled as the soldiers when the Doctor doesn't even try to save Ross, and she admits to Journey and fellow soldier Gretchen (Laura dos Santos) that while she trusts the Doctor to get them out alive, "the difficult part (will be) not killing him before he can." For all that, she has clearly decided that she trusts this new Doctor, even if she's stuck having to act as both his conscience and his buffer with other people.

Danny: With the Doctor now too old for the kind of flirtatious relationship Clara had with the Eleventh Doctor, the writers introduce Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson) as a new love interest for Clara. He is basically Rory 2.0 at this point - A nice guy, clearly attracted to Clara, completely tongue-tied when attempting to have a conversation with her. Anderson is likable enough in his handful of scenes, and has decent comic timing, which is promising for his ongoing role. Danny's background as a former soldier is utilized here to counterbalance the Doctor's heavy-handed dislike of all soldiers, which should make for some interesting interplay later in the season.

Daleks: Their casing is created not simply as a transport for the mutated being within, but also to "keep it pure." A supplementary electronic brain suppresses any thought or memory that might kindle the slightest hint of kindness, remorse, or compassion. The source of Rusty becoming "good" is a memory, one that hasn't been suppressed because of the malfunction. It saw beauty in the birth of a new star, and realized that the Daleks could never truly extinguish all non-Dalek life. But once the malfunction is fixed, its electronic brain restarts, and that memory is once again suppressed. The morally "good" Dalek, that wants to destroy other Daleks, becomes a functionally "good" Dalek, wanting to destroy everything that isn't a Dalek. In other words, business as usual.


THOUGHTS

Into the Dalek is a very good episode. It is fast-paced without being rushed. It's gorgeous to look at, with a visual flourish that feels like more like a feature film than a television show. The acting is excellent, with Capaldi truly becoming the Doctor here. The Doctor/Dalek relationship gets a reexamination that leaves him questioning at the end of the episode even more than he was at the beginning:

"Am I a good man?"

Rusty the Dalek has an answer for him all too similar to the answer his first post-Time War Dalek gave him. That lone Dalek told the Ninth Doctor: "You would make a good Dalek." This Dalek has even less welcome verdict: "You are a good Dalek." The look on Capaldi's face when this verdict is read can't really be described, save to say that it is perfect.

The story is a direct lift from Fantastic Voyage, which gets a passing reference when the Doctor observes that miniaturization for medical purposes is a "fantastic idea for a movie, terrible one for a proctologist." The biggest danger faced by the Doctor's miniaturized group is the same as in that film too - attacks by antibodies. This being a Dalek, those antibodies are hovering balls of sci-fi death, but the result is the same - certainly for poor Ross.

I'm enjoying the Twelfth Doctor's melancholy. He's casually rude and brusque to those around him, telling the soldiers: "You don't need to be liked; you've got all the guns." But there's no joy in his acidic remarks. When he asks Clara if he's a good man, he does so because he is genuinely uncertain. When Clara calls him on his need for all Daleks to be evil, he admits that she's right. When Rusty looks into his mind and recognizes the hatred he holds for the Daleks, his worst fears about himself seem to be confirmed. He realized who he was when he met the Daleks so long ago... And that identity is seen by Rusty the Dalek as that of "a good Dalek."

The man who dislikes soldiers on principle is identified with the Daleks - killing machines that the Doctor describes as "the perfect soldier." The Dalek is kept pure by engineering that constantly stokes its hatred. And when it looks into the Doctor's mind, it sees hate on a level it envies. Of course, that's only part of who the Doctor is - But that's the part the Daleks always bring out in him, and this time it leaves him even more appalled than usual.


Overall Rating: 9/10.

Previous Story: Deep Breath
Next Story: Robot of Sherwood

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On Twitter:

Follow @RandomMusings09

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads

#1 (8.1): Deep Breath.

The Doctor and Clara investigate a crashed
spaceship in Victorian London.

1 episode. Approx. 80 minutes. Written by: Steven Moffat. Directed by: Ben Wheatley. Produced by: Nikki Wilson.


THE PLOT

In Victorian era London, Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and her assistant, Jenny (Catrin Stewart) find themselves at the scene of a most unusual arrival: That of a live dinosaur! Vastra is able to use Silurian technology to contain the creature, which then coughs up the very thing that brought it here: The TARDIS!

The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is even more disoriented after this regeneration than usual. Vastra takes him to her estate to rest, but he stumbles out during the night - just in time to see the dinosaur burn to death, the latest in a series of what have been labeled cases of "spontaneous combustion."

The Doctor is reunited with his companion, Clara, just in time for both of them to be captured by the being responsible for these mysterious deaths: A mechanical, half-faced man (Peter Ferdinando), who has been using pieces of his victims to keep himself and his technology running.

"This isn't a man turning himself into a robot," the Doctor realizes. "This is a robot turning himself into a man, piece by piece!"


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor has only has limited appearances in the first half, but he does get a terrific early scene in which he first views his new face in the company of a very nervous homeless man (Brian Miller). Capaldi plays this wonderfully, moving between weary sadness, confusion, and dangerous instability in a way that feels completely organic. The hint of something dangerous remains even when the instability fades, and his final confrontation with the half-faced man is outstanding in both the writing and performance. The overall performance is more subdued than either of his immediate predecessors - But that's not a bad thing, and I suspect I'm going to enjoy Capaldi's irritable-yet-melancholy Doctor.

Clara: More interesting than Clara's overwritten, clearly audience-anticipating reactions to the new Doctor's age is her response to his new personality. The smug flirtiness of the Eleventh Doctor has been replaced by irascibility bordering on outright rudeness - Something she does seem to be adapting to as they explore the crashed spaceship under a Victorian-era restaurant, right up until he abandons her in a moment of cowardice (a call-back to one of the Sixth Doctor's poorer post-regenerative moments). "I don't know who you are anymore," she tells him sadly - Though, thanks to a last-minute intervention, she does just barely decide to stay to give him a chance to prove himself.

Madame Vastra/Jenny/Strax: This episode shows a few cracks in the so-called "Paternoster Gang." Vastra is quick to become judgmental over Clara's understandable shock at the Doctor's change. In the midst of seeing him stumbling around like a cross between a drunk and a lunatic, while wearing a strange face that's older than a renewal surely should be, she plaintively wonders if he can please change back - Hardly an unreasonable reaction. Vastra's response is to treat her like "a stranger" until Clara finally has enough of this and snaps at her - which, to the script's credit, earns applause from Jenny. Speaking of Jenny, she seems a little tired of her wife treating her as a servant in private. She's very sincere when telling Clara that she loves Vastra, but she's not blind to Vastra's faults - and it looks like she might be just about at her limit with a few of them.

While the Vastra and Jenny material has some interest, this episode is where I've officially become tired of Strax. His first appearance indicated a more three-dimensional characterization, particularly his "dying" realization that "I'm a nurse!" Episodes since have ground him steadily into two-dimensional comedy relief, and hearing him address beautiful women as "boy" and declare his intent to kill people for the glory of the Sontaran Empire has officially become tiresome. I know we'll see these characters again. I ask only that when we do, Strax please be given at least half a brain cell and be allowed to be more than just the butt of some now thoroughly played-out jokes.


THOUGHTS

"This face... It's covered in lines, but I didn't do the frowning. Who frowned me this face?"
-The Doctor, in the midst of regeneration confusion, sees his new face for the first time.

The Eleventh Hour set the tone for Matt Smith's Doctor - racing along at a breathless, breakneck pace, with clever plot turns and clever dialogue shooting by so fast that it takes two or three viewings to fully catch all of it. It was like watching his entire era in a microcosm.

I can only hope that Deep Breath will be similarly true for this new Doctor. The Twelfth Doctor's debut is noticeably slower-paced than most of the stories of his predecessor, with a nicely melancholy atmosphere hanging over the entire piece. A lot of this is credit to director Ben Wheatley, who did some acclaimed independent feature film work before directing this episode. His visual eye and ability to maintain an atmosphere even during comedy relief moments is a huge boost to this episode.

Steven Moffat's script overcompensates for Peter Capaldi's age, with far too many people remarking on how old he is. Capaldi is no more than middle aged and appears to be in pretty good condition. From the way Clara and others react, one would think the Twelfth Doctor was lugging around a canister of oxygen and a heart monitor while they tried to find him a good nursing facility! We get it; he's older; can future episodes please assume we've accepted that and move on?

That said, once the Doctor and Clara meet at the restaurant that's actually a front for the Menace of the Week, the story comes completely to life. I love the entire restaurant scene, particularly when the new Doctor and Clara continue to swipe irritably at each other even after realizing they have walked into a trap. Clara's encounter with the half-faced man is also superb, the dialogue classic Moffat at its best. The android interrogates her for information about the Doctor, threatening to kill her if she doesn't speak. She refuses, telling him now he has to kill her. "Never start with your final sanction. You've got nowhere to go but backwards."

Finally, there's the Doctor's quiet scene with the half-faced man near the end. Their encounter is more a conversation than a confrontation. Capaldi's Doctor is weary and sad, the android already knowing that there is no way out for him. There are no grand threats or proclamations. Just two people trapped by their natures. The question at the end isn't whether the Doctor pushed him or he jumped - The question is whether that difference ultimately matters in the slightest.

Overall, this is a good episode - Not as good as The Eleventh Hour was, but still certainly above average. With excellent performances and a second half that is basically one good scene after another, this is a promising start for a promising new Doctor.


Overall Rating: 8/10.

Previous Story: The Time of the Doctor
Next Story: Into the Dalek

Search Amazon.com for Doctor Who

Review Index

To receive new review updates, follow me:

On Twitter:

Follow @RandomMusings09

On Threads:

Follow@randommusings09 on Threads