Dalek

A fact about that Daleks is that there are simply a lot of rubbish Dalek episodes. NuWho seems to have mainly gotten around this by just making the Dalek episodes as quick moving, exciting and brilliant as possible.

Doomsday sees them fight the Cybermen, making a surprise appearance to form one of the shows greatest cliffhangers – one which left many screaming ‘How have they never done this before?’ and rightly so.

Journey’s End sees them all destroyed very easily by Donna Noble, while a rubbish conclusion it is a great moment for Donna's character.

Victory of the Daleks sees them regenerating themselves – or even degenerating themselves as they dive back to what they call there ‘original forms’. Why this happens I’m not actually sure as suddenly their casing seems to become genetically part of them.

The Big Bang sees a single stone Dalek fighting to kill The Doctor, although to be honest the fact it wanted to stop him destroying the universe makes it all a bit of a silly plan. Good bloody fun though. Overall the Dalek is just to get in the way and act as a real threat in the episode, otherwise he has no real sensible reason for being there.

None of these stories are perfect, but by treating the Daleks more as a plot point and using characterisation and excitement to drive the story forward, The Daleks have never really came across badly, but at the same time they haven’t ever proven themselves to be a menacing and truly scary race.

The new look to the Daleks has some down sides, but overall
 its wonderful.

Series 1 treats them very differently. They feature in two stories ‘Dalek’ and the two-parter ‘Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways’, and in both of these The Daleks are the main focus and this elevates them beyond just being ‘Daleks’ and becoming ‘The Best Who Monster/Enemy’. Only again in series 3 is this attempted – here however it proves fatal, luckily its set in New York so we can all blame our lack of enjoyment (if you didn’t that is) on the bad accents rather than poor Daleks and an overall terrible plot that represents (for me) series three’s ‘Doctors Daughter’ (the episode that is surprising for not being dropped).

It this treatment in ‘Dalek’ that makes it quite simply – Amazing. Sure there are problems, and one of those is directly in how the Dalek works and some plot errors that pop up from time to time, but I’ll get to that later.

Here we see exactly who and what the Daleks are/were, and this episode is the sole reason ‘Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways’ works so well – The Daleks are put forward as this invincible race, an unstoppable force that can’t be killed by simple weapons – making them for the oldest viewers, a terrifying villain.

To set all this up and launch this race in NuWho, Rob Shearman had a very big responsibility. One problem with complimenting him is that we know for a fact that RTD did some heavy editing and ordering big re-drafts numerous times. While we know this happens for many episodes, its a fact that with such a big episode no doubt RTD had very big input. Where and what I don’t know, but I do have some problems with the writing of this episode and from having listened to much of Rob’s mostly amazing work for Big Finish some things stand out as RTD inputs.

So I’ll dive straight into the biggest problem with this episode, and that's a character whose introduced for the sake of a plot RTD wanted for next week in ‘The Long Game’. That character is Adam Mitchell. For me he is the worst aspect of series one and one of the worst casting decisions in Who until Meera Syal takes Chris Chibnalls pile of piss that was his Silurian two-parter and takes a shit on it.

The whole flirting between him and Rose breaks the pace right away. Not only does it not fit timing for the episode, but it also causes bigger problems in that Bruno Langley who plays him can express about as many emotions as a damp carpet. He is just rubbish and fails entirely to put any exaggeration on the dialogue whatsoever.

Other problems with Adam? He is incredibly useless, I’d be fine with him, especially in him joining the TARDIS team if he used his computer genius skills in this episode to basically save the day at some point – either in a small way or just helping The Doctor. Unfortunately he does nothing, literally nothing. He just becomes someone Rose can converse with and is written so badly that in order to make things fit, Rob splits him from Rose as quick as possible, sticking her with the Dalek instead and fulfilling the actual plot than setting up RTD’s character point for the next episode.

When I said timing problems, I don’t just mean the sudden change from exciting things involving the Dalek to him and Rose near the start, but how in that same scene The Doctor seems to be tied up, have his top removed and tortured/analysed in another room. This split really doesn’t work as it’s made out to be live action, yet on screen its as if these two scenes are moving at very different paces and almost at different speeds.

That brings me onto my second problem with the episode, and again this also feels shoehorned in by RTDrayed, showing Van Statten his two hearts is just unnecessary and only acts to allow Rose to get to the Dalek in the mean time (and only because she isn’t with The Doctor when he talks to the Dalek – a better way of doing these events would be Rose going to see The Dalek as The Doctor is dragged out and touches the Dalek then). For me it makes no sense, Van Statten could be asking about the Dalek, but instead tortures the only alien who can tell him what he needs to know?

Jack was here.

Those are the only two big problems for me, and that's mainly because I see them as unnecessary and just for RTD to shove in his own plot points like setting up Adam and then showing The Doctor has two hearts, without serving the episode itself in anyway. Although as I said earlier, I have no idea who added what, what aspects came first or anything really about the production – but as I said from my understanding of the two writers I’ve interpreted this how I like, and anyway they are in the script and I’m really just reviewing the episode so back to that!

So Dalek sees a single Dalek trapped and damaged in an underground museum by Henry Van Statten. What follows is a great reel of moments to introduce not only the Dalek race into but also finally get down to exactly what happened in the Time War (or at least alluding to how events unfolded) and who was fighting in it.

The entire scene between The Doctor and the Dalek is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Not only does Chris play it amazingly – hitting every note and really putting forward the idea that he really is losing it, something that we’ve seen being built up throughout the series so far – but Nick Briggs who voices the Dalek really gets forward everything he needs to, the coldness of the Dalek but also those moments where it slightly goads The Doctor.

This all leads The Doctor to take an action that he has been building towards for most of the series, where as Tennants Doctor would seem scary just by picking up a gun in fear, and Smith’s seems scary in his sudden outbursts of anger, Ecclestein has been a very scary Doctor and in no way shown to be perfect and always caring. Rather than keep talking to the Dalek, things escalate and he falls into complete mania leading him to try and kill the Dalek. Except he doesn’t just try to ‘kill’ it, instead he tortures it, increasing the voltage given to it bit by bit as his rage built.

This episode deals with so many things, and it has to, RTD hasn’t just set Rob and himself the challenge of creating an episode which introduced the Dalek race, but also dealing with the Time War explanation, and his guilt and anger. I feel Ecclestein does this best, where as Tennant just sort of looks longfully and a bit less angry – even against Rassalon he isn’t all that angry. Smith in ‘Victory of the Daleks’ really pushes the anger a bit more, but still its not Ecclesteins rage as seen here – this is such an important part of Doctor Who that while RTD came up with I think he loses sight off as the series goes on. It almost becomes something that happened rather than something he went through.

Here its very much that he has done and been through something destructive and has deeply affected him. Once again Rose helps the Doctor in this episode in his need to deal with these emotions. Whereas up to now we’ve had Rose just being there to almost hold his hand when things are difficult, but here she actually stands up to him and tells him to look at how he is acting, and quite simply that he is becoming a Dalek himself. Firstly this is great – this is what makes Rose an amazing companion – and I will rant about how rubbish she becomes in series two when I’m reviewing series two and noticing how pathetic, whiny, and weak she becomes.

This brings me onto the most amazing thing in this episode. The contrast of the Dalek and The Doctor is simply amazing. Its a great idea to show to old and new fans exactly how deeply troubled this Doctor is in his emotions, and this will lead to the events in the next Dalek story this series. The Dalek, the most evil creature in the universe – but very similar to The Doctor in that he is the last one left (or so they think), damaged, and without a purpose.

This is exactly the same for The Doctor. One thing I would have liked to see was less Rose and Adam and more Doctor and Dalek stuff going on, as the contrast between them is a bit too subtle for me and the episode just has too much going on around it, leaving little time for this idea to breathe.

Rose was almost recast after staff realised Billie was too hot to handle.

The Dalek of course begins to take on emotions after absorbing Rose’s DNA in order to rejuvenate itself with her time energy. While this is happening, The Doctor is getting darker and darker, angrier and angrier. They contrast one another brilliantly, The Doctor gives away to hate in the same way a Dalek would. We never again see The Doctor’s character examined so completely as we do in this episode, and while ‘Amy’s Choice’ takes a fresh approach, its this episode which really succeeds in getting under his skin.

Now before I get onto the final showdown, I’ll tell you my other main problems with this episode. Firstly all the characters are very generic, and I mean that in that they are all reasonably thick. Firstly the torturer making a joke at the Dalek had the effect you’d imagine and he is quickly dispatched of. Now that's all fine, its suppose to be funny, however the guard then ignoring The Doctor’s advice on how to fight a Dalek and getting pretty fucking arrogant for a guy that's had to draft in scientists to help fight, and also since another team attacking from two sides just got annihilated. Van Statten is okay, just a bit selfish, but he could have shut up for a while, the whole ‘Don’t shoot it’ was fine at first but as he continues to shout it despite people dying it just becomes a bit silly and camp.

My other problems are with The Dalek. Firstly why does it start shooting up the room? To show off its weapons? It could have just shot the camera, rather than just shooting every random object including a fucking punch of cylinders right beside it. Does not make sense for a Dalek to act so pointless.

My second point is that I got annoyed at the electric scene, where he basically decides to kill off all the soldiers by electrocuting them. Now I can buy that actually he has an electric setting (his main gun is just a radiation blast), but they could have either made that clearer or made the men maybe realise he has made sure 1) Its made sure its not in the water, and 2) It doesn’t shoot them, but the sprinkler system. They could have used some sense.

This scene was a clever idea yes, but its slightly ruined because...
'Its got a fucking gun and can shoot you from down
therewithout having to go up the fucking stairs!'
Biggest plot hole of the episode.

Thirdly, and this brings us to the final stand, why the fuck...really...why the fuck did Davros (or the emperor) add a nice suicide function to a race of creatures which are suppose to just fight for itself? WHY! It makes no sense! Did they really think it was clever to say this is why they have the spheres on the sides? Because to be honest I prefer the Moff’s version in ‘Curse of Fatal Death’ and how the Master uses them.

I just didn’t buy it, but it was one way for it to kill itself – I’d have preferred it just exploding, just dying in the light (would have been good, also to know its so self aware it can kill itself just by an order would have been very strong). This is a minor point, but it still makes no sense what so ever.

The final showdown is the best bit of the episode, and unfortunately its not true for many Doctor Who episodes , so its a real achievement that all the threads get dealt with brilliantly here. I’ve already talked about the contrast between The Doctor and the Dalek, but its the relationship between Rose and the Dalek that really stands out here. She feels almost like a mother to the Dalek as she has created what it is now becoming and she is trying to teach it how to be human and look after it. Its a part of her now, and she has to take care of it.

She has to go so far in understanding that the Dalek has to die, this shows real maturity on her behalf and she herself acts in much the way The Doctor should act. The final order is given and everything is solved, The Doctor is alone again and still without any real purpose and still just as damaged – although we are seeing Rose really beginning to heal him at this point.

This episode is almost perfect but it just has too much going on that doesn't involved the Dalek, the war, or The Doctor. This really damages it and the character Adam just goes to ruin much of his scenes including his awful deliver of the final lines of the series - no sense of drama - nothing.

Jack was here.

9.5/10 - I want to give it a 9 just because I think there are some very definite problems, it is saved however by the fact that the concept really goes out there and gives the Dalek feelings rather than just relying on its villainy, this pushes the characterisation of all the characters in an amazing way.

This episode isn't any old Dalek episode, its one of the best Dalek plots you'll find in both old and new who, but it is also a great mini-resolution to the arc of the war and what has happened to The Doctor between his appearances (seemingly in his eighth incarnation.) as we get enough answers to really fuel our imagination and an on-going arc from here to the specials in 2009.

Get ready for next weeks review where I'll be telling you why 'The Long Game' is one of the best episodes of series one - but also why Adam is one of the worst characters since Adric.