9.6: Dalek
In which we learn that Doctor Who has anger management issues and PTSD, and everything you ever found funny about the Daleks is now going to kill you.
Broadcast: April 2005
Watched: July 2021
“That’s the mileometer from the Roswell spaceship.”
Okay, it’s a bit too familiar to have the full-impact, even though I’ve not seen it for years, but I think this is probably the first A++ story of the new run?
Firstly, obviously, it reframes a joke to something properly terrifying. Everything we think is silly about the Daleks turns out to be deadly (the sucker, the random globes) or wrong (it can fly). It’s basically a tank that can block bullets and repair itself at will. The way it’s clever and manipulative feels like a throwback to the Hartnell era Daleks (“It wants us to see”).
Secondly, Eccleston gives *an amazing*, intense performance, which is all the more impressive when he’s acting against a Dalek, and even more so when it’s voiced by Nicholas Briggs. (Who, to be fair, is quite good here.) He makes “fantastic” a kind of threat, and we see quite how much the Time War has ruined him.
And then the last act gives us a whole new layer by basically doing TNG: I, Borg. (Odd how often human Daleks come up isn’t it? This, Evil, Evolution, Into the, some of the novels, the entire character of Davros, etc.) I think for the first time this year everything is working at once. The direction – the Dalek’s eye view, etc – is brilliant. And some of the action, like the bit with the sprinklers, is genuinely unnerving.
Weird how the show sort of does two action ones back to back? I was going to say World War Three is also a character one but then, so’s this.
References: Eccleston chained up feels like Jason Connery in Varos. Also I *think* this is the first time we have textual confirmation that the Doctor has nipples. [It isn’t. Someone pointed out we also see them in the TV movie and Spearhead from Space, so the Doctor has canonically had nipples since 1970.]
The Doctor’s willingness to sacrifice Rose to stop the Daleks, then thinking better of it when he gets another chance, is the season arc in miniature.
Rose leaning against a door, thinking she’s dead, is the end of Doomsday, foreshadowed.
Good things: Continuing the “if you get a line, you’re not an extra” thing, De Maggio gets a decent scene before being exterminated off screen. I like the way you can see Goddard gradually turning against Van Statten, it isn’t a complete shock she betrays him.
I really like the way Van Statten is an arsehole but not a complete monster – he’s a very human villain, basically Elon Musk. His fate, homeless on the side of a road somewhere, is very sinister. (The idea of a sinister collector also feels like an old one – it’s TNG: The Most Toys, and sort of Carnival of Monsters, but it feels more common than that?)
When Rose flirts she is clearly absolute filth.
Wow, 2012 was the future once, huh?
