Doctor Who 08×02 – The Daleks Return

 

*WARNING – contains spoilers*

Doctor Who returned for its second episode this week with ‘Into the Dalek’ and with it the show was back to its normal running time.
Admittedly, I have a problem with Dalek stories in ‘Nu-Who’. The most dangerous enemy in the universe were supposedly wiped out during the time war, as welearned back in Christopher Ecclestone’s series. If so, why on Earth do these pepper pots keep on showing up? Not only that, but most of the Dalek stories have sucked in recent years making the greatest villains in Dr Who’s history into a self-parody.

Surprisingly, this episode was a pretty good outing. It wasn’t as sinister and dramatic as ‘Dalek’ or as bombastic and epic as ‘Journey’s End’  but it was a solid enough story. It took a different approach to the typical Dalek story and this really helped the episode stand out.
The premise of the story is that there is a war taking place between a rebel human army and the Dalek fleets sometime in the future. They have captured a damaged Dalek in battle, that has supposedly turned good. The Doctor arrives and is sent into the Dalek to try and repair the damaged enemy and use it to help potentially ‘fix the Dalek problem.’

Another underlying story is the development of Clara’s story at the Coal Hill School in London with the introduction of Danny Pink  who seems to be a potential love interest for Clara. It was kind of ‘Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS’ meets ‘Waterloo Road’.
To get into the Dalek, the gang were shrunk inside a ‘nano-size’ chamber with some jokes about microwaves thrown in to boot but this was basically ‘Honey, I Shrunk The Kids (1989)’ territory, and came off a bit hammy and was just a way to get them in. Once inside, it was an interesting experience with the Doctor and Clara venturing throughout the Dalek discussing the different aspects of the interior, how it remembers things, the cross between organic matter and technology and the different neurons. Most of the crew were killed throughout the episode by little flying metal ‘antibodies’ similar to those inside the ‘Teselecta‘ back in Matt Smith’s ‘death’ storyline which was a nice touch to it all.

The plot revolved around this idea that the Dalek would turn good because it saw beauty and decreed the Daleks must be destroyed. When they fixed old ‘rusty’, as the Doctor nicknamed him, he disabled these memories and thus turned the Dalek evil again. So, after a ‘moral dilemma’, they ventured to go and bring those memories back. This all happens whilst the Dalek helps his friends attack the humans on the ship adding pressure of time to crew inside.
The set design and cinematography in this episode is what really shines through. The inside of the Dalek is beautifully constructed with painstaking detail and due to the iconic status of the ‘dustbins’, you know exactly where in the Dalek they are just by looking at the detail on the wall. The lighting and colours and the textures of these sets are brilliantly portrayed and represent the real distance Doctor Who has come in recent years in terms of its technical brilliance.

The interesting part of the story comes near the end when he talks with the Dalek, turning the beast ‘good’ and reversing its morality. However, the failure here is that the Dalek still has a penchant for destruction, and goes to kill the other Daleks anyway. The poetic line delivered by the Dalek to the Doctor that ‘You are the best Dalek’ because of the anger inside of him gives us perhaps the greatest glimpse into how this Doctor will operate. This accompanied by lines earlier in the episode such as ‘She cares, so I don’t have to‘ (about Clara) and him asking the question of Clara ‘Am I a good man?‘ demonstrates the deeper level of conflict and darkness that Capaldi is going to bring to the table.
There are also hints about future conflict with the Doctor and Danny Pink. The Doctor wouldn’t allow one of the soldiers to join them because she was, well, a soldier. We also find out in the school scenes in the intro and outro that this Danny Pink fella is ex-army and seems to have some regret about things he has done. This will likely bring up some interesting dynamics later in the series which I very much look forward to.

 

The episode ticks along quickly, and felt strangely rushed at times, almost as if scenes had been cut out abruptly which was very odd indeed. The pacing did feel slightly off, but not as much as other critics have said all over the internet. It was a solid enough story, and was one of the better Dalek stories in recent years. Was it brilliant? No, but I wasn’t expecting it to be. It was enjoyable enough and set up some interesting plot lines to go forward with and it feels now that Capaldi is in full swing.
There was a very short scene in this with ‘Missy’ towards the end. Once again it continued to add intrigue to her character and hints at what she might become. It would be pretty awesome if she was ‘The Black Guardian’ or ‘The Master’ or something along those lines, but I doubt this will be the case.

Next week’s outing is the ‘Robots of Sherwood’ episode tackling the classic tale of Robin Hood which looks like it will be a hoot, so I am looking forward to that. This week’s episode was good, an improvement on last week, but nothing special.
By David Roberts