Doctor Perseus Reviews: "Into the Dalek" *SPOILERS* · 3:25am Aug 31st, 2014
In this week's episode of Doctor Who, the Doctor finds himself on a rebel space station and facing the task of helping a Dalek that has turned good. He, Clara, and a small team of soldiers are shrunken down and placed inside the Dalek in order to determine what has turned it good. As they journey deeper and deeper into the Dalek, the Doctor himself starts to face the question if he is truly a good man...
I'll be honest and say that this was far from one of my most anticipated episodes this season. Mostly because, to me, the Daleks have become fairly stale in recent years. And while this episode wasn't able to make them my all-time favorite Doctor Who villains, it definitely succeeded in taking a fresh and quite interesting look at the Doctor's greatest foes.
As expected, Peter Capaldi continues to shine as the Twelfth Doctor. While his main personality is still somewhat in a stage of flux, his Doctor is incredibly enjoyable to watch. His sarcasm, unpredictability, cold logic, and occasional detachment from human reactions make him an incredibly funny, intense, and intimidating Doctor. My favorite line from him in the episode has to be: "Yeah, my carer. She cares so I don't have to." I was glad to finally see the highly advertised "am I a good man" scene in full and I enjoyed seeing this theme play out in the background throughout the episode. I also especially liked Clara's response to him at the very end with her saying that she honestly isn't sure if he's a good man or not but maybe that's the point of the whole thing. And speaking of Clara, she was great in this episode too. While she didn't have as much to do as she did in Deep Breath, she still had several great moments with Capaldi's Doctor (the "am I a good man" scene and the bit with her slapping him in the face are two examples) and I was happy to see more into her life as a teacher at Coal Hill School (more on that later).
The Daleks in this episode, for the most part, were how I expected to see them. Shouting EXTERMINATE and rolling along. However, it's the main Dalek in this episode that provides the fresh twist in order to make this episode interesting. It was definitely interesting to see our heroes shrunken down Fantastic Voyage style (which got a nice reference in this episode BTW) and go inside the Dalek. I liked seeing the main Dalek compartment in the armor from a smaller perspective and the antibodies acted as fitting obstacles for the Doctor and his team to face. But the most interesting thing was seeing how Dalek morality works and seeing how it can be altered. The scene where the Doctor and Rusty (cute name, Doctor) shared minds was definitely the highlight. We saw the Doctor begin to show Rusty the beauty of the universe through the Doctor's eyes only for Rusty to be turned back into a killer (but against his own kind) in response to being exposed to the hatred the Doctor has for the Daleks. The final scene between the Doctor and Rusty was an odd mix of emptiness and uncertainty. The idea of a good Dalek that doesn't need to destroy anything appears to be seen as mostly impossible; and the moment where Rusty said the Doctor was a good Dalek while he wasn't was a chilling callback to the moment in Dalek where the Dalek in that episode called the Ninth Doctor a good Dalek.
The supporting cast in this episode, for the most part, was pretty forgettable. The soldiers were simply targets for the Daleks to hit and Colonel Morgan Blue was pretty much your standard colonel character. The only standout supporting characters were Journey Blue and Danny Pink. The actress who played Journey did a good job and I enjoyed seeing her working alongside the Doctor and Clara. Her final scene with the Doctor felt like an emotional slap in the face for her character...but in a fitting way. It's been a running theme throughout New Who for the Doctor to have something against soldiers (obviously due to his experiences in the Time War) and his refusal to take Journey with him was a fitting continuation of this motif. And speaking of soldiers, let's discuss Danny Pink. Though he hasn't been on screen for long yet, I've already taken a liking to his character. His status of being a veteran from the war in Afghanistan adds an extra layer to his character and the scene with him shedding a tear in class after being asked by one of his students (who was kind of a dick, let's be honest) if he had killed any civilians was pretty moving. He and Clara's conversations were enjoyably awkward and I'm looking forward to seeing more of him throughout the rest of Series 8.
Now some other little things to note. It was a nice surprise to see the mysterious Missy and her enigmatic Heaven again via the death of Gretchen the soldier. But while I liked the scene, I hope this doesn't become a running thing throughout Series 8 with us seeing someone die in each episode and then seeing a small snippet of them appearing in Missy's "Heaven". If this happens in only a few episodes, then I'll be fine. I just hope this won't be an every episode occurrence. Also, I'll admit that I was a bit surprised to see the Doctor so casually sacrifice the life of Ross the soldier. It really goes to show just how unpredictable and dark this new Doctor can be. But, to the Doctor's credit, Ross appeared to be doomed either way due to the antibodies. But, still, that was a pretty dark moment.
I liked seeing the Doctor talking about his first encounter with the Daleks as the First Doctor and how it was because of that encounter that the name of the Doctor became more than just an alias. Also, something I forgot to mention in my review of Deep Breath was how I found the pacing in that episode to be perfect and this episode is no different. Despite this episode not being gifted with the 76-minute run time Deep Breath was fortunate to get, this episode had great pacing and never felt like it was moving too slow or too fast. It's nice to have well-paced episodes as one of my gripes of Series 7 (which I still really liked BTW) was that several of the episodes were badly paced. Also, just like with Deep Breath, I really liked the humor in this episode. My favorite bits had to be when Clara commented on both Journey and Danny having color-based surnames and when Clara said that the Doctor would save her, Journey, and Gretchen but they'd just have to resist killing him before he did. I also loved how the Doctor had left Clara in Glasgow Sarah Jane Smith-style and brought her coffee three weeks later. Oh, Doctor.
So, overall, Into the Dalek was an interesting and enjoyable episode. While the supporting cast was mostly forgettable and most of the Daleks held few surprises, the episode gave a fresh and interesting look into the morality of the Daleks and acted as a fun, clever tribute to Fantastic Voyage (it's about time Doctor Who got around to doing an episode like this because everybody's parodied that movie by this point). Next week's episode is Robot of Sherwood!
Yeah, the kids at the Coal Hill School are dicks.
I liked this Doctor Who episode as well. I reminded me a bit of the Season 1 episode "Dalek". (Though I did not remember that the Dalek in that episode also called the Ninth Doctor a good Dalek.)
I've always liked Daleks. I kind of felt that it would have been kind of weird if the Doctor had succeeded and convinced the Dalek to be good. I thought it was quite fitting for the Dalek to end up hating and exterminating Daleks because it saw how much the Doctor hates Daleks. There is just no convincing Daleks to be otherwise. They're just these little cans of hate. Was it me, or did the Daleks here appear closer to their original design than that color-coded thing they had going on in the Eleventh Doctor's era?
As for Danny Pink, I also feel he has a lot of potential. I look forward to seeing what goes on with him in subsequent episodes.
2415496
Here's the clip.
2415586 Oh now I remember. And he said that Dalek would get "Rusty" too.
2415592
I just realized that too! Man, there were more references in this episode than I realized!
2415496 They've been using the Russel T. Davies "bronze Dalek" design almost exclusively since after "The Wedding of River Song", save the few red and blue ones in "Asylum of the Daleks".
Also, Series 8 seems to be redoing a few Classic Who story concepts.
-Shrinking down to go inside of something/someone: "Into the Dalek"? Try "The Invisible Enemy".
-Robots in a sword-and-arrows environment: "Robots of Sherwood"? See "The Androids of Tara".
And there might be a few more still to come.