Doctor Who (2005) 8-02: Into the Dalek

Episode:

802

|

Serial:

243

|

Writer:

Phil Ford and Steven Moffat

|

Director:

Ben Wheatley

|

Air Date:

30-Aug-2014

---

This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I already wrote the Ninth Doctor story Dalek and now I'm jumping forward exactly 100 episodes to write about the Twelfth Doctor story Into the Dalek. Not to be confused with Star Trek Into Darkness, which came out a year earlier and contains zero Daleks.

This is the second episode of the Twelfth Doctor's first series, coming right after Deep Breath, and the two stories were filmed by the same director, Ben Wheatley. He's more of a movie director than a TV director, specialising in horror, so he wasn't the worst choice for the job.

Phil Ford was the head writer on spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures for most of its run and wrote 11 stories, but he only ever wrote two episodes of Doctor Who: this and The Waters of Mars. Incidentally this is the first episode since Waters of Mars to have two writers credited under the title, though it became more common after this. I mean it was never uncommon to have two people working on the script, because the showrunner often did an uncredited rewrite, but after this point there's a lot of 'and Steven Moffat' or 'and Chris Chibnall'. I think part of the reason for this is that putting a bigger name on the script can entice bigger name actors.

Okay, I will be going through this episode scene by scene, sharing my thoughts and observations as I go. So if you want SPOILERS for this and earlier stories, keep reading.

---

The episode begins with a flashy visual effects shot of a space fighter swooping around a CGI asteroid field, which I suppose is an early hint that this story might be taking place in the future.

Hey I know that pilot, she's the villain in The Marvels! Doctor Who has a habit of hiring young actors who are on their way to becoming movie stars, so if you go back to an episode you saw 10 years ago there may be some familiar faces you wouldn't have recognised at the time.

The character's not doing all that great at the moment as her co-pilot Kai's looking a bit dead and she's being shot at by a menacing flying saucer.

The space fighter is revealed to be Wasp Delta and the larger ship is revealed to be the Daleks. The episode even cuts inside to so we can see one yell "EXTERMINATE!" But you've seen a Dalek before, you don't need me to waste a screencap on that.

It's not really a fair fight and the tiny ship soon explodes. Fortunately the Doctor's gotten really good at materialising the TARDIS around people at the last second.

The rescued pilot is more confused and concerned than she is grateful and the first thing she does is pull a gun on her rescuer. This turns out to be a mistake, as she's been rescued by one of the more acerbic incarnations of the rebel Time Lord, and it doesn't seem like he's even trying to put her at ease.

She's understandably distraught as her brother just died, but the Doctor points out that his sister survived. Then he tells her to put the gun down as she might shoot him and then she'll eventually starve to death in here.

I don't know which writer wrote what lines, but this dialogue feels very Steven Moffat and it turns out all that time Peter Capaldi spent on The Thick of It was good practice for this darker Doctor. I'm watching this right after the episodes Dalek and The Well and the change in style is pretty jarring. This is the kind of writing that got me into Doctor Who in the first place though, so I'm here for it.

The Doctor's currently travelling on his own without a companion, and episodes like The Waters of Mars and A Town Called Mercy have shown that tends to have a negative effect on the calibration of his moral compass. That said, he's actively looking for distress calls here, not just wandering into trouble and helping out while he's there.

Turns out that the pilot he rescued is Lieutenant Journey Blue of the Combined Galactic Resistance and she demands to be taken back to her ship, the Aristotle. The Doctor's really not impressed with her attempts to intimidate him, and after a bit of encouragement she finally drops the gun and asks him nicely.

He must have already had the coordinates entered in, as all he does is pull the lever and they're there. He's much more professional with his TARDIS piloting than the last few Doctors, as there's no frantic messing around with buttons as the room shakes.

Journey's a bit confused at the TARDIS being smaller on the outside and he assures her it's more exciting the other way around.

I like how this shot looks like it was done on one of those LED walls and if this was the Mandalorian I'd say that it's actually a bit obvious, but nope the technology wasn't around yet so it's got to be old school green screen compositing. Either that or they filmed it in a real spaceship hangar.

The Doctor figures out that the place is actually a hospital ship, but he's not quite right. They don't need hospitals anymore, as no one ever comes back from a fight with the Daleks wounded. (I guess no one ever gets sick by other means either, as they're too busy with all the Dalek fighting.)

Wow, I didn't realise how tall she was.

The Doctor's met by someone as blunt as he is: the ship's completely deadpan unemotional unsentimental commander, played by a guy called Michael Smiley. Colonel Blue tells the Doctor that he's grateful that he saved Journey, but they're still going to kill him. I wanted to see how the Doctor got out of this, but Journey intervenes, telling her uncle that he's a doctor... and they have a patient.

We get a surprising amount of anti-military comments from the Doctor here. I mean sure he's rarely been a fan of people with uniforms and guns, but he seems to have dialled it up a notch from previous regenerations. I guess the way that these guys keep pointing the guns at him and threatening to kill him may be influencing his opinion.

And the patient turns out to be a Dalek! Which is a bit awkward seeing as the Doctor only just got done with wiping out all the Daleks threatening Trenzalore a few days ago.

This isn't quite as dramatic as the reveal of the Dalek chained up in Dalek, but it's alright. The Doctor's fear isn't quite as dramatic as Nine's was in that episode either, though it's clear he's definitely not keen on any of this. It's the same guy driving the prop by the way, Barnaby Edwards, and Nicholas Briggs is still doing the voice.

Blue's team have a fantastic plan to miniaturise him and send him on a voyage inside their captive Dalek. Okay they don't say the word 'voyage' but the Doctor does say it'd be a fantastic idea for a movie.

OPENING CREDITS

Oh no, I forgot that Danny Pink was in this series. I've got nothing against the actor, or even the character really, I just don't remember being a fan of his storyline.

He's a teacher at Cole Hill (the school from An Unearthly Child, Remembrance of the Daleks and Day of the Doctor), which in this case is being played by Holton Primary School. So all that stuff on the walls may actually be real.

There Danny has a couple of scenes before he gets to his classroom, but this scene in particular establishes who he is: a former soldier who doesn't appreciate it when students keep asking things like "Have you ever killed anyone who wasn't a soldier?" He doesn't give an answer, but the tear in his eye is a bit of a clue.

Afterwards Danny's introduced to Clara, who teaches at the same school. It's almost like this is his story and she's a character in it, especially as we know something about him she doesn't. So when she says the line "Ah, you shoot people then cry about it afterwards?" we can understand his reaction. Not that it takes much context to understand why a vet might be a bit upset by that. Why would you even say that Clara?

He's surprised that the kids told people and she has to quickly assure him that no one told her anything and she's completely clueless. She was just trying to be funny.

Then the episode gets a bit chronologically untethered as Danny beats himself up for being an idiot before we see him turn down Clara's offer to go to a thing tonight. The actor really did beat himself up as well, smacking his head on the desk repeatedly.

I like the idea of trying new things with writing and direction like this, but it doesn't really work here for me. Flashing back to the scene of him turning down the offer (twice) is unncessary as the aftermath says it all. Fortunately Clara overheard him wishing that he said yes, which I guess counts as a yes.

Clara leaves Danny's plot and walks into a supply cupboard to find two coffees waiting for her. How the Doctor knew to be here waiting for her is never explained, as she clearly hadn't planned it with him.

Though she did plan for him to go get them some coffee at the end of the last episode. Three weeks ago. In Glasgow. I don't even get how this happened, as the two of them walked down the street to get coffee together. Still, it could've been worse.

2-03 - School Reunion

When he accidentally dropped Sarah Jane Smith off in Aberdeen it was 20-something years before she walked into a school storeroom and saw the TARDIS again.

Hang on, why did Colonel Blue let him leave the Aristotle alone? I thought the ship was supposed to be so secret that it was only his training as a doctor that was keeping them from killing him immediately. Actually never mind that, I want to talk about this supply room set instead.

Every now and then they'll build a set outside the TARDIS's door so the actors can walk straight into the console room in one unbroken shot, and they've done a pretty good job of that in this epsidoe. Aside from the fact that it's impossible for the TARDIS to be flush against a wall, as the base and 'Police Box' sign stick out.

See, they should've faked a bit of a gap somehow. And was that whole side of the room empty, or are they going to have to step around a bunch of filing cabinets and shelves that he materialised around. (Incidentally, it also bothers me a little that the Doctor shoves the TARDIS door open with his foot. It's very disrespectful!)

Once they're in the console room they have a weird conversation and I'm not entirely sure how to read it.

The Doctor: You were smiling at nothing. I'd almost say you were in love, but to be honest you're not a young woman any more.
Clara: Yes, I am.
The Doctor: Well, you don't look it.
Clara: I do look it. 
The Doctor: Oh, that's right, keep your spirits up.

If I look at it one way the two of them are doing fun jokey banter, if I look at it from a slightly different angle he's pulling a Strax and being a clueless alien, and she's just putting up with him.

To be fair the Doctor seems a little confused as well, as he suddenly gets very serious and asks Clara to tell him if he's a good man.

One of the problems I have with this is that we don't get any clue to why the Doctor's asking this now (we get a little clue later but it's rubbish). He doesn't say "Am I good man or am I spending every waking minute of my life saving people out of habit?" or "Am I good man even though I just insulted my best friend for no reason?" or whatever. I'm also a bit disappointed that her answer is just "I don't know". No elaboration there. No conversation there at all really.

Is he asking if his current regeneration is a good man? Can he provide any examples of things he's done that weren't good? I need more information!

He asks her to come with him because he needs her and they go off "Into darkness". Hey, that's the name of that Star Trek movie!

Then we get another slightly unnecessary flashback, this one full of exposition about the sick Dalek on the Aristotle. They found an inactive Dalek in space so they decided to recover it and take it apart, not realising there was a living creature in there that was going to start screaming at them.

What it's screaming is the interesting part though. Mostly things like "All Daleks must die!" and "DESTROY THE DALEKS!"

Back in the present day (relatively speaking), Clara calls the Doctor out on his uncharacteristic inflexibility in believing that it's impossible for there to be a good Dalek, and he concedes that she's right by offering her a raise. Actually he asks if he pays her first and she replies that he's one of her hobbies. The banter's getting better now, I like this dialogue. It's the kind of stuff that Doctor Who left me craving all through the Chris Chibnall era.

The funny thing is, the Doctor already met a good Dalek in Asylum of the Daleks and it was her. Or her time splinter at least. She knows that she saved him there, but he never mentioned the 'turned into a Dalek' part of the story.

The banter continues onto the Aristotle, as the Doctor introduces Clara to 'gun girl' and her uncle. Or at least he thinks he's her uncle; he might have just made that up out of boredom (he is her uncle, I had to go back and check). Clara tells them she's the Doctor's carer, and he explains this means that she cares so he doesn't have to. So far he's not scoring a lot of 'good man' points.

He's going to help heal the Dalek though, because he finds the idea of a Dalek so damaged that it's turned good fascinating. Seems to me that if morality is part of its malfunction maybe it's better not to mend it, but then I'm not a mechanic.

So the Doctor, Clara, and a trio of soldiers (including Journey) get miniaturised to be inserted into the Dalek through its eye stalk. Which is a bit weird. Fortunately none of them pop during the process.

This isn't the first time the Doctor's been miniaturised, in fact it happened way back in the Hartnell era in Planet of Giants. They actually did it properly with giant-sized sets as well, it was great. Then a replica of the Fourth Doctor got shrunk to enter his own brain in The Invisible Enemy, and the Eleventh Doctor got shrunk to enter a replica of himself in The Wedding of River Song. Oh plus there was Carnival of Monsters and The Armageddon Factor. This the first time that he's ever been inside a Dalek though.

Doctor Who (1963) 2-27 - The Space Museum, Part 2

I mean it's the first time he's been shrunk down and then put into a Dalek.

By the way, I've said this before but I really appreciate how the iconic 'pepper pot with a plunger' look of the Daleks has remained basically unchanged all this time. There have been plenty of different variations built over the years, but when I look at this in 2025 I see a Dalek prop that someone made in the '60s on a budget.

It turns out that the front of the eye stalk isn't a solid lens, it's some kind of liquid that the team can travel through. In wibbly slow motion.

Once they're through the Doctor welcomes them to the most dangerous place in the universe. Every other location the Doctor has or will ever visit is less dangerous than this. Unless he's exaggerating. He also indulges in a bit of hyperbole while describing the systems they're seeing inside, introducing the cortex vault as being the the worst possible thing in the universe.

The cortex vault is basically a computer inside the Dalek's casing that helps keep the Dalek mutant inside from ever developing a trace of anything that could ever be considered good. So I guess it must have been malfunctioning in the episode Dalek. There's nothing wrong with the cortex vault here though, it's not where the damage is.

We've know from the start that Daleks are living beings inside of mechanical shells, but the Doctor complicates things a little here by explaining the the shell is like a living being too, with antibodies to fight off infection. Even though Rusty wants their help it can't control its immune system (the Doctor has started calling the Dalek 'Rusty', after former current showrunner Russell T Davies.)

The immune system becomes a problem when Ross here causes some damage of his own by firing a grappling hook, and gets swarmed by malevolent spheres. The Doctor throws something over and tells him to swallow it, implying that it'll save him from being disintegrated. It turns out that he just wanted to track where the body ended up.

This is another glimpse of Twelve's coldly pragmatic side, like when he abandoned Clara for a bit in Deep Breath, and I'm not sure this earned him any 'good man' points.

Though it does show him where to find organic refuge disposal, which is where Ross's remains were sent. He knows that the antibodies won't stop until the infection in here, so saving them a job is the only way to escape them. If he hadn't tricked Ross into swallowing the tracker they may not have made it in time.

They used a pretty low-tech trick to film the scene of them going down the chute, but it looks decent enough. The tube was built horizontally and the actors were basically pulled through on a skateboard.

So now all the actors are covered in goop. 

The Doctor says another tactless line but Journey's a bit tired of his disrespect while her friends keep dying and shoves him against a wall. He pretty much had it coming, he's a bit of a dick in this one.

Then we get a rare scene of the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver to unscrew something, as he removes a bolt so they can escape through the hole. He calls it a 'bolt hole' and is disappointed when it seems like no one got his pun. I definitely didn't get the pun, I've no idea what the joke is here.

Okay I've looked it up and it turns out that a bolt-hole is a place where you can go to escape and find refuge.

While tiny team are making their way through Rusty the Dalek, the regular-sized soldiers outside are following their progress on a monitor. It's the closest you'll get to an official cross-section of a Dalek, and it's probably contradicted by every other episode that shows the casing open. That's fine though, no one said that the casing design had to conform to their extreme standards of purity.

The team crawls through a hot decontamination tube which helpfully dries their clothes.

I can never resist stitching together screencaps when the camera tilts to show the scenery like this. Hey maybe I should do this with my video game screens as well! I can tilt a game camera just fine myself.

Speaking of games, sometimes there'll be a moment when I'm exploring a place and I suddenly hear that distinctive crackling sound. The one that lets me know that I've been carrying a Geiger counter around with me all this time without realising. The Doctor's having a moment like that now, so now they've got radiation to add to their list of problems.

Rusty himself watches on a screen as the Doctor tracks down the source of the radiation leak. Turns out that it can hear the Doctor as well, and the two have a conversation about where its extreme anti-Dalek views came from. Turns out that Rusty saw the birth of a star and had an epiphany. The Daleks destroy stars all the time, millions of them, but they just keep getting born, so life will always win against them. Resistance is futile. (Doctor Who's allowed to use that phrase because they had it before Star Trek did).

The Doctor finally finds the crack in Rusty's power cell and welds it with his sonic screwdriver. I kind of wish one of the soldiers had done it with some futuristic welding gear so the sonic isn't too overpowered, but it wouldn't have made any difference really.

By the way, they really put the effort in when they were making this set, especially considering how briefly we see it, but it looks more like the inside of a '60s prop than a high-tech alien war machine. Funny thing is, some of this was actually filmed inside a power station. 

Well the good news is that the malfunction has been successfully corrected.

The bad news is that Rusty's gone back to being a bad Dalek and is now going on a killing spree through the Aristotle. We're getting a ton of proper x-ray shots here with the victim's skeleton being visible. They apparently found a cheaper way of doing the effect so they were able to cut loose a bit. Plus they had a pyro gun to shoot sparks at the Dalek shell, so they got to have bullet impacts too.

Journey is a bit pissed off about this turn of events, yelling at the Doctor that he was supposed to be helping them. The Doctor's not particularly surprised by how things worked out however, as he knew that Daleks were irreversibly evil from the start.

So Clara comes over and gives him a slap to teach him a lesson. Man, her students must be terrified of her.

She asks him to rethink what they've just learned here and now it's his turn to be confused for a bit until finally getting it. That means we get a callback to the 'do I pay you?' joke from earlier.

Journey's been ordered by her uncle to destroy Rusty from the inside (at the cost of her own life) but the Doctor talks her out of it by pointing out that Daleks will always be better soldiers than them, so they can't win using their methods. Journey could've been a bit of a frustrating character with how she's always arguing with the Doctor about everything, but she's actually pretty reasonable.

Rusty's called that Dalek saucer over and given away the Aristotle's hiding place, so the ship's in a bit of trouble here. Especially as it's locked them out of their defences.

We get a shot of all the Daleks inside, with the Dalek captain looking like it's holding a press conference.

If you stare at the shot too long it's theoretically possible to tell that they actually used models instead of full-sized props. At least that's what the director claims, I'm not 100% sure I believe them. (Okay the depth of field is a bit of a giveaway).

Inside Rusty, the Doctor explains that the radiation affected the Dalek's brain, allowing it to expand its consciousness. The effect didn't stick, but the epiphany was recorded by the cortex vault. They just have to give it the memory back... and he's volunteering Clara for the job!

She's got to go back up there, figure out the technology, find that file and restore it. Personally I think this is more of a 'Doctor' job. You don't send the audience surrogate figure to do a job no one in the audience could ever work out. The Doctor can't even talk her through the process because he doesn't have a clue!

The situation on the Aristotle has gone from 'really bad' to 'they're totally screwed' as the Daleks breach the airlock with one of those shots of doors bouncing around in an explosion. They roll in through smoke, yelling their iconic catchphrase: "SEEK, LOCATE, DESTROY!" 

To carry out the Doctor's plan Clara needs to get back up to the cortex vault in a hurry, but there's there's nothing that'll get them there quick enough except their grappling gun and using that will get the antibodies after them.

The other soldier has two questions, is the Doctor right and is this worth it? The Doctor tells her that if he can turn one Dalek he can turn them all and save the future. I kind of hate this line to be honest, because turning this one Dalek will require some pretty unusual circumstances that will not be repeated. It feels like he's just lying to her, which wouldn't be entirely out of character to be fair.

But the soldier believes him and announces her full name to be "Gretchen Alison Carlisle". She wants the heroes to do something good and name it after her. Sadly knowing Twelve there's no chance he's actually going to do that. She didn't even get her full name in the end credits, as she's listed as just "Gretchen".

So Journey and Clara ascend on the cable, while Gretchen stays behind to face the Dalek orbs and die like a big damn hero.

But then Gretchen becomes the second person this episode to find themselves in an unfamiliar place after their apparent death. And there's a mysterious person in black here as well.

This scene was filmed by Rachel Talalay by the way, and neither Phil Ford or Ben Wheatley had anything to do with it. We got another scene like it at the end of Deep Breath, so this is series 8's recurring arc mystery and it seems like this woman greets dead people quite frequently. There definitely seems to be enough cake for a large group.

She's so mysterious that the actor doesn't even appear in the end credits, but she does tell us her name this time. It's Missy.

The Daleks are still yelling "SEEK, LOCATE, DESTROY!" and occasionally "ADVANCE, SEEK, LOCATE!" and their assault on the Aristotle looks fairly awesome. I'm not surprised Peter Capaldi showed up on set early just to watch it being filmed. It was filmed on a military base, by the way, so that's appropriate.

There's explosions everywhere. The troops even manage to blow up a Dalek, which explodes into goo, but they're being overwhelmed here.

Meanwhile the Doctor's made his way up to Rusty himself, which is pretty impressive considering that he didn't ride the cable up with Journey and Clara. He also seems a lot taller now, though that might just be because of the perspective.

Clara finds a bank of lights which aren't lit like the others on the wall and assumes it must indicate suppressed memories. That's a bit of a huge assumption, but all she can do is pull a panel out and climb inside the cortex vault to look for an 'on' switch.

I'm not really a fan of how this is getting resolved, but that might just be because I've had to recover lot files from my computer a few times, and I'm absolutely certain that being miniaturised and crawling inside the case wouldn't have helped the process. Mostly certain.

Anyway it works and as a bonus it reboots the hardware, resetting the antibodies before they can kill Journey. So that was convenient.

It's around this point that the Doctor gives us the only explanation I can find for why he asked Clara if he's a good man.

The Doctor tells Rusty that visiting his homeworld of Skaro back in the Daleks' very first serial taught him who he was: the Doctor is not the Daleks. So if a good Dalek is possible, what does that make him? I'm not really keen on this bit of the episode, especially as I've seen the story he's talking about and I didn't get the impression it was a major turning point for his character.

Anyway the Doctor does a thing with some cables, setting up a mind meld with Rusty. The plan is to let the Dalek see the universe like he does and realise that's it's beautiful. Rusty looks into his soul and and actually does find beauty... in the divine perfection of his hatred. The Doctor hates the Daleks so damn much that even a creature with an evil hate computer attached to it who was bio-engineered by the most hateful person in the universe for the sole purpose of hating can't help but be impressed. In fact it's basically having a religious conversion right now.

The Doctor's a bit shaken by this, that this is all the Dalek could see in his soul. But it got the job done.

Rusty drives around the Aristotle on a killing spree, taking the Daleks by surprise and blowing them to pieces in a beautiful slow-motion shower of sparks. This has to be the best episode in all of Doctor Who for Dalek explosions. Well, except for maybe Remembrance of the Daleks.

With the job done the three surviving heroes are able to escape and return to full size. Off-screen. Fortunately none of them pop this time either.

So now they've got a semi-friendly Dalek on their side! It's killed every Dalek on the Aristotle and convinced the others to retreat by telling them the ship's about to self-destruct. The Doctor's a bit depressed that he couldn't really get through to it though. Rusty's still obsessed with extermination, it just wants to exterminate the other side now. It's a bit like Dalek Caan, who saw the truth of the Daleks and decreed 'no more'... hey there's another 'good Dalek' candidate for you.

The Doctor tells Rusty that this isn't the victory he wanted. He wanted to turn him into a good Dalek. Rusty tells him that he is a good Dalek, then basically drops the mic and leaves.

It's probably not a coincidence that the Dalek in Dalek said something very similar. Though this time the meaning is a little more ambiguous. Instead of 'you are good at being a Dalek' it could be 'you are like a Dalek who does good'. Either way he has a powerful amount of hate in him.

The leaked workprint of the episode revealed that Rusty was originally going to self-destruct and take the Dalek mothership with it, tying up the loose end of a helpful Dalek in the exact same way as the episode Dalek. But in the final episode Rusty lives!

Rusty heads to its next adventure, keeping its eye stalk facing towards the Doctor as it turns and drives off. It's still got its wig on though, so we'll be able to tell it apart from other Daleks if it ever shows up again.

Journey rushes over to catch the heroes before they leave because she wants to join them! It's a bit unexpected, seeing as they haven't exactly bonded during this adventure, but it's a nice ending to her arc. Though the Doctor won't let her come along because she's a soldier!

I think we're really meant to sympathise with Journey, as she's a heroic anti-Dalek resistance fighter who saved the Doctor's life at the start and listened to his advice at the end. This feels like a bad choice. In fact it kind of sucks for us that we're not getting her as a companion. Having a Kyle Reese on the team for a while would've been so much more interesting than what's going on with Clara and Danny. To me anyway, I'm sure lots of people prefer Pink to Blue..

Inside the TARDIS Clara tells the Doctor that she still doesn't know if he's good or not, but she thinks he's trying.

The TARDIS has been parked back in the cupboard again, exactly where it was in that other screencap earlier. Except not really, as the last time the supply cupboard was a set connected to the console room, and this time it's a room inside the school they were filming in. I love magic tricks like this.

Clara runs into Danny in the corridor (getting the door closed in time before he can spot the blue box) and he double checks that she really wants to have a drink with him, as he thought she might have a rule against soldiers. She says that she doesn't, but the way she says it makes it's clear she's thinking about how her time-travelling friend is not going to approve. 

Hang on, Danny's a soldier that retired to teach maths, that's exactly what the Brig did! I'm sure they'll get on fine.


CONCLUSION

---

Into the Dalek is about two things: morality and soldiers. And Daleks I guess.

The Doctor having doubts about whether he's a good man isn't a bad idea, especially as in some ways Twelve seems to be an attempt to do the Sixth Doctor's 'jerk to hero' character arc properly, but it really seems to come out of nowhere here. I guess it's supposed to be because the concept of a good Dalek is messing with his concept of who he is, but that whole idea is built on shaky ground. On the plus side the episode does continually test his morality and doesn't make it obvious if he made the right choice or not. Like was he right to pragmatically prioritise saving the group from the antibodies instead of trying to save Ross? Okay I suppose it's obvious that he shouldn't have been a dick to everyone the whole time, but that's what makes him so watchable so he can just carry on doing that.

I think the only thing that stands out to me as a bad decision was when he wouldn't let Journey Blue come as a new companion just because she's a soldier. Sure he needs his companions to help him with his moral compass, not go around killing people, but warrior companions are great! Jamie, The Brig, Leela, Ace. I guess Jack counts too.

The Doctor has rarely been 100% keen on soldiers, which is something they used in the UNIT era to give him some conflict with the Brig. Here though it seems like they're dialling his dislike up to 11 all of a sudden just to set up the arc with Danny Pink. I don't think there's really an anti-soldier message here in the episode; we're not necessarily supposed to be on the Doctor's side in this case. Sure Journey threatens him at gun point right after he rescues her and her uncle decides to kill him when he brings her home, but they're a resistance group fighting the hatesquids to save humanity so they are not really the bad guys in this situation. Plus Gretchen was a damn hero.

Though despite the episode's issues I was actually really onboard with this one... right until the point where the Doctor and Clara split up to put their plan into action. I don't like it when the characters rely on just trying stuff and hoping for the best, especially when it involves crawling around in a device they don't understand. Or worse, a device that contradicts my understanding. I definitely couldn't undelete some data on my PC by crawling on the SATA cables. And the Doctor's plan to share his own memories seemed to come out of nowhere and wasn't well explained. He just touches some cables together and that gives him a psychic link?

But I did like that the solution fit the established working of the Dalek: instead of fighting its nature by showing that wiping out life is impossible, he inadvertently showed it a purer form of hate. The Doctor hates the Daleks so much that he basically gave a Dalek a religious epiphany. And we got a friendly Dalek out of it! Rusty's still around, unlike every other Dalek that has turned good. That's about as close to a meaningful change to the Dalek status quo as you can get in this series.


RATING

---

I just gave beloved classic Dalek a score of 8/10 because it had multiple goals and achieved them all. It introduced the Daleks for new viewers, it made them into a threat again after years of them showing up in comedy skits, and it examined the Doctor's Time War trauma. Into the Dalek is far less successful at getting into the Doctor's head. But the dialogue has the wit of a Steven Moffat script and for me that goes a long way toward making up for its flaws. Plus it tried to do something new and it's got some nice slow-motion explosions.

So Into the Dalek gets... another 8/10.

---

NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm travelling to the modern era and writing about the brand new episode Lucky Day!

What are your thoughts about Into the Dalek? Have they changed since you've gotten used to Peter Capaldi's take on the Doctor?