| Episode: | 869 | | | Writer: | Chris Chibnall | | | Director: | Annetta Laufer | | | Air Date: | 01-Jan-2022 |
This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm watching Doctor Who again! This time it's the 2022 New Year's Day special: Eve of the Daleks, and it's a time loop tale! I hope no one considers that to be a spoiler, it wasn't meant to be. I'm going to be mentioning a lot of time loop episodes in all kinds of TV series so if that's an issue for you should skip the next paragraph and then also the rest of the review. Sorry.
Some of the best episodes in science fiction have been time loop stories. Supernatural's Mystery Spot, Stargate: SG-1's Window of Opportunity, Red Dwarf's White Hole. Oh and there's Groundhog Day, obviously. So this has a good chance of being something kind of special.
It's also the third New Year's Eve Dalek story in a row, so that's become a bit of a tradition. I feel like it might be the last of them, seeing as Russell T. Davies is coming back next year and he introduced Christmas specials, but you never know, maybe it'll stick. We could even have a Merry Cyberman Christmas, a Happy Dalek New Year and a Master Easter special all in the same year!
I'll be going through the whole episode scene by scene writing my thoughts down under screencaps, same as usual, so beware of SPOILERS.
The episode begins with a car pulling up to Elf Storage, a massive self-storage facility with a nice lighting thing going on where every floor has different coloured lights. Probably nothing do to with storing actual Elves, even though this is pretty close to Christmas.
Inside we meet Sarah, who's currently on the phone leaving a message to her employee Jeff, who has disappeared and left her working at midnight on New Year's Eve. Again. She's not happy.
- Nick turns up this same ridiculous time every New Year's.
- She really hates her business.
- The building's dilapidated.
- She's not doing well for money.
- Her rival's situated right across the street.
- She had other plans for tonight.
But the episode doesn't need words to let us in on the secret that he has a thing for her. The awkwardness says it all. That, and also the fact that he keeps asking her questions as an excuse to talk longer. He even has her list all the items that can be stored here, which she does from memory. The punchline being that he only brought a game of Monopoly. She's not amused.
Turns out she's going to use the 'restore Tardis' button and basically turn it off and on again, so that's maybe a bit of a let-down. While that's going on they're going to relax on a sentient beach, maybe play some chess with the fish.
They will have to run out of the room really quick before it resets though, so there's some danger there.
They all rush out to the beach as the room is torn apart around them. Of course she could've just had Dan and Yaz wait outside when she hit the switch, but that would've spoiled the reveal that they've actually landed in a self-storage facility on Earth in 2021.
The Doctor uses her screwdriver to determine that they're stranded in Manchester, on New Year's Eve, a couple of weeks in Dan's future I guess. She can see the bright side though: it's not hard to find a party on New Year's Eve.
He goes out into the hallway and comes face to eyestalk with a Dalek! The bronze 2005 Russell T. Davies-era model Dalek that everyone likes.
Downstairs Sarah gets a call from her mother, just wishing her a Happy New Year. Even though she's a few minutes early.
Sarah's a bit frustrated that her mother won't just call her at midnight, because of her slightly outdated worry that the lines will be jammed, but then Sarah's frustrated by everything today. She just wants to be at a party, drinking, not be stuck at work getting a speech from her mother about how New Year's Eve is a good time to meet a guy.
So the chances of Nick and Sarah getting together at the end have just doubled after that line. Yes I know he's dead. The Doctor and crew know too as they've just found the body. The Dalek's gone down to reception in the lift, and Sarah thinks it's Nick at first. "I am not Nick," replies Nick Briggs, providing the voice of the Dalek.
Team Tardis arrives just a little too late again, but the Doctor uses her sonic screwdriver to jam the Dalek's gun! That's a trick that's never failed.
Okay I've just checked the TARDIS wiki and it turns out she jammed a Dalek's weapons once before in Resolution, with the excuse that it wasn't "fully in sync yet". So there you go.
Killing off the entire main cast in the teaser was a good idea when Star Trek: The Next Generation did it in 1992 and I can't say that it's a bad idea here either. I'm a little disappointed though, as it's really unsatisfying when heroes are saved by luck and coincidence. The Doctor has survived for millennia in constant danger from the greatest threats in the universe, so the fact that she finally makes a fatal mistake now, in the episode with the time loop, is kind of eye-rolling.
LOOP 2
She checks her phone, due to the constant stream of Happy New Year's messages she's getting, and sees that the time is back to 23:52. Eight minutes to midnight, New Year's Eve. It's funny how Flux was always making sure to line up its dates with the days that the episodes were airing, but this is deliberately a day in the past.
Meanwhile Nick gets a memory of his death and rushes back from the storage unit to save Sarah, who's also having a Dalek flashback. So the Doctor's racing to where Nick was, Nick's rushing to where Sarah was, and Sarah's currently making her escape.
So Sarah switches to plan B: find a weapon, and runs for Jeff's storage unit upstairs. Nick arrives just in time to spot her on the security monitor, but he has a second run in with the Dalek who guns him down on the spot. So that's Daleks 6 - humans 0 so far.
Hang on, I'm going to check that list of stuff that she said was forbidden earlier.
"Stolen or illegal goods, tires,animals (dead or alive), humans (dead or alive), cash, plants, food, cars, guns or ammunition, or any material that is in any way toxic, hazardous, or radioactive. And a shop."
And room #3 crosses off 'food' as it's full of tinned beans.
Man, what is this screencap reminding me of? It's going to torment me if I can't figure it out.
Anyway Sarah's search for a weapon gets interrupted by a phone call from her mother. In fact it's the same phone call from her mother, which is interesting. Seems like only the people on this side of the forcefield get to keep their memories.
Unfortunately that apparently includes the Dalek, who anticipated that Sarah wouldn't be where he found her last time and came up here to kill her. Daleks 7 - humans 0.
Oh, and Daleks 10 - humans 0.
LOOP 3
We see on the screen that the Dalek's teleported in for loop three. Man, I was so distracted with how bad that password is that it took a while to register with me that they've actually written it on a post-it note and stuck it to the monitor. And it's a security monitor, for bonus irony points. With the cameras they can keep an eye on where the Dalek is at any time and move to avoid it if it's heading to reception. Conversely the Dalek can use the screen to find where they are. No one has any interest in doing this.
Some of the best episodes in science fiction have been time loop stories. Dark Matter's All the Time in the World, Star Trek: Discovery's Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad, The X-Files' Monday. Oh and there's Run Lola Run, obviously.
This has been a weird time loop story so far however, as everyone remembers what happened, so there are no scenes where someone has to convince someone else that they're in a loop. Plus no one's learning how to play the piano or speak another language or anything, because there's no time. There aren't even scenes of characters learning other people's routines, because there are no routines.
The Doctor and crew turn up as well and she assures her that they're entirely unconnected with whatever's chasing them and also it's a Dalek, not a robot. Wait, how do they not know what a Dalek is? They attack England every New Year's Eve!
Nick loses a couple of points with Sarah here unfortunately. First he tries to act chivalrous by shielding her (she takes the time while under heavy fire to accuse him of being patronising instead), then he leads them all into his storage unit… which doesn't have another exit.
The Doctor makes it clear that she makes the plans from now on and gives them a speech about how there's always another way out. Then she wanders off-screen so that Nick and Sarah can have a private chat for a couple of minutes. I don't know if this is a Chris Chibnall trope or just a Doctor Who cliché in general, I can't remember the older episodes that well, but it sure has been happening a lot these past few seasons.
Unfortunately Nick's lost even more points with Sarah now because a: storing your ex-girlfriends' stuff is weird, and b: his weirdness is the reason she had to come into work on New Year's Eve. She's properly furious in fact. I guess at some point her and Jeff figured out that Nick was the only one who ever comes by on New Year's Eve, so they can just lock the doors once he's gone. She was reaching to pick her coat up when she thought she heard him coming back earlier now that I think about it.
Anyway Nick is driven by guilt to go make a deal with the Dalek: he'll let it kill him if it lets the others go. So the Dalek just shoots him. Daleks 11 - humans 0.
The Doctor comes over and says 'You know how I always say there's another way out… there isn't.' So that depresses everyone. Then she says there's nothing they can use as a weapon either, which clearly disappoints Dan, who was holding an iron and was ready to go all 'Evil Dan' on someone.
Some good direction in this one by the way, they've really nailed the tone. This is director Annetta Laufer's first Doctor Who episode, though you wouldn't know by looking at it. In fact it's her first episode of anything.
The trouble is that they'll have less time on the next loop, as it shortens by exactly a minute each time. Loop 2 started at 8 minutes to midnight, on this loop they started with 7 minutes to go. So they have less time to work out what they're doing and the Dalek has less time to find and kill them.
It's at this point that the Dalek finally blasts its way through a tiny metal shutter and the Doctor immediately inflicts a far more devastating burn on it by congratulating it on defeating an old door. She also gets it to explain what it's here for: it came to kill her. And then it does. Daleks 15 - humans 0.
The Tardis usually brings the Doctor to where she needs to be, so I didn't think twice about her ending up in the one self-storage facility in Manchester with a Dalek infestation. It never even occurred to me that they might have been hunting her. (I still think the Tardis brought her here deliberately though.)
LOOP 4
They take an elevator to the fifth floor to look through Jeff's stuff for possible anti-Dalek resources, which gives the Doctor a moment to talk about the time loop. She's figured out that it's only happening within the confines of the building, which is obviously wrong as Sarah's mother keeps making the same call at the same time! The difference between inside and out seems to be that they can remember the last loop.
Just then she picks up a second Dalek signal on her sonic screwdriver (it can detect them now as well), and Dan reacts with an incredibly dramatic lift-button press. He's going to go off on his own to distract the second Dalek, like a badass. He justifies his choice by saying that she saved the entire universe last week, so he owes her.
I guess he's technically correct, even if the 'entire universe' is considerably emptier than it used to be, due to that antimatter wave annihilating huge chunks of it. Including Neptune. Honestly it's kind of weird that they still have the Sun.
Personally I think he should've tried keeping the thing distracted by peeking out from doorways and luring it around, as that approach wouldn't have necessarily ended with his inevitable death like this one does. Daleks 16 - humans 0.
Man I'm so impressed with Aisling Bea's performance in this episode, which is basically her story. Nick's actor Adjani Salmon is playing it more or less straight, while she's going a bit broader, but what she's doing works so well. She goes from shock, to comedy, to terror, to sincere guilt about leaving him to die on loop 2. She also admits that she's grateful he tried to save her life.
Then the episode cuts to the Doctor and Yaz as they revisit Jeff's three rooms from earlier, with Yaz passing judgement on his beans.
Hang on, I need to update the list:
"There's also occasionally dead people, depending on the loop, but that's not really Jeff's fault. Or is it?Stolen or illegal goods, tires,animals (dead or alive), humans (dead or alive), cash, plants,food, cars, guns or ammunition, orany material that is in any way toxic, hazardous, or radioactive. And a shop."
A Dalek finds them and starts opening fire at all their explosives, but it miraculously misses everything, including the Doctor and Yaz.
She accuses him of being a bit stalkery, but not in a harsh way. So she doesn't have to feel quite so guilty this time when he gets exterminated right in front of her (even though it was her fault for talking loudly).
She tells the Dalek he'll be sorry for that, and the Dalek replies "Daleks are never sorry!" Which is actually a great line if you say it in a Dalek voice while shooting lasers at someone. She runs for the back door and gets shot trying to get it open. Daleks 18 - humans 0.
Man, you'd think an episode with five characters in one modern day storage building would be cheap to make, but all these Dalek-ray skeleton effects must have cost some money.
Turns out the Daleks detected the energy and came down to execute her for murdering all those Daleks with the Flux. So the apparently complete annihilation of the Daleks last episode got referenced after all! She explains that it was actually a Sontaran Stratagem (hey I recognise that episode title… never saw it though), but the Dalek doesn't seem to care.
Her death is the priority of the Dalek race right now. So it kills her.
LOOP 5
All I know is that the Daleks are playing by the same rules they are, they do different stuff each loop, so they won't even necessarily look for him there!
Sarah tells them that Nick might be a weirdo, but he's a good-hearted weirdo and they're apparently the ones worth keeping. Cut to a meaningful look between the Doctor and Yaz (the Doctor doesn't get the meaning and Yaz denies any).
So the Doctor tells them all to wait there together and then she runs off alone to save Nick, even though there's absolutely no reason to assume he's in a more dangerous place than they are.
It's actually Nick who saves himself here, as he's figured out that the Daleks always say 'exterminate' or whatever before exterminating, so he tells them to say their line and then ducks, letting the two of them blow each other up. Daleks 20 - humans 2! It's kind of depressing though that the Doctor was in the same position a moment ago and didn't figure it out. It's basically the same solution she used to end the Time War in Day of the Doctor and to defeat the Weeping Angels in Blink!
Well that's it then I guess. The characters have defeated their implacable pursuers and now have as much time as they need to figure out how to escape the time loop.
They figure out that they're going to the fifth floor, getting all the explosive stuff, moving it near the exit in the basement, and then luring the Daleks in. She can confuse the Daleks for a bit by using the sonic to create false life sign readings. Wait, she's been hunted down and killed three times and it never occurred to her to create false readings until now?
They're going to persuade Sarah's mother to call her at 10 seconds to midnight, somehow, and use the phone as the ignition trigger. I guess hacking the phone to do it on its own is too tricky for the person who turned one into a scanner back in The Woman Who Fell to Earth after a few seconds of button pressing.
Their repeated failures have left Sarah feeling pretty cynical at this point, so the Doctor gives an inspirational speech lasting 35 seconds with some proper music behind it. The soundtrack's been pretty solid in this one actually, drawing attention to itself just enough for me to be able to appreciate it. Anyway three more Daleks teleport in and shoot them.
So that means there are five Daleks. At least.
LOOP 6
The darkness makes the loop a bit more interesting visually but it doesn't help them achieve anything. The Doctor tells Yaz and Dan to stay behind, again, even though where they are is still no safer than where she's going. But it turns out it's just an excuse for the writer to set up another chat between two characters. Dan lets Yaz in on a secret: she's in love with the Doctor, and he doesn't want her to wait too long like he did with Diane.
Then they both get killed by Daleks, because of course they bloody would! What was the Doctor even thinking? A few moments later it's Daleks 30 - humans 2.
LOOP 7
This time the Doctor sends Yaz away to go get Sarah and Nick, while she and Dan assesses their explosives. He takes the opportunity to reveal Yaz's secret, she claims ignorance, he claims otherwise.
Meanwhile Sarah and Nick are up in Jeff's other stash, gathering explosives, and chatting about the things that tie them down. The stuff from his ex-girlfriends, the business she inherited... incidentally we learn here that it's called 'Elf Storage' because the S fell off.
Sarah mentions that she always wanted to travel the world, if she ever found someone to travel with... but Yaz turns up and interrupts them. They all head down to the basement, and the Daleks are heading there too.
Daleks 35 - humans 2.
LOOP 8
But Nick just tricks one of them into blowing up all of his stuff in storage, mostly for the therapy, and so he can make an 'ex-terminate' joke. That's a goal achieved, so why would the Dalek expect him to come here on the next loop?
It's funny seeing them chilling out with a tin of beans in their hands, but it's not really a fake plan is it? This isn't something the Daleks can get the wrong impression from, because they weren't prevented from doing anything.
Though I did like the Dalek going "Daleks have no friends," and the Doctor replying that they've only got themselves to blame for that. Which is true! I bet they could make lots of friends if they ever tried, given a bit of practice.
Daleks 40 - humans 2.
LOOP 9
Sarah calls her mother and tells her to phone her back at 10 seconds to midnight and passes the phone to the Doctor to be hacked. Then the Doctor and Yaz race up to the fifth floor in the lift, load a cart with explosive canisters, and then get it back down to the basement again with only 55 seconds left until Sarah's mother calls.
The Daleks finally catch up to them but once the phone's planted the Doctor uses her sonic to knock out the power, leaving them in darkness again. Except this time she uses the sonic on the Dalek's night vision. Jamming guns, no. Jamming night vision, yes.
By the way, I like how they made sure to get the cracked Tardis in the background of this shot. I also like how no one is the slightest bit concerned about it getting blown up in the explosion. I mean please, it's the Tardis, it can take a bit of punishment. Unless the shields are down during the reset and it gets blown into splinters.
Actually, ignore that, this is an absolutely beautiful bit of CGI demolition. They are getting really good at using their destruction simulation tools this season. I'm a bit worried though about how much brick and concrete is piling up on top of that Tardis though. It might leave it slightly inaccessible.
It's funny how this episode rewards the Yaz and Doctor shippers by confirming that there is something there, while also making it clear that there's been nothing going on between them up to this point. That mysterious bed in the console room back in The Halloween Apocalypse was a red herring.
Also the cracks are gone! That's also a good sign.
Wait, hang on, is this the mysterious Jeff? Is he admiring the destruction of his home and workplace without even realising it?
I see how it is though. The series has completely forgotten that guy's sister who was kidnapped by the Stenza, but the guy who kicked a defeated villain off a crane gets a cameo. Well, he seems happy at least.
Anyway, the Doctor and crew finally get to enter the Tardis to check out the reset console room.
Though I am expecting a new console room. And it had better not make me miss this one.
There's a bit of talk between the team, and the Doctor once again refuses to tell Yaz anything she wants to know, but there's no cliffhanger here this time. They're just heading off for more adventures.
CONCLUSION
Some of the best episodes in science fiction have been time loop stories. Star Trek: The Next Generation's Cause and Effect, Legends of Tomorrow's Here I Go Again, Doctor Who's Heaven Sent. Oh and there's Edge of Tomorrow, obviously. That's that Tom Cruise movie with the aliens. Maybe you know it better as Live. Die. Repeat? It wasn't very well marketed.
Heaven Sent, that's a good comparison to Eve of the Daleks, as both stories are all about the characters being chased around a building by an unstoppable monster that will kill them when it catches up. Also, like Heaven Sent, this isn't really a time loop story at all. There's only one event that keeps repeating, the phone call, otherwise the characters are basically just respawning in a horror game. Everyone in the building remembers what happened, nothing's ever really reset except for the power box that got shot up. It doesn't even take place over much time. It's a 60 minute episode about people spending 45 minutes in a time loop, or something like that.
One big difference between the two stories is that Heaven Sent was about the Doctor surviving alone and grieving the loss of Clara, while this is about the characters dying constantly and confronting their unrequited hidden love. So it's got a very different tone. In fact this is a fun, funny, focused story that knows exactly what it wants to be doing, which is a bit jarring after the overcomplicated chaos of Flux. Sure the characters slow down to have a chat a bit too much, and a bit too often, but it's forgivable when the pace is pretty decent overall and I wanted to hear what they said!
Sarah and Nick are two of my favourite one-off Doctor Who characters, with Nick managing to be endearing and sincere when he could've been creepy, and Sarah basically stealing the episode any chance she gets. The Daleks may be the threat, but it's Sarah that the Doctor has to take on verbally and she's more entertaining when she rises to the challenge. Not that she doesn't have plenty to say to the Daleks as well. The Doctor might not be at her most formidable in this story, she gets killed repeatedly and gets others killed too by continually telling them to wait in one place when hunters are coming to kill them, but Jodie Whittaker's on fire here. It's one of those weird times where I both think it's a shame we're losing her but also want someone else to take over the role. I mean if Sarah's actress even wants it.
This is also one of the times that the Daleks come close to earning their reputation for being the deadliest killing machines in the universe. Their aim is a bit wonky and they're not all that fast, but the only things that can harm them are their own weapons and dropping a building down on them. Other than that they just rack up kill after kill after kill and they're never discouraged by the repetition because they are truly relentless. With one exception their appearance means inescapable death. And often a quip as well. Even the Daleks had good dialogue in this one!
The writing has a proper distribution of exposition and most of the comedy landed for me as well. It even gets its themes tied together properly, with Nick mirroring Yaz in their unrequited, unrevealed love. Plus Nick and Sarah are both in a time loop before the episode even starts, never moving forwards with their lives, always meeting at the same time on New Year's. Sure Nick's dating lots of women (apparently), but he's too shy to ask out the one he really loves.
The episode's not perfect though. I kind of just want to just call this review done and say "Thumbs up, great story!" but you could really nitpick this episode apart if you were inclined to.
For one thing the Tardis reset is a bit of an anti-climax. Anything that leaves your house covered in webbing and too many doors is something you should probably be worried about. It seemed like the old time machine was really ill this time! But it turns out she just had to reset it and it wasn't even an issue. Plus I've already mentioned how the Doctor kept getting people killed with terrible advice, so add that to the list as well.
But I think my biggest issue with it is how it handles the time loop rules.
- We're told that they begin a minute later on each loop, except from loop 3 onwards they always start off in the same place, with Sarah standing by the front door and the Tardis crew outside the Tardis.
- We're told that only the area around the building is experiencing the time loop, except Sarah's mother is clearly repeating the same few minutes along with them (she just doesn't remember it).
- We're told that their deadline is midnight, even though there's absolutely nothing in the story that even hints at that.
NEXT EPISODE
If you're on the fence about leaving a comment, you totally should. Your opinions have to be at least as good as mine are, so why let mine have all the attention?
Hmm. I think this is the second time the Doctor has been fatally shot by a Dalek. No time loop the last time, though. Just a severed hand.
ReplyDeleteThe ninth time you mean...
DeleteI guess the Gatling Dalek cannon must be better at killing Time Lords as she didn't even had a chance to go looking for a severed hand this time.
I was going to say that the best Chibnall episode was the one with the Transdimensional God Frog, but he didn't write that one.
ReplyDeleteI generally quite liked this one, although like most Chibnall stories, it makes less sense the more you think about it. I am a bit disappointed that there was no reference to Eight's New Year adventures though, something like "I've died at New Year before".
(Although strictly speaking it would be a day out, I know.)
She probably forgot.
DeleteThat's fair.
Delete