TV Time: Doctor Who Recaps: Series 8 Episode 2, Into the Dalek (TVPG - BBCAmerica - 45 mins)

Alo Party Peoples.

Written by Phil Ford.
Directed by Ben Wheatley.

After getting some feedback from a friend regarding this column I realized something. I already knew that stuff specifically devoted to Doctor Who would have a more limited, niche appeal than covering new movie releases, but due to the nature of this show, the things I describe must sound insane. When you have a show that has existed for nearly fifty one years, has been produced for thirty four of those years, had its lead actor switched out eleven times, supporting actors switched out even more, has existed in a myriad of social and political contexts, and endlessly references its own history, that is kind of unavoidable.

That isn't helped by the fact that Steven Moffat, the current show runner, tends to use time travel as more than just an excuse to move characters to and from the next adventure. Namely, he uses it for contrived retroactive changes to continuity. So if what I say in this sounds insane, enough that you find it unreadable, I apologize. I probably should have started with an explanation of what the show is about. As compensation, I will do that now.

EXPOSITION-There's this guy, he's named The Doctor. He's an alien, last of his kind after his planet went kaput in a temporal war. He travels all of time and space in the TARDIS, a surprisingly spacious time machine disguised as a mid 20th century London police box. He often picks out/abducts people to serve as his traveling partners, which fandom has dubbed "companions". They have all sorts of bizarre adventures through history, the future, deep space and all sorts of worlds, the writers can tell any story they want. As you might have guessed, traveling all of time and space is dangerous work, and he has close calls with death pretty frequently. When this happens, he can "regenerate" himself and heal all of his injuries, at the cost of a completely new appearance and personality. This was originally introduced so the original lead could leave due to his failing health, and now it's a mini event.-END EXPOSITION

See what I mean?

Glad I got that out of the way, and now onto the new episode, where we open with a big space battle against the Daleks. EXPOSITION- The Daleks are the Doctor's nemesis. Born from the radioactive ruin of the planet Skaro, they are deformed aliens that encased themselves in impenetrable armor, the design of which has not aged very well. They operate on the principle that peace is impossible unless they "Exterminate" all other life in the universe. This lead them into the aforementioned temporal war that destroyed the Doctor's people, which makes him hate them all the more. Imagine if Stephen Hawking had an invincible battle chair and Hitler's philosophies, that's a Dalek in a nutshell-END EXPOSITION.  Yeah, get used to that sort of thing, I have a feeling that it will come up pretty often with this show.

Anyways, we focus on one particular human craft as it becomes a casualty, but the pilot has been rescued by the Doctor. She is understandably horrified by the mysterious man that showed up as she died, and convinces him to take her back to base, on an asteroid. Where she and the Doctor are apprehended, and, upon hearing that there is a Doctor that just arrived, are taken to the base's one lone prisoner. A heavily damaged Dalek that is going on about how it must be destroyed, which peaks the Doctor's interest. After the intro, we cut to present day London, where Clara has just met a new co-worker, Danny. A veteran that, has no discernible character and doesn't really factor into the A-plot at all, so there is no reason to have him here. It doesn't really matter since soon after, the Doc arrives and we learn that from Clara's perspective, it's been three weeks since the end of the last episode.

He seems to have brought her on-board again to ask a question. "Am I a good man?" She responds that she really doesn't know. Understandable, he's literally a different person now, and it makes sense that the Doctor would have some concerns about that. It also makes sense that Clara, after not seeing him for three weeks, couldn't answer that question. It's a nice little moment that gets cut off because Doc decided to take her to the asteroid base. We learn that the Dalek is dying, and since it is uncharacteristically self hating, they want the Doctor to shrink himself ala The Fantastic Voyage and climb inside to see what's causing this. He is accompanied by some of the soldiers, which makes sense, and Clara, which doesn't.

There usually isn't that strong a reason for the Doctor to get involved in the problem of the week, but without it there wouldn't be a show half the time. However, here it makes even less sense. They already have suspicions that the Doctor is a Dalek spy, and now he disappeared and came back with a mysterious woman, how is he still trusted by them?

Anyways, Doc, Clara, and the soldiers all get put inside a pill, and enter via the Dalek's eye to get to it's brain, where they suspect the problem is. Once they're there, the Doctor goes on about the suppression systems meant to keep the Dalek angry, and how they seem to be on the fritz. After the soldiers start firing grappling hooks into it's brain for, no apparent reason now that I think about it, the Doctor freaks out about it since this activates the Dalek's internal security/immune system. (I'll never say this show is lacking creativity) It kills a couple of extras, and our heroes run down to it's digestive system, where they notice a surprising level of radiation. It turns out that the Dalek's fission reactor/heart is leaking, and that's probably what's gone wrong.

They go down to it's heart, and the Dalek starts talking to them. He starts talking to the Doctor about how it saw true beauty in the heat of battle. How it saw war, worlds being destroyed, but it also saw something else. It saw the birth of a star, a sort of light emerging from the darkness. That changed something inside the Dalek. It saw that no matter what, life would find a way. That "resistance" to that, a resistance that is the only reason he lives, is futile. That, is actually a clever and interesting inversion of that sci-fi cliche, which becomes irrelevant for a while since the Doctor fixes the radiation leak, and that immediately restores the Dalek to it's original programming/philosophy.

As fans of the show could have predicted, as soon as a time traveler helped a Dalek, it immediately goes on a killing spree across the base and calls for backup. Even a heavily damaged Dalek is pretty much unstoppable, which brings me to the older episode that this derives from, which looks to become a common thing with this season. In particular, the episode Dalek, which was also about a heavily battle damaged Dalek being helped by a time traveler and going on a killing spree through a heavily fortified base as a result. It is also my favorite episode of the show. It raises parallels between our hero and our villain, that, when things get serious, the Doctor is just as willing to resort to dirty measures as his enemy. An idea that is summed up by the line "YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DA-LEK!", said after he had been reduced to foaming rage and had started torturing the beast, because he hates them that much. Into the Dalek, feels like reheated leftovers of that episode. There isn't anything lesser about it, but time has dulled the flavor.

Anyways, Doc heads towards the brain as the soldiers pointlessly try to stop the Dalek's rampage, and since the soldiers received no characterization, most of them don't even have names, I felt uninvested in their struggle to the point that all I thought during the battle was "shouldn't the Doctor be regenerating after being so close to a fission reactor for so long? It's happened before." We're running out of time, so quickly, Doc gets to the Dalek's brain, sort of mind melds with it, and confronts it with the limitless wonder of creation that it had already discovered, successfully talking it out of it's rampage. It even convinces it's commanders to retreat, off screen, so there is no impact to this turn. Doc get's called a "GOOD DALEK!" in another callback to better episodes of the show, and Clara gets back to her irrelevant romance. The End.

I, don't have that much to say about this episode other than to say that is reheated leftovers of a better one. Peter Capaldi is still in top form, and he's loving this part. Jenna Coleman, while she has nothing to work with as Clara, comes off as a likable personality. Overall, this is an improvement over last week, but that ain't saying much. Next week, it seem's we're getting a period piece about the Robin Hood legend.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B