From MadCap's Couch - "Doctor Who: Dalek"

I. Flipping. Love. This. Episode!

No, I don't have a joke here. Let's start this recap!
The TARDIS lands in Utah in 2012, drawn off-course by a signal. The Doctor and Rose find themselves in an alien museum - that is a museum that has alien things in it, not a museum run by aliens. It's an important distinction to make, especially in this show - and, after finding a beautifully-restored head of a Cybermen (from the time of Revenge of the Cybermen, though the behind-the-scenes work says it's from the Cybermen invasion of London in the 1960s in...The Invasion), they set off an alarm and are surrounded by armed guards.

Rose makes the comment, just before the opening title sequence rolls that if someone's collecting aliens, that makes the Doctor Exhibit A. She does this well within earshot of several armed guards who work for that someone and could easily report him as such. If that's the case, then Rose just condemned the Doctor to be chained up and be autopsied by...

...oh, right. That does happen later, doesn't it?

Well, since that isn't how that happens, I can't really blame Rose for it. So no hit for you this time, Rose. Well done.

"They were trying to blow up a planet made of gold?"
"I know! So stupid, right?"

But the pair are brought before a Mr. Henry Van Statten (Corey Johnson) who, among other things, apparently has developed broadband from the Roswell crash and owns the internet. Somehow. He is attended by young Adam Mitchell (Bruno Langley), who will become a companion after this episode. Why? Well, we'll get into that during The Long Game next week...which is incidentally Adam's last appearance on the show.

We'll be getting into that as well.

After some testosterone poisoning between the Doctor and Van Statten (which Rose very helpfully lampshades)...

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 20

...Van Statten leaves Rose with Adam for their little scene together that will go nowhere and the Doctor is brought down to "the Vault" where he has his first encounter since the Time War...with a Dalek. A Dalek, which has been chained up and is unable to do anything but scream at the Doctor. Here, we get some background that the Daleks were indeed the race who fought against the Time Lords in the Last Great Time War and, by destroying the Daleks, the Doctor also destroyed Gallifrey and the Time Lords with them.

The pair of them are the only two beings of their respective species in existence.

...at least until other writers get a hold of them.

The Doctor attempts to kill the Dalek before it can break free, but is stopped by Van Statten and his men. The Doctor exposits on the Dalek and where it came from - not mentioning either Davros or Skaro by name, because Russell needs us to believe that continuity doesn't exist except it totally does - before he gets chained up and x-rayed to reveal his binary vascular system. The Doctor then works out Van Statten's game - he's a collector who profits off of alien technology, basically every generic evil millionaire villain that Doctor Who has ever had.

I'm even willing to forgive the Slitheen arm. That's how much I love this.

But while Adam and Rose are doing their flirting that totally isn't going anywhere, Adam shows himself to be kind of an arrogant prick and then patches into the communications systems to show Rose the Dalek, being tortured by Van Statten's men back in the vault. She immediately wants to help it and I'm not taking a point off of the awful counter because she has no context for what she's doing and is running into a situation half-cocked. Yes, torture is wrong, but she has no idea what this thing is and, if she did, she'd be cheering them on.

...okay, maybe not cheering them on. She's not Rose in Series 2. So I'm not going to add to the counter, either. I'm nothing if not generous.

But the Dalek manipulates her, and eventually Rose touches its casing as if to comfort it...and burns her hand on it (or I think she does, anyway. It never comes up again). The Dalek extrapolates her DNA and begins to revive, busting out of its chains and crushing the head of its torturer with its suction cup arm.

Dalek to me does what should have been impossible - it made the Daleks frightening again. Some would scoff at the idea, given how the Daleks were so easily defeated by hanging a coat over their eyestalks, that they could stand toe-to-toe with the Time Lords in the Time War. Some are right, of course...but it's important to remember that two of the three Dalek stories in the 1980s had them either plotting to or enacting plans to strike against Gallifrey. Both Resurrection of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks had the Daleks plotting to assassinate the members of the Time Lord High Council and take control of a Time Lord superweapon to enhance Skaro's sun into a nigh-unstoppable power source, respectively.

They were ready for the conflict long before it happened, and I'm honestly surprised that there wasn't more damage to the universe than what we have seen in the show.

The Daleks are a big part of Doctor Who history. They appeared in the second story - The Daleks - as the principal monster and the public took to them hardcore. It was to the point that, in the 1960s, they actually made movies based on two of the episodes. Starring Peter Cushing. And like that, I think I have some new material to look into for Reel Thoughts. But yes, this being the return of the Daleks since their last appearance in Who in 1988 meant that it had to be handled expertly. The seventeen or so years of parodies and pastiches that had been built up on them meant they were...less so.

Dalek delivered. From the first kill onward to a scene of Adam and Rose finding that Daleks can indeed fly to a mass slaughter of several of Henry Van Statten's men...it delivers in spades. The most chilling part, however, comes after the aforementioned slaughter, when the Dalek patches into the communications and speaks to the Doctor. The Dalek had previously hacked into the internet (taking down the power grid of the entire Western United States in the process) and scanned everything possible to find the Daleks...and had come up empty.

It declares of its intentions to follow the prime directive of the Daleks: kill everyone and everything that isn't a Dalek. The Doctor berates it, telling it that everything that it ever cared or stood for is gone and that it should rid the universe of its filth. That it should die. And a special note to Nicholas Briggs on the delivery here as the Dalek gives a succinct, damning reply.

"You would make a good Dalek."

And then, the transmission is cut. Absolute gold.

Props to the Doctor on trying to convince the Dalek to kill itself, but apparently they've learned from the lessons in Remembrance of the Daleks and this one doesn't go for it. I joke, but this is Christopher Eccleston at his best. This is his Doctor, nerves still raw from the Time War. He's shell-shocked, still nursing wounds that - for him at least - will never fully heal, faced with the exact counter opposite to everything that he is and everything that he stands for. The only thing that the Doctor is capable of well and truly hating in the whole of creation.

Despite all its rage, it is still just a heavily-mutated squid in a cage.

And the Dalek sees him for it, and can't help but appreciate what it considers to be something...beautiful.

Eccleston shows so many emotions here - fear, anger, sorrow, pain. Showing how the Doctor both hates and is absolutely terrified by this thing, this Dalek that is - to quote a French archeologist - a shadowy reflection of him. How easy it would be for the Doctor to give into that hatred. How easy it would be for him to become...like a Dalek.

But a plan is hatched to seal the Dalek in the vault, the only problem being that Rose and Adam are still down there. There is a "tense" scene where they run for the last bulkhead...and Rose is caught on the other side as it closes, with the Dalek. It opens fire...and Rose is definitely dead. Totally, definitely dead. Yes, I know Billie Piper was contracted for a whole Series, but that's clearly just a smokescreen to cover the fact tha-yeah, no, she's not dead.

After the Doctor gives Van Statten all the hell, we find out that the Dalek has not put Rose out of my misery because her touching it apparently made it start feeling emotions...that did not keep it from killing over 200 people from the Vault up until that point. It's losing it's cookies, but not enough to not manipulate the Doctor using his love for Rose...

...yeah, I'm waiting to get to this into the Tennant era, where it becomes more prominent. Basically, Russell's been making a not so subtle deal out of the fact that the Rose wants to jump the Doctor's bones and the feeling is apparently mutual. Just...keep it in the back of your head for a bit. Yes, I know it'll come up a lot, but just bear with me.

To tide you over, here's the short version: I fully understand why Rose is in love with the Doctor, but I do not even come close to understanding why the reverse is also true.

I miss the greenish look for them. But that may just be me.

But the Dalek gets out, questioning itself and it's existence the entire time and the Doctor runs off to go get a gun. The Dalek faces down Van Statten, but it talked out of killing him by Rose, who manages to suss out of it what it wants: freedom. Taking it up to the ground level, it blasts a hole in the ceiling to reveal the sunshine. Rose gets a look at the organic form of a Dalek as its casing opens up.

The Doctor charges in to Oncoming Storm its face in, but Rose stops him and rightly give him hell for his behavior...ignoring the fact that the Dalek did actually kill at least 200 people with seemingly not a single bit of remorse or regret.

...yeah, sorry. I tried.

Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 21

But the Dalek is indeed changing, which the Doctor points out is not good for it. It begs Rose to order it to die, and she reluctantly does so. With one last cry of "Ex-ter-min-ate!", the Dalek lifts itself into the air...and explodes. Sadly not putting Rose out of my misery in the process.

Van Statten gets a taste of his own medicine, the Doctor bitterly says that he's now definitively the winner of the Time War (and notes that he can't feel any other Time Lords in his mind), and Adam runs up to tell them that the Vault is being filled in with cement. With some heckling, Rose convinces the Doctor to let Adam onboard, and Adam confusedly walks into the TARDIS just before it disappears...which will lead us into the next episode.

Dalek is a masterpiece. I've been told that the audio play it's adapted from - Jubliee - is much better. Perhaps it is, but I can say that I've never listened to it (yes, I've listened to some of the audio plays, just not that one) and can really only judge Dalek on its own merits. It's absolutely perfect from start to finish. After the absolute drag that was Aliens of London and World War Three, this stands out as not only a great episode for Series 1 but a great episode of the series in general.

The set up is generic, sure - greasy slimeball of a millionaire profiting off of alien tech, secret base in the middle of nowhere, the mysterious creature in the basement, etc. - but it is the use of those assets that really makes the episode shine. Robert Shearman has sadly never written another Doctor Who episode as of this writing, but has been involved in several Doctor Who related productions, including several of the Big Finish audio plays. It's a shame, really, because he made an absolute gem here and I would have loved to have seen what else he might have brought to the table.

The Dalek itself is the showcase of what would be the main Dalek design to his day - barring Victory of the Daleks, but that's way off - and a showcase of everything that the Daleks could be. An utterly terrifying creature that wants nothing more than the death of every single creature in the universe that isn't a Dalek. It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with, and it absolutely will not stop until you are dead.

Sure, it's a bit of disappointment when it starts going human-y, but before that point it's entirely gold and it does nothing to deflate their menace. Of course, sadly, this blueprint hasn't really been followed since. Every time the Daleks have shown up since, there have been more of them and the plans have been grander and more elaborate. Often to the point of sheer stupidity as we'll see in The Stolen Earth and Journey's End.

But here...it's perfect. A locked down base, no escape, with a thing that is determined to kill you and everything else. Absolutely perfect from start to finish.

Next time, though, we're sliding firmly back into meh territory. The Long Game sees one half of the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost team get the worse of the two episodes they've gotten, and the departure of Adam.

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