Into the Dalek

I am not a good Dalek. You are a good Dalek.

It's funny going back to watch Series Eight when the Doctor has short hair. It just feels wrong. The larger hair of late Eight and Series Nine fits so much more. Or maybe I've just watched a bit too much Heaven Sent. Anyway, Into the Dalek introduces Danny Pink and gets a better handle of the dark and rude Doctor that characterizes most of Series Eight.

Plot Summary

The Doctor rescues a soldier named Journey Blue and in returning her to base, learns of a plan to enter a damaged Dalek through miniaturization and heal it. The Dalek is bent on destroying the Daleks, which intrigues the Doctor.

At Coal Hill School, Clara is introduced to the new Math teacher, Danny Pink, who is also a bit sensitive about his former soldiering career. After inviting him out for a drink, Clara is met by the Doctor who invites her along. Reappearing on the ship, they are shrunk along with Journey and two other soldiers and enter though the Dalek eye stalk.

In the Dalek, one of the soldiers attempts to repel down but triggers the system defenses. The soldier is killed and the group flees to the Dalek feeding tank to escape. After eluding the anti-bodies, they find the source of the injury, a ruptured fuel cell which is bathing the Dalek in radiation. The Doctor repairs the crack and the dalek, whom the Doctor calls Rusty, reverts to his normal self. He breaks free, kills the human guards and signals the Dalek control ship to invade.

The Doctor is a bit smug about being right about there not being a good Dalek but Clara slaps it out of him. He devises a plan where the group will reintroduce the suppressed memory that turned Rusty against the Daleks originally and he will add new ones. The other soldier, Gretchen, sacrifices herself to get Journey and Clara up to the memory banks. There, Clara activates the suppressed memory banks.

When the suppressed memories come flooding back, the Doctor inserts his own mind into Rusty's. He sees the beauty that the Doctor has seen but also sees his hatred of the Daleks. He turns again on the Daleks, who have come aboard the ship and are pushing back the humans. Rusty catches them by surprise and destroys the entire boarding party.

With the battle over, the group returns to normal size. Rusty leaves to destroy the remaining Daleks on the ship and the Doctor and Clara also leave. Journey asks to come with them but the Doctor refuses due to her soldier training. He returns Clara to just after she left with him and she leaves school for the day with Danny.

Analysis

This is Doctor Who meets Fantastic Voyage and it works pretty well. The action inside Rusty works fairly well, although it took my third watch of this episode to fully understand what was to be accomplished. I don't think it was explained particularly well that the humans thought Rusty had turned against the Daleks independent of his injury and that the repair of the injury returned him to his natural Dalek state. Aside from that though, the journey and actions inside Rusty flow rather well.

Another thing that was done well was the battle with the Daleks. Journey's flight was some impressive model work and the Daleks overrunning the human positions at the climax was also a good fight, although both sides had moments of making stormtroopers look like crack shots. But the real fun came with Rusty's conversion and his short bursts from the side that blew up the Dalek invasion force. Even more impressive was that it wasn't just a random blow up of the Daleks, which would have been fun, but you saw actual targeted fighting. It emphasized that Rusty knew exactly where to shoot to kill the Dalek mutant and that blowing up the full battle tank was inefficient. It was an actual smart battle and not just explode-y for the sake of visual thrills.

There were also some less than stellar moments with this episode. The worst part was how ham fisted some of the exposition was. Near the beginning you have the random kid in Danny's class ask if he killed anyone or if he killed anyone who wasn't an enemy. No kid would randomly ask that like that. Likewise, a teacher would shut that crap down immediately as it undermines his position of authority for the class to deviate from the topic like that. He certainly isn't going to be so sensitive as to shed an expositional tear for the class. It just feels so forced.

Contrast that to the very next scene where Clara makes a pass at Danny and the scene is told by him speaking what he wanted to say in hindsight cutting back to what he did say. That is both funny and a clever way of expressing Danny's thoughts without being overly ham fisted. It works well, but it does have the effect of further highlighting the errors of the previous scene.

The other bit of ham fistedness that just doesn't work is at the end of the episode where Journey asks to come with the Doctor. The sole reason for this scene is to express the Twelfth Doctor's disdain for soldiers and it feels like it. At no point in their entire time together do you get a sense of chemistry or trust between Journey and the Doctor. Her request to come with him, to abandon the fight with the Daleks, comes out of nowhere and it just doesn't make sense given the way they have interacted at this point. What's more, we've seen no evidence that she is aware of what kind of travelling the Doctor does at this point. How does she know what the Doctor does and where he goes and that is something she wants to experience? It just comes out of no where and makes the follow up statement about soldiers just very out of place.

However, in balance, the few points of ham fisted dialogue do not outweigh the fun adventure. The Doctor's personality is still in flux and his interaction with Clara is different than others. Actually, I rather wish his relationship with Clara had stayed like this as I liked Clara more when she was opinionated but still deferential do the Doctor, except when she had to call him out. It was in her assertiveness and independence in spite of the Doctor that she began to annoy me.

That aside, it is a fun story and worth the watch. You might just want to jump straight to the team going into Rusty as that is where the fun really begins.

Overall personal score: 3.5 out of 5