Doctor Who - Into the Dalek

The Doctor and soldiers. It's... complicated

Clara is still working at Coal Hill School - an arrangement which is likely to continue to disappoint me if they can't get William Russell in for at least a cameo - and making eyes at ex-squaddie Mr Pink, whose reaction to being asked if he ever shot a non-soldier and being called a 'lady killer' are highly suggestive of his tragic backstory. I fear that he may end up being controlled by the big bad in some fashion.

Meanwhile, back in the plot, the Doctor is called upon by human rebels to save the life of a Dalek that has decided all Daleks must die because their purpose is ultimately futile. This, apparently, is a 'good' Dalek, but the opportunity to explore whether simply wanting to wipe out the Daleks is in and of itself evidence of good is not followed up, and in place of any philosophical musings we get Fantastic Voyage the Dalek edition, with the Doctor, Clara and three soldiers shrunk down and sent in to repair the Dalek.

The Good

• Using the doomed soldier to save the others was a nice touch. Past Doctors might have warned him, and that this one rather chose to let him die hopeful was one of the few well-done character pieces for him this episode.
• Gretchen's sacrifice (a perfect example of why the Doctor's attitude was offensive; while he has never approved of a military first option, he has also never been dismissive of self-sacrifice.)
• The design of the ship interior and the atmosphere and effects of the battle.

The Bad

• The characterisation of Journey Blue, the hero resistance soldier, felt uneven, as she vacillated between supporting and condemning the Doctor.
• The story took a lot of its beats from Dalek, or even The Evil of the Daleks, in which a group of Daleks attempted to distill 'the human factor' and thus make more creative Daleks, and ended up returning their conscience (something which the Doctor forgot, apparently.)
• The failure to really address the distinction between hating Daleks and being good. It's touched on when the Doctor tries to provide the Dalek with a template from his own mind and just makes it hate Daleks, but since that's what has been defining 'a good Dalek' for the rest of the episode, it is a discordant moment for me.

The Ugly

• The Doctor's attitude to soldiers is as mercurial as Blue's attitude to him, and his stayed position here is frankly disrespectful of past companions. Harry Sullivan was a soldier; James McCrimmon was a soldier; Ben Jackson was a Navy sailor; Jack Harkness was a paramilitary time agent. The Doctor's best and most consistent friend for almost nine regenerations was the Brigadier, so to have him condemn all soldiers just to establish a forced emotional conflict with Clara over Danny Pink makes me angry.

Theorising

• Missy again, snatching people from the brink of death; apparently. I really don't want her to turn out to be a corrupt version of digital River Song living in the Doctor's screwdriver.
• I'm starting to feel that Moffatt has made it his mission to go too far the other way from RTD, and instead of building up the Doctor to be like unto a god he's almost tearing down the idea that the Doctor can possibly be real.

Top Quotes

• "It's smaller on the outside."
  "Yeah; it's a bit more exciting when you go the other way."

Verdict

Into the Dalek was pretty much what I was afraid it would be; a below-par episode trying to subsist on the touchstone of the Daleks. Despite a well-done battle sequence, they still aren't scary anymore, and I'm still not sure what happened to the New Paradigm. Did the toys really sell that badly?

The Twelfth Doctor is still a bit of a cipher, but his total antipathy to soldiers harks back to some of the less-positive memories of the Tenth Doctor. In fact, so far Twelve seems to be combining the whimsy of Eleven with the arrogance of Ten to produce almost a spoiled child. I guess that the idea is to show that despite the physical aging, this Doctor is almost a complete reboot, but it sits horribly uncomfortably with the fact that each episode seems to be shouting out to his depth of knowledge and experience.

The Doctor should be competent; that's why he gets to do what he does. Sometimes he should make mistakes, but at the point when he has to be corrected by his companion on a weekly basis, or is regularly making errors that cost lives, the audience begins to question why he has the slightest right to act as he does. In calling the Doctor's moral authority into question and not supporting it, the series undermines itself, because if the Doctor is actually a dangerously unstable sociopath with vast power at his disposal, then why aren't we watching a series about the hero trying to bring him down?

On the other hand, props if this Doctor actually turns out to be the Valeyard.

3/10