'Into The Dalek' takes place in an unspecified future where the Combined Galactic Resistance have stumbled upon a damaged Dalek that hates other Daleks. In a cross between 'Fantastic Voyage' and 'Journey To The Center Of The Earth' the Doctor and Clara (+ a couple of redshirts) get shrunk down and have to go inside the Dalek in order to discover what makes a 'good' Dalek. It's an interesting and fairly ambitious premise squandered by poor special effects and lame character stereotypes. Well okay, it wasn't completely terrible, it had some cool Dalek action and I generally liked everything to do with the Doctor and Clara. Everything else....kinda fell flat on it's face.
Phil Ford and Steven Moffat penned this episode. Fords last Doctor Who credit was the brilliant 'The Water's Of Mars', one of my favourite Who episodes ever. It was phenomenal TV, so it's a shame his latest story isn't up to scratch. Because there's two writers it's difficult to ascertain who wrote what, but the 12th Doctor had some killer lines in this episode. 'He's on the top layer if you want to say something' had me guffawing rather loudly. And how does the 12th Doctor open the TARDIS? He kicks the door open of course. Capaldi was amazing in every scene and his take on this supposed 'darker' Doctor feels really refreshing. He comes off as a grumpy bastard, and I do like a bit of bastard in my Doctor...
His actions are certainly questionable at times, he basically lied to Redshirt No 1 with the radiation pill and then joked about his death afterwards. He was also pretty rude to Clara in this episode, commenting on her 'manly' physique (she does give him a well deserved slap later, so they're mostly even). It's not something Doctors 10 or 11 would even consider doing, perhaps echoing the War Doctor's comments about both of then needing to grow up? Either way I can't see Capaldi's Doctor being put onto school lunch-boxes any time soon.
The new Doctor is aware of his increasing lack of empathy however. He questions Clara about whether she considers him 'a good man'. Clara responds at first by saying 'I don't know...' but later on she revises this to '...but I think you try to be, which is probably the point'. So yes, this new Doctor does come off as a total d*ck but his heart is still in the right place I guess. He's not 'darker' per-se, just really grumpy. Capaldi's reign seems to be making this aspect of the Doctors psyche much more pronounced again (both the first and sixth Doctors can be classified as grumpy at times). Clara's role so far this season has been a moral compass for the Doctor, she's the one keeping him in check. I'm interested to see how this particular TARDIS due will develop, it's a companion/doctor dynamic that we haven't really seen since the days of Rose and Christopher Eccleston and once again feels really fresh. They're both a shining light in an otherwise bland episode.
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| This Doctor has issues... |
Now for the negatives...
Read that premise, doesn't that sound awesome? On paper it sounds great: Dalek antibodies, walking up the signature eyestalk, protein vats, memory banks, the giant kaled inside writhing it's tentacles around, a mini-nuclear reactor...there's a lot of good stuff to play around with here. It's a shame then that (aside from a few establishing CGI shots) the physical sets don't seem to really do it justice. The camera is constantly zoomed in on the actor's faces and we never get a sense of the space they're in. The designs are rather uninspired as well: the Dalek antibodies look generic and are very similar to the ones from the Tesselecta, the memory banks are a bunch of super fake looking clean plastic tubes. The space sequence in the beginning also looked super naff despite the CGI being relatively okay looking. And that fight between the Daleks and the Galactic Alliance soldiers? While some very pretty explosions were going off (nice to see Daleks exterminating again!) the crappy laser effects and the soldier actors made some aspects look laughable as well.
Look I get it, ALL of these issues can be put down to budget, but Doctor Who can look like an expensive show. Remember the battle sequence in 'The Day Of The Doctor'? Even the last Dalek story, 'Asylum Of The Daleks' also looked pretty amazing visually. Effects and set-wise this episode dropped the ball. Some of it looked painfully bad, like Capaldi standing in front of the giant Dalek animatronic or the projected Dalek images behind Capaldi. It's extremely difficult to take Doctor Who seriously as a modern TV show with dodgy effects like these, I hope this doesn't set the standard for the rest of the season. This jankiness does have a weird positive effect though, something about the crude set design harkened back to the charm of classic Who in a....good way? There was something very old school about 'Into The Dalek' and I'm not just talking about an older Doctor. Even the score by Murray Gold (who is still knocking it out of the park) felt like a tribute to past Dalek stories.
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| YAY! PEOPLE ARE DYING IN DOCTOR WHO AGAIN! |
Presentation aside, I still have a few issues with the script. Danny Pink is a new recurring character this series and his introduction here came off as being extremely awkward and forced. What was up with that scene with the secretary, am I missing something? And that random kid in class who made him cry? They were both very cliché scenes that didn't really have anything to do with the episode. I would have left the backstory bits for later and just included the conversation with him and Clara, which felt awkward for the right reasons. We'll just have to wait and see where they go with him in future episodes...
The supporting characters for this episode were also pretty flat. From what I've seen of Michael Smiley (Reverend Green in 'The World's End') he seems like a good actor, so why did they waste him in a generic colonel role? You can only appear on DW once, don't waste it. Zawe Ashton's character Journey Blue didn't do anything for me either, her bid to travel with the Doctor at the end kinda came out of nowhere. The other two redshirts were exactly that, redshirts. They barely had any lines or characterisation beyond the stereotypical sacrifice archetype.
Another teething issue is that quite a few of the story beats echo 2005's 'Dalek': It features a lone damaged Dalek who turns good and the Doctor's hatred for the Daleks gets the better of him. Even the 'YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DALEK' line gets repeated, and perhaps not as good as the first time around. The episodes are similar enough that they probably contributed to a strong sense of deja vu I got from this episode.
While I like what the story achieved (there's probably going to be a rebel faction of Daleks hovering around now) everything else in the episode was extremely underwhelming. It's not for lack of trying, but like 'The Bells Of Saint John' it's another one of those episodes that left me cold the whole way through.
Positives:
+ Some great scenes with Capaldi
+ Clara continues to develop
+ Interesting premise
+ Lot's of witty dialogue
+ Some good shots of Dalek's blowing up stuff
+ The 12th Doctor is an A-hole
Negatives:
- Set's aren't very convincing
- Poor special effects, most likely due to budget
- Supporting characters are lame stereotypes
- A LOT of repeated idea's
- Really forced scenes with Danny Pink
- Feels like this episode was let down in execution
Overall score: 5/10
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