2: Into the Dalek

 

Writers: Phil Ford & Steven Moffat

Director: Ben Wheatley

Originally Broadcast: 30 August 2014

 

Cast

 

The Doctor: Peter Capaldi

Clara: Jenna Coleman

Journey Blue: Zawe Ashton

Colonel Morgan Blue: Michael Smiley

Danny Pink: Samuel Anderson

Gretchen: Lauren Dos Santos

Ross: Ben Crompton

Fleming: Bradley Ford

School Secretary: Michelle Morris

Mr Armitage: Nigel Betts

Courtney Woods: Ellis George

Dalek: Barnaby Edwards

Voice of the Daleks: Nicholas Briggs

 

After last week’s season opener, which cushioned the shock of the new Doctor by surrounding him with the characters and trappings of his predecessor’s time, the real Peter Capaldi era starts with Into the Dalek. Writer Phil Ford, who took David Tennant’s Doctor into unfamiliar and uncomfortable psychological places in 2009’s The Waters of Mars, provides a tale that gives Capaldi the opportunity to show how different his Doctor is from Matt Smith’s. It’s a thematically rich episode that delves deep into the Doctor’s psyche as he explicitly questions his own nature and motivations. It’s also disconcerting to watch, with the Doctor being shown as possibly the most detached and downright unfriendly he has ever been – an imperious, distant figure who seems to have little interest in relating to the humans he meets.

Clara is definitely left in no doubt that the Doctor’s life no longer revolves around her to the extent she enjoyed with his previous incarnation. After being sent off to fetch coffee at the end of the last episode, he doesn’t rejoin her for three weeks, during which time she has made her way back to Coal Hill School and resumed her teaching duties. He’s been distracted by something of more immediate interest, as he uses the TARDIS to save Journey Blue, a member of a far-future group of human soldiers fighting a losing battle against a superior Dalek force. He seems a little surprised himself at his impulsive action to materialise the TARDIS around her, rescuing her from her small ship that had been hit by Dalek fire and was about to explode. His manner towards her is hardly reassuring, looming over her as she lies on the floor, disoriented and tearful; her cry of “My brother just died!” is met briskly with “His sister didn’t, you’re very welcome.” He brushes off her attempts to take control of the situation, refusing to be intimidated by her gun and making her say ‘please’ before returning her to her uncle Morgan Blue, commander of the hospital ship Aristotle, which is hiding from the Daleks in an asteroid belt.

Indeed, he only returns to fetch Clara because he wants something from her – her answer to the question, “Am I a good man?” The series (particularly since the revival in 2005) has made great play out of the idea that the Doctor’s human companions are there to provide his moral compass; when travelling on his own, this new Doctor is presented as showing no empathy whatever. As he and Journey emerge onto the Aristotle, he tells her, “Dry your eyes, Journey Blue – crying is for civilians. It’s how we communicate with you lot.” It seems that one of his personality traits is going to be an antipathy to soldiers even more blunt than that shown by David Tennant’s Doctor in the 2008 two-parter, The Sontaran Stratagem and The Poison Sky.

 

Journey: “Don’t like soldiers much, do you?”

The Doctor: “You don’t need to be liked. You have all the guns.”

 

This is something the show has often been somewhat hypocritical about. The Doctor might be reluctant to wield a weapon himself, and tends to disparage those who use them, but he is no pacifist, and is quite willing to take advantage of military help (notably in the 1970’s, when Jon Pertwee’s Doctor had a close association with UNIT). Not to mention the enormous significance of the Time War and his role in it, running right through the revived series from its outset in 2005 to the revelation in 2013 that a whole secret incarnation of the Doctor played a central role in both fighting it and ending it. That traumatic experience, although finally now completely in his past after the events of The Day of the Doctor, has perhaps caused a certain amount of self-loathing and self-doubt to bubble to the surface of his personality during his latest regeneration. When he brings Clara aboard the Aristotle and introduces her to the others, he is openly scornful: Journey is just “gun girl – she’s got a gun, and she’s a girl.” Morgan is “a sort of boss one… probably her uncle but I may have made that up to pass the time while they were talking,” and he describes Clara as his “carer” (“She cares, so I don’t have to”). Capaldi imbues the scene (and in fact, the whole episode) with a powerful sense of cold disdain; even that witty last line, which other Doctors might have softened with a twinkle in the eye, is played as a completely honest statement of feeling.

In some ways, this removal of cosiness is taking the Doctor right back to his roots: when Doctor Who began in 1963, William Hartnell’s version of the title character was very much not the hero of the show, instead being self-centred and hostile towards the human interlopers who found themselves on board his TARDIS. Similarly, Tom Baker’s Doctor can be found in a brooding, remote mood at the beginning of 1975’s Pyramids of Mars, displeased with his previous self’s involvement with UNIT and looking to break away. But Hartnell’s Doctor soon softened and warmed to his companions, and Baker was never far away from a big grin and the enjoyment of adventure. It seems that Clara’s task of “humanising” this new Doctor will be a more long-term project; he remains grumpy and sour all through this episode, even as she helps him deal with the “patient” that the humans have secreted aboard the Aristotle: a damaged Dalek which has developed a strange malfunction – it proclaims that all Daleks must be destroyed. Clara immediately notes the Doctor’s refusal to accept the idea of a ‘good’ Dalek (“That’s a bit inflexible, not like you. I’d almost say prejudiced”), but his reluctance is understandable, given the Daleks’ implacable hatred of all other life forms. The cleverest feature of the episode is how it finds a way to show a Dalek behaving as no Dalek ever has before without undermining the core of the creatures’ character that has remained remarkably constant for over fifty years.

It was showrunner Steven Moffat (who also gets a co-writer credit) who contributed the idea that the title of the episode should be literally true, with the Doctor, Clara, Journey, and a couple of other soldiers being miniaturised and sent inside the Dalek to find the cause of the malfunction. (Moffat’s touch is also visible in the clever use of little flashbacks and flashforwards in the first few scenes, both on Earth and aboard the Aristotle, to set up the plotlines and get the exposition across in the most arresting way possible.) The “nano-scaler” technology that enables them to do this is an obvious homage to Fantastic Voyage (1966). However, director Ben Wheatley eschews anything like the psychedelic visuals of that movie, except for the actual moment of entry through the Dalek’s eyestalk, presented surrealistically with striking slow-motion, distorted images. After that, apart from a few CGI long-shots to establish a sense of scale, the inside of the Dalek is disappointingly mundane, appearing very like the sort of grimy industrial environments often used in Doctor Who to depict old spaceships or underground bases, with a few miscellaneous tubes and cables strewn about. It’s no wonder the Doctor comes up with “Rusty” as a nickname for the stricken Dalek.

The Doctor gets another chance to show off his new hard-nosed attitude, allied to a ruthless pragmatism, when one of the soldiers rather foolishly triggers an attack of “antibodies” – floating, zapping spheres that act as an automatic internal defence mechanism for the Dalek. Rather than futilely try to save him, the Doctor takes advantage of his death to locate a way past the antibodies into the inner chambers. In an amusing coincidence, Capaldi’s second story, just like Matt Smith’s before him (2010’s The Beast Below), sees him and his companions tumbling into a pool of slimy goo representing the innards of a giant creature they are inside. But this time, there is very little humour about the situation. Journey is furious at the loss of her fellow soldier (to which the Doctor simply fires back, “He was dead already – I was saving us!”), and justifiably explodes at him when he callously points out that the dead man is still with them in the pool of sludge (“Top layer, if you want to say a few words”). As he leads them further into the interior of the Dalek, with a completely unnecessary jab at Clara’s appearance thrown in for good measure, the Doctor’s new characterisation is in real danger of veering from abrasive to outright unpleasant, to the detriment of the show.

Fortunately, after this low point, the Doctor’s character recovers somewhat as he begins to get to grips with the problem of what happened to “Rusty” to change its behaviour. They discover that an internal radiation leak has somehow interfered with the Dalek’s systems that automatically suppress all memories and experiences that would corrupt its fundamental purpose. This is a new development, invented by Ford for this episode, but one that has been logically extrapolated from the Daleks’ previous appearances. Like the Cybermen, they are biologically capable of feeling a wide range of emotions, but their mechanical support systems deliberately cripple that range, inhibiting any aspects of their experience that would get in the way of a single-minded goal: in the Cybermen’s case, converting other humanoids into Cybermen, and in the Daleks’ case, exterminating all non-Dalek life. Unable to deal with the endless renewing of non-Dalek life in the universe as it witnesses stars being born and new species evolving, “Rusty” has effectively fallen prey to despair. (I particularly liked the way the story introduced a new meaning for the creatures’ frequent catchphrase, “Resistance is futile.”) Nicholas Briggs, who has provided all of the voices for both Daleks and Cybermen since 2005, effectively conveys the Dalek’s bewilderment as it tries to cope with its expanded universe of emotions, giving the Doctor a momentary wild hope that just maybe, a Dalek can learn to be non-hostile.

Fixing the radiation leak proves to be no problem at all; the Doctor easily seals it up with a wave of his sonic screwdriver (“An anticlimax once in a while is good for my hearts”). However, he then finds himself with a much bigger problem as “Rusty” immediately comes back to its true Dalek nature. It’s a clever counterpoint to the seminal 2005 episode Dalek – again, an isolated, injured Dalek is restored by a misguided act of compassion, breaks free and begins an unstoppable killing spree. The Dalek transmits a message to its fellows, giving away the Aristotle’s position. Morgan and his soldiers try to hold off a force of Daleks attacking the ship in a standard “doomed last stand” action sequence that propels the rest of the episode, as the Doctor and company inside the Dalek must quickly find a way to reverse what they have done before all the humans are wiped out.

 

Journey: “Let me get this straight. We had a good Dalek, and we made it bad again? That’s all we’ve done?”

The Doctor: “There was never a good Dalek. There was a broken Dalek, and we repaired it.”

Journey: “You were supposed to be helping us!”

The Doctor: “I gave it a shot, it didn’t work out. It’s a Dalek, what did you expect?”

 

The angry confrontation between Journey, Clara and the Doctor is compelling, due to the intense performances of all three actors (although thanks to an overenthusiastic foley artist, Clara slapping the Doctor’s face becomes a ridiculously over the top moment, briefly jolting the viewer out of the scene). Clara sharply upbraids the Doctor for taking a grim satisfaction in having “proven” his contention that a good Dalek is an impossibility (“We’re going to die in here, and there’s a tiny piece of you that’s pleased. The Daleks are evil after all, everything makes sense, the Doctor is right!”). It’s here that the episode is most successful in making use of the Doctor’s new characterisation, placing him and Clara believably at odds with each other, in the same way that the Doctor and Rose clashed in the earlier Dalek episode. There’s also another parallel with The Beast Below, where the companion is able to provide the solution to the problem when the Doctor can’t. Clara shows that he was right to bring her along, as she prompts him to realise that if they can undo the Dalek’s memory suppression, he can get into its mind and attempt direct communication with it.

There’s no way for Clara to get back to the Dalek’s memory vaults without triggering another antibody attack, so Journey’s fellow soldier Gretchen sacrifices herself to provide a distraction. Regrettably, what should be an intense moment feels forced and unearned; a woman who has known him for all of half an hour is somehow persuaded to give up her life simply by the Doctor’s promise that he will do something “amazing.” The actors do their best to convince us that no other course of action is possible, but the emotional effect that the scene should generate just isn’t there. And so Gretchen dies – only to find herself suddenly facing the mysterious “Missy” from the end of last week’s episode. Is this some kind of afterlife, or has she actually been transported elsewhere? (Interestingly, the whiteout effect, together with the fading out of all sound but Gretchen’s scream, is very like the start of the episode when Journey was taken aboard the TARDIS.) There are only questions without answers at this point, and the weirdness of this unexplained intrusion is only heightened by the jarring cut straight back to the action on the Aristotle.

Unfortunately, the science of the resolution doesn’t stand even the slightest examination, being more on the level of the children’s spinoff series, The Sarah Jane Adventures (for which Ford was the main writer). The freeing of the Dalek’s suppressed memories is depicted by showing Clara crawling through some tubing to switch on a few random lights; Journey’s lampshade-hanging “Seriously?” is the only concession made to the thorough implausibility of the plotting here. But it’s almost worth it for the intensity of the Doctor’s speech to the Dalek as he establishes mental contact with it. Unlike the earlier moment with Gretchen, this scene successfully makes its points about the Doctor’s nature, with its thought-provoking suggestion that he views himself as not really becoming “the Doctor” until he encountered the Daleks (in only his second adventure, back in 1963). Even better is what happens next – the Dalek fixates on the Doctor’s hatred of its kind and absorbs it into itself. Capaldi shows the Doctor’s horror and disgust as perhaps the most memorable line from the 2005 episode (“You would make a good Dalek”) is now shown to be true – infused with the hatred learned from the Doctor, “Rusty” remains an implacable killing machine, but now focused wholly on killing other Daleks. It quickly destroys the attacking Daleks and saves the Aristotle. But any sense of triumph is muted as the Dalek expresses its fellow feeling for the Doctor (“I am not a good Dalek. You are a good Dalek”), and leaves to continue its crusade against its own kind. (In fact, this ending was originally much less open; dubbing scripts for the first five episodes were leaked onto the internet before the season premiered, and the one for this episode revealed that a brief scene after this was cut, where “Rusty” self-destructs in order to destroy the Dalek command ship.) It’s no wonder that when Clara finally answers the Doctor’s question “Am I a good man?” it can only be with a less than ringing endorsement: “I don’t know… but I think you try to be.”

In an unsubtle but effective directorial touch, after “Rusty” destroys the other Daleks aboard the Aristotle, it pauses under a stream of water, which flows down its dome like tears – an echo of Journey’s tears at the opening of the story. The crying soldier motif also appears in a secondary strand, in which the Doctor (as yet) has no involvement: unknown to him, Clara has met Danny Pink, a fellow teacher at her school who is an ex-soldier with evidently something traumatic in his past. Their initial encounter is played for comedy, but a spark is kindled and they are obviously on course to develop a deeper relationship. In the final scene, Clara is brought up short when Danny wonders if she has “a rule against soldiers” – an implied criticism of the Doctor, who rejected Journey’s desire to join him as a companion on no better grounds. Throughout the episode, Zawe Ashton’s warm-hearted portrayal of Journey has clearly been intended to rebuke the Doctor’s anti-soldier prejudice, and the culminating scene where her offer is coldly rejected is uncomfortable to watch. As Danny and Clara agree to go for a drink to get to know each other better, it seems he is destined to cause the Doctor a certain amount of disquiet when they finally meet; judging by this episode, the Doctor will thoroughly deserve it.

 

Classic Who DVD Recommendation: A previous homage to Fantastic Voyage can be found in the 1977 story that introduced K9, the Doctor’s fondly remembered robotic dog: The Invisible Enemy, starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson.

 

Reflections: Danny Pink certainly did end up getting under the Doctor’s skin, even though their actual encounter was delayed until halfway through the season. Before then, Clara successfully managed to keep the two strands of her life separate. She had been doing this with the previous Doctor as well, but there was never a sense that we needed to see any more than brief glimpses of her mundane life – just enough to show that she had a life on Earth, devoted to either child care or teaching. Now, for the first time, the companion is given a developing story that takes place apart from the Doctor – in fact, one in which he is the cause of increasing difficulties, until he finally intrudes into it irrevocably in The Caretaker. With the Doctor’s new personality moving him away from his previous carefree friendship with Clara, this was a good way to create interesting conflict between them (both here and in later episodes, the Doctor is simply oblivious to the idea that she might have other things to do than go on an adventure with him). Unfortunately, Clara’s relationship with Danny was never quite as successful as it should have been thanks to the rather tepid chemistry between the actors (not so much here, but definitely in later episodes when they are supposed to be deeply in love).

As I alluded to in the previous chapter, the Twelfth Doctor’s introduction was not unlike that of Colin Baker’s sixth incarnation in 1984. Once again, a decision was taken to knock the audience off balance by making the new Doctor frankly unlikeable. Back then, the thin justification of the Doctor being “alien” was all that was provided to account for his new manner. But while more thought was clearly put into the writing of the Doctor’s character in the modern episodes than was the case thirty years ago, after two seasons it is undeniable that Capaldi’s Doctor has not been embraced by the viewers to the same extent as Matt Smith (and before him, David Tennant). In the UK, after the audiences in 2014 were at more or less the same level as the previous few years, the 2015 season saw a significant drop right from the first episode. This implies that any cause within the show for the decline must come from the stories of Capaldi’s first year.

Looking at the 2014 stories as a whole, it’s not hard to see why some viewers were put off, as the aloof, even disagreeable Doctor of Into the Dalek proves to be a harbinger of the whole season. He unbends a little in the next few episodes, but it’s not until right at the end of his fifth story, Time Heist, that we have a scene showing the Doctor relaxed and having fun in the TARDIS, making jokes with friends as his previous selves would have done. But then, the next four or five episodes bring the conflict between the Doctor, Clara and Danny to the forefront, with the Doctor/Clara relationship increasingly viewed as less than healthy (an idea which would culminate in the “hybrid” arc of the next season). Finally, the season climaxes with an exceptionally grim finale that seems to bring the Doctor and Clara’s story to the bleakest of conclusions. It all made for some powerful drama, and both Capaldi and Coleman delivered several knockout performances. However, anyone watching primarily for straightforward action adventure, with a hero and companion to identify with (or imagine joining on their escapades), would have been left out in the cold.

There were other issues, too: as will be discussed, the scheduling and promotion of the 2015 series was notably poorly handled in comparison to previous years. Also, while it’s still common in some circles to see 21st-century Who referred to as the “new series,” that label is increasingly inappropriate for a show that is now over a decade old in its own right (as well as being part of a continuity stretching back over fifty years). For the first time since the 1980’s, a substantial part of the audience has never known a time when Doctor Who was not running – and as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt (or, at least, a drifting away). But these headwinds that Moffat and Capaldi had to contend with as they laboured to establish this very different Doctor should not obscure the string of powerful performances Capaldi provided almost from the start. His ability to create compelling viewing even without the presence of any other actors – often with speeches delivered directly to the audience – was first seen in this episode, but would return in Listen and be taken to an extreme in next year’s Heaven Sent. In his second year, some significant retooling of the Twelfth Doctor would take place to bring him back towards what we might call the mainstream of the Doctor’s character, with a greater emphasis on comedy in particular. But by then, it would appear, quite a few viewers had already tuned out.