More Than The Novelty, Doctor Who Succeeds Going “Into The Dalek!”

The Good: Good character development, Decent pacing, Good performances
The Bad: Somewhat silly plot conceit for the plot . . .
The Basics: An utterly unnecessary trip “Into The Dalek” makes for a strong, compelling philosophical episode of Doctor Who that helps strongly establish Peter Capaldi’s version of The Doctor!


Now that Peter Capaldi has taken up the mantle of The Doctor, my household is in a state of near-constant excitement. Capaldi is the first new Doctor since my wife became a Whovian and more or less dragged me into the fandom as well. That means that each little teaser trailer for the new season yielded a “stop everything, we have to watch this!” moment in our home. None of those trailers left my wife with more excitement than the one that had Capaldi’s first Doctor lines where he quietly asked his companion Clara, “Am I a good man?” Between learning that Capaldi was bringing a Bowie-esque take to The Doctor and that teaser, my wife was super-enthused for a month.

That line was not made just for the promos; it comes up in “Into The Dalek,” Peter Capaldi’s second full episode as The Doctor (whose number could be retconned at any moment, but is generally called the Twelfth Doctor). The new episode is “Into The Dalek” and while many fans I know were excited to see the Daleks return, Dalek episodes are, for me, quickly becoming stale. The once seemingly-unstoppable enemy never seems to die, was defeated in the past (early 20th century in a somewhat nonsensical two-parter), wiped out in the future, and was last seen blowing themselves up during the significant action of “The Day Of The Doctor” only to return the very next episode to bring about the long-awaited Siege Of Trenzalore in “Time Of The Doctor.” So, going into “Into The Dalek,” my expectations for the episode were pretty simple: I want to know how the Daleks exist in this incarnation of Doctor Who and if they will serve as a distraction or a key to The Doctor finding Gallifrey, a purpose that was neglected in “Deep Breath” (reviewed here!).

In the distant future, a small ship is being attacked by a Dalek mothership. Just as its captain, Journey Blue, is about to be killed, she materializes on the bridge of the TARDIS. Rescued by the Doctor, Journey Blue just wants to know where her brother and her command ship, The Aristotle, are. The Doctor returns Jenny to her hospital ship where the fact that he is a doctor earns him his survival (the captain wants to kill him for fear that he is a Triplicate). The Doctor recognizes a medical shrinking device before he is shown the patient the captain wants him to heal: a Dalek. The Dalek seems to recognize The Doctor instantly.

Clara is working at Coal Hill Secondary School, where she meets the new teacher, Danny Pink. Mr. Pink is a former soldier, who is shell-shocked from having killed and Clara takes a pretty instant fancy to him. Her potential for a date with him is interrupted by The Doctor, who pops back (three weeks after he abandoned her in Glasgow) to get her advice. Flashing back aboard the Aristotle, The Doctor learns that the Dalek is expecting medical assistance and that it was found adrift by the crew, who do not entirely understand its nature. The Doctor is equally confused by the Dalek; it wants to destroy the rest of the Daleks. Returning with Clara to the future, Clara and The Doctor go through the nanoscaler and into the Dalek’s shell. With a military team, the Doctor and Clara try to figure out why this Dalek is different and how to heal it. When one of the soldiers activates the Dalek “antibodies,” he is killed and the Doctor’s team runs to the organic waste disposal section of the Dalek. Tracing the problem with the Dalek to a radiation leak, the Doctor is able to heal the damaged Dalek . . . only to have it revert to its true nature!

“Into The Dalek” runs into similar conceptual problems to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “One Little Ship” (reviewed here!). Both episodes try to take a somewhat ridiculous premise which plays better on a Saturday morning children’s cartoon and make it plausible in an adult science fiction show, namely miniaturizing people and having them fly about something or someone a similar size to their original one. The idea is an old one: ever since the 1966 science fiction classic Fantastic Voyage. The danger for an adult television context is simple: such a conceit naturally leads to the potential that the episode will just be a goofy, big-budget special effects-driven one-shot with little purpose outside creating spectacle. While “One Little Ship” played with the spectacle, it utilized the conceit well-enough to make for an enjoyable episode. “Into The Dalek” smartly avoids being a simple special effects show by keeping the conversation flowing and minimizing the battle sequences.

Instead of spending a great deal of time with the wonder that is the inside of the Dalek, the journey into Rusty (as The Doctor nicknames it) is rather quick. The Doctor does now dwell on how some of the wires he and Clara sees are actually blood vessels. Instead, the episode treads smartly toward the philosophical. Just as the first “modern” episode that involved Daleks, “Dalek” (reviewed here!) had the concept that combating the Daleks could be a philosophical war, “Into The Dalek” picks up the idea of converting Daleks. Much like the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “I , Borg” (reviewed here!), the purpose of “Into The Dalek” is largely to change the terms of the conflict with the implacable, unstoppable, foe. In that regard, “Into The Dalek” works exceptionally well. Instead of being a physical conflict, “Into The Dalek” turns into a psychological conflict where epiphany and beauty become the best chance for humans to survive and succeed in the darkened future.

The Doctor might need more guidance in “Into The Dalek,” but he generally answers the question of whether or not he is a good man in the episode. Actually, one of the beautiful aspects of “Into The Dalek” is that the emotionally-conflicted nature of the Doctor is delightfully presented in the episode. The Doctor has anger within him at the Daleks and even at himself. Despite having a strong philosophical bent to his take on warfare, he has no real issue with killing by proxy (while he is happy to mind-meld with Rusty, the result is not to download the epiphany back to the Daleks to get them to stop . . . ). The character elements of “Into The Dalek” are good, though much of the episode seems to serve the purpose of differentiating the Doctor’s rules (not big on soldiers) from Clara’s (she has no issue with them).

Fortunately, once Rusty is repaired, the end of “Into The Dalek” is not telegraphed. The Daleks refer to the crew of the Aristotle as “rebels” and that makes no real sense . . . unless the entire crew is Daleks in human form who have left the Dalek order. That does not seem to be the case, though; the rebels are those who rebel against the Daleks, though that has not been established in the Whoniverse before now. So, the sacrifice of Gretchen Allison Carlyle is not a clever chance to reveal the true nature of the rebelling humans, just that Missy is going to continue to recur and swipe out of time and space significant people The Doctor encounters this season.

The trip into the exoskeleton of the Dalek largely serves as a conceit to make the Doctor’s conversation with the organic element of the Dalek seem more sensible. It’s a largely unnecessary conceit, but the episode’s other conceits – the mind-meld, the Dalek declaring that resistance is futile, etc. – have all been established fairly well before now. In fact, on the conceptual front, the only real issue with “Into The Dalek” comes from a few stray lines where the Doctor talks to Clara as if he was Strax (the line about Clara’s hips and looking like a man did not quite seem to fit). Unfortunately, the explanation for how this batch of Daleks survived the carnage that ended the Time War or the Seige Of Trenzalore is not at all addressed.

All that said, “Into The Dalek” has Peter Capaldi strongly defining himself as a morally-ambiguous Doctor who tries to do good and while there might be a debate as to how well he succeeds, his desire to safeguard the beauty that exists in the universe becomes one of his most compelling and likable traits.

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Eighth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

8.5/10

For other Doctor Who episode and season reviews, please visit my Doctor Who Review Index Page!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

After A “Deep Breath,” Doctor Who’s Eighth Season Might Find Its Own Legs. . . (But It Doesn’t Here!)

The Good: Decent acting, Moments of character
The Bad: Heavy reliance on comedy, Very simple plot, Requires so much other Doctor Who to truly get.
The Basics: Peter Capaldi’s first full outing as The Doctor has the new Doctor in Victorian London alongside Steven Moffat’s reliable gang of Companions for a “Best Of”/sampler pack episode.


This week is a big week for those who love genre television. Sunday saw the end of True Blood with its series finale, “Thank You” (reviewed here!), and the BBC sent the new season premiere of Doctor Who across the pond to American audiences. “Deep Breath” is the first new episode I’ve had the opportunity to review since my wife got into Doctor Who (and pretty much dragged me along into that fandom, too!). “Deep Breath” is also the first episode of Doctor Who that I’ve felt the need to watch more than once (I’m up to three times now) before I actually reviewed it. The reason for that is simple: on the first viewing, I was excited by the experience and the novelty of the new Doctor, on the second viewing, I was predictably disappointed (comedy and self-reference plays poorly the second time around) and on the third, I felt I had a fair assessment of the episode.

“Deep Breath” is a decent comedy and a good episode of Doctor Who, but it is utterly unremarkable for television. In other words, if one is not a fan of Doctor Who the episode is much more likely to baffle and disappoint than genuinely entertain. When it is not busy explaining itself to new viewers, “Deep Breath” belabors the humor. More than most episodes of Doctor Who, “Deep Breath” is like Doctor Who meets Ally McBeal. Somewhat surprising for Stephen Moffat, the humor in “Deep Breath” is troublingly obvious; Moffat telegraphs most of his jokes. My wife and I managed to avoid all spoilers for the episode and virtually every gag the episode had (most involving Strax and props), we were able to call in advance of its execution. Humor that is predictable plays poorer upon subsequent viewings and “Deep Breath” might be amusing or diverting, but its entertainment value quickly diminishes upon multiple viewings.

Opening in Victorian London where a dinosaur is walking around the Thames, Madame Vastra, Jenny, and Strax the Sontaran witness the dinosaur cough up the TARDIS. When The Doctor emerges from the familiar blue box, he is entirely disoriented and his companion Clara tells the others that he has regenerated. After taking The Doctor back to her house and telepathically knocking him out, Madam Vastra finds herself annoyed at Clara’s treatment of the Doctor and her lack of comprehension over his regeneration. As The Doctor becomes more grounded, he witnesses the dinosaur spontaneously combust before he rushes out into the London night to see what happened. There, he challenges his Companions with the question of “have any other, similar, murders occurred?” As he heads off to try to investigate the only person in the crowd unphased by the flaming dinosaur, the other four return to Madame Vastra’s.

After a medical examination by Strax, Clara finds an advertisement in the newspaper that seems to be an invitation from The Doctor to lunch. Meeting The Doctor, who has managed to get a new coat and an unpleasant odor, both Clara and The Doctor realize they have been set up for their meeting. The Doctor recognizes the restaurant as a trap (all of the other diners in the restaurant are automatons) moments before he and Clara are taken to a subterranean ship where human organs are being harvested. With the villain revealed as a machine who is reconstructing himself with organic parts (then disposing of the bodies by lighting them on fire), the Doctor abandons Clara to try to figure out why the adversary seems so familiar to him.

On its own, “Deep Breath” does not answer the question in a satisfying way, though fans of Doctor Who will easily recognize what the Doctor obliquely references. “Deep Breath” is a de facto sequel to the second season episode “The Girl In The Fireplace,” where the romance of that episode is replaced with over-the-top humor that does not fit the established patterns of Doctor Who (has there been a cheap groin joke in the modern Doctor Who before now? This is not progress . . .). In a similar way, the Doctor’s references to his own face are not explicitly clarified in “Deep Breath,” but strongly allude to Capaldi’s previous appearance in Doctor Who, “The Fires Of Pompeii.” So, while fans of Doctor Who might appreciate the new Doctor running around declaring that this situation and adversary (and face) are familiar, casual viewers or newbies to the series will be left baffled.

The reason this is as much of an issue as it is is because of Clara. Clara was the Doctor’s last companion before he regenerated from his Matt Smith appearance/personality to the new Peter Capaldi incarnation. Moffat uses Clara’s inexperience with regeneration to have Clara go through the character struggle of feeling like she does not really know the Doctor anymore and her arc in the episode leads her to the decision of whether or not to remain with the Doctor on his journeys. Unfortunately, as the Impossible Girl, this struggle is the most ridiculous journey for the character to make. Clara has been a part of the lives of all previous Doctors – in “The Name Of The Doctor” this is made explicit – and possibly the subsequent incarnations of him. Either way, Clara has witnessed, interacted with and saved all of the prior incarnations of The Doctor to undo the damage done by The Great Intelligence. In short, there is no sensible reason why Clara would have an issue with the Doctor changing his face; the only reason for that character arc in “Deep Breath” is to explain the regeneration concept to new viewers. So, fans are given tons of allusions to thrill over, but bored by a senseless character direction for the most consistent character in the episode and browbeaten with regeneration information they already have and new viewers are spoon-fed the regeneration concept while being baffled by allusions that are not made explicit enough.

Beginning the episode with Vastra, Jenny, and Strax (indeed, setting the episode in their native time and place) sets the stage for an episode that is much more fan-friendly than it is intended for anyone who is starting the show at this point. The trio of occasional companions/allies to the Doctor could have their own spin-off and it might work better than “Deep Breath” because they could pull off a science fiction comedy more effectively than Doctor Who (which does best when it blends creepy and humorous). “Deep Breath” is heavy with humor when it is not beating viewers over the head with exposition.

What works best in “Deep Breath” is Peter Capaldi as the new incarnation of The Doctor. There is always a period of adjustment for the Doctor after one of his regenerations and the new Doctor is delightfully edgy and has moments of unpredictability that play well. While some of the plot-based issues are predictable (that The Doctor did not place the ad that leads him and Clara into the trap was instantly foreseeable), most of the character-based changes are not. The Doctor abandons Clara at a key moment and his ultimate confrontation with the episode’s adversary is delightfully unsettling. Capaldi takes up the mantle of The Doctor with perfect distinction and credibility.

All that said, some of the minutiae also oscillates between delightful and troubling. Has it previously been established that Doctor Who androids are bound by Soong-ian rules of grammar?! The Doctor declares that the droids are now more human than robot because they use apostrophes, but that’s not some universal science fiction constant (even in Star Trek: The Next Generation, while Data cannot use contractions, Lore can . . . so this is a right-field assumption on The Doctor’s part). On the delightful side is the substantive function of the episode’s big cameo. The prior incarnation of The Doctor makes a telephone call to Clara and as possibly one of the coolest, most delightful retcons ever, Clara admits to him that the new Doctor has gotten old. If she had not confirmed that for him, the Doctor might well have picked a different face and been younger (a great observation from my wife!) for this season.

The eighth season of Doctor Who was set up in an uncommon way; unlike most of Doctor Who where the protagonist is usually a wanderer, this season was set-up with a mission for The Doctor. The Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey has been revealed to still exist, albeit in a pocket universe; the Doctor has a self-imposed mission now of finding and rescuing his people. While the resolution to “Deep Breath” unfortunately does not redirect the befuddled new Doctor with that purpose, but the idea of this particular Doctor with a quest and an adversary of his own is a promising one. It’s unfortunate that “Deep Breath” forces fans to take it on faith that the show will go in that direction.

For other works with Peter Capaldi, please visit my reviews of:
World War Z
In The Loop
Fortysomething
Smilla’s Sense Of Snow

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Doctor Who - The Complete Eighth Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the debut season of Peter Capaldi as The Doctor here!
Thanks!]

6/10

For see how this episode stacks up against other Doctor Who episodes I’ve reviewed by visiting my Doctor Who Review Index Page where the episodes and seasons are organized by rating!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |