Keiran McEwen
Keiran McEwenAh, smell that future air of 2012? It is weird looking back at watching “Dalek” on April 30th, 2005, and yet, never really thinking about 2012 in any way, shape, or form. It was just too far away in my head. Of course, instead of a genocidal upside-down dustbin from space, we got YouTubers, and there’s not much of a difference. Though it does mean that we still got egomaniacs with a poor sense of scope, as they undoubtedly take a serious situation and urinate into a strong wind. Yes, I’m of course talking of the passive villain of the episode, Henry Van Statten; Businessman 1 in the Doctor Who writer’s handbook.
Landing in a hallway lined with display cases holding trinkets and others, Rose and The Doctor step out into the dimly lit room. Filled with the light of the TARDIS, he exposits when, where, and why: Half a mile under Utah in 2012 because the TARDIS was being pulled there by something. Bish, bash, bosh; The setup is done and we know where we are. The next question is why are they in an alien museum underground in Utah, in a hallway lined with a Raxacoricofallapatorian’s arm, a 70s era cyberman head, and bits from Roswell?
It is America, he and Rose are intruding, and they are standing in an underground bunker that isn’t open to the public. It shouldn’t surprise anyone to know within a couple of minutes, there are guns everywhere, and angry men in all black, with heavily put on American accents. Given the owner, Henry Van Statten arrives soon after Rose and The Doctor has in “BAD WOLF 1,” security might be a bit jumpy. That and he’s a psychopath/megalomaniac who’ll fire someone and wipe their mind for an opinion. Replacing his assistant with Goddard; Or for those that have seen The Witcher, Zola.
So, we have one mad man with a blonde in tow and we have Van Statten and his blonde, the latter two with accents faker than Barbie’s peroxide. The fake Americans (ok, an Australian and American in the UK) have a card up their sleeves, an alien expert that buys up all of Van Statten’s museum pieces. After Van Statten is informed of his “visitors,” he tells Goddard to warn one of his men to hurry up on getting “my pet to talk;” A pet with a blue tint to its single eye. Yeah, it’s not a pet and it’s not talking, it’s screaming with a distorted voice of Nicholas Briggs.
In Van Statten’s office, Adam shows him the useless alien paraphernalia he’s bought for the museum. The question I would want to ask is, what constitutes a museum? This is just a big room with artifacts from off-world beings, but a museum is about exhibiting and preserving the artifacts for those many years on to see. This is just a warehouse in the middle of nowhere, and you might as well move it all to South Dakota and call it “Warehouse 13.” Then again, I’m not bored in only liking one of the actresses.
Anyway, The Doctor and Rose are guided into Van Statten’s office by Goddard for what the latter thinks is an interrogation, but the former has the bigger card up his sleeve. Who’s the biggest alien expert? The magic space wizard alien with a binary vascular system and twelve-ish regenerations. Van Statten thinks he’s holding the key to an alien sports car, The Doctor points out it’s just an instrument. I have to say it, it annoys me to no end that in the background of The Doctor’s close-up, there is a cop from “World War Three,” once again stood in all black with a big gun. That might annoy you the next time you watch the episode too.
Admiringly and intently studying The Doctor, Van Statten tries pulling back the upper hand. The man that owns the internet vs the man (Eccleston) before the man (Tennant) before the man (Smith) that would own Tumblr. Ah 2012, you were so simple. After a bit of back and forth of two men with planet-sized egos and only one of them swinging it about, we get to Van Statten’s pet and “the cage” that Rose and The Doctor landed next to. Time to go find out what this pet is, why it’s under so much protection, and what living signal did the TARDIS drag them there for.
Locked in the cage, Eccleston does what Eccleston does best. Seeing drill bits and saws that Van Statten has used to try and open up his “pet,” The Doctor shows empathy, of course. With two words, a name he calls himself and a name repeated back to him in that distorted tone, he knows that in the shadows the blue eye-like light isn’t the pet. It’s a dolphin that’s grown sentences and human-like lungs; Of course not, it’s an upside-down Nazi bin locked in chains and held in the dark. It is a Dalek.
With one more word, consisting of three strained syllables repeated in anger, “EX-TER-MINATE!” Eccleston has in 30 seconds gone from empathy to concern and fear that his greatest enemy has returned. By no means is he doing all the lifting; It’s also the work of Briggs, Shearman, Raynor, Ahearne, and the editor. However, beautifully it goes on, he’s locked in a room with the only Dalek in existence, a broken and chained up Dalek. Once again he changes from fear that he’s about to be angrily yelled at a few more times, to pure joy as he’s once again in power. With venom in his voice, he berates this “great space dustbin” for a couple of minutes.
Screaming at each other as the last two of their respective races; The Dalek demands orders to fight, and The Doctor is happy to know he-it won’t get any. Showing one last moment of anger followed by joy, he pulls a lever that has been used to torture this last Dalek, with the aim of killing this tin monster hell-bent on killing everything that’s not Dalek. This, of course, calls an end to one of the scenes that makes this episode. Van Statten doesn’t want his “pet” to die, he’s got other plans for it. Defense contracts, manufacturing for personal security, and other evil businessman ideas.
All the while Rose has been spending time with Johnny English, otherwise known as Adam. There’s a reason I don’t care to give him any respect as a character, I have great loathing for him. That says a lot when I’ve just been talking about something modeled after actual Nazis. In this episode (Spoiler alert) and the next one, he’s just a useless love-interest for Rose with the character depth of a week-old dead fish being mauled by a stray dog. He goes from an American-style side-kicks’ pet to that passive villain in the space of about an episode. I could only hate him more if he was the magic red button and his name was Clara.
The problem with his “charm” is how he’s meant to be the alien expert, yet he’s only met two of them and he thinks the big-eared bloke is just from the north. I understand it is written so he’s stupid in comparison, but he’s flirting with Rose by telling her aliens are real. She’s seen the planet they are standing on be ripped to shreds. Either Rose has a thing for guys that are a bit slow to the take or she just attracts idiot savants.
Anyway, seeing this space dustbin being tortured, she shows empathy for it as it screams under duress from torture. Being sequestered by Van Statten, The Doctor in a lift (“elevator“) talks shop with Van Statten, Goddard, and two armed men. The topics include Where did the Dalek come from, what is it, and why did it say you were the last of your kind also? In order, The Doctor answers that he: Fell through space; it is A mutated monster with the only emotion being that of hatred; and oh yeah “I’m also an alien”. You know, all the right things you want to say to a man that’s been torturing the only other alien in the bunker.
Shirtless and strung up, The Doctor is once again forced into his best position: Telling an idiot why they are wrong and why they are a passive villain in this story. By trying to keep the Dalek alive, and ignoring The Doctor’s many warnings, Van Statten thinks it is better to keep this tin monster full of hatred locked up. This happens as Adam takes Rose down to stand face to… dome with the Dalek. Showing empathy for this monster, she asks “Are you in pain? I have a friend who can help, he’s called The Doctor.”
“Yes;” The space dustbin that has been specifically constructed to feel only one emotion, the feeling of hatred towards all that are not Dalek, replies, “Yes, I’m in pain.” Somehow, this abnormality of Dalek understands that it has been tortured, it has been tortured out of fear, and yet, Rose standing a foot away from its eye stork is showing empathy. As it is dying, Rose offers a bit of help in its last moments of life, showing emotional support by putting her hand on the Dalek’s dome. The touch of a time-traveler to this metal monstrosity that has fallen through time is all it needed. A piece of human DNA, time-traveler DNA to give it a “fresh start.”
Breaking free from all the chains holding it down, its torturer comes in and is about to sedate it. With new strength, the plunger and electric whisk that all standard Daleks come with in the base-model now work once again. The Doctor’s warning comes true of course. They are all locked a mile underground with an angry, hateful, and vengeful space Nazi. “Release me if you want to live,” The Doctor commands Van Statten, as the announcement of the hostile bin is still locked in the cage but on its own.
Standing and just waiting outside, Rose and Adam stand about like dolts as it unlocks what would be a vault door in a bank. These last two things are the problems I’ll sometimes have with Doctor Who, Why was The Doctor strung up in the first place and why didn’t they instantly run when they could see the door’s combination being cracked? Sometimes you have to sacrifice logic in a script to make a plot compelling, but neither makes sense to do in any case. If your life is being threatened, run!
A couple of minutes later, surrounded on both ends of a small corridor, the Dalek is being shot at by fifteen or so men and women. All of whom are dead after only a few minutes of the Dalek using its 360-degree swivel point on the dome and its “Torso” gun mounts. Killing everyone and everything in sight, it begins to move through the facility. Still running, Rose comes to some stairs with Adam and one of the guards. Something that a rolling hunk of hatred can’t do is climb stairs, right? No, as was the case in the cliffhanger to story 148 part one, “Remembrance of the Daleks” on October 5th, 1988, they can climb.
It kills the last guard, leaving Rose and Adam defenseless at the bottom of the bunker. All the while Van Statten still doesn’t get why keeping the Dalek alive is the worst possible idea. It just wants to kill, it believes all races other than Dalek are wrong. To quote The Doctor, “It is the ultimate in racial cleansing,” it just wants to kill. So, The Doctor orders all guards left (10-15), scientists, accountants, and all to arm themselves with alien guns, they need all they can get because human guns can’t touch this thing.
Collecting in a storage department, they await the Dalek, and more importantly, Rose and Adam. This is where The Doctor tries to help them, telling the leading general in the ranks how to kill the Dalek, shoot the eye, it is the weak spot. Being a faux American with a gun, this general is a bit trigger happy, a bit stupid, and a bit too gung-ho to listen to the only person with knowledge and experience in this situation. I wouldn’t have minded a bit of Star Trek teleportation just to smack him on the back of the head.
Moments later, Rose and Adam come barging through the assembled crew lacking all sorts of alien weaponry, followed by an angry Dalek with an eye for Rose. It’s almost as if her DNA did something to this tin can of hate. It fires at the sprinkler system, covering the floor in a small pool of water; It fires once again, this time the shot acts like an electric arc reaching through a conductive element, such as metal or plastic. This shot takes out the troops on the floor with one on the metal gantry above, and just like that all of the security and staff have been taken out. Not a single bullet hit it.
During the second, for want of a better term, one-on-one with the Dalek and The Doctor, it explains why Rose regenerated it. In that time it has downloaded the internet and scanned every device in search of the Dalek empire, finding nothing. With nothing left, it must follow the primary directive to destroy, something that The Doctor points out is aimless without an empire to destroy for. Seeing that he has the power in the conversation, The Doctor takes his chance, “If you want orders, follow this one: Kill yourself.” Once again bringing that venom in his voice as he shows genuine anger towards a hunk of metal.
“You would make a good Dalek,” it retorts before cutting communication. Once again, it is Eccleston knowing how much that anger boils over and how much is building in him to know part of that is true, in this sense. The next step is commanding Van Statten to close the bunker completely, locking it deep down there for the rest of time. There’s just one problem, Rose is still down there. With only 20-30 yards to cover, there is power to the bulkheads and the door begins to close under orders from The Doctor.
No matter how much she ran, she was always a bit slow. Locked in the bottom of the bunker with an angry space dustbin, it closes in on her. Through the phone, The Doctor just hears “EX-TER-MINATE!” Knowing where to place that anger he turns to Van Statten, the one who stopped him from killing the last Dalek, the last Nazi dustbin, the last thing the 19-year-old Rose would ever hear… Kind of.
It’s her turn to berate something, asking why the Dalek did what it did. It’s a Dalek, it must kill. However, there’s one thing a Dalek doesn’t do, feel. That’s what stopped it from killing Rose, it can feel her fear, it can feel emotion and that’s what they are genetically modified not to do. Demanding that the doors open, The Doctor sees that the Dalek didn’t kill Rose, so he caves and gives in to its demands. While marching Rose out of the vault, it makes its way up to the top where the other four are: The Doctor, Adam, Van Statten, and Goddard.
With nothing to get rid of this killing machine easily on hand, Adam points out his workshop has some weapons that might be of use. Too bad most of them are broken and one of them is just a hairdryer. Nevertheless, there is one weapon of use, a big beefy bit of plastic that I’m sure Nerf ended up making into one of their toy guns. All the while the Dalek pins Van Statten against a wall and questions his actions, asking him why he tortured a Dalek that couldn’t and didn’t fight. Just as it is about to kill Van Statten, Rose asks what it really wants, “FREE-DOM.”
The Doctor rushes back up to find the Dalek, and engages in one last standoff with the last Dalek. It fries a whole in the roof of the bunker revealing sunlight, as Rose stands only feet away. Opening its casing for the first time, we see the mutated brain, with a central eye, and tentacles like an octopus. The Doctor bursts in aiming a gun and wanting to kill it. Eccleston’s last piece of anger turns to confusion and compassion, he aims the gun at Rose as she stands in front of the open Dalek. Once she explains that all it wanted was the sunlight, he sees, for lack of a better term, the humanity imbued into the Dalek via Rose’s touch.
Breaking down into the emotional coward I genuinely love the character for, he tries to open up about The Last Great Time War. “WHY-DO-WE-SURVIVE?” it asks with its last gasps of life, showing the last of two mortal enemies destined to do this dance forever. Feeling the pain, the darkness, and the heartache that The Doctor carries around, The Dalek asks Rose to order it to death. “THIS-IS-NOT-LIFE. THIS-IS-SICKNESS.”
By giving character to the evilest piece of killing machinery, and giving a character that’s about peace and resolution nothing but pure bile and hatred; It is one of the strongest episodes of Eccleston’s run. The only pieces to pick apart are archetypes from the handbook, i.e Van Statten, and Adam. The rest of Robert Shearman’s only episode of Doctor Who TV fits the show beautifully. A brilliant story adaptation of his audio drama, Jubilee.
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🔥588Doctor Who "Dalek"
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Pros
- Characterization of the Dalek.
- The Doctor taken to that Batman-Joker edge.
Cons
- Archetypal secondary antagonist.
- Those "American" accents.
