From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho.moderated
From Address: jphalt@aol.com
Subject: Re: jphalt's Doctor Who reviews

DALEK

1 episode. Approx. 45 minutes. Written by: Robert Shearman. Directed
by: Joe Ahearne. Produced by: Phil Collinson.


THE PLOT

The Doctor follows a distress signal to Utah, 2012 - specifically, to
the underground museum of Internet billionaire Henry van Statten
(Corey Johnson). Van Statten has turned a fortune into an empire by
studying alien artifacts that have fallen to Earth, adapting their
technology for the marketplace ("Broadband? Roswell!").

But the prize of his collection is a living being which he has dubbed
"The Metaltron." The creature is encased in a protective machine, and
it refuses to speak. Van Statten's men have tortured it to make it
scream, but it still won't talk. Until the Doctor walks into its cage,
determined to rescue it from captivity.

Only this machine is no simple victim. It is the last surviving member
of the most evil race the Doctor has ever faced. It is a Dalek!


CHARACTERS

The Doctor: For the Ninth Doctor, the cheerful cover was never more
than a very thin veneer even at the best of times. Christopher
Eccleston delivers his best Who performance, showing that cover not so
much stripped away as shattered. From the instant he recognizes the
Dalek right up to the story's end, he is intensely and nakedly
emotional: terrified, desperate, and overflowing with rage. The
Doctor's not wrong to call for the creature's death, as the entire
first 30 minutes chillingly demonstrate, but it's still disconcerting
to see spittle literally fly from his lips as he screams at the Dalek:
"Why don't you just die!?!"

Rose: Her compassion compels her to rush to the Dalek's cage when she
sees van Statten's men torturing it. She knows nothing of its nature,
and it is easily able to manipulate her into touching it - allowing it
to extrapolate from her DNA to repair itself. In this way, Rose's
compassion sets off the events that lead to so many deaths, something
the Doctor's harshness would have prevented had he not been stopped.
Still, Rose's ability to identify with the Dalek stops the killing in
the end, as the Dalek extrapolates too much of her into itself. More
importantly, she is able to defuse the Doctor's rage, leading him back
to his usual self by the show's end.

Adam: The first of two stories featuring interim companion Adam
Mitchell (Bruno Langley). Rose responds strongly to Adam, openly
flirting in their very first proper scene together. Adam's
intelligence and lack of respect for authority remind her of the
Doctor - a younger, sexually available version of the Doctor. Adam
does manage to get on the Doctor's bad side by saving himself by
ducking under a descending bulkhead rather than trying to help Rose,
but I don't think he can be condemned there. Rose was too many steps
behind - All he would have accomplished by lingering would be trapping
himself on the wrong side of the bulkhead with her, which would surely
have ended in his death in a way that would have been no help to Rose
at all.

Dalek: Quite possibly the only new series story in which the Daleks
really work.  The story strips the threat down to a single Dalek.
Battered and old, it looks more pathetic than frightening. Which makes
it all the more effective as it rips through van Statten's small army
of guards with no effort at all. We are shown its intelligence, not
only through decoding the lock to its cage and "absorbing the
Internet," but also viscerally. Surrounded by guards, the Dalek takes
in the room. It observes the fire alarm, the sprinkler system, the
metal all around... and in three expertly-judged shots, a matter of
seconds, it performs a massacre. The spectacle is enough to make Van
Statten finally take the thing seriously - and more than enough to
sell every viewer on the threat of the Daleks.


THOUGHTS

The episode opens with an effective aside, working both as a nod to
the old series and the old fans and as a thematic tie-in with this
story. The Doctor and Rose are poking around Van Statten's private
museum, when the Doctor comes across the head of a classic series
Cyberman. He stares at it through the glass, shocked and a little
disgusted at seeing "the stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit."
There's not even a pause in breath between him observing that and
stating that he's "getting old."

Like the Cybermen, the Time Lords and the Daleks are all gone. The
stuff of myth and nightmares, reduced to one Time Lord and one Dalek,
living relics of an age long past. If van Statten has his way, both
Dalek and Doctor will be reduced to museum exhibits - intelligent
animals, kept in a private cage for his own entertainment.

Dalek is loosely based on writer Robert Shearman's Big Finish audio,
Jubilee. The two stories are very different, however.  Their only real
similarities are the idea of a single, imprisioned Dalek and a similar
(though not identical) Doctor/Dalek confrontation scene.

I like Jubilee better overall, but the Doctor/Dalek scene in Dalek is
by far the stronger confrontation. With the Time War backstory, it's
more meaningful. Instead of simply being a verbal confrontation
between the Doctor and a Dalek, it is a confrontation between the last
Time Lord and the last Dalek, the start of what would seem to be the
final battle of that war. All "Doctorish" elements drop away from
Eccleston's performance in an instant, as he taunts his enemy, blocks
out its words about them being the same, and finally embraces that
charge by attempting to kill the Dalek - even preceding his attempt by
intoning the Dalek catchphrase: "Exterminate!" It's been seven years
since Doctor Who returned to television as I write this, and this
remains the most intense scene the series has presented.

The first thirty minutes of Dalek are magnificent. It's a very
stripped-down episode: a single Dalek on a rampage, Rose and Adam on
the run from it, and the Doctor determined to not only stop it but
obliterate it. The script is taut, smart, and suspenseful, the pace
driving relentlessly right up to the instant that bulkhead closes with
Rose caught on the wrong side of it.

And then, it all falls apart.

There is nothing in the first thirty minutes of Dalek that does not
work for me. Unfortunately, there is little in the last ten minutes
that does work. The Dalek doesn't transform gradually. Despite an
attempt to plant something early on in the Dalek focusing on Rose, it
still behaves as a traditional Dalek - albeit a traditional Dalek on
steroids. But once that bulkhead closes, it suddenly becomes a
completely different entity.

Maybe if the Dalek spared only Rose, because of its connection with
her, but continued to exterminate everyone else... Maybe then it
wouldn't feel so completely out of place dramatically. But its sparing
of van Statten and Goddard (Anna-Louise Plowman) is a step too far.
The Dalek goes from "alien death machine" to "grumpy puppy" with
practically no transition, and that last ten minutes feels like it
belongs to a very different episode, a very much worse one.

If I was as enthusiastic about the show's ending as I am about the
rest of it, this would be the best Ninth Doctor episode. It's still a
decidedly above-average episode, with a stunning performance by
Christopher Eccleston and some of the best moments in the entire new
series. The ending fails badly for me, though, transforming a great
episode into merely a very good one.


Rating: 8/10.

--- Synchronet 3.15a-Linux NewsLink 1.92-mlp
 * Origin: rec.arts.drwho.moderated moderation hosted by Gweep Systems
(1:2320/105.97)
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Linux
 * Origin: telnet & http://cco.ath.cx - Dial-Up: 502-875-8938 (1:2320/105.1)