Dalek

Obviously wonderful and easily the most GOSH WOW ISN’T DOCTOR WHO THE BEST THING ON TELEVISION episode yet but, I don’t know, I think I preferred World War Three. Maybe it was because I have heard the whole thing before, in the fantastic audio adventure Jubilee or maybe because for all the fabulous set pieces it was just another base under siege story. Please don’t get me wrong, this was exciting, emotional and scary and easily the best ‘production’ of the show to date, it was great telly for sure but it just felt a little too mainstream to be truly Doctor Who. Whereas World War Three was outrageous and silly, this was all a bit normal for Doctor Who. Gosh, I bet I’m not making any friends, am I?

What Rob Shearman has done (in my eyes at least) is taken all the humour out of Jubilee and kept all the serious bits and despite adding some depth to the situation with further mentions of the Time War has practically pasted the entire script into a televised episode. And to be frank, I think I preferred Jubilee. There was something wonderfully uncomfortable about that particular audio and not just because we get to sympathise with the Dalek captive but because the humour was out and out disgusting in places and mixed in with the horror and drama made for a delightfully macabre experience. Whereas Dalek the TV episode goes for spectacle and frights, which admittedly it does fabulously but with the humour all but absent, I was constantly feeling there was something missing. It was no where near as uncomfortable and thus only half as effective as it could have been. Although I know somebody who will be delighted with this episode, someone who despised the humour from Jubilee but enjoyed the central idea. He will be in heaven.

However some of the humour in Jubilee was overdone and embarrassing and losing a woman asking a Dalek to marry her was greatly appreciated. And when all is said and done Rob Shearman is still Rob Shearman, which means the episode will still be powered by superb dialogue, strong emotions and clever twists. Dalek is all the best emotional bits from Jubilee strung together and that can be no bad thing. Considering how lightweight some of the series has been to this point some meaty drama can be no bad thing.

And wowza Christopher Eccleston where have you been hiding in the first five episodes? This was a bravura performance from the lead man, unleashing previously unseen anger and bitterness that highlights a particularly ugly and racist side to his personality. I adore this sort of examination of the Doctor and this was one of the absolute best attempts, his sheer hatred and fear of the Dalek led to some thoroughly uncomfortable moments. The scene where he attempted to kill the Dalek in cold blood chilled me to the bone but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of the Doctor gripping that bloody great bazooka and threatening to blow its head off at the climax. We know how dangerous these metal bastards can be and technically we should be behind the Doctor all the way but by creating an unfamiliar bond between the creature and Rose we are forced into the discomforting position of wanting him to fail. And while the much celebrated “Do I have the right?” scene from Genesis of the Daleks is powerful in its own right I don’t think any other Dalek story has convinced me that the Doctor is wrong in his beliefs and that the Dalek deserves to live. It aint pretty but it makes for compulsive television.

I am so glad Nick Briggs was given a chance to star in the new series, the delights he has lavished on fans of the Daleks with his audio series are manifold and were easily enough to convince the creators of Doctor Who that he is the right man for the job. What he does here is phenomenal, actually managing to make us care for what is nothing but a homicidal killing machine. With his voice alone he conveys the Daleks’ anger, despair, defeat and revenge. He makes it scary as shit in certain scenes and yet touching in others. Of course the creators of the actual Dalek machine deserve plaudits too, there has never been a Dalek this stylish before and several of its actions scenes, particularly the amazingly cool moment where it swivels its body around to shoot more people, are gob smacking. Everyone involved deserves a round of applause, they have managed to take this absurd looking pot and make genuinely frightening, certainly I was terrified when it rose into the air and turned the sprinkler system into electric hell.

Billie Piper is such a good performer it breaks my heart to have to say this but I think Maggie Stables is a better actress and her relationship with the Dalek in Jubilee had more charge than Rose’s with this Dalek. Rose and the Dalek hit all the right notes and more, they convincingly portray their (dare I say it) bond and bring you close to tears when she eventually tells it to commit suicide. The scene where Rose asks the Dalek what else it wants apart from killing is superb drama. But Maggie played the Evelyn as though she was thoroughly terrified of the creature whilst she was understanding it which made for far more edgy scenes whereas Rose clearly cares for the Dalek which guts some of the tension. Plus I couldn’t really take the sunlight scene as well as others have, there was something a bit too twee about it (well this is set in America!) reaching out its tentacle into the sunlight. Of course Dalek only had half the time Jubilee had to get inside its characters heads and I think it still deserves kudos for doing something with a bit more depth than most mainstream sci-fi shows would dare or indeed have the ability to do. This is far, far from the unbearable sugariness of Star Trek the Next Generation’s I, Borg which similarly humanised one of its biggest baddies. At least Dalek got to kill over two hundred people and sucker someone death for a laugh!

There was definite step up in production values and direction too which help to give this episode a filmic quality. The news of Joe Ahearne directing Doctor Who got a lot of fans excited as he has been the perpetrator of some fantastic telly in the past and this was like all his best work put together. The pace of this story never lets up and there is a genuine sense of danger. The POV Dalek scenes were giddily dramatic and added a lot of weight to the interrogation scenes. Some of the shots were painfully violent and all the better for it, the kids must have been terrified of this one. The cameras never stop moving and there is a pleasing mixture of complex long shots and intimate close ups. This is the work of a man who understands telly; the build up to the Daleks’ escape is nail bitingly tense. Murray Gold once again provides fine accompanying music; I loved the heavy vocals as the Dalek rampages through the complex. And the lighting and special effects were flawless, conveying danger and spectacle in equal measure.

Performances never falter but nobody tops the work done by Eccleston and Piper and more than ever you can feel their bond. The Doctor’s violent reaction after he shuts her in with the Dalek and thinks it has killed her made me sit up and gasp, clearly he has more complex feeling for this woman than we ever dared to think. And his heartbreaking reaction when she asks what he has become, pointing a gun at her because she standing between him and the Dalek, shock at how ashamed he feels proves he really does care what she thinks of him. Equally Rose’s painful “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world” when she thinks she is going to die speaks volumes.

Riveting drama then, and easily the most sit up and pay attention episode yet. I would not be surprised if Dalek won the best episode of the season poll as it clearly is oozing with talent. Maybe the humour of Jubilee would have poisoned such a dramatic episode but in the end of the day I will probably stick on the much more uncomfortable audio rather than watch the episode in the future.