The Daleks had been ridiculed, often imitated, and had generally lost their edge. No longer were they the stuff of nightmares; they were now the figures of fun. With this in mind, Robert Shearman had a hard task in writing this Episode, and it is a pleasant surprise that it was as great as it is.

Slowly but surely, the Dalek strips away all possible points of humour: the sink plunger arm becomes a sucking, lethal, and head-breaking (literally) weapon, as well as one able to break codes and absorb information; the circular balls on the Daleks’ bases are no longer pretty, decorative attachments but are instead spherical bombs which are used to commit suicide, or self-extermination if you prefer; the gun turret in the Dalek centre can now swivel around 360°, making any notion of sneaking up behind them and, say, pushing them into a freezing cold lake on Spiridon no longer reasonable. This Dalek could single-handedly wipe out the entire Thal army in less time than it takes to surmise the plot of… well, a ‘Doctor Who’ story with very little plot- insert your own parallel here!

The actual plot of ‘Dalek’, rather famously now, borrows the lone-Dalek-in-a-cell scenario from the beyond-excellent Big Finish play ‘Jubilee’, but scenario aside there is very little in the way of similarities, which is a good thing as it saves me having to write out lengthy comparative paragraphs, though I shall come back to it later on nevertheless.

Here we have what everyone believes to be the last Dalek. Ever. The Daleks are no more; they fought a war against the Time Lords and were wiped out, though quite why they were fighting each other and what it actually entailed is something we never learn throughout Series One. This is a Dalek which is alone, and consequently confused. It kills, because that is what it does. It exterminates because it is a Dalek, and Daleks exterminate.

After some nifty DNA-extraction from a certain Rose Tyler (o, she of the easy deception), our entrapped friend is free to begin its killing spree, and kill it does. The bodies fly thick and fast, the screams echo and in one very memorable scene, the Dalek even makes sure everyone is watching it as it gloatingly murders a room full of base personnel in a rather imaginative way. The actual repair of the Dalek seems a bit convenient, though I cannot really see another way in which it would have worked, considering how the Episode ends. The use of a solitary Dalek was a superb way to make them seem all the more hostile and threatening. After all, if one Dalek alone could cause the immense damage this one did, imagine a whole army of them…

The supporting characters Shearman has created are just as memorable as the Dalek’s actions within the Episode; Henry van Statten- played with obvious relish by Corey Johnson- is the perfect ‘Doctor Who’ baddie. He is selfish, arrogant, rude, and out only to save himself at the expense of everybody and everything else. Bruno Langley debuts here as Adam, and he gives a performance that shines, so when he joins the TARDIS crew at the end of the Episode, it is a pleasant and most welcome surprise. As Van Statten’s aide, Diana Goddard (played by Anna Louise Plowman) is just as cold as her boss, but so less vocal that she gets away with not being shouted down by the Doctor. Alas, she is given little to do compared to Van Statten and Adam but she still makes an impression.

Once more, Billie Piper as Rose Tyler is a joy to watch, from the slow way she is tricked by the Dalek to the moving conversation she has with the Doctor via Mobile Telephone. If this wasn’t enough, Christopher Eccleston turns in his best performance to date as the Doctor. This is a Time Lord scarred by all he has seen, witnessed and fought in, and his sheer anger throughout the Episode is gripping stuff; you cannot help being drawn in. Everything, from his one-on-one conversations with the Dalek to his rant at Van Statten following Rose’s apparent demise, is so good that one is compelled to watch.

The Director of ‘Dalek’ was Joe Ahearne, and he is quite simply terrific. The ambience he creates fits the Episode perfectly; when it is meant to be moody, it is moody; when it is meant to be a bit lighter in tone, it is lighter in tone. From the reveal of the Cyberman head in a glass case near the start of the Episode to the interplay between Van Statten and the Doctor to the scenes with Rose and Adam talking about extra-terrestrials, everything is as close to perfection as can be achieved. Complimenting this very nicely indeed is Murray Gold’s incidental music; his score is big, loud, operatic and grand, and lives up to the expectations of the visuals every step of the way.

The very ending of the Dalek in ‘Dalek’ is good, though arguably not clear enough. Many people have complained that it is shown to be weak and full of heart due to having a conscience, but in truth it has anything but that. It does not kill itself because it has gone ‘soft’ and seen the error of its ways. It kills itself because it can no longer kill. It wants to exterminate all living things, but cannot. It wants to see the destruction of all things, but is prevented from doing so, so it kills itself. It is not a happy ending; this Dalek has not been redeemed. If anything, it shows itself to be just as nasty as it has done throughout the Episode. It wants to kill, but it cannot, so it kills itself. It dies through lack of sadistic alternative.

If I had two complaints, they would be that, as mentioned above, the ending lacks the clarity that it really should have, and also, from a personal point of view and one largely irrelevant to the Review, I preferred ‘Jubilee’.

For a start, I think that its four-episode format allows the supporting cast to develop more, and also the Dalek undergoing similar treatment reaches the same state as the one in ‘Dalek’ without the lack of conscience, making for, in many ways, a more powerful ending and certainly a more interesting Dalek. Perhaps I just wanted ‘Dalek’ to be longer than it was, but for me ‘Jubilee’ wins the crown as the better story. Despite this, I still think that its television equivalent was superb, so it’s a bit like comparing sublime with fantastic- they’re both good, but one has the edge.

‘Dalek’ was a chance to make everything the Daleks once were prominent in the viewers’ minds, and Shearman has succeeded remarkably. This is an Episode that could have gone so badly, but it doesn’t. Everything shines from the acting, to the Direction, to the golden Dalek casing (which looks brilliant and quickly quenched any thoughts within which wanted the Dalek casing to be silver like in ‘Death To The Daleks’ in my deepest, darkest fanboy dreams). Okay, so the ending lacks the clarity it deserves and, for me at least, the source of inspiration (‘Jubilee’) remains superior to this, but that is not to say that I disliked this. In fact, I loved it, as the rest of this review will show. ‘Dalek’ is a resounding triumph, which does ‘Doctor Who’, Christopher Eccleston and- above all- Robert Shearman proud.

We are hitting the middle episodes of Doctor Who 2005 now, and the production team wisely re-ignited the public interest with those wonderful Daleks – the main reason the show took off in the first place. After just over a month on TV, this would have seemed a great idea – a definite pulling back of viewers after that initial excitement of the first few shows. Fact is though that Doctor Who 2005 has been pulling the viewers in regardless. Admittedly Aliens of London 2-parter had seen a slight drop in viewers – but it was still popular and massively in the public eye.

Dalek presented something extra special in a season that continues to enthral and amaze. Time and again this series has exceeded my expectations – and Dalek was no different – and those expectations were so high too!

Christopher Eccleston was at his best in Dalek, but increasingly it is Billie Piper who is claiming the major accolades for performance amongst some brilliant characters. Her lovely scene with Adam in the workshop was wonderfully flirty. It is Rose who has the confrontation with the creature at the end – the Doctor clearly bricking himself at the possibility of being anywhere near his Number One Foe. It is Rose who increasingly is the Major Star of Doctor Who – even though, I have to stress this, the 9th Doctor is brilliant too.

The episode was beautifully paced, and I think it’s the Director who deserves praise for that. The wonderful opening in the Museum, with all the strange artefacts on show. The inclusion of the Cyberhead was glorious – has anything looked so shiny and worthy of display more? The Dalek was introduced at perfectly the right time, and Christopher Eccleston excelled in his fear.

The supporting characters, from the cold collector Van Statton to the genius wonderkid Adam, were very good too. I rather warmed to Bruno Langley, and it will be interesting to see how Rose and Doctor take to this new travelling companion.

Dalek essentially was about the Dalek though – hence the imaginative and totally appropriate title. And in this regard we have brilliance. Isolating the major Doctor Who enemy this way made me think of Hugh, out Next Generation Borg fame. But then I moved beyond that – this individual of an enemy race was handled much better, and with far more gravitas. This lone Dalek was infinitely more powerful than anything seen in the series thus far. I genuinely believed that this Dalek, on his own, could produce more devastation than anything we had thus far seen. I was totally convinced because of the design and execution of this iconic Monster.

I am warming to Murray Golds music more too – and in Dalek he reached his peak thus far. The dramatic vocal score particularly emphasized the menace presented – and was a perfect counterpoint throughout to the action. Excellent production. Another reassuring aspect of Dalek was this was the first Directorial chore for Joe Ahearne. As he is directing the bulk of the rest of this series, that bodes very well for its quality.

The sets were marvellous, and I loved the totally appropriate use of the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff. I have always thought Sports Stadia were very bunkerish. I will be watching for any Daleks the next time I go through any Sports Stadium!

Another interesting aspect of Dalek is the script. I have been a big fan of Rob Shearmans work on Doctor Who since Holy Terror. His scripts are continually superior to most of Big Finishs consistently excellent output – they are that good. Jubilee, the inspiration behind some of this TV script, was one of the best. But yet Dalek went its own way, with only the imprisoned Dalek of the start reminiscent of Jubilee. This story is mostly about a Dalek on the rampage in an underground bunker – there was none of that in Jubilee. All the usual Dalek put downs were present and correct here – but further emphasized how superior this new Dalek was.

In short Rob Shearmans script totally fitted its TV medium, as Jubilee totally fitted its Audio Medium.

I am convinced that Dalek will win the Poll for Best Story of the season – even if the Daleks return later on. I thought it was magnificent – the second brilliant episode of the Series so far (the Unquiet Dead was glorious too, for all kinds of other reasons). Dalek shows again that new Who is brilliant Who.

Aren’t we the lucky ones – we have 7 more stories this year, and another massive season next year. These are truly golden years for anyone who has ever loved Doctor Who. 10/10

Okay... now, how should I describe this episode? I have read everyone else’s reviews after I finally saw this episode on Saturday that has just passed. (Us poor deprieved people in Australia were five or six episodes behind the UK; I have been brave and not let myself look at any other reviews for future episodes).

While having watched the new Who every Saturday and the reruns of every all the old series (we are currently on the second series with Tom Baker) every weekday I thought the Daleks in the old Doctor Who weren't all that scary compared to the latest episode. I actually got really scared when the Dalek started to go one its killing spree because it showed many shots of the dead bodies. I did feel a lot of sympathy for it when Rose's DNA started to mutate it.

Actually coming to Rose I thought that Billie Piper acted brilliantly, especially all of her scenes with the Dalek and as usual all of her scenes with the Doctor were a joy to watch. The Doctor's reaction to thinking that Rose was actually dead and gone was extremely convincing but his reaction to seeing her alive was even better to watch. Christopher E's acting though stole the show when he first encounters the Dalek and his reaction and speech to the Dalek after he realises that it actually can't hurt him because his laser can't "Exterminate!" I did get a bit disturbed though when the Doctor threatened the Dalek with a massive gun, even though the Dalek had opened his casing and only was trying to feel the sun. Since when did the Doctor become a military man? Her reaction though was extremely well played and her asking the Doctor, "What about you Doctor? What the hell are you turning into?"

Excellent acting but the only thing that peeved me off was the introducing the character of Adam.

Why on earth did the Doctor take him? I can understand from Rose's point of view but why oh why Doctor? Hopefully he'll die or something in the next episode!

I also really hope that the Doctor and Rose get together in the end.

Overall I would give Dalek a 9/10.

Dalek was undoubtedly one of the most disturbing, emotional and exciting episodes of Doctor Who I have ever seen. Writer Robert Shearman skilfully gave us an episode that had the requisite amount of thrills and drama, but with an emotional wallop that has surely never been seen in the series before.

With just one Dalek to contend with, the battle for the Doctor against his deadliest enemy was far more personal and totally believable. It was disturbing to see the Doctor first cowering with fear as the Dalek threatened to exterminate him (for the umpteenth time, you’d think he’d be used to it by now!) But then to then see him taunting the Dalek and explode with uncontrollable fury. Then just when you’re reeling at that, he actually tries to kill the Dalek in cold blood…

This was powerful emotional stuff and superbly played by Christopher Eccleston. Never before have we seen a Doctor be so scared; not even Patrick Troughton! The gradual development and exposition of the Time War back story actually had me on the edge of my seat. This episode, perhaps more than any of them so far, really gave Eccleston a chance to excel and show just why the production team chose him in the first place, regardless of him only wanting to do one season.

Nicholas Briggs gave the Dalek voice so much more character than any other Dalek voice actor before. The sixties Dalek voices (apart from the films) always sounded camp, while Roy Skelton in the seventies was scary yet monotonous, mainly due to the script. Here, for the first time, the Dalek ran through a gamut of emotions, even managing to instil some sympathy in us while still maintaining its menace. And when the Dalek spoke about Rose being the "woman [the Doctor] loved!" I was gobsmacked!

And what of that woman? Well, Billie Piper continues to impress due not only to her talent but also due to the writing. The production team are aiming to show true character development and consistency, plus building up a relationship between the Doctor and Rose that is genuine and believable. The scene where she says goodbye after the bulkhead closes was heart-wrenching, I literally was on the edge of my seat!

It wasn’t just the emotional level being hiked up, the Dalek had its image updated too and its scare factor significantly increased. No more sink plunger jokes thank you; although you knew it was coming, the new and improved deadly plunger no doubt had audiences cheering. The exterminating effect was superb but an old Git like me missed the old-style negative effect. Any traditionalist fan however will be pleased that this Dalek story fulfils the usual requirement of a high body count, with not only the electrocution scene being memorable, but also the individual deaths of minor characters like DiMaggio were realistic and shocking.

With the trio of the Doctor, Rose and the Dalek taking up the majority of screen time, the other actors should be praised for making their characters quite memorable. Corey Johnson was suitably menacing as Van Statten, perhaps being more of the story’s villain than the Dalek. Anna-Louise Plowman as Goddard had little to work with but still gave a solid performance. The character of Adam Mitchell threatens to be another Adric, although fortunately he is, at least, well played by Bruno Langley.

The ending was odd, but in a good way. I had imagined that we would actually see the Doctor blasting the Dalek to bits. To see it just give up and self-destruct at first seemed wrong but on reflection, it does seem to be the more appropriate ending. The Dalek mutant was another triumph for the special effects crew.

And the Cyberman cameo at the start was strangely moving, focusing as it did on the "teardrop" design. Despite it being one of the dated designs, it managed to look realistic and not retro or quaint. Maybe I’m getting old too?

Dalek was fantastic as the Doctor would say! The best episode of this series so far, full of wonderful moments and for me it managed to demonstrate in just 45 minutes, all that is wonderful about Doctor Who.

Dalek continues the season's downward trend with an episode that promised much but ultimately delivered little of any real quality.

A lot of fans seem dazzled as usual by the high production values, but this was a resolutely uninspired run-around. Take the Dalek climbing the stairs incident - I'm no fan of the McCoy era, but at least the climax to Remembrance part one had pacing. Given that everyone know the bloody thing was going to levitate, what was the point in having it sit there for about two minutes listening to a load of old piffle about being made to surrender? The subsequent death of the trooper was gratuitous and contrived - there was no reason for her to stay and get killed - she already knew her weopen would be useless.

But these are small points compared to the more serious charges that, with each passing episode, can be laid at the feet of Christopher Eccleston's Doctor. People seem to be enjoying his "anti-hero" stance, but this idea that the Doctor is now some sort of intergalactic war veteran with psycologicial scarring and a predilection for bouts of gut-level brutality -well, does any of that do anything to evoke or develop the essential magic of Doctor Who?

The Doctor is supposed to be a HERO folks, he was never meant to be Avon, or Garibaldi from Babylon 5. By all means make other supporting characters messed up and flakey, but for God's sake, give the kids a central hero they can rely on. In the Unquiet Dead he ended up with his back to the wall, having made a monumnetal error of judgement and almost destroyed the world - fortunately Dickens was there to save everyone. In the next story he allowed himself to be cooped up in one room for nearly a whole episode, eventually replying on Rose's mobile phone and a council estate urchin to save the day by proxy. And now we have him standing around getting all emotional while Rose inadvertently defeats the Dalek with a dose of her own humanity.

Come on Russel T. Davies - give us a story in which the Doctor finally DOES something heroic and positvie, where he behaves like the Doctor! Subverting his character is an act of sabotage that will only be appreciated by hard-core fans. A new generation of children need the brave, resourceful centre-stage hero which we were treated to between the years 1963 and 1980. Anything other approach and we end up slipping down distinctly Carmel-esque slopes.

One other thing about this episode that drove me nuts was the heavy handed and over prescriptive incidental music, which became positively unbearable at the climax. Having revealed the Dalek creature in all its one-eyed glory, the story then slipped into slushy melodrama with the kind of string-driven pap that blights american movies. The whole of the final sequence had enough emotional content already - here was a Dalek choosing suicide! Why do we need to be told how to feel by slushy music? Can you imagine that happening at the end of Ark in Space as Noah sacrifices himself? A flurry of strings as Chase gets eaten by his compost machine? Those fine memorable dramatic deaths happened in the complete absence of music!

And finally - it seems we have another Adric on our hands. I've already forgotten the name of the character, along with his face, his voice, and his non-contribution to the story. Just what is it about him that the production team felt would be a good companion? Blandness personified! Rose's boyfriend would have been infinitely better, and that's not saying much.

All in all, this episode (SFX trumped up as potentially the greatest episode ever!) reminded me of a forgettable Doctor-less comic strip from the back pages of Dr Who weekly. A major disappointment.

‘Dalek’ reintroduced ‘Doctor Who’s’ most enduring and iconic villains to a new audience, and at times during this story we can’t help feeling a kind of magic. When the Doctor approaches the hurt, shadow-shrouded alien in friendship, only to hear that horrible, familiar voice (“DOC-TOR? THE DOC-TOR?”), it’s a moment filled with horror and delight – an instant classic scene.

The idea of an emotionally tortured and stranded Doctor facing off against a *literally* tortured and stranded Dalek counterpart is a fascinating one, rich with dramatic possibilities, but unfortunately this story is not the mini-masterpiece it might have been. This is not really to do with the ‘time-traveler DNA’ element that seems to have angered so many fans (it’s really amazing to me how many of us seem to have convinced ourselves that classic ‘Who’ was above absurd – often *extremely* absurd – pseudoscience).

No, instead it’s more to do simply with the storytelling methods. If classic ‘Doctor Who’ can be criticized for giving its audience too much detail (and boy, can it ever), then ‘Dalek’ can be criticized for giving us too little. Oh, we have everything we need to follow what’s going on – but we have nothing more, and it is that ‘more’ that so often made the old series feel like it existed in its own true fictional universe. ‘Dalek,’ on the other hand, feels like a plot outline. Gone is the fun of the Doctor having to figure out where he and his companion have landed and why; this time he simply tells us in the story’s first minutes. (In fact, he tells us we’re in an alien museum before we can even *see* that we’re in one!) Then we are asked to swallow that the paranoid van Statten would immediately take an intruder found in his maximum-security compound and dump him in (unchaperoned!) with his most prized possession . . . . These problems aren’t really the fault of Rob Shearman’s script; the writer simply does what he has to in order to bring the viewer up to speed within the constraints of a single 45-min. episode. But to anyone approaching the new ‘Doctor Who’ in the context of the old, ‘Dalek’ can’t help feeling somewhat shallow and rushed – blink and you’ll miss it.

The supporting cast of characters doesn’t add much. Van Statten is an extremely annoying stereotype – he bellows his own *name*, for crying out loud – and his self-conscious banter with Goddard is shrill and witless. He’s as bad as Chinn in ‘The Claws of Axos,’ and the fact that the character is such an obvious joke makes it seem ridiculous that the Doctor would take him seriously enough to give him a Pertwee-esque indignant lecture. And the irritating Adam contributes little to this story, except for his obvious plot function as provider of the secret Dalek-killing weapons.

That’s not to say that all is bad about ‘Dalek.’ The fundamental premise is still compelling, and Christopher Eccleston effectively plays the Doctor’s jumble of emotions at the resurfacing of his oldest foe – bafflement, fear, fury and mockery all combine convincingly in this performance. Rose is plonked into a ‘Beauty and the Beast’ clichй, but Billie Piper makes as much of it as she can. The finale is rather melodramatic (especially Rose’s ‘What the hell are *you* changing into?,’ accompanied by ‘Tara’s Theme’ style sweeping music, which made me cringe a bit), but even so, it’s hard not to be touched by our first good look at the sad, lonely mutant inside the travel machine.

As for the Dalek itself, it is also somewhat better in the concept than in the execution (this is nothing new for the series, I suppose!). Nicholas Briggs seems to be channeling the ghosts of Dalek voices past – he sounds like Roy Skelton when angry, like Michael Wisher when hysterical, and like Brian Miller much of the rest of the time. It’s a messy, mixed bag of a performance: Briggs jumps up and down vocally where Dalek inflections traditionally go up and up and up, and I found it rather distracting. The Dalek machine itself does look very good, and it’s certainly nice to see its lights flashing in synch for once. But it also seems to move slower than any Dalek in ‘Doctor Who’ history (who would have thought that was possible?), and the production team has inserted a C-3PO-esque mechanical squeak when it moves its eyestalk, which makes it more robot-like than ever. As for the Dalek’s character, it does show cunning and manipulation in its dealings with Rose, true, but it doesn’t really resemble the resourceful, scientific Daleks of old at their best (the weaponless Daleks in ‘Death to the Daleks,’ for instance, take control of their situation much faster than this mopey old philosopher).

All in all, it’s of course worth watching, and nostalgia alone should raise it a couple points in any fan’s estimation. But there should have been another way . . . .