When I discovered that Robert Shearman would be writing the first Dalek episode of the new Doctor Who series my heart sank, since I had heard that the episode would feature a lone Dalek and predicted that Shearman would rehash the basic plot of ‘Jubilee’. Whilst Shearman is my favourite Big Finish writer, ‘Jubilee’ is my least favourite of his audio stories, and although the vast majority of the viewing public would not have heard it, I also found it vaguely disappointing that a writer of Shearman’s calibre would recycle his own material. Fortunately however, ‘Dalek’ is sublime, a stripped down, leaner version of ‘Jubilee’ without the awful, generically unconvincingly “mad” Rochesters and the nonsensical temporal paradox, and the result is, for me at least, by far the best episode of the new series to date. It also occurs to me that it is actually highly appropriate for Shearman to write a new Dalek story by plagiarizing his prior work, since Dalek creator Terry Nation was never a man to let an idea go un-recycled.

‘Dalek’ is, in keeping with Russell T. Davies direction for the new series, a character piece. Shearman’s gift for characterisation means that virtually every supporting character makes a mark upon the memory, but it is the interaction between Rose, the Doctor and the Dalek that leaves an indelible impression. As in ‘Jubilee’, Shearman has a fine grasp on the Doctor’s most popular enemies, exploring the Dalek as a character without actually resorting to twee rot; the audience is invited to feel sympathy for the Dalek, especially during the poignant ending, but the writer remembers that the Daleks are above all else cunning, manipulative psychopaths, who only become even remotely sympathetic when they’ve either gone mad or been infected with the human factor. So here we get a Dalek that proves supremely capable of not only going on an impressively directed killing spree, but also of getting under the Doctor’s skin and bringing out the worst in him. The moment the Doctor realises what van Statten’s “Metaltron” actually is, he hammers on the door of the cage and starts screaming “Let me out!” Once he realises that the Dalek’s gun isn’t working, he positively gloats, shouting at it, “If you can’t kill, then what are you good for, Dalek?” The ensuing scene is fascinating, as we learn, rather predictably, that the Time War mentioned throughout the series was the final battle between the Daleks and the Time Lords, in which both perished. The Doctor snarls, “You all burned, all of you. Ten million ships on fire, the entire Dalek race wiped out in one second.” He sounds utterly traumatized, and the Dalek capitalizes on the moment, smugly adding, “And the coward survived.” It then adds, “I am alone in the universe. So are you. We are the same”, prompting the furious response, “We are not the same!” before he tries to destroy it.

The point of all of which is that we get a reminder of just how much the Doctor hates the Daleks, none of which would have any impact, if the acting were crap. Having admitted that Christopher Eccleston’s performance was starting to irritate me in ‘Aliens of London’/‘World War Three’, I was far more impressed with him here, as he conveys the Doctor’s sheer hatred extremely well, as well as his obvious fear and near-panic when trying to convince van Statten to release him, insisting, “That thing downstairs is going to kill every last one of us… it’s woken up, it knows I’m here!” The scene in which he screams at the Dalek on the communication screen shows the Doctor at his most vitriolic, as he demands, “If you want orders, then follow this one… why don’t you just die?” The look of shock on his face as the Dalek ripostes, “You would make a good Dalek” is magnificent. Of course this all culminates in the climax of the episode, as he stands facing the increasingly vulnerable and confused Dalek with a massive gun, forcing Rose to stand in the line of fire to stop him destroying it. When she asks him, “What about you Doctor? What are you changing into?” he again looks terribly shocked, and Eccleston is superb when the Doctor starts weeping and tells his companion, “Oh Rose, they’re all dead.” It’s another insight into just how badly he’s been traumatized by the Time War, and it’s a powerful moment. Eccleston gets some other great moments here too, including the Doctor’s gentle use of the alien musical instrument and his subsequent coldness when van Statten discards it, and his deadly seriousness when he informs van Statten that the population of Salt Lake City is dead if they can’t stop the Dalek. His impassioned rant at van Statten when he thinks Rose is dead, as he tells him, “”You’re about as far from the stars as you can get. And you took her down with you” is convincingly delivered.

Impressive though Eccleston’s performance is however, he’s almost upstaged by Nicholas Briggs, who finally gets to voice a Dalek onscreen after several years of honing his performance for Big Finish. As an avid fan of Doctor Who, one can assume that Briggs was like a dog with two dicks when given the role, and he gives it his all, fully exploiting Shearman’s dialogue. Anyone who has seen such “classic” Dalek stories as ‘Planet of the Daleks’ and ‘Death to the Daleks’ might find it surprising that a single Dalek could pose much of a threat, but the script gives us a Dalek that is phenomenally dangerous; we learn at the start that the last person who touched it burst into flames, and it’s got a fair few other new tricks as well. Exactly how it is able to absorb the DNA of a time traveller in order to regenerate itself is not clear, but this isn’t important; what is important is that as soon as it realises that Rose is the Doctor’s companion, it starts spouting self-pitying dialogue such as “I am dying” in order to make her feel sympathetic in an example of cunning and understanding of the human psyche not seen since ‘The Power of the Daleks’. The moment she pats it, a note of triumph enters its voice, as it starts to regenerate, and snaps its chains. Briggs delivers all his lines here extremely well, emphasizing the fact that the Dalek is very, very devious. Having plaintively told the Doctor, “I am a soldier, I was bred to receive orders”, it quickly proclaims that the Dalek race survives through it, and quickly decides, “I shall follow the primary order, the Dalek instinct to destroy!” Its subsequent killing spree is magnificently directed by Joe Ahearne, and the Daleks have never seemed so dangerous; we get the amusing sight of a Dalek actually making use of its sucker arm, firstly to kill its torturer and secondly to override computer locks; we see the Dalek single-mindedly gliding through a hail of bullets and finding a computer terminal through which it absorbs most of the national grid and the whole of the internet (as the Doctor tersely notes, “The Dalek’s a genius”); we get a hugely impressive gun battle in which the Dalek almost elegantly rotates its torso section and blasts dozens of guards down; and best of all another generation of kids gets to see a Dalek floating up a stairwell. The silliness of the Dalek saying, “elevate” before it does so is quickly forgotten under the circumstances. Best of all is the Daleks elaborate slaughter of the guards by silently rising into the air, then setting off the sprinklers to flood the room and then electrocuting them all, simply to show off to the watching Doctor. With the swanky new gold-coloured design, they’ve not been this impressive for a long time. The Dalek’s new means of opening its casing is also rather impressive, as is the Dalek creature inside; although we’ve never full seen one before, we’ve seen enough bits of Dalek over the years and the creature revealed looks absolutely right, a cross between Raymond Cusick’s original design from the nineteen sixties as seen in Jeremy Bentham’s Doctor Who – The Early Years, and the tentacled green blobs glimpsed in ‘The Five Doctors’ and ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’. Its self-destruction is also quite nifty, although as some fans have noted, it seems strange that a Dalek would be designed with a self-destruct mechanism that limits collateral damage.

‘Dalek’ is also a good episode for Billie Piper. Rose gets a nice scene with Adam, when he tells her “I honestly believe the whole universe is teaming with life” and she tries to keep a straight face, but her best scenes are of course with the Dalek. Having inadvertently resuscitated it, she drives it insane, as it absorbs rather more than just DNA from her, and it cries in anguish, “I am contaminated!” Having gained emotions beyond the usual Dalek repertoire, it exploits them; when the Doctor proves willing to sacrifice Rose to stop the Dalek once, he can’t bring himself to do it a second time, as it holds her hostage and asks him, “What use are emotions if you will not save the woman you love?” Piper conveys Rose’s fear extremely well when she thinks she’s going to be exterminated, and is also very good when Rose tries to bond with the Dalek. When it asks her in frustration, “Why are you alive? My function is to kill! What am I?” she takes advantage of its confusion to save Van Statten’s life by dissuading it from killing. Despite Rose’s attempts to save the Dalek, Shearman resists the temptation to have it happily go off travelling in newfound happiness; it wearily tells her it wants freedom, and blasts a hole through the roof to see sunlight before it dies. The scene in which it opens its casing to feel sunlight on its skin, and raises a slightly phallic tentacle to the light, is strangely poignant, but it remains true to its race, insisting, “This is not life, this is sickness. I shall not be like you!” and ordering a reluctant Rose to order it to self-destruct. It’s great stuff, and Piper portrays a whole battery of emotions largely through facial acting and body language.

‘Dalek’ also demonstrates Robert Shearman’s gift for characterisation in the supporting characters, most of whom are memorable, even if they don’t do a great deal. Corey Johnson’s Henry van Statten is a stereotypical ruthless billionaire, who secretly owns the internet, wipes the memories of fired staff members, and chooses the outcome of presidential elections, but he works rather well, especially when he starts to crumble under pressure. He panics once his guards are shot down, and is desperate to flee until his assistant Goddard sharply informs him that there is no power to the helipad. Having half stripped and tortured the Doctor, he is forced to ask him for help, and he becomes increasingly frightened, most notably when he desperately tries to think of a way to bargain with the Dalek. The Doctor stonily informs him, “If the Dalek gets out, it’ll kill everyone. That’s all it needs” and he snaps, screaming, “But why would it do that? Why?” He looks utterly horrified when the Doctor replies, “Because it honestly believes they deserve to die.” Having failed to save any of his soldiers, van Statten is inevitably hoist by his own petard, as Goddard orders him to be taken away and have his memory wiped. Then there is a new (temporary?) companion in a shape of Bruno Langley’s Adam, who brims with enthusiasm, is pragmatic enough to stash weapons so that he can, if necessary, fight his way out of van Statten’s base without having his memory wiped, proclaims himself a genius, and obviously fancies Rose. Interestingly, the Doctor treats him in a similar way to Mickey, offering him withering sarcasm, and pointing out his flaws to Rose in very jealous fashion, which culminates in his worried observation, “Rose, he’s a bit pretty.” Even the female soldier who tries to stop the Dalek on the stairs is memorable, desperate to prevent further deaths and sacrificing herself in an attempt to give Rose and Adam time to escape.

‘Dalek’ also contains some nice but unobtrusive nods to the past, such as the Doctor wistfully telling the Cyber head, “Look at you… the stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit” and his reference to Davros in the lift with van Statten. Murray Gold’s incidental score is also perhaps the best of the series so far, managing for the most part to be stirring and epic, and only occasionally intrusive and pompous. Overall, ‘Dalek’ is perhaps the first episode of the new series that I might genuinely call a classic.

“You would make a good Dalek, Doctor.”

Before Saturday 30th April 2005 my all-time top five Doctor Who stories where “The Caves of Androzani,” “Remembrance of the Daleks,” “City of Death,” “Logopolis” and “Genesis of the Daleks,” in that order. After watching Rob Shearman’s action-packed psychological masterpiece “Dalek,” I already feel impressed enough to put it right up amongst such lofty company, if not above it.

Having watched the episode hailed by SFX as “the best episode of Doctor Who ever” twice - I usually review episodes after just one viewing but I just couldn’t resist an immediate replay – I am sure it will remain one of my favourite episodes for many years to come. On the first viewing I actually cried three times. This story was absolutely phenomenal. As someone who has been counting down the days (for about three years) until the cinema release of the “Revenge of the Sith,” I think it will have to be something to beat this TV episode of my favourite-ever TV show. It was chilling, it was moving and in all it’s 16:9 / 5.1 surround glory it was as spectacular as anything you could hope to see at the cinema. More than that, I thought it was an incredibly sad and moving story.

>From the opening scene where the Doctor looks at the head of a Cyberman – “the stuff of nightmares… reduced to an exhibit” – I realised how lucky we were to have the Doctor back. For over a decade our only hope of seeing a Cyberman’s head was in a museum or convention somewhere… and now we were going to get something far better than a Cyberman, an Auton, a Slitheen or the Gelth. A Dalek; no scrap that; not just a Dalek –a Dalek characterised by Rob Shearman. With the sounds of his extraordinary play “Jubilee” still ringing fresh in my ears I held my breath as that distinctive theme began to play.

“Bad Wolf One descending…”

It didn’t take long for the action to begin, and for forty-five minutes (an ideal length for a story such as this one) it didn’t cease. We had only a few minutes to enjoy what we have become used to as “The Ninth Doctor” as he playfully demonstrates to Adam and Van Statten the musical instrument. Of course, as soon as he learns an alien life form is being held in this underground bunker of Van Statten’s he wants to help – just as he did with the Gelth, the pig in the space suit etc. – and ever the optimist, he enters the cage. You could cut the tension with a knife – this scene was fully loaded.

The Doctor we know is gone in the blink of an eye. Previous Doctors have been terrified by the Daleks – most memorably in my mind is the look of the Seventh Doctor’s face as he is backed against the door by an Imperial Dalek at the end of “Remembrance, Part I” – but the Ninth Doctor seemed even more terrified. This scene was scripted, acted and directed beautifully. As those lights on top of the dome lit up I had goosebumps. When I heard “EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE” I felt the tears well up. The Doctor ran for his life – then he realised. The Dalek gun was powerless. In “one second” the Doctor changed from a Timelord scared for his life to a bitter, hateful and vindictive creature. I loved the way he got right in the Dalek’s face. “What are you gonna do?” he yells in his northern accent – although I must admit I am curious as to why the Dalek didn’t “sucker him to death”(only possible niggle I could think of; I had to think damn hard with this episode!!!) – I guess it was probably still too weak prior to it’s DNA infusion from Rose. The following exchange of dialogue was some of the best that has ever graced an episode of Doctor Who. We learn that the Doctor finally completely and utterly destroyed his mortal enemy – and the enemies of the Timelords – leaving them “burning in space.” He brags about this to the Dalek. “What of the Timelords?” asks the Dalek. “The coward survives…” And then it happens. The Doctor tries to murder the Dalek. This is the same man who had the chance to destroy every Dalek forever just by touching two wires together… but he couldn’t do it. He felt he didn’t have the right.

But now his homeworld has gone. He’s “getting old.” All his people are dead; their TARDISes annihilated. He could have prevented it all. How he must regret that decision he made hundreds of years before, in another life. Twisted, bitter and full of hate he wants that last Dalek dead.

“You would make a good Dalek, Doctor.”

After hearing the exchange between the two sole survivors of their respective races, Van Statten wants them both in his collection. The Doctor is strung up and his biology examined and patented. Two hearts. Another revelation for the new viewers, expertly delivered.

When Rose meets the Dalek she is free from prejudice, having never met one of them before. Nicholas Briggs puts in a chilling performance as the Dalek, his voice talent particularly impressive in this scene. There are moments, no doubt done deliberately, where the Dalek sounds practically human. “I am in pain…” The modulation on the voice is cut down and it sounds like weak, pathetic, tortured life form. Like Evelyn before her in “Jubilee,” it is Rose who can sympathise with the Dalek, who can take the role the Doctor should if we were dealing with any other life form that was tortured or in pain. It’s also Rose’s sympathy that leads directly to the death of hundreds of people.

The “torture” scenes earlier on where nowhere near as graphic or brutal as in “Jubilee” though their effect (and purpose) is just the same. I even found myself feeling pity for this malevolent creature. Where “Dalek” primarily differs from “Jubilee” is the pace – instead of a long, drawn-out relationship between Evelyn and the Dalek in the Tower, Rose’s pity towards the Dalek is initially brief as once she touches it all hell breaks loose. Again, wonderfully directed, the Dalek shatters it’s chains and chillingly screams “genetic material absorbed…” or something along those lines.

Then we get what we have been waiting for – a bad ass, unstoppable Dalek. Its sucker can crush your skull in the most horrific way. It can suck all the power out of city in seconds. It can download the entire internet in the same amount of time. It can elevate. It is cunning – the scene where it sets off the sprinkler and exterminates all the soldiers with one gunshot is breathtaking. It’s trunk, base, and dome can now all rotate separately so you can’t hide from it merely by standing behind it. It is a tank. It is a killing machine. It is “the ultimate in ethnic cleansing.” It’s as deadly as the Terminator. You can call it a nazi, a fascist, a racist or whatever; it is worse than all those ideologies combined. It is a DALEK.

“You would make a good Dalek, Doctor.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Rose cried into her phone as she prepares to face her certain death. I absolutely LOVED this sequence. It had all the power of “I could save the world but lose you” but this time there was no cop out – no Harriett Jones to make the call – the Doctor made the call. I’m ashamed to say that as we heard “Exterminate!” and the gunshot went off the tears made their second appearance of the night. It’s not that I thought Rose was dead – I’m not that naïve plus I’m a spoiler-junky – it was just the power of the scene. The Doctor’s face; his reaction. For a minute I thought he was going to punch Van Statten (though that would have been a bit too far).

“You would make a good Dalek, Doctor.”

It was a joy to see the Doctor’s face when the Dalek AND Rose appeared on the monitor – the classic hostage situation (reminded me very much of the scene in “Earthshock” with the Cyberleader and Tegan) – he was simply overjoyed to see her alive. For a moment it was as if he’d forgotten about the Dalek. We saw a faint hit of that “Fantastic” smile; the Doctor underneath.

“What use are emotions if you can’t save the woman you love?”

Not out of place, not overdone or overstated – the Dalek called it as he saw it. Platonic it may well be but the Doctor loves Rose and she loves the Doctor. I’m sure if the Doctor had the chance he would go back and touch those two wires together. Now he had another chance to make the decision to save millions of lives or Rose, and this time he couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice her again, even to save millions of people.

So the Doctor and Adam take off to find the biggest bazooka imaginable, leaving Van Statten at the mercy of the Dalek as it burst in crying “EXTERMINATE!” But the Dalek can’t kill him. ‘Infected’ by Rose’s emotions in the DNA it absorbed to regenerate itself, it begins to questions itself, it’s purpose, what it wants. Like the Dalek in “Jubilee” it is a solider; a solider with no orders to follow. It wants orders, but there are no other Daleks to give them. This Dalek decides it wants ‘freedom.’

The final scene was as beautifully written, acted and directed as every other in the episode. The shot of Rose following the Dalek through the corridor is an image that has particularly stuck in my mind – but nothing in the entire episode was as unnerving as the Dalek looking up into the sunlight (through the hole in had blasted), it’s eye-stork looking up towards the sun. That particular shot seemed almost religious in it’s significance – here is this evil, twisted monstrosity of a creature. Born evil, bred evil. It had no choice other than to be evil. Evil be it’s good. Yet we have it ‘infected’ by human emotions and ideas. To see it looking up into light, as if it has been redeemed, is an incredibly powerful image. Earlier in the episode it had commented “you would make a good Dalek Doctor,” possibly the most hurtful thing anyone has ever said to the Doctor. When we look across from this creature basking in the light to the heavily armed Timelord emerging from the shadows, something just isn’t right. Bazooka in hand, we have a Timelord fallen from grace; the last of his people; and no matter how much he abhors violence he has no other thought in his mind than the cold-blooded killing of the last of the race who killed his people. The tears weld up again for one last time.

“You would make a good Dalek, Doctor.”

The Dalek’s casing gracefully slid open (as opposed to the Dalek getting it’s lid-blown off as usually happens once per Dalek story!) and we saw the most effective realisation of a Kaled mutant to date. It looked ancient. There was also something about it that looked… I don’t know… kinda pathetic. This small, weak little creature encased in a metal death machine. Maybe I’ve just got ‘Star Wars’ on the brain or something but there is something unnerving about the amalgamation of weak flesh encased in an armour of terrors. No matter what evil deeds we see the machine committing, when it is revealed in the flesh there is a sense of pity you can’t help but feel towards the creature. It’s just so unnatural.

The dialogue in this old-fashioned showdown was beyond superb. All those fantastic ideas about the nature of good and evil, the difference between the hero and the villain, the interchangability of the two… somehow it was all encapsulated in this final scene.

It has been forty-two years since that Doctor and the Daleks first graced our television screens. All that history from “The Dead Planet” to “Remembrance” and the destruction of Skaro; all the Timelord history and larger-than-life characters; Rassilon, Omega…; all gone forever. All we have is the Doctor and this one Dalek. It had a horrible finality to it; it felt so incredibly sad. When the Dalek realised it was mutating into something more human… it just couldn’t allow itself to live. Its suicide was incredible feat of CGI; and more impressively it spared the Doctor having to kill it.

”Oh Rose…”

He couldn’t see until it was too late that his hate has blinded him to the fact that, bazooka in hand, he was becoming as bad as the Dalek – and unlike the pepperpot from Skaro who could blame Davros for it’s evil nature, the Doctor had no-one to blame. As in “The Unquiet Dead,” Rose helps the Doctor see something he could never have seen without her, just as he shows her things no-one else has ever seen. That’s their love.

Following the end, we had the beginning, as Adam joined the Doctor and Rose aboard the TARDIS for what will undoubtedly be a fascinating ménage a trois….

After “Dalek” – twice – I am drained. I haven’t enjoyed a TV show that much in a long, long time. I can only hope that somewhere, in some time, more Daleks survived the Time War. I can only hope that this “Bad Wolf” thread gets a good payoff too. More than anything I hope that “Doctor Who” will run every year for the rest of my days!

Episode six’s writer, Robert Shearman, was always expected to deliver an excellent script based on his reputation forged in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas. Perhaps particularly so given that Dalek was based on one of the most successful of those scripts, Jubilee, a tale featuring the Sixth Doctor encountering a lone Dalek imprisoned in the Tower of London in an alternative timeline. Taking the basic set-up of the lone Dalek and its relationship with its captors and being alone in the universe, Shearman manages to craft an effective tale less than half the length of the play upon which it is based, which is similar enough to retain what made Jubilee so good, but different enough not to make thus of us who have heard the earlier story feel cheated. While I did have problems with some of the story elements, there was nothing I felt to be badly written as such, with the exception of one line. The Dalek’s “What use are emotions if you will not save the woman you love?” was without a shadow of a doubt the worst piece of dialogue to have been uttered so far in the new series, so bad it sounded exactly like the sort of tagline a third-rate Hollywood movie might have. That it came from the pen of usually so reliable a writer as Shearman makes it all the more surprising, but then again when the only piece of dialogue you can fault in an episode is one brief line, it shows what a difference there is between this and your average classic series story.

Outside of this, Shearman’s use of the Dalek was interesting – for the first time since the 1960s we got to see a Dalek that was more human in its dialogue, something that is particularly noticeable if you go back to the original Dalek story, long before they started to become mere caricatures of themselves. There is also a distinct Power of the Daleks feel in terms of the Dalek’s use of guile and cunning, but I have to confess that I do like my Daleks to be the hard-arsed bastards of the universe, killing anything that gets in their way, so I did take a particular sadistic joy in the scenes of the creature going on the rampage and wiping out van Statten’s troops. Of particular note was the electrocution scene, another ingenious example of the Dalek – and the writer of the episode! – putting some thought into things, even if the pedantic might put out that showing us a shot of the rubber soles of the soldiers’ boots surely suggests they ought to have been insulated from the electricity…

I’m not sure about the end of the story, however. The idea of it being ‘infected’ with Rose’s DNA was a good one, and there is an established link of a Dalek bonding in some way with a young human female, touched upon in Remembrance of the Daleks and expanded upon in the novelisation of that story. But still, the way it ended… I can accept that in a way it was the Dalek being true to how we’ve always known them before as it wanted to destroy itself rather than to live with the sickness with which it had been infected, but I think the idea of trying to make us sympathise in a way with the Dalek was a mistake. Daleks should be irredeemable, evil, merciless destroyers, and despite the fact that it’s just killed two hundred people Rose won’t let the Doctor destroy it, which seemed wrong to me.

Having said that, Rose’s appalled reaction to the Doctor wielding a gun was an excellent piece of scripting. Most fans would be horrified at the Doctor packing a weapon, and it was awful when he said ‘lock and load!’ after finding a gun that worked. (Although the “broken… broken… hairdryer” line almost made up for it!). I can accept, however, that it’s his sheer fear of the Dalek, his horror at finding one still alive, which drives him to this – after all, it was Resurrection of the Daleks which showed the usual pacifistic Fifth Doctor happily wielding a pistol at a loose Dalek mutant. Plus the Doctor’s horrified realisation of what he had become at that moment – earlier foreshadowed by the Dalek’s taunt of ‘You would make a good Dalek!’ – justify the brief, horrible image of the Ninth Doctor as gun-wielding action hero, and provide a neat contrast between what the Doctor should be and what he occasionally lets himself become, and why perhaps he needs Rose’s humanising influence around him. This is a Doctor clearly scarred by the events of the time war, the great conflict about which we learn so much in this episode – good, intriguing backstory that helps add to the mystery and enigma of this incarnation of the Doctor, and factors which always go towards making good Doctor Who.

Rose continues to shine, with Billie Piper performing as excellently as always in this episode, never putting a foot wrong. Despite my misgivings over the Dalek plotline, Rose’s reaction to it and the sympathy she felt early on before she knew the true nature of the creature were all excellently written and portrayed. My only problem with the character in this episode was the moment of amazing stupidity she displayed at the end of the pre-titles sequence, happily mentioning that the Doctor is an alien. Is it not, to put it bluntly, a bit bloody thick of Rose to point this out when they’re surrounded by dead, stuffed, mounted and encased bits of alien and several troops with guns?

Not being an American I can’t comment on how authentic the accents were of the US characters, although I believe that all of them were genuine Americans aside from Anna-Louise Plowman, who according to the IMDb hails from New Zealand, and the “tin robot” guy sounded off even to me. Wherever they were from, they were mostly excellent, with Henry van Statten being one of the best villains seen so far in the series. His interplay with the Doctor, his arrogance and his intelligence all came across well, with my favourite scene between him and the Doctor being the discussion over the alien musical instrument. The Doctor’s simple delight in playing the thing, and his gently instruction to van Statten are wonderful, and van Statten’s sudden discarding of the instrument, throwing it carelessly into a corner, is really quite sad – I love the little upset look briefly visible on Eccleston’s face as he does that. This sets up the contrast between the two men very well.

Plowman was also very good as van Statten’s No. 2, Goddard, who seemed like she’d stumbled in from the solicitors Wolfram & Hart in Joss Whedon’s Angel. That’s by no means a complaint, however – no, I’ll save those for Bruno Langley as Adam, who I wasn’t particularly taken by. He did seem to improve as the episode went on, I admit, but he lacked anything in the way of charm, charisma or anything else that might make me want to take an interest in his fate. All he seemed to be was, as the Doctor said, “a bit pretty”, and that’s not enough to interest me. For one thing, if he’s such a genius, then why has he never bluffed his way down to the cage before? He clearly wants to, and manages it easily enough when Rose wants to go down and stop the Dalek from being tortured. Perhaps he’ll improve in the next episode, but I have to say I am relieved to know that he won’t be travelling in the TARDIS beyond that.

One problem that did arise from characterisation was that, for the first time this series, the pace did seem to be something of a problem for me. The first half of the episode flew by too quickly for my tastes, and I would have liked a while longer to get to know the various characters, particularly those who were being killed off. Di Maggio’s decision to attempt to stand and fight the Dalek on the stairwell and allow Rose and Adam more time to escape, for example, would probably have been a lot more affecting if we had been given a little time to get to know Di Maggio first. I accept that such characterisation is probably difficult in the confines of a 45-minute episode, but establishing sympathetic characters in minimal screen time has been a particular strength of Russell T Davies’ scripts thus far in the series, and the contrast is notable. The problem didn’t affect Mark Gatiss’ The Unquiet Dead, as he was working with such a small cast of characters in the first place.

On the production side of things, Joe Ahearne was always the most hotly-anticipated director to be hired to work on the series, given his experience in UK telefantasy productions such as his own Channel 4 vampire serial Ultraviolet and Andrew Marshall’s Strange for BBC One, and more recently the docu-drama Space Odyssey – Voyage to the Planets. Indeed, so limited has been the production of fantasy-orientated dramas in the UK that Ahearne is probably the only director currently working in British television who is particularly associated with the fantastical. This expectation that he would thus deliver the goods for Doctor Who is more than justified here – my own personal favourite shot was the Doctor’s face and head being encased within the reflection of the Cyberman head on the glass early on. Whether you take this to be a sign of the Doctor’s forthcoming ruthlessness and desire to destroy later in the episode or just a nice piece of framing, it’s still a nice touch. I also liked the Doctor’s comment in that scene about “the stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit” – a comment on what happened to the old series after it ended, perhaps? And the Doctor reaching out as if to brush away the tears moulded into the eyepieces of the mask was also a lovely little touch.

Ahearne proves more than adept at handling the action sequences too, giving great style and flair to the sequences of the Dalek wiping out van Statten’s troops. Overall the direction gives much more imagination and creativity than the rather flat approach of Keith Boak in the previous two-parter, perhaps no surprise given Boak’s background in more standard BBC drama fare such as Holby City.

The whole look of the episode was wonderful – from the fan-pleasing selection of alien nasties in the museum to the superbly-realised Dalek itself. The other production areas more than kept up – some have complained about the look of the Dalek in its CGI state, but I didn’t have a problem with any of the effects. Perhaps I am just easily pleased!

Overall then, I have to say that despite all the build-up, Dalek was not the best episode of the series so far, for me anyway. It was, however, a wonderful piece of Doctor Who, well-written, well-performed and well-made. If the series can keep up this high standard for the rest of the run then I will be more than happy – however, I can only hope that the Daleks themselves will be given another chance to show what utterly malevolent, destructive pepperpots they can be somewhere along the line.

The Unquiet Dead excepted, this week's instalment of Doctor Who seemed like a different programme altogether to, in particular, the comparitively appalling two-parter preceding it. Dalek is certainly the most convincing, compelling and dramatic episode of Who since, well, Ghost Light 1/Curse of Fenric 4/Survival 3. But I would go even further than that to say - despite one or two quibbles which I will mention in a bit - Dalek compares to some of the latter classics of the old series such as Curse of Fenric, and in its unusual intensity, pace and edginess, harks back to the inimitable direction of Graeme Harper's Revelation of the Daleks (with which it has much in common including Gothic-angle on the Daleks and noticeably similar incidental music) and, more importantly, the iconic Caves of Androzani: of course Dalek is still some way from being as superb as the latter story, but is very much in a similar vein, especially regarding intensity and pace, and more importantly, a quite vulnerable Doctor at the mercy of ruthless, capitalistic humanoids in a very gritty and overwhelmingly dark scenario. We also have a convincingly brutal torture scene with the Doctor chained up in almost crucificial posture, strongly reminiscent of the Fourth Doctor's interrogation by Hildred in The Deadly Assassin (though this time the direction goes one stage further from Tom Baker's open neck shirt and has Eccleston with naked, sweaty Ben-Hurish torso as he undergoes torture via a mechanism obviously modelled on the Dalek's eyestalk). Further harking back to the past series, we have easily the grittiest and most intellectually orientated study of the Daleks since Genesis of the Daleks (Revelation being focused solely on their creator, whereas Genesis split this analysis between the creator and, crucially, his creation); there is also, obviously, a very well written and realised echo of the Troughton classic Evil of the Daleks, in which the Human Factor seminally played a part in the Daleks survival-inhibiting downfall as it does, once more and arguably even more poignantly, in Dalek.

By the end of World War III I was seriously starting to think the consummate Unquiet Dead was perhaps just a one-off aberration in this new series of generally diluted and dumbed down, formulaic Who. One only needs to compare Aliens/War III with Rob Shearman's brilliant contribution to now see very clearly how RTD's writing credentials are seriously under dispute: so far he has only really offered one episode, End of the World, which, in (too few) places, could compare to some of the - more average stories - of the old series, but which was overall ruined by some highly inappropriate gimmicks. For my part, Rose and Aliens/War III are not worthy of the cannon, and this conviction has been strengthened by Dalek, a truly riveting episode which harnasses Who traditions with sharp reinventions, most obviously the most compelling and substantial portrayal and realisation of a Dalek since Genesis (or arguably since Evil back in 1967). Hats off to - the normally grating - Nick Briggs for an exceptional vocal performance as the Dalek - also worthy of note, the convincing and surprisingly quite restrained visual beefing-up of said entity.

This for me is the first episode in which Eccleston presents us with a truly compelling Doctor and in especially the one-on-one scene with the Dalek near the beginning, Eccleston's acting is quite literally superb; arguably no other actor has played the Doctor as intensely (in an emotional sense - Tom Baker's more subdued alien intensity being something else altogether, as well as his angry outbursts in Seeds of Doom and, ironically, the otherwise shabby Invasion of Time re his shouting at Borusa; and Colin Baker in the opening scenes of the even more shabby Twin Dilemma) as this before, displaying an almost unadulterated show of hate-fuelled emotion which re-cemented my thoughts on him prior to Who as sometimes being very similar to Ralph Fiennes, in facial characteristics and mannerisms - in this scene particularly Eccleston demonstrated he could have been an equally good choice for the Nazi character played by Fiennes in Schindler's List.

Ironically however it is on Eccleston's extremely powerful and memorable performance that I wish to briefly touch with regards the very few concerns I have with this episode: whilst this sort of face-contorting, angst-ridden acting from Eccleston is highly impressive and in some ways welcome, the tangibly violent nature of his verbal confrontation with the imprisoned and powerless Dalek is extremely disturbing to say the least when issuing from the mouth of a traditionally (bar some abberations in the past such as the pugilistic Sixth Doctor) pacifistic character and again the braun over brain syndrome of this latest incarnation manifests most worryingly in his ultimate confrontation of the Dalek, wielding a Ridley Scott-esque anti-tank gun; this scene is made all the more alarming due to the Dalek having become humanised by this point and evidently more vulnerable than ever before. Of course, thankfully, the Doctor finally assimilates this, partly due to Rose's influence, and lowers his weapon, then displaying a very tormented and confused emotional response regarding his grief for his dead race. I suppose then in the end these emotionally aggressive outbursts of the Doctor are finally reconciled as he comes back to his senses, however, there are shades of the Vietnam-vet approach to the Ninth incarnation which should perhaps be toned down more. Ultimately the magic of the character is his cerebralness and other-worldly ability to see through and around things which to human minds might seem less ambiguous - I find his earlier attempts to electrocute the captive Dalek particularly uncomfortable to watch. Yes, even the impassive Fifth Doctor did hold a gun at Davros in Resurrection, but this was softened by his lowering it during Davros's manipulative speech in an attempt to convince the Doctor he had mended his ways and was planning on doing good deeds with his creations; ultimately Davison's Doctor was taken off guard in this scene and missed his opportunity at carrying out the assassination of Davros, which I suppose was Saward's cop-out clause - detectably, there is something of the Saward blood and thunder approach to Who creeping in to the new series and the other scene in this vein which I really disliked was the Doctor mocking Adam with the - admittedly very amusing line- 'What are you going to do? Throw your A Levels at him?', then picking up the monstrous weapon and wielding it like a bloodthirsty weapons expert. Certainly the Ninth Doctor's uncompromising aggression towards the Daleks is light years away from the very moral ruminations of the Fourth Doctor when contemplating destruction of the Daleks in Genesis; and thus lacks the profound sophistication of his predecessor's compelling angst.

Another note is why is the Doctor feeling such a weight of grief at the destruction of the Timelords who in the past drove him away due their fascistic parochialism, exiled him to Earth (War Games) and took away his knowledge of piloting the TARDIS, continually manipulated him to do their dirty work (Genesis of the Daleks) so as not to spoil their 'lily white hands' (Brain of Morbius), turn his heroism on their behalf into ungrateful spurious propaganda cover ups (Deadly Assassin), attempt to execute him (Arc of Infinity), put him on trial (Trial of a Timelord) and generally piss him off throughout time and space? Perhaps a hint of grief at the loss of his own race, yes, but not to the point that he wishes to annihilate the last, humanised member of their special nemeses. The Doctor also says 'he has nothing left' now Gallifrey is gone - this seems odd considering his voluntary exile from the Timelords in pursuit of desired independence and his general contempt for them in previous years (especially the Fourth Doctor's almost irrational attitude towards them and anything related to them). A nice touch though was the Doctor saying he knew he was the only one left in his mind: hinting at the Prydonian telepathic ability.

Apart from the more overtly aggressive tendencies of the Doctor in Dalek, and two irritating lines, 'God, I can almost smell the testosterone' (Rose between the Doctor and Van Statten) and Van Statten's line about '...the girl you love' when referring to Rose - why not just 'a girl you love?', or better still, 'a human girl you love/a human you love', which would take away emphasis on Rose being a girl the Doctor is conceivably in love with - this episode was otherwise brilliant and very much definitive Doctor Who in plot, style and direction. An obviously nice touch was the Cyberman head at the beginning - it was great to have that first initial link to the past, leading up to something even more integral to the show's origins, as well as refreshing to see a circa Invasion Cyberman, quite possibly salvaged from the Mondasians's invasion of 1968 London (for me this echoed of the mini-scope teaser in Carnival of Monsters).

Also worthy of note are all the incidental characters who were as well realised as one might expect in only 45 minutes. Adam promises to be one of the more likeable male companions of the cannon, if he is to stay, which I think would be good and certainly preferable to the more tedious and superfluous Mickey. Nice also to have the first male companion since the superbly charismatic Turlough predicted to also be of ambiguous motivation (and not forgetting the equally turncoat-ish Adric, much less convincing a character though than Turlough). During the Colin Baker and McCoy eras I always wanted there to be a third, male companion, as I think this always gives the best dynamic and ideally gets someone else to do the testosterone-charged action bits while leaving the Doctor to be the more cerebral one.

Other brilliantly directed scenes in Dalek for me include the highly disturbing shots through the screaming Dalek's eyestalk as one of Van Statten's men tortures it - brilliant stuff, truly unpleasant to watch and reminiscent of some of the more gritty Troughton stories; the Dalek fighting the soldiers in the rain; and of course, the beautifully directed and genuinely moving final scenes in which the very convincingly realised Kaled reveals itself to the sun for the first time (its eye looked very real, though I did feel it should have had the hint of a second eye too in order to detract from the accidental and (as we know from Genesis) specious implication that Kaleds, prior to mutation, were Cycloptic).

The underground museum sets were brilliant; all production standards were A1 and even the CGI Dalek was convincing; another nice aescetic touch was the Art Deco-esque painting of Van Statten behind his desk. Clearly a lot of thought had gone into the set designs and visual details.

This is also only the second episode (Unquiet Dead being the other) to perfectly fit 45 minutes with absolutely no padding whatsoever, nor conversely any feeling that it needed more time to develop/to flesh out characters/to flesh out storylines (or in the case of Rose, actually include a storyline) - significantly in this sense, it and Unquiet Dead are the only two episodes so far to not be tediously interrupted by pointless domestic scenes (yes, even End of the World was with the brief Aerial commercial of the paroxide blond Miss Tyler bundling clothes into a washing machine whilst nattering to Rose on the phone near the beginning). There you are RTD: just cut out the domestic tedium and you have time to fully utilise the 45 minute time slots for the good of the storylines, which is supposed to be the point after all.

Dalek is undisputably a classic (in both the new and old sense), and has even exceeded the superb though more traditional and less dramatic Unquiet Dead as by far the best and most compelling episode of the new Who so far, and one which, unlike the RTD episodes, I will return to again and again on video, which is how the series should always be made: with layers and layers of detail.

9/10.

Let me take you back a little. When the interviews for the new series of Doctor Who began, Russell T. Davies was asked about the return of the Daleks. He famously said, many a time, that we would cry for the Dalek. "I'll believe it when I see it!" I thought. Saturday 30th April 2005 was the day of reckoning. From the pre-credit sequence it was clear that this was to be a different style of episode from the previous 5 weeks, and it was going to be something of an emotional rollercoaster. "Look at you!" exclaims the Doctor, a mix of awe and sadness in his voice, as he sees the severed head of a Cyberman in a display case. Surrounded by Alien artefacts in some kind of museum, Rose states what we - the viewers - are all thinking... that the Doctor, as a live specimen, must be Exhibit A. In rush a swat team, and in rush the credits. The scene truly setting the tone for the following 42 minutes.

As the Doctor and Rose meet Van Statten and "Little Lord Fauntleroy" Adam, the opposing views are set. Van Statten, an obnoxious man who's only true achievement has been to steal Alien technology and patent it as his own, is clearly set up as the villain of the piece - who is blissfully unaware that his prized possession, the eponymous Alien of the show, is in reality the most dangerous artefact that he is ever likely to possess. Cue a wonderful scene, beautifully edited, with swift retorts between the Doctor and Van Statten. Jump cutting between the two characters we feel how Rose must feel, and once again she airs the thoughts of the viewer "you can almost smell the testosterone" - she is our eyes and ears in these stories, a connection with is used to it's utmost in this story by it's writer and director.

When the moment the world has been waiting for happens, and the Doctor meets his arch-enemy, the eponymous Dalek, we are suddenly swept into a whirlwind of emotions. From the Dalek's futile attempt to exterminate the Doctor, who frantically tries to escape from The Cage, to the verbal confrontation between these two enemies, we are whirled from Fear, to Hate, to Guilt. The Doctor's 'in your face' confrontation of this, almost impotent, Dalek really hits a chord with the viewers. Taunting the Dalek, he finds himself on the recieving end of some pretty harsh criticism, and searching questions. And from this scene we learn that the Doctor was, in his view, responsible for the Time War - and therefore responsible for the demise of his own race. We feel his pain, we feel his loss, and we feel his anger. Yet, this reviewer felt these emotions for the Dalek too. A lone survivor, who somehow slipped through some kind of time eddy and escaped the fate of it's race. The story skillfully shows similarities between the Doctor and the Dalek, whilst maintaining their differences. Perhaps it is these similarities which make some of us start to feel sorry for the Dalek.

The pivotal scene of the story comes whilst the Doctor is being 'examined' - which really means tortured in the name of science - and Rose sees the Dalek being tortured on the cctv system. Her travels with the Doctor have already brought out her caring side, and through her visit to Platform One Rose has learnt to be more tolerant of Aliens, and not to automatically think that because they're different they're evil. Wanting to see the Metaltron, as Van Statten and his team refer to the Dalek, and feeling remorse for the ignorance of the humans holding it prisoner, Rose comes face to face with the Dalek. As she approaches it, we hold our breath in anticipation. We've already heard that the last person to touch it burned to death, and yet Rose reaches out and places a hand on the Dalek's dome - after some rather moving dialogue which truly expresses Rose's compassionate nature. From hereon in, the Dalek goes on a rampage, and finds itself on an ever increasing emotional rollercoaster. Yes, I said emotional. You see that's the clever thing with this story. Having used the DNA from a Time Traveller - Rose has just recently travelled in time - the Dalek rejuvinates itself enough to break free of it's shackles and make a bid for freedom, after suckering it's torturer to death. (Frankly I found this moment shocking, and rather scary. "Whachay gonna do? Sucker me to death?" I laughed at this line, thinking that nothing would happen. Boy, was I wrong! Don't ever think a Dalek's sucker is a humourous whimsy, with no threatening purpose.) But what this Dalek didn't bank on was the mutating effect of the Human DNA on it's own DNA. Over the remaining time of this story the Dalek begins to question it's actions, it's instincts. It develops feelings, and emotions.

But all this isn't to say that the Dalek is the only one showing emotions in this fine story. Overcome with his guilt, the Doctor slowly begins to descend into a sort of madness. And things aren't made any better when he has to shut the Dalek in, creating what could have been a wonderful cliffhanger. "I'm sorry, I was a bit slow" says Rose, staring at the closed bulkhead, tears in her eyes, and with the Dalek somewhere in the distance, closing in on her. "I wouldn't've missed it for the World" and I choked up on tears that somehow never came. The Doctor, facing the thought that he's killed Rose, becomes more vitriolic, his anger and guilt mingling. The relief we all feel at seeing that Rose is still alive, is short-lived, as this manipulative new Dalek forces the Doctor to put the world at risk again for the sake of his companion. And yet, the emotional aspect of this story is still only just beginning! As Rose persuades the Dalek not to kill Van Statten - why Rose, why? - we see the her DNA beginning to mutate the Dalek.

It is in the final segment of the story we see it's true sorrow. As the Dalek searches for freedom, and in it's final moments reaches a faltering tentacle out to the sun, we realise just how human it's become. For old fans this is the moment we realise just how determined this Dalek will be on suicide, and the futility of it all saddened me. It is no longer a Dalek, and no, Rose, that isn't better. A Dalek's natural instincts for racial purity will not accept anything un-Dalek, and that is what this Dalek has become. At this point, I cried. Yes, Russell was right. I cried for the Dalek, I cried for the Doctor, and I cried for Rose. As the Doctor tried to explain himself, in faltering tones "I didn't... I couldn't...", the Dalek pleads with Rose to instruct it to kill itself. This lone DNA-altered Dalek, searching for orders, seems now to see Rose as it's leader. Something she is unwilling to be. But when it comes to the crunch, she sadly tells it to "do it then", and steps back. After such a conclusion to this emotional rollercoaster, the final scene, of the Doctor and Rose returning to the TARDIS feels bitter-sweet. Rose and the Doctor are obviously still reeling from their encounter, but the Doctor trying to be more normal - when Rose asks if Adam can travel with them the Doctor says "He's a bit pretty".

For me, this story has been the highlight of a wonderful new series. The story was incredibly well written, and the tight direction felt like it wasn't there - which is, of course, the best kind of direction. The acting from both Eccleston and Piper was beautiful. I was gripped, and actually forgot that I was watching a pair of fictional characters on TV. The sets, and designs were wonderful. Creating a real world feel to the setting. The slight injection of humour into the story actually added to the emotional nature of the story, and was perfectly integrated. The Dalek was a revelation - how can we escape them now, with their geared mid-section? And full credit must go to Nick Briggs for his Dalek voice. Somehow, Briggs managed to portray a thinking, feeling, Dalek without producing something which felt camp, or cheesy. My only complaint - and it's a small one - is that one of the CGI effects felt unreal. As the Dalek elevated up the stairs, after being taunted by Adam in the way we - and the press - used to taunt them in the 80s, things started well. But as the camera angle changed and the Dalek came towards us, there seemed to be something wrong. Somehow it looked fake. But this was one scene, and for the rest of the episode everything was perfect. My only worry now is that this story is an extremely hard act to follow, as is Eccleston's Doctor.