The first thing you notice about this episode are the balls.
Not Rusty the Dalek’s antibodies, which whizz around its ailing innards like Toclafanes disguised as Magic 8s, but the cojones: the swaggering, look-at-the-size-of-this braggadocio of a blockbusting space adventure.
The fact that it’s a combination of several other blockbusting space adventures – not to mention a few old Doctor Who stories – dusted in Steven Moffat’s speciality snark-and-spookiness is easy to overlook amid the adrenalin-pumping clamour of intergalactic pursuit, exploding Daleks and sharp putdowns from Peter Capaldi’s blackly amusing new old Doctor.
It’s almost as if the show is cocksure enough to dare viewers not to enjoy it – despite any failings that might peek through.
Fortunately, ‘Into the Dalek’ is fairly enjoyable – despite the rip-offs homages to other great science-fiction sagas and despite the fact that it features the Daleks.
One of the great ironies of Doctor Who is that although the Daleks are a superb creation, the ratio of good-to-rubbish stories featuring them – particularly in the modern series – is high on the crappy side.
‘Dalek’, their first reappearance in 2005, was devastatingly good. ‘Asylum of the Daleks’, in which Jenna Coleman made her debut as a Dalek who thought she was human, was also excellent. Pretty much everything in-between has been poor. It’s no surprise, then, that a combination of these two aforementioned adventures is what ‘Into the Dalek’ most closely resembles.
Yet it’s no more a simple rehash of past glories than it is a Who hotpot of Innerspace, Empire Strikes Back and Aliens (despite having shades of all three movies). The trip inside a Dalek is a fine idea well realised.
It’s the first time Doctor Who has properly done miniaturisation in almost fifty years and there’s no messing around with Honey, I Shrunk the Budget-style superfluity; this is no Professor Pepperpot’s Problem. It’s simply a means to an end, getting the Doctor and his cronies into the Dalek to work out why it’s done the one thing Daleks never do: renounce its evil ways.
The reason? Basically, it’s off its metal tits on leaking radiation and remembering all the beauty it’s seen during a career of carnage. When the problem is fixed with a wave of the sonic screwdriver, Rusty becomes nasty all over again, meaning the Doctor has to persuade Colonel Morgan Blue (Michael Smiley) and his grumpy niece Journey (Zawe Ashton) not to blow it up. ‘Is he mad or is he right?’ asks one of the other soldiers. ‘Most days, he’s both,’ Clara admits.
He’s also bloody dark. Funny, yes (never more so than when jibing at Clara or mocking the idea of shrinking people – ‘Fantastic idea for a movie, terrible idea for a proctologist’), and full of the manic energy that has characterised every incarnation of the character since Christopher Eccleston first wiggled his ears in a mirror, but his ruthless streak is now as long as Mr Tickle’s arm.
‘I thought you were saving him!’ protests Journey when the Doctor fails to prevent another soldier being vaporised by an angry antibody.
‘He was already dead,’ the Time Lord snaps. ‘I was saving us.’ It’s harsh on the supporting cast – not to mention Ben Wheatley, whose direction is suitably cinematic – to say the Doctor also saves the episode from ignominy, but without Capaldi’s captivating performance, it would be a tedious thing indeed.
Certainly, the weakest parts are those without him. The scenes of budding romance between Clara and new character Danny Pink (Samuel Anderson) are about as convincing as Ian Botham claiming his Twitter account was hacked. Something more believable needs to develop between the two of them or this in-TARDIS relationship will fizzle away to nothing in the deflated tradition of Adric and Tegan’s unconsummated sex bickering.
Occasional anti-climaxes might be good for the Doctor’s hearts, but they make desperately dull viewing. They’re just a load of balls.
Aired at 7.30pm on Saturday 30 August 2014 on BBC One.
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