She Cares So I Don't Have To

In this week's installment of Doctor Who, for the first time in almost six years, we get to see...

A Dalek actually kills someone!

The Story

Journey Blue is in trouble! But never fear, the Doctor is here!

"I'll save your life if you say 'please'."

On board the Aristotle, we find a Dalek that sees other Daleks as evil and wants to exterminate them. In the Doctor's eyes, this marks a Good Dalek, so he decides to save it, though not until he returns to Earth and retrieves Clara.

Clara wouldn't have come along if it weren't for last episode's overdue coffee.

After they get shrunk and inserted "into the Dalek", the Doctor, Clara, and a few soldiers dive into its innards and discover a radiation leak. With his handy-dandy magic wand certified medical device sonic screwdriver, the Doctor makes the Dalek, now known as Rusty, feel all better.

A crack in the wall? That's sooooo last Doctor.

Unfortunately, the Doctor has repaired more than the cracks in time Rusty's power cell, and our favorite Dalek sends his comrades the location of the formerly hidden Aristotle. Fortunately, Clara plugs Rusty's memories back in, allowing the Doctor to put on an infomercial in the Dalek's brain.

"When a boy star and a girl star love each other very much..."

Rusty decides that he does want what the Doctor is selling, including the limited-time free offer of some extra hatred of the Daleks, so he turns on his fellow plunger-wielding trash cans, leaving the Doctor feeling disappointed, and the Daleks' intended victims feeling relieved.

In most Dalek episodes, this would be considered a good thing.

The Doctor rejects Journey Blue's application for the position of Companion, and he and Clara head home so that she can resume her date with Danny Pink.

Into the Dalek devoted about 15 minutes of its running time to Clara and Danny smiling at each other.

Oh right, Clara met this soldier math teacher Danny Pink - forgot to mention.

The Review

Into the Dalek was comically inconsistent. For instance, this guy's first lines were (slightly paraphrased):

"The Daleks leave no wounded, and we don't take any prisoners. Now let's go meet our prisoner, a wounded Dalek."

But that's just a line of dialogue. How about the whole premise of the episode?

Into the Dalek kicks off with a "Good Dalek", defined as a Dalek that wants to kill other Daleks.

Pictured: A Good Dalek

The Doctor tries to restore a "Good Dalek" and fails. The result, which we can call a "Not-Good Dalek", is defined as not good because it wants to kill other Daleks.

Pictured: A Not-Good Dalek

So there goes the episode's "deep" lesson.

What about the mechanics of the resolution?

First, after Ross's untimely demise, how does Gretchen and Journey firing at the antibodies not trigger a further reaction?

Then, Gretchen Alison Carlisle sacrifices herself to transport Journey and Clara to the Dalek brain. But how do the Dalek antibodies tell that it was her, as opposed to Journey or Clara, who fired the shot?

Target practice, but for whom?

That's especially relevant near the end, when Clara breaks off the panel of Dalek-brain, and the antibodies target Journey instead of Clara. How convenient. We wouldn't want Clara trying to escape antibodies while re-awakening Dalek memories, now would we?

This is actually a  picture from the Daleks' standard Biology 101 textbook.

Speaking of the memories thing, Journey had it right when she asked "Seriously?".

This is Clara, climbing around in a little tunnel filled with see-through plastic coil piping, and occasionally smacking her hand against the wall.

Seriously?

Moving on... to soldiers. The Doctor hates them.

"If only your last name weren't so colorful."

The Doctor spends the whole episode being hostile towards Journey, a woman who has just lost her brother and is going on another mission with him. She loses two more fellow soldiers on said mission, one of whom, another soldier, sacrifices herself for the Doctor. And at the end, the Doctor basically says that everything about her is admirable, but because she joined the military, she can't join him.

No consideration at all about why she joined the military. Maybe she was born into this war against the Daleks and had no choice? Maybe it was a family tradition, and she would have been disowned or killed for not enlisting?

And where did this hatred of the military even come from? In the classic series, the Doctor worked closely with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and if I recall correctly, Brigadier is a military title. And for my fellow NuWhovians, the Doctor didn't start hating Martha Jones when she joined UNIT, did he?

Maybe it has more to do with her colorful name.

I'm sure that Mr. Pink's ex-military status won't play any part in the upcoming season.

Also, can we stop with things like "The most dangerous place in the universe". Four episodes ago, we also saw the most dangerous place in the universe. I get that we need drama, but "the most _____ in the universe" just doesn't cut it anymore.

"Enjoy a cup of the strongest coffee in the universe."

I suppose it's obvious by now that I didn't care too much for Into the Dalek. But that's not to say that it had no redeeming qualities. I am starting to very much enjoy the new Doctor.

"I know how to be happy too. See? SEE?"

Here he is, giving Ross a treat, right before the Antibodies eat him. Journey says what we're all thinking: "I thought you were saving him!", and he replies: "He was dead already; I was saving us!".

We were promised a darker Doctor, according to some press release that I don't feel like looking up. That's not exactly what we got, but what we got is better: A more pragmatic Doctor. He doesn't worry about feelings or sentimental details when there's work to do. He will piss off everyone he's working with, but he will get to safety as many people as he can, and he will not worry about the ones he can't.

And no, hatred of the Daleks is not a sign of inner Darkness. In fact, it's most likely exactly the opposite.

So when he said "she cares so I don't have to", he really meant it.

I will also give Clara an extra nod. Once again, her character got some nice development, both with the Danny Pink story, and more importantly, when the Doctor was ready to give up.

Pictured: True, old-fashioned, discipline

"That is not what we just learned!"

Clara's got her teacher's hat on, except this time, it's not to figure out, but to convince. And it makes perfect sense that it would have been her who noticed. The Doctor, and everyone else, was convinced that the lesson of the day was that the Good Dalek was only a malfunction, but Clara was the one to see that the Good Dalek happened in the first place.

Once again, her shirt has nothing to do with the rest of the episode. For shame.

I will end this review with one final observation. It's pretty clear that there was a big mystery established earlier, but thankfully now it's been resolved.

Gretchen Alison Carlisle was obviously a robot, proved by the fact that she's in the completely non-mysterious Robot Heaven, and that's why she was willing to sacrifice herself in Into the Dalek.

Overall

Into the Dalek is an epic journey that takes us from a Dalek that pleases the Doctor by wanting to kill the Daleks, to a Dalek that disappoints the Doctor by wanting to kill the Daleks. With a contrived ending and a moral that makes no sense, this episode ends up being a long Journey into the Blue waste of nowhere.

But despite a completely vapid story, Into the Dalek was a great episode for our newest Doctor. His unsentimental pragmastism is such a contrast to his recent friendly and huggable predecessors that this is shaping up to be a very interesting season, with a very interesting Doctor.

"Yay, he liked me! Now I get to be in more episodes!"

NEXT EPISODE: ROBOT OF SHERWOOD