Into the Dalek

I wasn’t keen on it.

I never like things about people being shrunk down and put into larger things. It always strikes me as a ridiculous premise, one with more than a hint of desperation to it, as though the production team have gone through all their best ideas and have accepted they need to start trotting out the genre standards. People being shrunk and inserted into a living creature disengages me.

It didn't help that it was a Dalek the Doctor and Clara enjoyed a jaunt in. On the one hand yes, it makes perfect sense for the Daleks to be used in this role because they are the show's most recognisable alien race. Their iconic status practically necessitates their use for such a plot. Their design helps too. But on the other it feels like a waste. Why would we want to see Peter Capaldi's Doctor scurrying around inside a Dalek before we’ve even seen him angrily opposing one? This feels like the sort of story you'd do for a Doctor's second Dalek encounter, the one you do once you've got their traditional encounter in the bag.

Saying traditional makes it sound like I just want all Dalek stories to be the same. Which I don't. Having every Dalek story follow a basic format is what brought us to uninspired civil war tales of Resurrection, Revelation and Remembrance of the Daleks. When every Dalek story does the same thing it's bad. But Peter Capaldi acting opposite Dalek props for forty-five minutes could have been so good. Because Malcolm Tucker versus the Daleks is the sort of Hinchcliffean mash-up modern Doctor Who is capable of doing so well, and they finally have the lead actor to do it with.

The next time the Daleks come back (and I hope that's at least a couple of years off because they need a rest for exactly the things I'm talking about) Moffat or the next showrunner should come up with something interesting for them do. Something jarring, quirky, that makes us see the all too familiar Daleks in a new light and demonstrates that they do things other than fight generic science fiction wars in outer space. They had a great idea in The Time of the Daleks by having the titular race obsessed with the works of Shakespeare. That the script didn’t do the premise justice makes using the idea more appealing. And there are other audios that could be adapted, not all of them necessarily involving the Daleks in their Big Finish form.

It’s probably worth mentioning Danny Pink too. I’m reliably informed he’s nice to look. That probably helps to distract from his wooden acting. I’ve no idea how he got the part because he’s a dreadful actor based on his scenes here. Poor lines delivered poorly. I’d take Vastra’s hamming of his wooden awkwardness any day.

But Into the Dalek wasn’t all bad. There were a some things I enjoyed mixed into the bland 1950s premise. Capaldi was the best thing about the episode, here by a wider margin than in his debut. Seeing Tyres off Spaced was nice. The production team did wonders making a bunch of corridors look like a convincing Dalek interior. The direction seemed better than what we got throughout the main body of series seven. The model used for the Dalek mutant looking like a Jagaroth, intentional or not (I suspect not), was entertaining. The scene with Missy.

To be clear, I don’t feel this was a badly made episode. I think it suffered from having an uninspiring actor in a significant role, having a plot ripped from a B movie, and being another story to not do anything particularly interesting with the Daleks. But it was still a significant improvement on series seven’s cyborg cowboys and spacefaring dinosaurs. It's just that I'd rather have Daleks quoting Hamlet than shooting generic space soldiers.