10 Criminally Underrated Doctor Who Stories

5. Into The Dalek

Doctor Who Into The Dalek
BBC

Into the Dalek is Peter Capaldi’s second episode as the Doctor, and it’s a crowd-pleasing blockbuster helmed by respected film director Ben Wheatley, in which the Doctor is miniaturised and must journey into the inner workings of his greatest enemy. This episode is generally seen as solid if unremarkable, but beneath its amusing premise hides a complex metaphor that sheds light on the Doctor’s character.

Capaldi is wonderfully acerbic here. His searing, sarcastic dialogue gives him an abrasive presence compared to the other Doctors, and this notion of our hero seemingly turning bad is perfectly paralleled by the idea of a Dalek that has malfunctioned and turned “good”. At the episode’s climax, the Doctor and the Dalek merge their minds together, allowing the Doctor to channel his thoughts into the creature, further cementing the thematic parallels between them.

The Doctor hopes that this will make the Dalek see peace and kindness, but what he actually sees in the Doctor is hatred: hatred for the Daleks. After proclaiming “Daleks must be exterminated!” the Dalek destroys his allies to satiate his burning hatred caused by the Doctor’s mind-merge. The Doctor realises that there is no such thing as a good Dalek, and the Dalek retorts: “You are a good Dalek”. Not only is this an excellent callback to the 9th Doctor’s initial Dalek encounter, it’s also an encapsulation of the episode’s themes, and a catalyst for the 12th Doctor’s character arc that transforms his outlook from apathy to empathy.

Advertisement
In this post: 
Doctor Who
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor

Patch is a pop culture enthusiast and purveyor of puns. He writes about media in a vague attempt to justify the alarming amount of time he spends consuming it. Nobody's convinced... but nobody's told him that yet. He spends his spare time working on Portal 2: Desolation, an ambitious fan-made sequel to Valve's beloved puzzle games.