Doctor Who Eve Of The Daleks: 10 Huge Questions After The New Year Special

6. Why Should Sarah Trust Nick?

Doctor Who Eve of the Daleks
BBC

Even if we overlook the unlikelihood of Sarah’s storage business surviving with just one customer, with the facility on the other side of the street apparently getting all the trade, there are huge question marks over the dynamic that forms between her and Nick.

Nick is a disturbing character. If he is being portrayed as a misunderstood geek who we are supposed to sympathise with, then Chibnall is simply feeding into the unhelpful media portrait of fans as abnormal and socially awkward. Lovable, but odd and disturbed nonetheless. His behaviour raises all kinds of red flags, and would suggest that Sarah is best off keeping far away from him, even if he did save her life.

With Yaz being a police officer, it’s understandable that she is the one to query the fate of Nick’s past girlfriends, but the point is not pursued, and it’s strange to see Sarah who is reluctant to trust the Doctor and her friends, so quickly fall for him. He fits the mould of the odd friend in a Richard Curtis movie, not the hero of those kind of stories. If Chibnall was wanting to subvert those stereotypes then fair enough, but this script failed to do that.

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Paul Driscoll is a freelance writer and author across a range of subjects from Cult TV to religion and social policy. He is a passionate Doctor Who fan and January 2017 will see the publication of his first extended study of the series (based on Toby Whithouse's series six episode, The God Complex) in the critically acclaimed Black Archive range by Obverse Books. He is a regular writer for the fan site Doctor Who Worldwide and has contributed several essays to Watching Books' You and Who range. Recently he has branched out into fiction writing, with two short stories in the charity Doctor Who anthology Seasons of War (Chinbeard Books). Paul's work will also feature in the forthcoming Iris Wildthyme collection (A Clockwork Iris, Obverse Books) and Chinbeard Books' collection of drabbles, A Time Lord for Change.