From Newsgroup: rec.arts.drwho.moderated   
   From Address: jphalt@aol.com   
   Subject: Re: jphalt's Doctor Who reviews   
      
   DALEK   
      
   1 episode. Approx. 45 minutes. Written by: Robert Shearman. Directed   
   by: Joe Ahearne. Produced by: Phil Collinson.   
      
      
   THE PLOT   
      
   The Doctor follows a distress signal to Utah, 2012 - specifically, to   
   the underground museum of Internet billionaire Henry van Statten   
   (Corey Johnson). Van Statten has turned a fortune into an empire by   
   studying alien artifacts that have fallen to Earth, adapting their   
   technology for the marketplace ("Broadband? Roswell!").   
      
   But the prize of his collection is a living being which he has dubbed   
   "The Metaltron." The creature is encased in a protective machine, and   
   it refuses to speak. Van Statten's men have tortured it to make it   
   scream, but it still won't talk. Until the Doctor walks into its cage,   
   determined to rescue it from captivity.   
      
   Only this machine is no simple victim. It is the last surviving member   
   of the most evil race the Doctor has ever faced. It is a Dalek!   
      
      
   CHARACTERS   
      
   The Doctor: For the Ninth Doctor, the cheerful cover was never more   
   than a very thin veneer even at the best of times. Christopher   
   Eccleston delivers his best Who performance, showing that cover not so   
   much stripped away as shattered. From the instant he recognizes the   
   Dalek right up to the story's end, he is intensely and nakedly   
   emotional: terrified, desperate, and overflowing with rage. The   
   Doctor's not wrong to call for the creature's death, as the entire   
   first 30 minutes chillingly demonstrate, but it's still disconcerting   
   to see spittle literally fly from his lips as he screams at the Dalek:   
   "Why don't you just die!?!"   
      
   Rose: Her compassion compels her to rush to the Dalek's cage when she   
   sees van Statten's men torturing it. She knows nothing of its nature,   
   and it is easily able to manipulate her into touching it - allowing it   
   to extrapolate from her DNA to repair itself. In this way, Rose's   
   compassion sets off the events that lead to so many deaths, something   
   the Doctor's harshness would have prevented had he not been stopped.   
   Still, Rose's ability to identify with the Dalek stops the killing in   
   the end, as the Dalek extrapolates too much of her into itself. More   
   importantly, she is able to defuse the Doctor's rage, leading him back   
   to his usual self by the show's end.   
      
   Adam: The first of two stories featuring interim companion Adam   
   Mitchell (Bruno Langley). Rose responds strongly to Adam, openly   
   flirting in their very first proper scene together. Adam's   
   intelligence and lack of respect for authority remind her of the   
   Doctor - a younger, sexually available version of the Doctor. Adam   
   does manage to get on the Doctor's bad side by saving himself by   
   ducking under a descending bulkhead rather than trying to help Rose,   
   but I don't think he can be condemned there. Rose was too many steps   
   behind - All he would have accomplished by lingering would be trapping   
   himself on the wrong side of the bulkhead with her, which would surely   
   have ended in his death in a way that would have been no help to Rose   
   at all.   
      
   Dalek: Quite possibly the only new series story in which the Daleks   
   really work.  The story strips the threat down to a single Dalek.   
   Battered and old, it looks more pathetic than frightening. Which makes   
   it all the more effective as it rips through van Statten's small army   
   of guards with no effort at all. We are shown its intelligence, not   
   only through decoding the lock to its cage and "absorbing the   
   Internet," but also viscerally. Surrounded by guards, the Dalek takes   
   in the room. It observes the fire alarm, the sprinkler system, the   
   metal all around... and in three expertly-judged shots, a matter of   
   seconds, it performs a massacre. The spectacle is enough to make Van   
   Statten finally take the thing seriously - and more than enough to   
   sell every viewer on the threat of the Daleks.   
      
      
   THOUGHTS   
      
   The episode opens with an effective aside, working both as a nod to   
   the old series and the old fans and as a thematic tie-in with this   
   story. The Doctor and Rose are poking around Van Statten's private   
   museum, when the Doctor comes across the head of a classic series   
   Cyberman. He stares at it through the glass, shocked and a little   
   disgusted at seeing "the stuff of nightmares reduced to an exhibit."   
   There's not even a pause in breath between him observing that and   
   stating that he's "getting old."   
      
   Like the Cybermen, the Time Lords and the Daleks are all gone. The   
   stuff of myth and nightmares, reduced to one Time Lord and one Dalek,   
   living relics of an age long past. If van Statten has his way, both   
   Dalek and Doctor will be reduced to museum exhibits - intelligent   
   animals, kept in a private cage for his own entertainment.   
      
   Dalek is loosely based on writer Robert Shearman's Big Finish audio,   
   Jubilee. The two stories are very different, however.  Their only real   
   similarities are the idea of a single, imprisioned Dalek and a similar   
   (though not identical) Doctor/Dalek confrontation scene.   
      
   I like Jubilee better overall, but the Doctor/Dalek scene in Dalek is   
   by far the stronger confrontation. With the Time War backstory, it's   
   more meaningful. Instead of simply being a verbal confrontation   
   between the Doctor and a Dalek, it is a confrontation between the last   
   Time Lord and the last Dalek, the start of what would seem to be the   
   final battle of that war. All "Doctorish" elements drop away from   
   Eccleston's performance in an instant, as he taunts his enemy, blocks   
   out its words about them being the same, and finally embraces that   
   charge by attempting to kill the Dalek - even preceding his attempt by   
   intoning the Dalek catchphrase: "Exterminate!" It's been seven years   
   since Doctor Who returned to television as I write this, and this   
   remains the most intense scene the series has presented.   
      
   The first thirty minutes of Dalek are magnificent. It's a very   
   stripped-down episode: a single Dalek on a rampage, Rose and Adam on   
   the run from it, and the Doctor determined to not only stop it but   
   obliterate it. The script is taut, smart, and suspenseful, the pace   
   driving relentlessly right up to the instant that bulkhead closes with   
   Rose caught on the wrong side of it.   
      
   And then, it all falls apart.   
      
   There is nothing in the first thirty minutes of Dalek that does not   
   work for me. Unfortunately, there is little in the last ten minutes   
   that does work. The Dalek doesn't transform gradually. Despite an   
   attempt to plant something early on in the Dalek focusing on Rose, it   
   still behaves as a traditional Dalek - albeit a traditional Dalek on   
   steroids. But once that bulkhead closes, it suddenly becomes a   
   completely different entity.   
      
   Maybe if the Dalek spared only Rose, because of its connection with   
   her, but continued to exterminate everyone else... Maybe then it   
   wouldn't feel so completely out of place dramatically. But its sparing   
   of van Statten and Goddard (Anna-Louise Plowman) is a step too far.   
   The Dalek goes from "alien death machine" to "grumpy puppy" with   
   practically no transition, and that last ten minutes feels like it   
   belongs to a very different episode, a very much worse one.   
      
   If I was as enthusiastic about the show's ending as I am about the   
   rest of it, this would be the best Ninth Doctor episode. It's still a   
   decidedly above-average episode, with a stunning performance by   
   Christopher Eccleston and some of the best moments in the entire new   
   series. The ending fails badly for me, though, transforming a great   
   episode into merely a very good one.   
      
      
   Rating: 8/10.   
      
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