The Good, Terrifying Fury of Physician Who’s Dalek Reunion

In some ways, Physician Who‘s regenerated period has spent everything of the final twenty years chasing the highs of April 30, 2005. In 45 minutes, and with an episode merely titled “Dalek” launched a young new viewers of viewers, nonetheless reeling from Who‘s return, to the horrible, unflinching may of the Daleks. Within the years since, the present has returned time and time again to the shape and content material of “Dalek” and its method to the titular pepper pots; generally it’s eschewed its classes for sweeping senses of scale, as if easy multiplication might match. However what has at all times remained true about “Dalek” within the final 20 years is that what makes it so completely terrifying even now, arguably lengthy after the Daleks have misplaced much of their bite as soon as once more for audiences, is much less in regards to the carnage its lone monster wreaked—and extra about what the Dalek mirrored again on Christopher Eccleston’s tackle the Time Lord.

“Dalek” is consistently about this mirror match between its titular protagonist and antagonist. Just like the Physician had been within the revitalized collection’ new background, the Dalek encountered within the episode (in a then-near-future Utah, within the underground vault of a megalomaniacal tech billionaire, Henry Van Statten) is rendered the final of its form, the only survivor of its species’ half in the Time War. It, just like the Physician, is confused by its place within the universe reckoning with this info, however in contrast to the Physician we’d met up so far, the Dalek’s conclusion is destruction despite all of it, an eradication of the whole lot it deems inferior in distinction to the Physician’s ceaseless want to save lots of whoever and no matter he can as penance for his individuals’s destruction. By the episode’s finish, and the Dalek’s self-immolation because it acknowledges its bond with the Physician’s newest companion, Rose Tyler, we see an interesting parallel in humanity’s influence on each the Physician’s oldest foe and in some methods, themselves.

However amongst that, and among the many delectable terror of the Dalek’s one-armored-mutant-cephalopod rampage (gleefully tearing up each metatextual “weak point” of the species’ place in popular culture historical past alongside the best way), “Dalek” shines brightest in its darkest shadows, the place the reflection between the Dalek and the Physician are much less about what divides them, and extra about what similarities they share cast within the crucible of the Time Struggle.

It brings out one in all Christopher Eccleston’s truly great performances because the Ninth Physician in a season that burns brightly with a lot of them. The primary encounter between the Physician and the Dalek sees the actor pull out all of the tsops, dancing between an array of feelings—as we watch the previous leap between his regular calm collective want to assist, to terror upon realizing the creature he’s adopted a misery sign to, to gloating glee over their shared misfortune. However simmering beneath all of it, barely managed as Eccleston bounces across the tiny room the Dalek has been chained up in, is an emotion rarely glimpsed at this level within the Ninth Physician’s character: rage. We’ve seen him offended in fact, pushed by his sense of justice, in the best way he dealt with the Autons in “Rose” or dispassionate view of Cassandra and the Slitheen. However in “Dalek” the Physician growls in a fury that’s actually terrifying to look at, at the same time as he flits between it and the tragedy of his grief.

It actually comes out when the Dalek first broaches the concept the remainder of the episode will construct on, because it bleakly intones itself that it and its individuals’s best enemy at the moment are the identical, resulting in the Physician’s express determination to enact cruelty instantly on his foe, torturing it to close dying. However as scary as that second is, to look at our hero revel on the considered torture and homicide, to should be dragged away from the possibility to complete the job he began within the Time Struggle, it’s afterward within the episode the place we get an unimaginable reversal on this scene that turns into downright chilling.

As soon as the Dalek breaks free and begins is rampage, “Dalek” climaxes its motion with a superb showdown between the creature and Van Statten’s safety forces, cleverly obliterating a swath of troopers by electrocuting them in a single shot from its extermination ray. Within the aftermath of that carnage, which the Physician watches from afar on safety cameras, the facility dynamic from his first reunion with the Dalek has completely switched: if the Physician was in management there, the Dalek weakened and chained up, now it’s the Physician hiding from his revitalized foe, calmly however assuredly basking within the energy of the carnage it’s simply dedicated. And if that first encounter is in regards to the Physician’s rage barely being in management till it spills over, Eccleston’s efficiency right here is much extra subdued for longer. Prodding the Dalek to confess that its makes an attempt to confirm the Physician’s claims that the Dalek Empire is useless and gone, the Physician as soon as once more turns chilly when he presents a easy objective to the wayward soldier: killing itself.

The Physician’s anger bubbles over once more as soon as these phrases tumble out of his mouth, resulting in the well-known rejoinder that he would “make a superb Dalek” as a shock to his system, nevertheless it’s the stillness with which Eccleston portrays that second that exhibits you the way fully shut the Physician is to the sting of changing into one thing in contrast to something audiences of this new period had but to see him in. It’s a superb, ugly second for the Physician to face—and 20 years, and plenty of Dalek appearances later, it’s one which’s nonetheless far scarier than any physique rely these legendary pepper pots might muster.

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