In some ways, Physician Who‘s regenerated period has spent the whole thing 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 would possibly of the Daleks. Within the years since, the present has returned time and time once more to the shape and content material of “Dalek” and its strategy to the titular pepper pots; typically it’s eschewed its classes for sweeping senses of scale, as if easy multiplication may 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 a lot of their chunk as soon as once more for audiences, is much less concerning the carnage its lone monster wreaked—and extra about what the Dalek mirrored again on Christopher Eccleston’s tackle the Time Lord.
“Dalek” is continually 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 type, the only real survivor of its species’ half in the Time Warfare. 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 up to now, the Dalek’s conclusion is destruction regardless of all of it, an eradication of every part it deems inferior in distinction to the Physician’s ceaseless want to avoid wasting whoever and no matter he can as penance for his folks’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 affect 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 way in which), “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 Warfare.
It brings out one among Christopher Eccleston’s really nice 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 ordinary 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 not often 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 way in which 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 really terrifying to observe, whilst he flits between it and the tragedy of his grief.
It really 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 folks’s biggest enemy at the moment are the identical, resulting in the Physician’s express choice to enact cruelty straight on his foe, torturing it to close loss of life. However as scary as that second is, to observe 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 Warfare, it’s afterward within the episode the place we get an unbelievable 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 an excellent 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 totally 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 concerning the Physician’s rage barely being in management till it spills over, Eccleston’s efficiency right here is way 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 lifeless and gone, the Physician as soon as once more turns chilly when he gives a easy function 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 great Dalek” as a shock to his system, however it’s the stillness with which Eccleston portrays that second that exhibits you the way utterly shut the Physician is to the sting of turning into one thing in contrast to something audiences of this new period had but to see him in. It’s an excellent, 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 depend these legendary pepper pots may muster.
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