Doctor Who/Recap/S27/E06 Dalek

"Rose: You don't have to do this any more. There must be something else, not just killing. What else is there? What do you want?

Dalek: I want... freedom."

Marked the return of the eponymous villain to Doctor Who, and began the extremely brief tenure of bad companion Adam Mitchell.

The Doctor and Rose arrive in 2012 Utah, in a museum of alien parts. As they discover when they are captured, they're in the Elaborate Underground Base of Henry van Statten, an American tycoon with way more money than sense. The pride of The Collector of the Strange's collection is a strange metal... droid... thing, that Mister Alien Expert just knows is sentient, but that he can't communicate with. So he locks the Doctor in there with it.

Even the usually unflappable Ninth Doctor freaks the hell out when he sees... a DALEK. It's his first clue that the genocide that ended the Time War wasn't as complete as he'd thought. A tense standoff ensues, during which we see all the Doctor's rage and pain, and Christopher Eccleston should get some kind of medal for it.

Anyway, van Statten kidnaps the Doctor for forcible induction into the Alien Museum. While he's indisposed, the Dalek tricks Rose into touching it, repairs itself using her time traveller DNA, and escapes from its holding cell to wreak some serious havoc. The Dalek is horrified to learn it is the last of its kind.

Rose and Adam try to rejoin the Doctor (who has convinced van Statten to let him go try to save everyone's lives), but are separated by a steel blast door. And Rose is on the wrong side of it. An even tenser standoff ensues, while the Doctor watches over CCTV, but Rose's DNA -- transferred to the Dalek when she touched it -- is messing with the Dalek's xenophobic sensibilities, and it suffers an identity crisis instead of just killing Rose. The Dalek nearly kills a panicking van Statten, but Rose stops it, and it decides it wants to leave. She goes with it to the top floor of the dam and it shoots a hole in the ceiling, letting in the sunlight. It opens its shell to feel the warmth of the sun. The Doctor arrives at this point, wielding a BFG and telling Rose to get out of the way. She refuses and calls him out on trying to kill it when "all it wants is the sunlight." The Dalek learns Rose touching it has combined its DNA with hers, making it "impure." It decides it wants to die rather than live as a new lifeform, and orders Rose to tell it to self-destruct. She reluctantly does so, and it kills itself.

Meanwhile, van Statten's assistant has his guards seize him and orders them to wipe his memory, Ironic Echoing him when he'd earlier decided another assistant had failed him and ordered him memory-wiped and dumped on the side of the road in "some place beginning with 'M'".

Rose and the Doctor get ready to leave, followed by Adam, who doesn't understand why they're going into a box when the dam is going to be filled with cement, but Rose has persuaded the Doctor to let him come. He follows them into the TARDIS.

-

Tropes:
"The Dalek: "DOC-TOR? THE DOC-TOR?!""
 * Arc Words: "Bad Wolf One" is the call sign for van Statten's helicopter.
 * Armor-Piercing Question: "What about you, Doctor? Who are you changing into?"
 * Awesomeness By Analysis: The Dalek breaks through van Statten's lock (when it is broken and low on power, so it couldn't do Open Says Me) because its genius intellect and sucker manipulator mean it can run through the billion possible combinations in seconds.
 * Badass Boast: "THE DALEKS SURVIVE IN ME"
 * Batman Gambit: The Dalek pulls off a marvelously simple one to regain a hold on its situation.
 * Berserk Button: The Daleks, for the Doctor.
 * And vice versa. Remember, the Dalek had been there for years, stoic, until someone introduces himself to it as the Doctor.

"Doctor: By a genius, van Statten. By a man who was king of his own little world. You'd like him."
 * Bill, Bill, Junk, Bill: "Broken, broken, hairdryer, broken..."
 * Chekhov's Armory: Van Statten's collection.
 * The Collector of the Strange: Van Statten.
 * Computer Equals Monitor: The Dalek smashes a computer monitor with its plunger arm, and proceeds to both recharge itself (draining power from the entire West Coast in the process) and absorb the entire Internet.
 * Continuity Nod: The Dalek's cry of "Have pity!" as the Doctor tortures it echoes Davros' exact same words in Genesis of the Daleks. He asked more or less the same thing of Seven back in Remembrance, and got about as sympathetic a response as Nine gives the Dalek.
 * Although not named, Davros is given a Shout-Out when the Doctor is asked who created the Daleks.

"Doctor: The Daleks have failed! Now why don't you finish the job, and make the Daleks extinct?! Rid the universe of your filth! Why don't you just die?!
 * The scene of the Doctor being tortured is shot to strongly resemble the controversial torture scene that opened "Vengeance On Varos".
 * The Cyberman head van Statten has in his collection is of the one used in either The Invasion or Revenge of the Cybermen.
 * The Daleks putting the "technical" in the Doctor's Technical Pacifist nature is nothing new. (See also Berserk Button.)
 * Van Statten's line about how his men are replaceable but the Dalek is unique is quoted almost word-for-word (replacing "Krynoid" with "Dalek") from Harrison Chase in "The Seeds of Doom".
 * Death Seeker: The Doctor shows signs "You [the Doctor] survived." "Not by choice"
 * The Dog Bites Back: Van Statten's subordinates are going to wipe his memory and dump him somewhere, just how he used to punish incompetent subordinates at the beginning of the episode.
 * Driven to Suicide: This episode demonstrates just how scared the Daleks are of becoming anything other than their idea of perfection.
 * Elaborate Underground Base
 * ET Gave Us Wi Fi: Apparently, broadband came from Roswell.
 * Evil Is Not a Toy
 * Fake Kill Scare: The scene in which the Dalek is chasing Rose. She gets trapped behind the closing door, then you hear "EXTERMINATE!" and a shot over the radio. Then it is revealed she didn't get killed after all.
 * Foreshadowing: One of the techs mentions that the last person to touch the 'Metaltron' burst into flames.
 * The sentiment comes back to haunt the Doctor in the season finale.
 * Heroic BSOD: The Doctor nearly loses it when he finds a Dalek survived the Time War.
 * I Cannot Self-EXTERMINATE: Well, it can, but only if it's ordered to first.
 * Immune to Bullets: The Dalek has an anti-bullet force-field (apparently powered by sheer badassery) surrounding it.
 * Kick the Dog: Sure, the Dalek could have just shot each guard in the warehouse area, but triggering the sprinkler system and electrocuting the guards through the resulting puddles is way more fiendishly satisfying.
 * Laughing Mad: Briefly, but The Doctor’s attack of laughter at seeing the Dalek chained up does have a maniac quality to it.
 * Laugh with Me: "I'll tell you how they got in, in-tru-da-window."..."In-tru-da-window, that was funny!"
 * Last of His Kind: The Dalek.
 * Licensed Game: A flash game based on this episode is available on the BBC website. Remarkable in that it lets you play as the Lone Dalek and exterminate everyone, including the Doctor.
 * Mercy Kill: The Dalek
 * Monster Sob Story: This is the one story where we feel sorry for a Dalek of all things.
 * Morality Chain: Rose arguably acts as one to the Dalek. She "corrupts" it, making it unable to kill her and even convinces it not to kill the Doctor and Van Statten.
 * Not So Different:

Dalek: *pause* You would make a good Dalek."

"Dalek: I am alone in the universe.
 * Not to mention, with a large dose of nightmare fuel:

Doctor: Yep. *bitter smile*

Dalek: So are you. *The Doctor's smile slips* We are the same.

Doctor: We're not the same! I'm not... no, wait. Maybe we are. You're right, yeah, okay. You've got a point. Because I know what to do. I know what should happen. I know what you deserve. *sadistic grin* Exterminate! *yanks down the shock lever*

Dalek: *Screaming* Have pity!

Doctor: Why should I? You never did! *turns it up further*"

"Adam: "Great big alien death machine. Defeated by a flight of stairs."
 * The Doctor also suggests that van Statten would like Davros, the creator of the Daleks (without referring to Davros by name). Van Statten, naturally, is not aware that this is not a compliment.
 * Oh Crap: The biggest one ever. The one characters had when they saw the pants-browning horror that was the following statement.

DiMaggio: "Now listen to me. I demand that you return to your cage. If you want to negotiate, I can guarantee that Mr. van Statten will be willing to talk. I accept that we imprisoned you, and maybe that was wrong. But people have died, and that stops, right now. The killing stops. Have you got that? I demand that you surrender, is that clear?"

Dalek: "EL-LE-VATE!""

"The Doctor: Let me tell you something, van Statten. Mankind goes into space to explore. To be part of something greater!
 * The Doctor has this moment when he realizes that van Statten's 'Metaltron' is a Dalek: he panics and begs to be let out of the cage before the Dalek can kill him.
 * "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The Doctor delivers a pretty powerful one to van Statten once Rose is trapped down with the Dalek:

Henry van Statten: Exactly! I wanted to touch the stars!

The Doctor: You just want to drag the stars down and stick them underground, beneath tons of sand and dirt, and label them! You're about as far from the stars as you can get! And you took her down with you."

"Henry van Statten: There has to be something it wants.
 * He gives another one earlier on:

The Doctor: What's the nearest town?

Henry van Statten: Salt Lake City.

The Doctor: Population?

Henry van Statten: One million.

The Doctor: All dead. If the Dalek gets out, it will murder every living thing. That's all that it needs.

Henry van Statten: But why would it do that?

The Doctor: Because it honestly believes they should die. Human beings are different, and anything different is wrong. It's the ultimate in racial cleansing, and you, van Statten, YOU'VE LET IT LOOSE!"

"Dalek: van Statten. You tortured me! [Tone rises dangerously] WHY?!
 * He also rather bluntly states that van Statten is worse than a Dalek at one point.
 * Reconstruction: The episode might as well be called "Reconstruction of the Daleks"; the production team are clearly going all out to restore the Daleks from 'tired jokes' to 'shit-your-pants scary'. Before writing the script, Rob Shearman asked his girlfriend what she thought were the silliest things about the Daleks. He then took the responses he got -- that they couldn't go upstairs, that they had that silly plunger, that they couldn't see anything behind them, that bullets could damage them, etc -- and had the characters actively invoke them in the story. And then had the Dalek completely subvert the expected weaknesses and even use them to kill said characters horribly. The Dalek can now fly upstairs to kill people. The Dalek can swivel it's eyestalk and weapons to kill people behind it. The Dalek now has a forcefield that melts bullets. The Dalek can now use it's plunger to CRUSH PEOPLE'S SKULLS IN. And so on. It's also notable that several terms often used dismissively towards the Daleks ('tinpot', 'pepperpot', etc) tend to crop up -- and the people who use them tend to die horribly not long after.
 * Some of these weaknesses (particularly the flying thing) had been addressed in the earlier "Remembrance of the Daleks", but that story was both over fifteen years in the past at the time of this story's airing, and was broadcast at a time when Doctor Who was not as popular with or watched by as many people as were watching in 2005, so it's not entirely surprising that the production team thought a refresher was in order.
 * Release Me If You Want To Live
 * Shirtless Scene: For Christopher Eccleston.
 * Slow Doors: Complete with an Indy Hat Roll by Adam.
 * Smug Snake:
 * Van Statten's callous disregard for the lives of his men as the Dalek massacres them - as well as his massive ego, make him completely unsympathetic and detestable. His final fate is immensely satisfying.
 * Van Statten's chief scientist / torturer also comes across as a bit of a smug, slimy weirdo who enjoys his job of essentially torturing a living thing every day a bit too much (it's a Dalek, granted, but it's not like he knows that). This makes the bit where the Dalek settles scores by crushing his face in oddly satisfying as well.
 * Adam is also a bit smug and full of himself as well.
 * Teen Genius: Adam Mitchell
 * Tempting Fate: The head scientist / torturer, upon being confronted with the released and seemingly powerless Dalek, smugly asks whether the Dalek is intending to 'sucker [him] to death'. The Dalek then grabs the scientist's face with the plunger and crushes his skull in. So... that's a pretty big 'yes', then.
 * Twenty Minutes Into the Future: From 2005 to 2012.
 * Unstoppable Rage: One could interpret the Dalek's rampage as this, given the lines shouted at van Statten when it corners him

van Statten: [After various panicked apologies and excuses] I swear, I just wanted you to TALK!

Dalek: [With a definitely acid tone] Then hear me talk now. Exterminate. Exterminate! [gun-stick raises] EXTERMINAAAAATE!!!"

"The Doctor: Your race is dead! You all burned, all of you! Ten million ships on fire! The entire Dalek race wiped out in one second!
 * It's a Dalek. They start at Unstoppable Rage and work their way up.
 * The Doctor himself gets a fair amount of this in this episode, like when he first tries to kill the Dalek and when he's yelling at it to die.

Dalek: YOU LIE!

The Doctor: I watched it happen! I MADE IT HAPPEN!"


 * This is the only time The Doctor reveled in what he did to end the Time War.
 * Unwitting Pawn: Van Statten, Rose.
 * Vasquez Always Dies: The paramilitary guard who escorts Rose and Adam to safety is an Action Girl who tries to stop the Dalek herself with a normal handgun. It doesn't end well.
 * Villainous BSOD: The Dalek never lets The Touch of Rose take full effect, but the results are much the same.
 * Was It Really Worth It?: The Doctor asks van Statten if letting the Dalek live was worth losing everyone it killed.
 * We Have Reserves: Van Statten orders his soldiers to stop attacking the Dalek, as they are expendable and it is unique.
 * Withholding the Cure: Van Statten claims to have discovered the cure for the common cold, but isn't letting it out of the labs. "Why sell one cure when I can sell a thousand palliatives?"
 * Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: "You would make a good Dalek."