Into the Dalek

[major_clanger]

That was very fun, and much better-plotted and more tautly told than last week's episode. I liked the central idea, and the execution was good. But there was one aspect about it that really bothered me.

I know that 'continuity' and 'Doctor Who' aren't really concepts that sit together, but despite having revisited the Great Time War in the 50th anniversary special it seems that's now been retconned to 'all the Daleks were destroyed, except for the ones that weren't' and 'the war was time-locked so even time-travellers can't go back to it, except when they can'. Because what Into the Dalek seemed to show was yet another round in the Human-Dalek Wars of the medium future (as in the next few thousand years from now) as shown in various Classic Who stories. The Doctor, for no readily apparent reason, seems to have travelled back to one of those conflicts, rescuing Journey Blue from the imminent destruction of her ship at the hands (plungers?) of superior Dalek forces.

And this is where we get a rather odd take on the Doctor.

The repeated message of Into the Dalek is that the Doctor - or at least the Twelfth Doctor - doesn't like soldiers. He makes this clear as soon as he meets the crew of the Aristotle, and finally rebuffs Journey Blue by telling her that she seems a nice person underneath, but she's a soldier.

Well let's just hang on a minute. This is the Doctor who - as The Night of the Doctor showed - chose to become the War Doctor and fight the Daleks ("Make me a warrior. Now.") He did so because he finally accepted that the Daleks were an existential threat, and there could be no standing aside, not even as a non-combatant trying to help relieve suffering.

So why can't he accept Journey Blue? It's clear that the humans are fighting for their lives against overwhelming Dalek strength. It seems many of her family are in the military; she is serving under her uncle and was fighting alongside her brother until he was killed. That sounds like a culture on a total war footing, and frankly I very much doubt that any of them are volunteers.

Journey Blue is a soldier for exactly the same reason as the Doctor became the War Doctor: faced with her whole culture being threatened with annihilation by the Daleks, there was no option but to fight. So isn't it a little bit rich of the Doctor to judge her for this?

I wonder if we are being set up to tackle this, because equally much fuss is made about Danny Pink being an ex-soldier (and clearly one with a traumatic past). It seems likely the Doctor will have to deal with this. But if the payoff is going to be having the Doctor deal with the trauma of being the War Doctor (and a major point in this episode was how Rusty the Confused Dalek sees into the Doctor's deep-seated hatred of the Daleks) then surely this is just retreading ground from the 50th anniversary special, which was all about the Doctor coming to terms with this. And that was on top of the plot arc of the Ninth Doctor, which was pretty much to do with him being PTSD Doctor following the Great Time War.

Peter Capaldi is an excellent actor, and Steven Moffat clearly wants to take every advantage of that to do some interesting things with the Doctor as a character. I'm just hoping that those things aren't a retread of the last nine years' worth of character development but with added Scottish accent.

Comments

[watervole]

From where I sit, the Doctor IS a soldier, but he can't admit it.

He made the instant decision to sacrifice one soldier to the antibodies and used that tactically and never looked back.

That's military thinking and was necessary on this occasion. I think earlier doctors would have hesitated or even been unable to tell the soldier to swallow that tracker.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

The only way I can make sense of it is if it's being the War Doctor that has given him an attitude. Like what's the psychologist's word? Displacement.

Because otherwise, hello Brigadier? Sergeant Benton? You weren't always so fastidious.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Yes; the Doctor (particularly in his Third and Fourth incarnations) was frequently exasperated with or disapproved of UNIT's approach, but he seemed quite content to work with them. Mind you, it was shown in 'The Sontaran Stratagem' / 'The Poison Sky' that the Tenth Doctor, post Time War, had a much more jaundiced view of UNIT, although this subsequently seems to have been patched up to an extent. (Possibly because he realised that if UNIT doesn't deal with extraterrestrial threats, then Torchwood does, with even messier results.)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It did seem to be a rather extreme reaction - he didn't seem to take in the idea that she wanted to get away from the war, so might be a good fit to his goals. Apart from that it was a reasonable episode, with a nice Fantastic Voyage riff - though I find it hard to imagine that much empty space and so many familiar-looking components inside a Dalek. And Missy was back and collecting more inmates for her personal heaven - still wondering what that's about, apart from the obvious thoughts about who she is.

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I did think they missed the timing with the Missy scene. It should have been at the end of the episode: Carlyle had had a very good "heroic death" moment, so let us believe in that for a few minutes before we see the twist.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

Perhaps he just didn't want Journey Blue to become a deserter.

[drplokta]

If he eventually brings her back to a point in time five seconds after she left with him, it's not exactly much of a desertion.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

And he's so good at that.

I found the whole thing a bit strange; several incarnations of the Doctor have worked just fine with soldiers in a range of capacities. He always appeared reasonably approving of the soldiering life. If this is just Moffat's clumsy way of explaining why Clara + boyfriend can't travel in the Tardis when the Ponds did, I'll be seriously hacked off.

[doubtingmichael.livejournal.com]

He'd have just said that, and he was actually quite clear about his reasons.