[h2]6. Dalek[/h2]
Written by Robert Shearman
This is the episode that got me hooked on Doctor Who, and I am sure the same can be said for countless fans around the world. In fact, when I recommend the modern series to people, I always tell them to try watching at least through “Dalek,” because if this episode doesn’t work for you, Doctor Who, by extension, will not. It is as simple as that. This was the first great hour of the modern series, the one where everything clicked into place and the show found a higher, darker, and more intellectually and emotionally complex gear to operate within.
The episode finds the Doctor confronted by the last surviving Dalek (well, for now) in a strange, near-future underground base, forcing his pent-up emotions about the Time War – an invention of the modern series that had not been greatly explored until now – to boil over into uncontrollable rage. Christopher Eccleston was a great Doctor, and he was never better than he was here, vengeful and confused and terrified at the sight of his old enemy’s return, and I think the same can be said of Billie Piper’s Rose, perfectly employed here as the Doctor’s sole touchstone to his remaining humanity. The episode is also a great character study for the Dalek itself, as the lone survivor not only functions as a terrific antagonist – the action sequences the episode constructs around a single Dalek’s reign of terror are some of the modern show’s best – but also a surprisingly complex and intriguing figure in its own right. The modern series has never told a better Dalek story than this – not even close – and only a handful of subsequent episodes surpass the sheer, absolute effectiveness of this one.
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