Review of Into the Dalek
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.
If you’d told me a month ago that one of the episodes of this series would be The Invisible Enemy meets Dalek, I’d have been, shall we say, dubious at best. Yet that’s what we got in Into the Dalek, and I have to say I think it worked.
The very fact that I’m willing to mention this episode in the same breath with Dalek, a personal favorite from the post-Hiatus era, tells you something about how much I enjoyed it. Granted, is was not completely flawless (though to be honest, I doubt such a beast exists), but it was, for me, certainly one of the best since Moffat took over as showrunner.
Yet while the main conceit of the episode—literally getting inside a Dalek’s head—is new and therefore interesting, it was not, in fact, the driving force of the story. Instead, it’s a character piece.
Most of the character development is for our new Doctor. We the audience are still getting to know him (as is Clara and, let’s be honest, he is himself), so this is important stuff for us to see. And I was fascinated to realize both that I like Twelve less than I did in his debut, and that I find him an infinitely more interesting character than most of his predecessors. This distinction is important to me, so let me put it another way to be sure I’m making myself clear: this Doctor is not nice, but I adore him.
