So, yeah, the latest Doctor Who, “Into the Dalek,” tipped the metre into wretched. Seriously, if I wanted to watch people traipsing through a giant robot, I’d watch Lost in Space, so I’m going to talk a little about this episode using stills from the Series 2 Lost in Space episode, “Trip Through the Robot.”

So first, there’s explosions. In media res, and all that. It’s not as good as starting a story, but it works in a pinch. And hey, future setting! I like those. Explosions!

Then there’s more explosions, in case you missed the first ones.

But all that’s more okay than it should be, because The Doctor is watching! And he saves the one that hasn’t completely blown up yet, even though she keeps wanting to shoot him too.

Yay! Saved! The whole crew gets together and thanks The Doctor, but then decides well, we like you, but we still have to kill you. That’s how we show gratitude here in the future!

But that’s not important either, because in fact none of it matters a few seconds later because the The Doctor runs and gets The Companion, which The Crew apparently decided he could do instead of shooting him, because The Crew have serious mood-instability issues have a patient. WHO COULD IT BE? Whups, not yet, time for new credits.

…and then we run about with The Companion for a while, but then The Doctor shows up, and we all go find out who is The Patient. And who is The Patient? Dun dun dunnnnnn A DALEK! O NOES!

This Dalek is very sick – so sick it has turned into a drama queen.

So, whelp, there’s only one thing to be done for it – Let’s Get Small! Now, this makes no damn sense even for Doctor Who, because honestly, have you priced tiny atoms lately? Nobody has the money for that. Even Lost in Space knew better, and just made the Robot Dalek Robot really huge.

But that’s not important either! All that matters is that even at this size, it’s bigger on the inside, because really, who can manage scale. Scale is difficult, who cares, it’s Doctor Who, suspend some goddamn disbelief already. Anyway, The Doctor and The Companion go inside. (And to be fair, this was a visually interesting moment in the actual episode, and I kind of liked that bit. Now, back to the hack job I’m doing here.)

And there’s a bit of wandering around inside, and finding things. None of those bits might be important, could they? Eh. Oh, look, it’s the engine room of the BroTrek Enterprise, a.k.a., a brewery! This would be convenient, except alcohol did not help this episode, and believe me, right about here, I started trying.

But oh no! There are antibodies inside the robot and they’re after us! Anybody got some gum? It won’t help, but hey, gum!

Run! Run some more! Oh good, here, here’s a diode heart food storage area, we’ll be safe there – it’s too important to have defences! (STRATEGY!)

Oh, as an aside, Happy Christmas! Apparently. But I digress.

We need to Fix The Dalek! Because this Dalek is so broken it’s become ‘good,’ which apparently means ranting about killing the things a Dalek doesn’t normally want to kill, and sure, that makes ethical sense, but hey, carry on.

And they get inside the jukebox reactor which powers the Dalek, and weld together the broken bit with… a screwdriver. Fine, whatever. Radiation: It’s Fucking Magic. So is the sonic. I’m kind of okay with that, it’s part of the territory.

YAY! WE FIXED THE DALEK!

YAY! IT WANTS TO KILL EVERYBODY BUT DALEKS AGAIN AND CALLS IN THE FLEET! WHO COULD’VE CALLED THAT?! OH NOES, HERE COMES THE DALEK SAUCER!

OH NOES THE SHIP IS ASPLODES!

Strangely, the Dalek boarding party is really not very large. And they board instead of just blowing up the ship some more. Anyway, then there’s a bunch of running around while The Doctor and The Companion try to re-reboot The Dalek into Good Mode again. Because sure, enough hits on the reboot button has to do something, right?

And The Doctor climbs up into The Dalek’s brain chamber and talks to it for a while.

And The Crew is running around getting shot at and killed sometimes because they don’t run away very well. And who are these jerks, anyway? Mostly people who wanted to kill The Doctor for saving and returning one of their fighter pilots. They must just hate her.

But eventually, they reboot The Dalek again, and this time it comes back up Good! Yay! But that just means it wants to kill Daleks again, which they thought was good before, but now it’s all depressing for some reason, I guess because The Dalek found out that The Doctor really does not like Daleks. And that’s just like The Good Dalek! And that’s bad. So The Doctor is being all mopey about not being better than The Dalek, even though that’s bollocks.

There’s supposed to be a dilemma in there about how The Doctor makes a better Dalek than The Dalek, except we saw that in the new series before already, and frankly, we saw it a lot better and more convincingly.

But in the end it works out kind of okay anyway, because The Companion tells The Doctor hey, you’re trying, and intent – like radiation! – is fucking magic, and matters a lot more than saving the universe a couple of zillion times, and that picks him up a bit. That’s… nice? I guess?

And then The Doctor drops off The Companion and wanders off in television space and time again. l8r l8r don’t be a h8r.

Roll credits while rolling eyes. The moral of the story is, “ don’t let the robot run out of power, you morons, you’ll need it later ” “ rebooting fixes everything ” “ everybody can be good ” “ any chance to redeem a murderous psychopathic alien should be taken so I can feel better about myself ” “ one good dalek who wants to genocide the right aliens because it saw a star being born trumps a couple of hundred other… humanoids… because… yeah I’ll get back to you on that ” “Samuel Anderson is kinda hot.”

Or, you know, that’s as much as I gleaned from this mess. Moffet is starting to make me miss Most Hated (6th) Doctor and No Really I’m An American Companion Peri, and goddamn, that takes some work. Is he a secret Colin Baker fan? Is all this about improving the past’s reputation by contrast? Because yeah, which is better, “Twin Dilemma” or “Into the Dalek”? Some questions should not be asked.

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