Doctor Who: 1x06 "Dalek"

And we’re back to the regularly scheduled programming.

DOCTOR WHO REWATCH: SERIES ONE, EPISODE SIX: “DALEK”

For the first time in New Who, we meet the Daleks – the Doctor’s most hated enemy – and it is awesome. (But maybe not for equal representation)

Doctor Who: 1x06: “Dalek” Written by Robert Shearman

The Summary:
The Doctor and Rose follow a signal for help to an underground compound in Utah in the year 2012, which is the past now but was the future then. They discover that they have landed in a private alien museum/collection owned by a personification of capitalist greed by the name of Henry van Statten. The Doctor rather idiotically shows off and proves himself to be an alien expert. Van Statten then forces him to go, without Rose, to confront the alien he’s been torturing with hopes of learning what it is. Said alien turns out to be a Dalek, which looks rather silly with its weapons being a whisk and a plunger but is actually rather terrifying and sends the Doctor into a crazed frenzy. Meanwhile, Rose chats up Adam, the technology expert working for van Statten who really knows nothing about aliens and thinks Rose is completely ignorant. Rose gets Adam to spy on the cell van Statten takes the Doctor to, but instead of seeing the Doctor scream about how much he hates the Daleks, she sees one of van Statten’s employees torturing the Dalek. The Doctor has been taken to another cell to be tortured once van Statten figured out he was an alien. Rose convinces Adam to take her to the cell so she can help the poor alien. The Dalek tricks her into touching xim* which revives xim to full strength. A bunch of people die, like whoa, including almost Rose, who only survives because she tainted the Dalek into treating her like xir commanding officer. Using her power over the Dalek, Rose helps it realize that it wants something more than to kill, which shouldn’t be possible; at the same time, the Doctor has become obsessed with killing the Dalek. Eventually, the Doctor convinces Rose to convince the Dalek to blow xirself up, which is presented as merciful since the Dalek’s changes are torturous to xir nature. In the end, the Doctor and Rose, with Adam, disappear into the TARDIS once again. This episode marks the fourth instance of the Bad Wolf meme and the first episode in which no women interact only between themselves.

The Women:
Rose Tyler, Diana Goddard, de Maggio

The Conversations:
…

…

Ahem.

The Woman to Woman Quote of the Episode:
:-( :-( :-( :-( :-( :-(

The Tally:
Episode 1x06 Total: 0
Series 1 Total: 13.5
9th Doctor Total: 13.5
Rose as Companion Total: 13.5
Russell T Davis Era Total: 13.5
Series 1 Half-Way Point Episode Average: 2.25 points/episode = One and a quarter conversations between only women without mention of men per episode

For Further Discussion: Compassionate Women are Wrong

This is the second episode in which a woman who acts out of selflessness and compassion unleashes something murderous. One of the major characteristics of the Doctor is his compassion – he always wants to give whatever/whomever he encounters a chance and hates to resort to violence. This has turned out both badly and well for him, but so far, when women do this, it turns out horribly. It’s probably too early to call foul and claim there’s a pattern, but it’s something I’m definitely going to be looking out for this in future episodes. As it stands now, it looks almost like an indictment against sentimentality, which is typically attributed to women over men



PS. De Maggio is awesome and I wish Rose became friends with her rather than with Adam.