Dalek

Attracted to a subterranean bunker in the Utah desert the TARDIS carries the Doctor and Rose to confront the last of the Time Lord's greatest of foes. A Dalek in a chain, tortured, suffering and in pain, power and desire lost in The Time War and rapidly on the wane. However, a petal rests on the case, the slightest sense of empathetic embrace, setting a genetic recharge off at pace, resulting in a battle and a race - and some guy called Adam at the end, for reasons unclear I won't pretend, hitches a lift into... space.

The first Fantastic episode. This episode takes an old, and frankly ridiculous Doctor Who foe and makes it a killing machine. This made the Daleks scary again in a Fantastic episode.

When I knew we were going back to the beginning of "nuWho" to review the episodes, this episode was one of the ones I was really looking forward to seeing again, as I remembered it fondly. It wasn't quite as good as the regard my memory had for it, but it's still probably the best episode of the run so far.

Tracking a distress signal to an underground bunker in the far future of 2012 (!) The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose (Billie Piper) discover a personal collection of alien artefacts belonging to American Billionaire Henry Van Statten (Corey Johnson). Most is junk but to the Doctors horror the distress signal is coming from a damaged, but alive, Dalek that he has chained up. The Doctor is torn between his desire to end his greatest foes forever, Rose's naïve assistance and Van Statten's desire to own a unique object.

So the issue here is one of expectation vs Reality, in my mind, Eccleston berates the Dalek for its own existence and it's a classic lengthy monologue. In reality, it's a nice bit of business, but nothing like as Iconic. "You would make a good Dalek" is a nice comeback though and it does oddly tie into the idea that the war doctor is the one before this one and he's still dealing with some of that trauma.

Overall the show is good though. It's a first look at the iconic villain and the episode circumvents those old jokes immediately about getting away from Dalek's by heading up some stairs by introducing the flying mechanic. I love the skeleton effect on the deaths via the laser gun and the specific sound effect for it too. Awesome stuff. Bruno Langley makes his debut as Adam. I remember that he has a little run with team tardis - but at the moment I can't remember if he comes to a sticky end or not. I guess I'll wait and see. He isn't that strong a character here, so I can't imagine we spend that long with him.

It's still the strongest episode so far, just not quite the masterpiece I remembered.

Of all the dalek serials since the Doctor Who reboot in 2005, this is, in my opinion the best. I was lucky enough to be a child when this came out and its one of the few to stick with you (in a good way - not like "Boom Town"). The threat is there from the beginning and it's difficult to decide whether to be more afraid of the dalek or the fear/rage of Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor!

The design of the animatronic dalek is brilliant and its infinitely superior to the CGI version in "Into the Dalek". It seems a shame that the rough CGI returned in comparison to the hard work and effort of the Series 1 dalek. Best episode of series 1 too.

This was where Series 1 went up a level, 'Dalek' remains a truly classic episode, a real game changer. We learn of the Time War from the dalek, that all Daleks and Timelords are dead, with the exception of this Dalek and The Doctor, The Dalek draws parallels between the two which make the Doctor uncomfortable. The story in brief, Super rich American Henry Van Statten owns an Alien Museum, the Dalek is chained up as prized possession. Rose is uncomfortable seeing the Dalek tortured so steps in and unwittingly restores it from a decayed state into the zipped up, no nonsense metal meanie that we now recognise. Rose becomes locked in a vault with it, but will it kill her? One thing I particularly loved about this episode is that the Dalek which had seemingly softened during the 80's, was now a highly intelligent killing machine with true menace. The 'matrix' moment, is well done and shows the Daleks are finally tough to deal with. Rewatching it I agree with my initial decision about the best scene, where the guards lay in wait for the Dalek, and the Dalek sets off the water sprinkler fires onto the floor and electrocutes them all with one shot, genius. Roses closing scenes with the Dalek are brilliantly done. I can see why people would class this as the overall best episode of Series 1, but in my humble opinion even better was to come. Little note of trivia, the picture that appears above Van Statten's desk was used years ago in a Poirot, 'The Underdog.' The painting is really of Dennis Lill not Corey Johnson, but there is a resemblance.