# Doctor Who Revival S8E2 -- Into the Dalek (boxed spoilers until it airs on the West Coast) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 30, 2014, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950 "2014-08-30T11:46:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2014, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/61 "2014-09-03T17:20:24Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > I didn’t understand his rejection of Journey Blue at the end. So what if she’s a soldier? Maybe she’s wanting to come with you and quitting the army? Maybe that’s her growth mode. Versus, say, Martha Jones, who went off and _became_ a soldier running UNIT. Or Mickey Smith. As I recall, the Doctor wasn’t too pleased with Martha about that. ---
**Author:** ![emarkp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3be4f8/32.png) [@emarkp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emarkp)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2014, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/62 "2014-09-03T20:42:23Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > I didn’t understand his rejection of Journey Blue at the end. So what if she’s a soldier? Maybe she’s wanting to come with you and quitting the army? Possibly he’s got soldier enough in him, and feels he needs someone with him who’s never had that perspective. Innocent eyes, and all that. ---
**Author:** ![MacSpon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MacSpon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacSpon)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2014, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/63 "2014-09-04T03:01:42Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I haven’t seen the episode, but IIRC from reading about it, the Second Doctor in _Evil of the Daleks_ was kidnapped by them and forced to work on them somehow so that they’d be able to defeat him. As it turned out, he sabotaged them so that they were good and started a Dalek civil war. Guess that was too long ago to reference in this episode. Very few _have_ seen it … alas. ---
**Author:** ![Cayuga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Cayuga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cayuga)\ **Post date:** [September 5, 2014, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/64 "2014-09-05T10:43:25Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > [I’ll just leave this here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WBqHdI5Bdw) I can’t believe no one has mentioned this yet. It is astonishing! Thank you for leaving it here. ---
**Author:** ![gonzoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a6a055/32.png) [@gonzoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzoron)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/65 "2014-09-08T19:17:35Z")
I quite liked this one. It felt very old-school, in a charming way. Speaking as someone who hasn’t watched much Classic Who yet, so take this with a grain of salt, it felt very Classic Who. The sets inside the Dalek were serviceable at best, and the effects were patchy at times, but the important part was the story, the moral quandary, and the character beats, which were all great. (That’s what I imagine the best of Classic Who to be. It’s what I love about Star Trek: TOS, for example.) Clara was welcome and felt “right” finally. It was very nice to see her supporting cast back home grow, and I’m looking forward to more Mr. Pink. In the Modern Who era, this felt like it could have been a Tenth Doctor / Donna (or maybe Rose) story, and that’s a good thing, IMHO. 12 is growing on me. I think I like him better than 11 already. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/66 "2014-09-08T20:00:02Z")
And they seem to have erased the nuDaleks from continuity. I would have liked to see a massive pogrom, but I’ll take what I can get. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/67 "2014-09-08T20:52:03Z")
Also I am really liking the sarcastic, understated Doctor, and the “new” Clara is a revelation: she gives real insight into what a companion actually _does_ and why the Doctor needs one, interpreting humanity for the Doctor and occasionally having to keep him in line. Who thought Jenna Coleman could actually act? ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/68 "2014-09-08T23:02:01Z")
> [@Skywatcher](#): > > [I’ll just leave this here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WBqHdI5Bdw) That was excellent. ---
**Author:** ![Toucanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Toucanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toucanna)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2014, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/69 "2014-09-09T21:58:50Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] First appearance of the Daleks per Doctor: First Doctor: second episode {snip} [/QUOTE] Nitpick: “The Daleks” was the second serial, not episode. The first serial, now known under the umbrella title, “An Unearthly Child” had four episodes. So, technically, the Daleks’ first appearance was in the fifth episode. [QUOTE=BrightNShiny] {snip} While he’s arrogantly playing redeemer…, tons of people get killed. It’s no wonder everyone and their mother declared war on Eleven. [/QUOTE] For a guy who bitched at others about not seeing the big picture, NuWho has a bad case of forest-blindess (“looky all the trees!”) [QUOTE=Sage Rat] I was more annoyed that they spent the entire first episode getting her to accept that he’s the same person as he had been before, then immediately puts her into boyfriend-finding-mode, since the Doctor is no longer BF material. {snip} [/QUOTE] IMO, Moffat is obsessed with this character dynamic: an attractive woman who appears to be a leader (but who is secretly insecure) paired with a gawky, geeky low-self-esteem guy who thinks he has to put up with verbal disrespect in order to be allowed to stay with the attractive woman.\* (E.g.: Sally Sparrow/Larry Nightingale; Amy Pond/Rory Williams; Clara Oswald/Eleven. And, to some extent, River Song/Strackman Lux.) It’s possible Moffat et al. think parents will complain about their kids watching a show with an implied romantic/sexual relationship between an “old geezer” and a “hot young chick”. If Clara/Twelve risks driving viewers away, the next best option is to find another [del]victim[/del] romantic interest for Clara. [QUOTE=LawMonkey] Well, they did have that one episode with THE LORD OF DARKNESS HIMSELF, SATAN, PRINCE OF LIES. :rolleyes: {snip} [/QUOTE] If you are referring to “The Impossible Planet”/“The Satan Pit”, my take on that was that the creature was the inspiration for universe-wide legends of a creature that was Evil Incarnate, but this didn’t mean that “Hell” (as in, a place where souls are sent to experience eternal suffering/torment/punishment) was a real place. As always, YMMV. \*FWIW, I hate this. No one should have to put up with this kind of treatment. This is not romance, it is abuse. ---
**Author:** ![Toucanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Toucanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toucanna)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 8:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/70 "2014-09-10T08:01:26Z")
[QUOTE=Sherrerd] Is there a history in \*Doctor Who \*of depicting or referencing life-after-death for humans? (As opposed to regeneration for Time Lords and that sort of ‘aliens are different’ thing). [/QUOTE] FWIW, the “Tardis Data Core” website has this entry the subject: [Heaven (afterlife) | Tardis | Fandom](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Heaven_%28afterlife%29). ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/71 "2014-09-10T19:49:38Z")
> [@Toucanna](#): > > FWIW, the “Tardis Data Core” website has this entry the subject: [Heaven (afterlife) | Tardis | Fandom](http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Heaven_%28afterlife%29). Very interesting; thanks. If I’m not mistaken, all the examples seem to refer either to character beliefs or to fraudulent ‘heavens’ except for this one: > [@](#): > > Iris Wildthyme once spent three weeks in Heaven trying to win back the Ark of the Covenant from the angel Gabriel in a game of gin rummy. (PROSE: The Unhappy Medium) Possibly it’s just an artifact of the way the entry is worded, but there _does_ seem to be an implication there that the angel Gabriel is a real as-described-in-human-stories entity, and not an alien posing as that entity. (And of course we don’t know for certain what the current showrunners are up to with Missy and her domain.) ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/72 "2014-09-10T19:55:31Z")
Do note that their citation for that is a Doctor Who book. The TARDIS wiki takes the sense that everything is canon, no matter how contradictory. The BBC, on the other hand, takes the stance that nothing is canon. Unless a cite says (TV: \) I wouldn’t say it has any real “precedence” as far as the show is concerned. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/73 "2014-09-10T20:17:46Z")
> [@Baron\_Greenback](#): > > A hot tunnel crawl in-story, but really just “TV” Not an unheard of phenomena. I refer you to _The Tempest_, Act I, Scene 2, when Ariel rescues the victims of the storm and says: “On their sustaining garments not a blemish, But fresher than before:” Considering the state of laundry services in Elizabethan England I think we can assume that drenching the actors and their costumes for every performance would have been too costly. Let’s just call it “Show biz”. ---
**Author:** ![Pushkin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@Pushkin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pushkin)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/74 "2014-09-11T21:31:01Z")
> [@MacSpon](#): > > Very few _have_ seen it … alas. [Millions have seen The Evil of the Daleks, but episodes 1, 3-7 were only seen the once](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evil_of_the_Daleks#Broadcast_and_reception) ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2014, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/75 "2014-09-11T21:40:10Z")
> [@Cayuga](#): > > I can’t believe no one has mentioned this yet. It is astonishing! Thank you for leaving it here. Seconded; that was epic. Guy’s got some moves, too. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2014, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/76 "2014-09-11T21:57:08Z")
> [@Penfeather](#): > > Seconded; that was epic. Guy’s got some moves, too. That wasn’t a guy. ---
**Author:** ![Toucanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Toucanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toucanna)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2014, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/77 "2014-09-11T23:54:05Z")
[QUOTE=Penfeather] Seconded; that was epic. Guy’s got some moves, too. [/QUOTE] Thirded. And that guy learned “hir” moves from The Corsair. She was a bad girl! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/78 "2014-09-12T03:07:54Z")
I’ve been staying out of this thread until I watched the episode. Loved it! > [@Cayuga](#): > > I can’t believe no one has mentioned this yet. It is astonishing! Thank you for leaving it here. Y’all are welcome. A clip of that was in one of Five’s Pre-Capadli specials and I went looking for the whole thing. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/79 "2014-09-12T03:12:39Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > That wasn’t a guy. I am strangely confused and aroused. ---
**Author:** ![Toucanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Toucanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toucanna)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950/80 "2014-09-12T21:00:54Z")
[QUOTE=dropzone] {snip} As for the Doctor and Ross, wow. Just wow. I have never seen anything so cold-blooded. This is not your daughter’s Doctor Who. [/QUOTE] Yeah, Twelve ain’t a guy for warm-n-fuzzy moments. Once Rusty’s antibodies targeted Ross, he was a dead man. Outside of destroying every antibody–which wasn’t technically feasible–there was nothing anyone could do to save Ross’s life. I think Nine, Ten and Eleven also would have planted a tracking device on Ross. The differences would have been: 1. Nine would have talked one of the other soldiers into planting the tracker on Ross; after Ross dies, Clara complains about this and Nine snaps at her, “It’s a different morality. Get used to it or go home.” 2. Ten first would have said, “Sorry, I’m so sorry.” After Ross died, he would have shouted “Alons-y!”, then turned time backwards (doing a wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey thing) and made everything happy happy again. 3. Eleven would have teared up, worked his lower jaw back and forth a few times, kissed Ross on the forehead, then handed him a Jammie Dodger with the tracker hidden in the jam. (BTW, I hope it’s okay to quote this without spoiler tags now that the episode has aired.) [QUOTE=Sage Rat] Well going back and watching just [Danny’s] scenes… The “Why?”, “To be funny”, “Why?”, “I just do that.”, “Why?”, “I don’t know.” bit is pretty odd. I don’t see many women getting turned on by being stared down for having made a joke. {snip} [/QUOTE] I also found this scene uncomfortable until I rewatched the episode last night and noticed that right after Clara and Danny are introduced, Clara starts organizing some printed material. As she and Danny start to chat, she puts a folded copy of _The Guardian_ newspaper on the bottom of the stack, then holds the stack against her chest, then asks Danny about the kids she saw him drilling earlier. Danny notices that Clara is carrying a copy of _The Guardian_. I’m not British and I’m not familiar with all the nuances, but apparently, that paper is perceived as “left-wing”, anti-war/military. Examples, [The BBC buys lots of copies of the Guardian. What does that really say? | Roy Greenslade | The Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/14/bbc-guardian-most-popular-newspaper) [http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/The\_Guardian](http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/The_Guardian) A UK 'doper could clarify this for us, though. Now that I’ve noticed the business with the newspaper, I understand that Danny’s hostile (over)-reaction to Clara’s jokes stems from him already feeling defensive because of the kid in his class pestering him about killing someone and, the students seeing his tears. His emotionally raw state made it easier for him to mistakenly interpret Clara’s mindless jokes as an attack by a stereotypical “_Guardian_ reader”, disrespecting him because he’d been a soldier. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doctor-who-revival-s8e2-into-the-dalek-boxed-spoilers-until-it-airs-on-the-west-coast/696950.md?page=5)