No seriously, while I liked many of the episodes from Series 11, this one blew them all out of the water.
Based on the official episode synopsis and the commercials, I was very worried that this was just going to be a retread of Series 1's "Dalek", but nope. If anything, it succeeds even better at showing why the Daleks are the Doctor's greatest enemies (with all due respect to the Master): One Dalek mutant even WITHOUT its casing manages to wreck havoc with Earth. Yeah, the whole "Daleks can control people" thing is new, but let's face it, that is hardly the dumbest power we've seen for the Dalek mutants. Pretty sure that "honor" still goes to Dalek Sec sticking a human up his butt.
And I'm really digging the casing that the mutant eventually built. I get that it's not an "official" Dalek travel machine, but still, if they ever redesigned the Daleks as a whole to look more like it, I would not complain.
And Jodie Whittaker absolutely shined as the Doctor here. While I think she's been doing a good job so far, I think Series 11's insistence on not bringing back any recurring villains hurt her truly feeling like the Doctor. Finally pitting her against a Dalek allowed her to show a level of determination that I think she's been missing thus far. Also, I just about died laughing when the Doctor paused to ask herself how long a rel was.
Good character stuff with Ryan's dad coming back into the picture, with both Ryan and Graham getting some great scenes with him.
It was nice to see the Doctor attempt to get help from Kate Stewart and UNIT, even if UNIT seems to be shelved at the moment due to real-life politics. Hopefully this review won't take too long, because I really do like a good UNIT story.
No more Who until next year, but I hope they look to this episode when deciding what worked in Series 11 when putting together Series 12.
-------------------- "Kirito? I killed a thing and now it says I have XPs! Is that bad? Am I dying?"
-Asuna, Episode 2, Sword Art Online Abridged
Registered: Mar 1999
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