Inspirations: Into the Dalek

Into the Dalek is the second story to have as a major inspiration the 1966 sci-fi movie Fantastic Voyage. Back in Season 15 we saw the Doctor and Leela miniaturised (or clones of them at least) and injected into the real Doctor's body. This time, the Doctor and companion are miniaturised and injected into one of his deadliest foes.

In each instance - in the series as well as in the movie - it's all done for medical reasons.

As a Doctor Who story, the idea of the Doctor being shrunk and injected into a Dalek originated during the Matt Smith era - but not as a TV episode.

It was actually considered as a scenario for one of the computer games - The Adventure Games.

There were five of these, released between June and December 2010, and the first of them was a Dalek adventure ("City of the Daleks") written by Phil Ford - so it's no coincidence that he is the co-writer of this story. Presumably the idea was left on the back-burner for possible later development by Ford and Steven Moffat - one of those "too good to use here" ideas.

(Coincidentally, this is the first co-written story since The Waters of Mars - Phil Ford again).

Having the new Doctor meet the Daleks so soon into their tenure was thought by more than one critic as another sign that Moffat lacked confidence that the public would take to an older incarnation - following the telephone call from Eleven to Clara in the last episode.

The episode opens with the Doctor questioning if he is "a good man", which is a running theme through Capaldi's first series. He is trying to work out what sort of Doctor he is, after the revelations of the War Doctor and his new lease of life courtesy of the Time Lords.

He asks Clara, but the best person to really tell him is one of his oldest enemies, which is why we get the set up of the Doctor confronting one of the Daleks face to face.

This Dalek, nicknamed "Rusty" as it's battle-scarred, just happens to hate its own kind, so the Doctor needs to find out why - hence the whole shrinking / injection thing.

Before he gets to the mutant itself, the inside of the Dalek has lots of dangers - mainly in the form of "antibodies" - exactly like we saw in both Fantastic Voyage and The Invisible Enemy.

Along the way the issue of what Daleks eat - if they eat at all - is covered. This has been one of those things which fans with no life have sometimes discussed.

Problem is we don't really get an answer. If it's just people who have been miniaturised and injected into them being killed by antibodies then they can't feed very often.

But the confrontation with the mutant is the key to the episode. The Doctor wants to know if he's a good man, and he's confronted by a seemingly good Dalek - but we learn that it isn't really that good (it's been poisoned by leaking radiation, and believes it's on the side of right as it has seen the Doctor crusade against it's own kind). It's all about comparing him to it. Which of them is really, genuinely, the good person?

The 2005 episode Dalek obviously comes into play, as once again the Doctor is told by one of the creatures that he is just like it in a lot of ways.

There are other similarities in the way the Doctor is presented with a captured Dalek and has to argue / reason with it and is told an inconvenient truth that they aren't all that far apart.

We also see the Dalek free itself and go on a rampage, though here it kills other Daleks as well as humans.

We actually see a clip from Dalek during the confrontation, as well as the climax to Journey's End (where the meta-crisis Doctor appears to commit genocide against the Daleks).

The Doctor also refers to his very first encounter with them on Skaro in The Daleks.

Apparently an initial draft saw Rusty self destruct after being captured by the other Daleks, wiping them out along with their spaceship. It was decided to reprieve him for possible re-use later - which is exactly what happened.

The other thing which runs through this first Capaldi season is his dislike of the military - ramped up from the more minor irritation he expresses in earlier incarnations, usually with UNIT in its pre-Kate Stewart version.

Here he saves soldier Journey Blue and seemingly gets on okay with her - only for him to refuse point blank to consider her for a companion-type role come the conclusion.

The anti-military thing is set up because Clara now has a boyfriend who used to be a soldier - another story arc for the season.

We again see the mysterious woman in Edwardian dress, welcoming a fatality of the story into some sort of afterlife.

Next time: never meet your heroes?