Day 703: The Long Game

The most interesting thing about this episode is, oddly, not the main plot. Instead, it's the new companion, Adam, who was brought into the series in the previous episode, Dalek, and leaves the series in this episode. It's not an awfully long tenure, and it's easy to see why when you watch this episode.

The Long Game feels like Russell T Davies showing the audience that the role of companion isn't just for anyone. After however many years of the Doctor seemingly picking random people off the street and choosing them to be his companion, Adam is the one that manages to buck the trend in a massive way. He's not an example of what we as humans should strive to become, with the most heroic act that he does within this episode being to bravely try a 'kronkburger' in order to experience the culture of Earth in the year 200,000. Everything else that he does is profoundly selfish, as he wanders through the story trying to get as much information as possible about the future, such that he can return to Earth and use it for his own purposes. This ends up creating a lot of problems, not least of which putting the Doctor and Rose in danger when they end up being captured.

So, upon realising that he's made a terrible mistake and that Adam is going to be a nuisance, the Doctor takes him home and dumps him. It's the first companion that we've ever seen get explicitly dumped, everyone else leaves more or less of their own accord. Suddenly, the role of companion feels just that bit more sacred in the eyes of the viewer, because we get to see someone fail at it. It draws to attention just how good the previous companions have been, if only by contrast to the way in which Adam managed to ruin it for everyone. And whilst I'm not the biggest fan of Adam, I do appreciate what he represents, being The Companion Who Couldn't (to quote the working title for the story), and showing us how fantastic companions have been, both past, present and future.

Day 702: Dalek

Dalek ranks as one of my favourite stories in Doctor Who of all time. It's easy to see why, and I feel that this is best seen in one of the final scenes in the story. The lead-up to the scene is that a Dalek has been methodically going through a base, killing everyone that it comes across. This is thanks to Rose accidentally regenerating it by giving it power, somehow. The Doctor, meanwhile, is hell-bent on destroying it, in part because the Time War was between the Daleks and the Time Lords, and he blames the Daleks for so much. So the scene comes about when the Doctor, whilst holding a massive gun, meets with the Dalek while Rose is kept captive by the Dalek, for reasons that confuse it.

Over the course of the scene, we see the entire relationship between the Doctor and the Daleks play out. The Doctor turns up, all ready to kill the Dalek once and for all. But he can't, because he's shocked to see that the Dalek has opened up its casing and destroyed a potion of the roof, just so that it can feel the sunlight on its tentacles. Rose points out that the Doctor is the one with the gun, and that the Dalek is slowly changing, and that it isn't killing any more. The Doctor puts down his gun, in a moment of realisation of what he has done, whilst the Dalek, realising that it is becoming something impure, commits suicide.

This scene shows how much the Time War has changed the Doctor. A man who abhors violence, and has almost always sought peaceful solutions to events, even those concerning the Daleks, is now so legitimately furious at the Daleks that he needs to destroy it himself. But Rose stops him. Just as Rose healed the Dalek, so too does Rose heal the Doctor. She helps him realise what a person he has become, as well as striving for him to be someone better.

Meanwhile, in one of the story's cruellest jokes, the Dalek can't cope with the fact that it's changing, but the story desperately wants it to change and become nice. The music, for instance, by Murray Gold is at times overly sentimental, whilst the direction from Joe Ahearne desperately tries to get beauty out of sunlight dancing off the Dalek's tentacles. But being nice is so against the very nature of the Dalek that it must die, and so it does, defying the story that is being told and instead remaining true to itself. It's a slightly warped joke about the concept of the Daleks, and how we should never sympathise with them, because it's just wrong.

And that's just a small sample of what is a truly fantastic story that manages to do what could be seen as impossible: it makes the Daleks scary again.