As someone who has committed several years of my life to the study of
philosophy, and who still practices it regularly, I was ecstatic watching this
weekend’s new episode of Doctor Who. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Oh, yes,
and
SPOILERS
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I feel confident saying that Into the Dalek has given Doctor
Who in the 21st century some of its new iconic imagery. |
Into the Dalek was the most visually inventive and spectacular episode
of Doctor Who I’ve seen, other than the anniversary special, probably since the
finales of the Davies era. The much more cerebral, narratively complex,
dramatic Doctor Who of the Moffat era usually downplays, de-emphasizes, or
purposely undermines its own visual panache. But the opening scenes of the
Dalek assault on the small starfighter, the Dalek invasion of the Aristotle,
the stunning visuals of the interior of the Dalek itself from the small scales
of the shrunken TARDIS crew,* and undoubtedly the utter weirdness of the
Doctor’s hand turning to liquid as he steps into the Dalek’s eye make for brand new iconic images of Doctor Who.
* Into the Dalek also has a curious relationship with Doctor Who’s
past. It touches on the high points of the show, of course, in how it engages
with the Doctor’s relationship with the Daleks. But it’s also concerned with
resurrecting a curious idea from one of the deservingly discarded parts of the
show’s history: shrinking the cast to enter the body of a character is the same
notion from The Invisible Enemy, one of the nadirs of Tom Baker’s era.
This episode aimed a tight focus on the relationship of the Doctor and
the Daleks. This wasn’t their diegetic relationship, the history in the show’s
own narrative of their interactions. At the forefront of Into the Dalek is the
philosophical and moral relationship of the Doctor to the Daleks. The Doctor at
one point says to the Dalek that when he first started travelling, Doctor was
just a name he called himself, but he only understood what it was to be The
Doctor after he met the Daleks. The Daleks are a force of monstrousness, evil,
destruction. The Doctor defines himself through his fight against this. What is
noble and admirable about him, the answer to his question “Am I a good man?,”
is seen through his opposition to this monstrousness.
The Doctor’s devotion to goodness and the precise nature of this
goodness is central to the story. The Dalek, which the Doctor affectionately calls
Rusty, could no longer believe in the Dalek morality of total destruction of
all alien life forms after a revelation that occurred in its thinking upon
watching the birth of a star. Rusty understood the futility of the Dalek quest
to destroy all that was different. Life itself is the proliferation of
difference, of novelty, of that which is alien to what has come before. And
this proliferation continues despite all the Dalek attempts to shut it down.
Daleks are opposed to a fundamental aspect of existence itself: the
creation of the new. This is the beauty that the Dalek saw, and the beauty that
the Doctor spent the climax of the story trying to remind Rusty of his
experience. The goodness of the universe lies in its beauty. But that beauty is
not a matter of mathematical elegance or physical symmetry, as our more common
intuitions would have it. The beauty of the universe lies in its creative
energy. The evil of the Daleks lies in their desire to destroy that creativity.
It’s at this point, I would say, that Doctor Who has taken up an explicitly
Bergsonian philosophy.
 |
Henri Bergson's philosophy
understood existence itself as
inherently creative, and later
developed an ethics in which the
best human behaviour was to
channel that creativity into our
daily lives. |
This is expressed differently through Dalek activity throughout the
story. The action scenes as the Daleks invade the Aristotle are visually
breathtaking, some of the most beautiful action sequences Doctor Who has done
in a while. But the Daleks themselves are boring. As characters, all a standard
Dalek is really capable of doing is destroying things: killing, exterminating,
annihilating, all at various speeds depending on physical impediments and their
occasional desire for a nice bit of victim torturing first. The presence of
Daleks wipes all creativity out of a story, just as, diegetically, they wish to
wipe all creativity out of the universe. The only thing you can do in a regular
Dalek story is figure out how they’re going to kill everyone, and stop them
while avoiding being killed.
This was interesting when they were first introduced (The Daleks, The
Dalek Invasion of Earth) because such a creature had never really appeared
before on television. Terry Nation’s only attempt to do something different with
Daleks was an insane failure, making them comedy characters in The Chase. After
that, what was most interesting about Dalek stories was what was going on
around them.
In The Daleks’ Master Plan and Revelation of the Daleks, it was the
plots of all the secondary characters. In The Power of the Daleks, it was how
they manipulated the power games at the colony until they could get back to
proper massacring. In The Evil of the Daleks, it was the literal alchemy of the
story transforming Dalek nature. In Day of the Daleks, it was the narrative of
collaboration with evil. Genesis of the Daleks was brilliant because of its
depiction of a self-destructive society, and the charisma of the character of
Davros. Remembrance of the Daleks was wonderful because it used the Daleks to
tell a parable about race, prejudice, and the political and personal
consequences of social exclusion.
Stories in the classic series that focussed specifically on the Daleks
and their nefarious plans to
do what they do every night, Pinky, and try to
destroy all other life forms, were generally terrible. Jon Pertwee’s other two
Dalek stories, Planet of the Daleks and Death to the Daleks, were uninspired
retreads of story styles from the 1960s, as was Tom Baker’s second Dalek story,
Destiny of the Daleks. The same goes for Peter Davison’s Resurrection of the
Daleks, which also suffers from being hopelessly convoluted and written by Eric
Saward.
The post-revival series follows the same trend. The more boring Dalek
appearances are when they’re behaving just as Daleks do: storming through the
narrative destroying everything. Journey’s End was probably the only story to
fall completely on this problem. The difference of the post-revival from the
classic series is that the Daleks so rarely overpower all the more interesting
characters and ideas around them anymore. The Parting of the Ways and Doomsday
came close, but avoided collapse because those stories were still ultimately
about the relationship of the Doctor and Rose. Victory of the Daleks was in
similar trouble, and suffered from the android Bracewell not being prominent
enough to carry the episode.
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The greatest Dalek stories of the post-revival series have
seen Daleks themselves attempt what the Doctor first tried
to do to them in 1968: change them. |
Asylum of the Daleks worked because it was about setting up the
multi-diegetic mystery of Clara and repairing the Ponds’ relationship. Evolution
of the Daleks, shit-show though it was, was most intriguing when it focussed on
Sec’s own transformation and its implications. Rob Sherman’s Dalek was the
first attempt in the televised series to have a Dalek itself try to develop.
Only when a Dalek character breaks from this pattern of a totalizing
will to destroy can it be truly interesting. But once that happens, the
character isn’t really a Dalek anymore. Rusty is unique in this tradition of self-refuting
singular Dalek characters because it understands that it isn’t a Dalek anymore
once it accepts this new moral perspective. Rusty still has his Dalek heritage,
because the only way he knows how to put his morals into action is to destroy
things. Now, he simply destroys Daleks.
Yet there is also a very important difference between Into the Dalek
and the other stories that focussed on a Dalek transforming itself into
something different: Rusty survives.
Sec, the Dalek in Sherman’s episode, and Caan in Journey’s End are all
progressive evolutions of the essential Dalek nature. They achieve individually
what Patrick Troughton’s Doctor (in David Whitaker’s script, most importantly)
tried to do through alchemical intervention in The Evil of the Daleks. But
these three Daleks are all failures in this progressive change because they don’t
survive their stories. The change does not proliferate.
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The Doctor and the Daleks, philosophically entwined,
without escape. |
This is why the Doctor was so intrigued to have found a Dalek who had
made itself ethical, who had learned to appreciate the goodness of the universe’s
relentless creativity. The Doctor first defined who he was in opposition to the
Daleks. In the original sense, this was in strictly moral terms; the Dalek
drive to destroy was “senseless, evil killing,” and the Doctor opposed this.
But this was a negative self-definition; the Doctor defined himself through
identifying what he stood against.
Regeneration gave the first positive definition to the Doctor himself,
and to Doctor Who as a television show, which has allowed them to run for half
a century and, despite sometimes getting worse, still continuing runs of
brilliant television. The Doctor was defined by his changeability. Like a star
born from the dust of dead stars, he could make himself again and again, as can
Doctor Who. Now, we can identify the Daleks negatively, in opposition to the
Doctor; he changes, and so they stay the same. With Rusty, the change in the
essential morality and personality of the Daleks can continue. The seed of
creativity and fluctuation exists in the Daleks now.
My girlfriend said, astonished as we watched Into the Dalek this
weekend, how amazed she was that Doctor Who could still produce such good
television after so long. I said that it was because the show never let itself
get stale by staying the same for too long. It kept changing.
Into the Dalek brought us a Dalek who could change.
