#s1 the dalek

[miametropolis]

literally took my dumbass until today to realize that the s1 finale is a direct parallel to “the dalek” in that the doctor ‘loses’ rose and decides to betray his usual code because “I lost her once. I can’t do it again” only for him to think in the finale that she’s really gone (cut to the pile of ashes he falls dramatically onto and holds in his hands) and THAT’S why he sends her off in the TARDIS, that’s why he has that look on his face. he can’t bear the thought of losing her, he knows he’s going to die. but he sends her back, not just because he loves her (duh, she’s the ‘woman he loves,’) but because he lost her once that day. and he’s not doing it again.

[ninesl3atherjacket]

Rose Tyler trying so hard to convince The Doctor to let The Dalek live only for the Dalek to order her to let him die always breaks my heart

[gcballet]

Doctor Who S1 (2005) as Penguin Classics

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[camellcat]

I'm rewatching s1 again and I think it's so fucking funny how much every other doctor except nine absolutely hates guns. nine is SO excited to shoot that goddamn dalek. he is READY he is DOWN he is soooo for it. he points a gun at rose tyler and doesn't even think about it until she scolds him for it.

and then in bad wolf where he's incredibly comfortable about holding that big ass blaster. never gets onto jack about parading around with them either. just does not bat an eye. in fact he is threatening people with it, even if it is a farce.

the others would NEVER lol

[coolbeansnico]

Watching doctor who is like:

"Who's behind this plot I wonder?"

"Oh its the fUCKING DARLEKS AGAIN 😐"

[lesbicosmos]

eight watches doctor who for the first time: season 1 episode 6 (dalek)

@latin-8-o-clock-my-room

[10moonymhrivertam]

Things that continually haunt me: New Who’s Companion-contemporary is a year ahead of the year it aired from Aliens of London/World War Three until the rewind in Last of the Time Lords, which resets it to correct contemporaneousness

[buildoblivion]

oh so jubilee is GOOD good

[bellamysgriffin]

hot take of the day but i think s2 of doctor who probs has the worst episodes out of the rtd era

[intyalote]

if you ignore the dubious historicity and typical british patronizing of other cultures, “the aztecs” is worth watching for the hilarity of the bbc deciding, six serials in, to make it clear that the old man Does Fuck, and not just in the vague “well he has a granddaughter” sense

[gaygollum]

that scene in doctor who where nine yells at the dalek why dont you just die? and there’s a pause and the dalek says you would make a good dalek. most brutal lines in all of doctor who and its episode SIX.

[none-ofthisnonsense]

S1E6 ("Dalek") is my favourite episode so far.

[rosesbleachblondehair]

It is interesting how fandom understands that Rose influenced the Doctor to heal after the Time War and that she changed him for the better, but when it comes to how Rose shouldered the trauma of a veteran who came out of an incomprehensibly horrific war and how the first place that veteran takes her is to see her own planet get destroyed and how later she stands between that veteran holding a gun and a Dalek (she even has dialogue explicitly pointing out that the Doctor is the one who is pointing a gun at her), nobody in the fandom thinks about how any of that would have influenced and changed Rose.

It’s all why is s2 Rose different from s1 Rose? instead. And I think there’s an answer for why she’s different right in front of you.

[rabbitdarling]

So I'm on episode 6: Dalek and the one thing that has always stood out to me in this episode is the sheer compassion Rose shows. Yes she doesn't know what a Dalek is, the Doctor has never mentioned them or told her about them but her first instinct is to help and comfort this being she just saw be tortured.

She see's this hard metal thing, it doesn't look organic in any sense of the word, every other alien she has seen has had a more organic look to them compared to a Dalek. She asks if it's okay and if it's in pain, she reaches out to connect and comfort this cold inanimate object looking being.

Her sheer ability to empathize with others is so rooted into her very being that it changed the Dalek. Which has me wondering how much of Rose was always Bad Wolf from the very start of s1? I seriously love this season and how they interwove the story through out the episodes and I will always wish they delved more into how Bad Wolf could have changed Rose through out their adventures.

[sadcoms]

AU where Rose stayed with the Time Lord Doctor after Journey’s End and they start to argue more like they did in S1 because the Doctor is doing his “I never would” thing and Rose is now saying “but sometimes you HAVE to” which causes him to start down another Davros-inspired spiral about how he’s “turned her into a weapon” and she’s like...actually travelling across dimensions trying to fight eternal darkness brought about by a ton of genocidal aliens will do that to you regardless!

Because Rose was never for pacifism-above-all-else. The episode before Dalek Harriet Jones straight up says she’s a very violent young woman because Rose (not unreasonably) wants the Slitheen to be blown up after they murdered countless people. Same with the Nestene Consciousness - but the Doctor says he has to give it a chance, and that is what she mirrors back at him in Dalek. This is usually why the pair works, because if one doesn’t have mercy on or compassion for someone the other one usually will (eg Cassandra). That’s why Ten is even willing to give Davros a chance, though it’s exacerbated by a lot of guilt around the Time War, especially when it kicked off in-part because of what he did, and failed to do, in Genesis of the Daleks.

And that is what Davros never got - that Rose had already seen the Doctor’s soul and loved him anyway; that part of their souls are the same because they helped each other grow. And it’s the same for all of the companions this era, whether it’s Jack saying he never doubted the Doctor would kill him, or Donna seeing him murder the Racnoss and still regretting not travelling with him, or Martha (somehow) forgiving the Doctor for the year that never was and for everything he burdened her with.

Because I think what Davros and the Doctor came to see as him turning people into weapons was actually just people willingly taking on the burden he carried. Again, a lot of people sort of write Tentoo and Rose off as the dalek genocide couple, but what exactly was the alternative? Let them destroy the universe? The Doctor is a coward, any day, and that makes complete sense as a reaction to already bearing two genocides on his shoulders, but it’s also that cowardice that makes other people step up and be brave, which usually means sacrificing themselves, and the Doctor carries that too. That is why Martha gets the direct parallel to the Doctor with the Osterhagen key - both are willing to burn their planets to save the rest of the universe, and Martha already spent S3 being more like the Doctor than he was because he was so broken by grief. By Season 4, the Doctor is already so self-destructive and so self-loathing that only he, the "true" Time Lord, can be the arbiter of genocides and who can’t be. Even when it comes to Martha, or to another exact replica of himself.

(Never mind that he makes essentially the same decision the Metacrisis Doctor and Martha did again in End of Time when he sends Gallifrey back into hell, but hey, he got there in the end.)

And it’s one of the reasons why the Doctor’s so reliant on the Master. I’m not sure he would have gone to get his ‘reward’ had some of that weight of destroying Gallifrey again not been shared with another Time Lord. Ten does, ultimately, put humans on a pedestal and does his best to protect them even when they are willing to share his burden (note that Tentoo destroying the Daleks means Donna doesn't have to take on any of the burdens Rose or Martha did, so she stays the least militarised companion). He simultaneously wants that other Time Lord judgement while needing humans as another perspective.

All of this to say that, I think most people understand that Ten being with someone but especially with Rose would have stopped him going Time Lord Victorious, but they don't necessarily understand why. TLV comes from his desire to save everyone, because all the loss he's seen and has caused is too much. Not only does having Rose help soothe that, but she also specifically could have helped ground the Doctor back to where he was morally in the first two series, which is quite different from where he is by S4.

(Also The Next Doctor would have been an absolutely wild story for Rose and the Doctor to have gone on next. They arrive thinking they might have a fun Christmas and then they have to confront the fact that the Battle of Canary Wharf is still following them and how when they lost each other they lost everything. And how the villain in that is defeated by the Doctor showing her herself, which is what Davros tried to do the Doctor.)

[sallysellsseashellssundays]

Absolutely insane how much emotional/physical pain Ten suffered in S3, there's everything to do with the loss of Rose which is a repeating theme throughout but also...

The Runaway Bride: Turn Left tells us he would have died at this point if not for Donna

Smith and Jones: plasmavore sucks his blood and he has to be resuscitated

The Shakespeare code: the Carrionite stops one of his hearts, luckily he has two!

Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks: the Doctor gets hurt with the lightning strike, tempts the Daleks to kill him

42: the sun possesses him, he's in such a great deal of pain he actually thinks he's going to regenerate

Human Nature/The Family of Blood: experiences great pain when using the Chameleon Arch as he changes his biology in a similar way as when he regenerates

I think it's probably the only series where he's seen to be in actual pain/hurt/very close to death for most of the episodes, I genuinely can't think of many from S1/S2 except maybe Dalek when Van Statten has captured him...it's a good thing he had Martha who was studying to be a doctor because 😲😲😲 and it's such a testament as to how affected he was by losing Rose that he really seemed to lose sense of himself, he became far more reckless to the point that Martha called him out on it in Evolution of the Daleks even though she hadn't known him for long then, and he genuinely did not seem to value his own life as much as before, he kept putting himself in incredibly dangerous situations that he wouldn't have survived had it not been for Martha and Donna