#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.

[doctorwhocontext]

DOCTOR WHO S01E06 Dalek

[sage-nebula]

To be clear I love Tentoo and the Rose/Tentoo ending, but also it makes me laugh when Ten is like, "[Tentoo] destroyed the Daleks, he committed genocide, he's dangerous" because so did Rose as the Bad Wolf, and she knows she did it ("I took the Time Vortex and poured it into [the emperor's] head and turned him into dust") , and we all know she'd do it again too if it meant protecting those she loved, so how is leaving Tentoo with her meant to teach him this is wrong? You are grasping at straws here, my good bitch, and you know it. If Tentoo is dangerous, then so is Rose, and stranding them on Bad Wolf Bay with their baby TARDIS (which DoctorDonna tells them how to accelerate the growth of so they can use it in their human life time) isn't going to change that.

[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

[buildoblivionthenwewilltalk]

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.

[besidesitstoowarm]

"Dalek" thoughts

this episode is quintessential who. i doubt i can say anything about it that hasn't been said sooner and better, but i love the sound of my own voice even in text so,

my notes for this episode turned mostly into a list of quotes. i wish shearman had done more for the show, honestly. i have a pretty low opinion of the audio dramas in general (sorry) but he's been responsible for the most famous and best, hands down. "chimes of midnight" is iconic, just wouldn't be christmas without it

"the stuff of nightmares, reduced to an exhibit" about the cybermen. it's kind of fun to see the head of a cyberman (one of the most recognizable recurring villains of the entire show) next to the claw of a slitheen (the joke of rude). no offense to the doctor's assessment here but i think most cybermen episodes suck. "world enough and time" is the only one that's actually the stuff of nightmares

it's very telling that the doctor's terror at being trapped with a dalek turns immediately on a dime into RAGE the second he realizes it can't shoot. oh, he is angry, and he's projecting hardcore about it being a failure, worthless now that it can't kill. "the coward survived" it says. "not by choice" he says. not by choice, i think that's so telling

it's not by accident that this episode is set in america. i'm impressed at how well they predicted the rise of elon musk, van statten is exactly the type and i wish the dalek had exploded the stupid dr phil looking bitch. "why sell one cure when i can sell a thousand palliatives" kill yourself dude.

obviously there have been essays on essays written about "you would make a good dalek" so i won't go on about it too much. it still hits, but the part that i find interesting is that the episode draws this little triangle between doctor-dalek (survivors of the time war, murderers, cowards), doctor-rose ("the woman you love"), and rose-dalek (gives her dna, mutates it). we see a lot of companion-as-doctor-parallels in new who (rose in s4, doctor-donna, martha IS a doctor, amy's daughter is the doctor's wife, clara's whole thing) and so i think a natural extrapolation from this episode can be "rose would make a good dalek" like i think that could be an interesting thing to pick at. she has a really dark streak that fascinates me

got a little twinge of annoyance at the whole "you're the one pointing a gun at me" bit like i'm sorry. but it's a DALEK??? you can play that game w ANY other antagonist but i'm not going to disagree with the doctor's assessment that this thing needs to be blown to hell. i don't have an inherent problem w violence. eleven's little speech in "town called mercy" comes to mind, that's my own dark streak i guess. shoot the fucker. "oh it's changing" it is about to change into goo, when i shoot it, with my gun. bye

but i like the dalek trying to comprehend what it is now. i like that the doctor says he's sorry, bc he knows how deeply that change goes against dalek beliefs and values. it wants to feel the sun, but it's hurting. it's kind of lovecraftian but from the other side; this creature, bred selectively for violence, has had the sudden glimpse of a world with mercy, love, fear, kindness, tenderness, and it has no structural framework or capability to process what that might mean. you see this in feral animals sometimes, they snap and cringe even from gentle touch bc they do not have the part of their brain that tells them what "gentle" even is. they can't comprehend it. but the dalek can, for just a moment, and it begs to die, bc it's too much. i do feel for it here

oh also adam was here. that's all i have to say about him bye

[doctorwhocontext]

DOCTOR WHO S01E06 Dalek

[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.

[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.)