Should old acquaintance be forgot? Not when you’ll see them again in five minutes!
With implications of The Flux still reverberating around the still much-reduced universe of DOCTOR WHO, all eyes turned to the first episode of 2022: EVE OF THE DALEKS. Of course, the Chibinista who had been assuring anyone who would listen that this year’s festive special would somehow retrospectively redeem the lacklustre RESOLUTION and REVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS by bringing them all together in a cohesive trilogy were to be left disappointed but then dangling, abandoned plot threads are, at this point, the outgoing showrunner’s leitmotif of his grand Whovian symphony. Here, though, by a happy new year coincidence, the obdurate disregard for the narrative devastation left in his wake frees Chibnall to deliver possibly the tightest, most self-contained and satisfying episode he’s ever written. For the first time in his tenure and, arguably, since THE HUSBAND OF RIVER SONG, the festive special feels, well, special.
On New Year’s Eve, Sarah (Aisling Bea) is forced into work [S]elf Storage, the failing business she inherited while the rest of the world celebrates. Well, the rest of the world minus her and Nick (Adjani Salmon), her one and apparently only customer who always comes in on New Year’s Eve to put something into storage. Into this humdrum Hogmanay scene comes the Doctor, Yaz and Dan – and something else: the Daleks. There’s no chance for these old acquaintances to be forgot, though, because time is looping back on itself and everyone’s going to die again and again and again.
After the lavish, cinematic sprawl of THE FLUX, there’s something reassuringly traditional about EVE OF THE DALEKS: a very small cast and an economical location are quintessential elements of DOCTOR WHO and yet while it was obviously cheap to make, it never looks cheap thanks to the bravura direction of Annetta Laufer, the cinematography of Robin Whenary and a refreshingly kinetic – and surprisingly brutal – script from Chris Chibnall. While it shrugs off the events of the previous six episodes a little too easily (the ominous time-damage to the TARDIS is handwaved away by the Doctor effectively switching it off and on again) it does at least explain the Dalek’s umpteenth apparent return from extinction by noting that the Flux trap eliminated the Dalek war fleet, not the entire race itself – and boy are the Skaroan pepperpots pissed about that. The energetic and edgy tone is established right from the extended pre-titles sequence which contains not one, not two but five mercilessly abrupt exterminations.
More obviously inspired by HAPPY DEATH DAY than GROUNDHOG DAY, it’s an undeniably fun episode that makes the most of its contained setting and ticking clock premise. Once again, the regular companions are left with little to do but follow around in the Doctor’s wake but that leaves ample room for Aisling Bea’s tremendously grumpy and sardonic turn – another character to add to the long, illustrious list of one-shot characters who would have made brilliant companions and the never-seen but oft-mentioned Jeff who ends up being one of the episodes MVPs.
There’s something breathlessly exciting about a story where the Doctor is continually on the back foot – especially as the Daleks seem very aware of the fact they’ve finally got their mortal enemy firmly in their sights. The Daleks of EVE OF THE DALEKS are the kind of shoot-first-ask-questions-never Daleks we’ve often been promised throughout the series’ near-sixty-year history but rarely had delivered. They’ve even got a cool new weapons upgrade, a railgun which adds a chilling frenzy to their murderous zeal.
It’s through Bea’s engaged performance that the tentative romance between Sarah and Nick finds room to breathe and evolve through the cyclical killings (despite some of the worrying red flags that the script apparently thinks are charming quirks) and there’s a surprising level of wittiness in the dialogue and running gags that further bolsters the feeling that demob-happy Chibnall is a far better writer than Chibnall under the self-imposed obligation of reforging cannon to suit his personal plot peccadillos. Having never been comfortable incorporating Christmas into his specials, here he manages to find organic ways to weave in the seasonal iconography of New Year, right down to the fireworks at midnight. Even so, the sprightly momentum grinds to a halt two-thirds of the way through EVE OF THE DALEKS as Chibnall implements his usual Business Presentation 101 approach to exposition: “tell ‘em what you’re about to tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em what you’ve told ‘em”. It’s also unfortunate that immediately after the Doctor gives her underwhelmingly rousing speech (the kind of grandstanding moments that Tennant, Smith and Capaldi excelled at, mainly because they had more verbosely lyrical material to work with) the newly reinspired team delivers their worst, most inept run through the loop so far.
With an eye to the future of the characters and the series as a whole, having largely freed itself from the burdensome baggage of the previous twenty-eight episodes – and with only two episodes left – it feels far too late and somewhat foolish to shoehorn in a clumsy making of the implicit explicit, meaning that Yaz’s attraction to the Doctor will need to be added to the overcrowded slate of things which really need to be addressed before the impending regeneration. Yaz has long been a character who deserved better, more consistent development but this sudden lurch smacks of Chibnall trying to up the ante in preparation for a sacrifice yet to come – a sacrifice which might not have the emotional impact on the wider Thasmin-oblivious audience.
Still, EVE OF THE DALEKS is easily the best special of the 13th Doctor’s era and an exciting and fun way to kick off this pivotal year for DOCTOR WHO as a whole – and if the teaser for the spring special LEGEND OF THE SEA DEVILS is anything to go by, we’re in for quite a ride!
