'Into the Dalek' (Story Code 8.02) by Phil Ford and Steven Moffat

“A Dalek so damaged it's turned good. Morality as malfunction. How do I resist?” – The Doctor

The Ryzak solar system, 31st Century: amidst a massive space battle between the forces of the Combined Galactic Resistance and a Dalek fleet, a badly-damaged two-man Wasp fighter hurtles past, pursued by an enemy saucer. Inside, its pilot, Lieutenant Journey Blue, desperately calls her command ship Aristotle for help in getting her mortally-injured brother Kai to safety – but then one of the Dalek ships breaks off and opens fire on the fighter, and the ship seemingly explodes! To Journey’s surprise she finds herself still very much alive, and now lying on the floor of the TARDIS, where she is greeted by the Doctor. When he explains how he materialised his ship around her vessel one second before it was destroyed, Journey is less than grateful, and angrily points her gun at her rescuer. After breaking the news that her brother is dead, the Time Lord forces Journey to calm down and then takes her to her command ship, which is hiding behind a massive rock in a nearby asteroid belt. Materialising inside the Aristotle’s hanger bay, the Doctor and his guest are met by Journey’s uncle, Colonel Morgan Blue, and a squad of armed soldiers. Although grateful for saving his niece, Blue is about to have the Time Lord executed as a security risk when he hears that he is a doctor. The Colonel immediately takes his new prisoner to a securely-guarded surgical laboratory to see his patient: a wounded, battle-damaged Dalek. To the Doctor’s horror Colonel Blue explains his mission: using the lab’s moleculon nano-scaler, the Doctor will be shrunk and sent inside the Dalek to save its life!

Earth, the present: another day at Coal Hill School for new schoolteacher Danny Pink, treating his Cadet Squad of kids like soldiers, missing the flirtatious advances of the school secretary and taking a maths class, in which he avoids an awkward question about his previous time in the army. He then gets introduced to fellow teacher Clara Oswald, but makes a hash of things when she asks him out to a staff leaving do that night. Replaying the moment in his head later, Danny thinks of all the right things to say – and is overjoyed when Clara reappears and gives him a second chance to take her out for a drink. Walking down a corridor Clara opens a stationary cupboard, but instead of pens she finds a cappuccino offered by the Doctor from the TARDIS parked inside. The Doctor needs Clara to tell him if he is a good man; given his recent regeneration, Clara isn’t sure, so the Doctor brings her with him as he returns to the Aristotle…

The Aristotle Nano-Scale Surgical Lab, the past: Colonel Morgan Blue explains to the Doctor how his forces found the Dalek floating in space, and only discovered it had a living creature inside it when they started to disassemble it. When the damaged Dalek asks for help the Doctor refuses – until it declares that all Daleks must die, and that it will destroy them…

Arriving in the Aristotle’s Nano-Scale Surgical Lab, the Doctor introduces Clara to the soldiers and then shows her the battered Dalek – a Dalek so damaged it has turned good. The Doctor realises that he has no moral choice but to help the creature after all… A short while later, the Doctor, Clara, Journey, and two heavily-equipped soldiers named Gretchen and Ross put on their nano-controller bracelets, devices that take over the molecular compression after they have been miniaturised. The nano-scaling begins, and the five adventurers and the cylindrical tank in which they stand are shrunk down to tiny size; a technician then fits the miniaturised tank to a device that he attaches to the end of the Dalek’s eye stalk. As Colonel Blue and his technicians monitor their progress on a scanner, the Doctor and his party begin their fantastic journey: passing through the eye stalk lens and into the Dalek’s visual cortex tunnel, they make their way down a corridor filled with flashing lights, visual impulses travelling towards the creature’s brain. Arriving at the cranial ledge, the travellers look down in awe at the dizzying drop into the Dalek’s casing, the walls covered in cables, circuitry and machinery, and a number of massive tentacles that belong to the actual mutant creature that lives inside. The Doctor explains that the cortex vault is a supplementary electronic brain that keeps the Dalek ‘pure’ from kindness or compassion, making it a creature of just hate and evil. Addressing the damaged Dalek as ‘Rusty’, the Doctor asks for its assistance in getting down to it so they can perform a medical examination. However, Ross cannot wait, and he fires a peg attached to a cable into the body of the creature, to enable him to abseil down its hide; his actions trigger the Dalek’s antibodies: hovering, metallic, golden eye-globes, which instantly surround the soldier. The Doctor throws Ross something from his sonic screwdriver and instructs him to swallow it; Ross complies – but is still blasted into dust one of the spheres, which then vacuums up his remains. The ever-practical Doctor tells an appalled Clara that he can now track the globe thanks to the radiation signature from the spare battery he gave the doomed Ross. As the rest of the antibodies come after them, the Doctor orders Clara, Journey and Gretchen to follow him as he tracks the trail to the organic refuse disposal where the globe dumped Ross’ remains. Explaining that it is better to go where the antibodies want them to while they are still alive, the Doctor makes everyone jump inside; they slide down a transparent tube into a sludge-filled chamber: the Dalek’s food plant, where it converts its victims into protein that it ingests via a feeding tube. Journey is furious at the Doctor’s lack of respect for the dead, but he just busies himself with removing a large bolt from the wall. Crawling through the narrow bolt-hole he has exposed, the Doctor, Clara, Journey and Gretchen emerge into a maze of giant circuit boards, the core of the Dalek. Hearing Gretchen’s Geiger counter go off the Doctor realises what is wrong with the Dalek: Rusty is suffering from a trionic radiation leak, which is poisoning the creature – and the four people now inside it. As they make their way through the maze the Doctor asks Rusty what changed its mind; the creature replies that it saw a star being born; knowing that Daleks have destroyed millions of stars, and yet more still grow, the Dalek realised that life prevails over everything and that resistance is futile. Reaching the trionic power cell, the Doctor and his party see electrical sparks and explosions venting from a crack in the side. Using his sonic screwdriver the Doctor seals the breach, and with no more radiation poisoning, the malfunction in Rusty’s brain stem is corrected; unfortunately this also means that the Dalek’s original programming is restored – turning it back into a creature of pure evil! Back in the laboratory, the Dalek breaks free and opens fire on the soldiers; as Colonel Blue gets to safety, the creature then connects itself to a communications port and contacts the Dalek fleet. The call is heard aboard the Dalek mother ship, and the Command Dalek immediately orders a boarding party to be mobilised. Aboard the Aristotle, inside the damaged Dalek, the Doctor is actually pleased that he has confirmation that all Daleks are evil after all, until Clara slaps him for losing focus. Colonel Blue contacts Journey and tells her that the Dalek has set its comrades on them and locked the soldiers out of their defence system; the colonel needs Journey to destroy the Dalek from within, whatever it takes. But Clara makes the Doctor see how they can do something better: the radiation allowed the creature to expand its consciousness and consider things beyond its natural terms of reference, so the Doctor plans to access Rusty’s memory banks, play back the recording of the birth of a star and make the Dalek good again. Outside, the Dalek command ship docks with the Aristotle, and the Dalek boarding party begins its attack on the rebel soldiers. Realising they will not reach the cortex and memory banks in time, Gretchen decides to sacrifice her life to buy the others some time, firing grapple lines into the Dalek high above her. Thanking her, the Doctor sets off to confront the Dalek mutant, leaving Clara and Journey to ascend to the memory banks as the antibodies converge and atomise Gretchen… who then awakes to find herself sitting inside a tea room. Mad Missy is here too, and as she pours them both tea she welcomes Gretchen to Heaven… Aboard the Aristotle, Colonel Blue and his soldiers are fighting a losing battle against the hordes of attacking Daleks. Meanwhile, Rusty makes its way through the ship to join its comrades in the extermination of their enemies. Inside the creature’s casing, the Doctor comes eye-to-eye with the mutant itself; high above, Clara crawls through the Dalek’s memory banks, reactivating the dark sections which she believes are the creature’s suppressed memories. As antibodies close in on Journey, Clara manages to reactivate all the memory lights – and the antibodies stop, as the Dalek’s systems reboot. In the Dalek mutant’s cradle, the Doctor watches as the images on the screen in front of Rusty change, and he urges it to remember the truth it learnt about the Daleks. Meanwhile, Colonel Blue and his surviving men barricade themselves inside the laboratory; but the Daleks begin to burn their way through the heavy door… Inside the Dalek, the Doctor grabs two cables and connects his mind with Rusty’s. Seeing the beauty the Time Lord has seen, and the hatred he has for the Daleks, Rusty changes his mind: now believing that Daleks are evil, he sets off to exterminate his own kind. Arriving outside the Surgical Lab, Rusty opens fire on the Daleks burning through the door, destroying every one of his former comrades… Later, having been restored to normal size, the Doctor and Clara watch as Journey is happily reunited with her uncle. Rusty informs the Doctor that he has transmitted a retreat signal, telling the Dalek fleet that the humans have initiated the ship's self-destruct. The Doctor is still unhappy at all the hatred Rusty saw in his own soul, but is pleased to hear how the good Dalek will re-join the fleet to continue its work. When the Doctor and Clara return to the TARDIS, Journey bids goodbye to her uncle and sets off after them; however, the Doctor refuses to take her with him, not wanting to have a soldier travelling with him. Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor takes Clara back to Coal Hill School so she can join Danny for that drink…


Peter Capaldi (The Doctor), Jenna Coleman (Clara), Zawe Ashton (Journey Blue), Michael Smiley (Colonel Morgan Blue), Samuel Anderson (Danny Pink), Laura Dos Santos (Gretchen Allison Carlysle), Ben Crompton (Ross), Bradley Ford (Fleming), Michelle Morris (School Secretary), Nigel Betts (Mr Armitage), Ellis George (Courtney Woods), Barnaby Edwards (Dalek [Rusty]), Nicholas Briggs (Voice of Battered Dalek), Michelle Gomez (Missy [The Gatekeeper of the Nethersphere])

Directed by Ben Wheatley
Produced by Nikki Wilson
Executive Producers Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin
A BBC Wales production

TX (BBC 1 & BBC 1 HD):
30th August 2014


Notes:
*Featuring the Twelfth Doctor and Clara, and introducing Danny Pink