Doctor Who – New Year’s Special review: A new Dalek and Ryan’s dad
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From the start, we were told that The Doctor was going to be helping Earth against one of its biggest threats ever, an ancient being who had been buried underneath for centuries. An archaeologist ended up finding the remains of one of the protectors and soon after that, we saw the escape of a Dalek in its true form — not just enclosed in one of those famous shells. This was more of a squid-like creature who attached itself to the archaeologist as it began its quest for domination. The Dalek controlled her, body and soul, and allowed her to kill and do so much more.
Or, at least that was the case for a little while. Eventually, the new host was able to fend the creature off, but not before the Dalek had an opportunity to restore itself to its traditional vessel. (Yes, we were slightly worried that there would be no classic Dalek tonight, but that changed in due time!) This Dalek, basically a high-powered scout, was ready in the closing minutes to summon its entire fleet in order to exterminate the world once and for all.
As the episode entered the home stretch, the question that we had to wonder was simply this: How do you stop a psychopathic rogue Dalek from destroying the world?
The story of Ryan and his father
We do think that there was some meaty material here as Ryan got to ask some tough questions about why his father decided to leave so many years before — and the guy was also put through his paces. Ryan didn’t respect him, and he also had to ensure Ryan calling Graham his granddad — basically, he was his family now.
With that being said, we definitely understand why this storyline was annoying to a lot of people, mostly due to the fact that there was so much action elsewhere with the Daleks. Strangely, though, the two storylines ended up intersecting in a strange way. Eventually, Ryan’s dad did make it clear that he wanted to be a better father, and he found himself on the Tardis at the perfect time. He had the perfect skill set for knowing precisely how to defeat the Dalek one way or another.
Yea, there was something really dumb about the most dangerous alien on Earth could be defeated by a glorified oven — but yet, here we are. They were able to use some of the metal parts of the oven in order to blow the Dalek casings to pieces. For a moment, it did appear as though the Dalek was dead and gone … but that was before the alien possessed Ryan’s father. The Doctor was left with a choice: Either follow the Dalek’s orders or allow something to happen to Ryan’s dad.
The closing minutes
How could The Doctor stop the Dalek from taking over, while not also taking Ryan’s dad in the process? She came up with a squid-sized space vacuum that could do the trick … only that it almost didn’t work. The guy was almost sucked off into space and he would’ve been, were it not for some quick thinking from Ryan’s dad.
CarterMatt Verdict
Were there a ton of problems with the special, including that nobody on Earth ever seems to remember what the Daleks do? Absolutely, but we were still entertained thoroughly by most of what we saw in this episode. It was a space adventure like no other with the return of an iconic villain — one that put most of the villains in season 11 to shame.
Related News – Be sure to get some more news regarding season 12 and what could be coming up next!
What did you think about the Doctor Who – New Year’s Special as a whole? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments. (Photo: BBC.)