Doctor Who: Series 11, Episode 11 – “Resolution” (2019)

So, remember how I said I wanted to see classic villains at some point during Thirteen’s run?  Say no more!  The New Year’s special brings back an old baddie, albeit in a rather new way (premise spoilers.)

A pair of archaeologists uncover the body of a long-buried alien enemy, and doing so allows the creature to revive and prepare to lay waste to the Earth (as you do.)  The Doctor recognizes what the creature is through evidence long before she’s face-to-face with it:  it’s a Dalek, part of an elite subgroup that was the first to leave Skaro.  With the help of her friends, she attempts to track down the Dalek and thwart its plans.  In the middle of all this, Ryan experiences his own blast from the past – while investigating in Sheffield, the group is met by Ryan’s absentee dad who’s looking to reconnect.

I ultimately come around to what they do with the Dalek here, although I was pretty unsure at first.  Goodness knows all sorts of different bits have been added to the Dalek mythos over the decades, so the idea of a recon scout and its special abilities aren’t so strange.  Honestly, the hardest hurdle for me is the voice, and it never fully feels like a Dalek to me until we get that familiar Dalek cadence and Nicholas Briggs’s voice.  There are some things you just don’t mess with!

I find the episode on the whole to be something of a mixed bag.  There are a lot of great moments – the Doctor’s increasing frustration at dealing with a blandly-pleasant call center operator, a quiet scene between Graham and Ryan’s dad – and I like the central premise of a revived Dalek that was such an early visitor to Earth, slain in a centuries-old battle.  Not to mention, the episode offers up a fine guest star in the form of Charlotte Ritchie, lately Nurse Barbara on Call the Midwife.  But the big picture doesn’t entirely come together for me.  The stuff with Ryan and his dad feels a little tacked on, and while there have been enough references to him that we knew it was going to have to be dealt with at some point, I’m not convinced that this episode was the right time to do it.  Additionally, team TARDIS’s actual plans for taking on the Dalek are a little lackluster, and none of the companions have a huge amount to contribute to the adventure.

What I do love, though, is the Thirteenth Doctor coming face-to-face with this Dalek.  The circumstances make it a bit different – given how and when it arrived on Earth, I’m assuming this Dalek never had anything to do with the Time War – but her confrontation with it is a thing of beauty.  I love the moment when it realizes who she is, and even more, I love a mid-episode scene in which she communicates with it through technology, demonstrating her capabilities while also showing off how stone-cold serious she is about all this.  Thirteen hasn’t had as much chance to bring the gravitas as some of her predecessors, but she gets her Oncoming Storm on here, and it’s amazing.