Written by Chris Chibnall
Directed by Wayne Yip
Recon Dalek: "Who are you? Identify."
The Doctor: "Oh mate, I'm the Doctor. Ring any bells?"
After ten episodes of no returning monsters, it was long past time for Jodie Whittaker's Doctor to finally meet something from her past and the return of the Daleks (or just a single Dalek) was the very thing the show needed. Now if only Chris Chibnall hadn't been so grudgingly half hearted in actually promoting the return of the show's most enduring enemy.
Granted, the last time we saw a Dalek, it was Rusty in Twice Upon A Time but given that Series 11 has been clamouring for something familiar, this return felt needed even more than ever. So, was the wait actually worth it? Well, kind of. There's no doubt that this was a Dalek story but it was also a rather unusual take on one too.
The opening sequence decided to lift off Justice League by having three groups in the ninth century encounter a single Dalek, hack it to bits and then bury it in three different spots instead of just killing the thing altogether. In present day Sheffield, archaeologists Mitch (Nikesh Patel) and Lin (Charlotte Ritchie) uncovered one essential part of the Dalek and for the latter it resulted in fatal enough consequences.
Now I love a good bit of possession acting and this show can be a treat with it too, so there was something rather delightfully twisted in seeing poor Lin taken over by the Dalek and going on a one woman mission to get the remaining bits while bumping off various extras along the way and getting into a bit of a verbal spat with the Doctor before the Dalek actually managed to reassemble itself from various bits of scrap.
The design of the Dalek for this episode isn't great but it's not quite the disaster area that a previous other design was either. Saying that though, it took far too long for the Dalek to actually get it's body back (despite the great possession acting from Charlotte Ritchie's Lin) and while there was an impressive enough body count of extras, I can't help but feel this episode would've benefited from killing someone a little closer to home if we're being honest here.
For example, towards the end of the episode, the Dalek managed to take Ryan's father, Aaron (Daniel Adegboyega) captive at one point and there was a moment where I thought he was going to end up a dead man, only for the Doctor to send the Dalek into a supernova instead. Speaking of Aaron, it was inevitable that we were going to meet him and while I didn't mind some of his scenes with Ryan, I did feel a lot of them dragged out and delayed a lot of the action here.
Saying that though, the Doctor and Dalek scenes were some of the strongest moments of this episode. Jodie Whittaker has been crying out for a proper threat to challenge her and make her up her game and having a Dalek back certainly saw her rise to the occasion here. Here's hoping we'll see more of this next series with more threatening new monsters and some returning ones.
As for the rest of the episode - remember how I've said that Yasmin has felt like a spare part at times? Well, this episode didn't change that. I do like her but the show seems to struggle to do anything meaningful with her while Graham had some decent moments, surrounding Ryan and Aaron and slightly being peeved about the Doctor smashing his favourite chair. With the extended delay for Series 12, I do hope Chibnall can balance out the companions better (or change up the dynamic).
- No title sequence again this week and along with the Daleks, Wayne Yip is also a returning element to the series, having previous directed The Lie Of The Land, Empress Of Mars and two episodes of Class.
- UNIT have apparently been disbanded courtesy of Brexit, but don't worry, there's always Big Finish for now.
- There's some nice mentions of Alfred the Great and Giuseppe Piazzi in this episode.
- Even the Doctor doesn't seem to know how long a rel actually is.
- That scene with the Daniels family reacting to the wifi being cut out was one of the strangest moments in the episode. Also, poor gay security guard Richard for being taken out by Dalek Lin. The romance with Mitch and Lin felt a bit forced.
- Chronology: New Year's Day 2019 for the present day stuff, as well as 9th Century Anuta Island, Siberia and Yorkshire.
Resolution marked an improvement on the extremely disappointing finale we had last month and while we've had arguably strong Dalek stories, this is certainly one of the more engaging ones to boot. Yes, it takes a while to get going and we certainly should've seen a more significant character bite the dust but other than that, I did enjoy this New Year's special quite a bit.
Rating: 8 out of 10
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