History Recap / DoctorWhoS34E2IntoTheDalek

* FantasticRacism: When the Doctor states there are no good Daleks, Clara calls him on this.

** Gretchen gets on the Doctor's case for making light of Ross' death, though the Doctor just takes it in stride.

* BookEnds: Clara responding twice to the Doctor's question: "I don't know." Note Rusty's opinion on the matter: The Doctor is ''not'' a good man, but rather a fellow monster [[TerrorHero who is aligned with good]].

Journey Blue's having ''quite'' the bad day -- and, yes, that ''may'' be an understatement -- her brother's dead, and her ship's fleeing through an asteroid belt with a Dalek cruiser in hot pursuit. Luckily, as her own ship explodes another instantly materalises around her -- it's the TARDIS, with the Doctor at the console! He takes her back to the ''Aristotle'', a battleship clinging to the back of an asteroid staffed by rebels against the Daleks' many regimes. They're none too impressed with the intruder, but the Doctor manages to talk himself down from being shot dead with a little help from Journey. Besides, he's a doctor, and the rebels have a patient for him...

Journey Blue's having quite the bad day -- her brother's dead, and her ship's fleeing through an asteroid belt with a Dalek cruiser in hot pursuit. Luckily, as her own ship explodes another instantly materalises around her -- it's the TARDIS, with the Doctor at the console! He takes her back to the ''Aristotle'', a battleship clinging to the back of an asteroid staffed by rebels against the Daleks' many regimes. They're none too impressed with the intruder, but the Doctor manages to talk himself down from being shot dead with a little help from Journey. Besides, he's a doctor, and the rebels have a patient for him...

--->'''Journey Blue''': "''I thought you were saving him!''"
--->'''The Doctor''': "He was dead already, I was saving ''us''!"

* CurbStompBattle: The Daleks easily blast their way through the rebel soldiers, losing only a single Dalek (on screen anyway) during the attack. When Rusty enters the fray, set against his fellow Daleks, they get to be on the receiving end as he single-handedly wipes them out.

* JerkassHasAPoint: The Doctor's reasoning throughout the episode that a good Dalek cannot exist under normal circumstances. Rusty is initially seemingly good due to the casing malfunctioning and the resulting radiation sickness, and the Doctor's attempts to make Rusty good again result in a Dalek that merely targets other Daleks and not humans.

* IdiotBall: The Doctor insists after Rusty is "Fixed" that there are no good Daleks despite having seen two of them himself, [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E5EvolutionOfTheDaleks Dalek Sec]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd Dalek Caan]]. Possibly justified by lingering post-regeneration memory lapses.

* {{Adorkable}}: Danny Pink is really awkward when it comes to interacting with his fellow teachers, especially when it comes to romantic interactions with said teachers, such as Clara. Fortunately, she finds it endearing.

* {{Adorkable}}: Danny Pink; fortunately Clara finds it ActuallyPrettyFunny.

* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The episode revolves around averting this trope about the Daleks. It is possible for one of them to turn good without caveats like [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek "ingesting human DNA"]] or [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd "going crazy due to breaking a time lock"]].

* AsteroidThicket: The ''Aristotle'' is hiding in one.

** In another homage to the Third Doctor era, the Doctor and his companion are shrunk down into an alien machine with hostile things waiting inside. Think "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E2CarnivalOfMonsters Carnival of Monsters]]", but with a Dalek instead of a miniscope. Also "[[DoctorWhoS15E2TheInvisibleEnemy The Invisible Enemy]]", when the Doctor and his companion were cloned and shrunken to enter his own body.

->''"A Dalek so damaged, it's turned good. Its morality's malfunctioned. How can I resist?"''

* BittersweetEnding: The Dalek fleet is stopped and the possiblity that they could all HeelFaceTurn is confirmed, but at the cost of many lives on the ''Aristotle''.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Twelve's GoodIsNotNice personality is established, when he purposefully gets someone killed in order to evade capture by Dalek antibodies.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: Twelve's GoodIsNotNice personality is established, when he [[spoiler: purposefully gets someone killed in order to evade capture by Dalek antibodies.]]

** Also for "Dark Water". [[spoiler:An ActionGirl abruptly finding herself rescued by a Time Lord foreshadows TheReveal on Missy's identity, when she does the same stunt with Gretchen.]]

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/into_the_dalek_capaldi_5752.jpg]]

* DarkAndTroubledPast: One of Danny's students decides to be a an ass and ask if he killed anyone as a soldier. When he asks Danny if he killed anyone who ''wasn't'' a soldier... Cue SingleTear. The student promptly puts a cork in it, [[DudeNotFunny knowing he went too far]].

Journey Blue's having quite the bad day -- her brother's dead, and her ship's fleeing through an asteroid belt with a Dalek cruiser in hot pursuit. Luckily, as her own ship explodes another instantly materalises around her -- it's the TARDIS, with the Doctor at the console! He takes her back to the ''Aristotle'', a battleship clinging to the back of an asteroid staffed by rebels against the Daleks' many regimes. They're none too impressed with the intruder, but the Doctor manages to talk himself down from being shot dead with a little help from Journey. Besides, he's a doctor, and the rebels have a patient for him . . .

The Doctor, Clara, Journey and a small platoon of soldiers are shrunk down to minuscule size, and carefully placed inside the belly of the beast. The Doctor'll have to face dangerous machinery, killer antibodies and his own increasingly-murky morality, but if he gets it right, he could change the Daleks forever . . .

* AscendedMeme: The Doctor refers to the broken Dalek as "Rusty", which was the FanNickname for the Last Dalek in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek "Dalek"]].

* CallBack: The Doctor says he wasn't really the Doctor [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E2TheDaleks until he went to Skaro]], lampshading his CharacterizationMarchesOn in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild "An Unearthly Child"]] before his character became established as a fighter against evil.

** Several nods to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks "Genesis of the Daleks"]]. Possibly most noticeable is the recreation of the iconic image of the Doctor holding the two wires in front of him questioning the morality of touching those two wires together.
** There are also a few from [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek "Dalek"]], such as Rusty's parting quote, but the context is quite different. Where the Dalek in "Dalek" was referring to the fact that Nine's rage and wish to destroy it made them NotSoDifferent, Rusty sees Twelve as a Dalek that happens to be "good".

** The Doctor's attempt to reprogram "Rusty" into being benign is reminiscent of [[{{Recap/DoctorWhoS4E9TheEvilOfTheDaleks}} "The Evil of the Daleks"]].
** Rusty screams [[Recap/DoctorWhoS11E3DeathToTheDaleks "DEATH TO THE DALEKS"]] at one point.
** There are visual references to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS21E4ResurrectionOfTheDaleks "Resurrection of the Daleks"]] during the mass Dalek attack on the ''Aristotle'', especially in the scene where they blast in through the airlock.

** Clara climbs up through a shaft and the Doctor, beneath her, makes a comment about her body, just like Toby did with Rose in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E9TheSatanPit "The Satan Pit"]]. Toby's comment to Rose was flattering in a naughty way, however, compared to the Doctor's unflattering one in response to Clara's own anticipation of a good look of her [[ShesGotLegs hips]]. Go further back, and it reflects an exchange between the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E2TheArkInSpace "The Ark in Space"]], also the second full episode with a newly introduced Doctor.
** In another homage to the Third Doctor era, the Doctor and his companion are shrunk down into an alien machine with hostile things waiting inside. Think [[Recap/DoctorWhoS10E2CarnivalOfMonsters "Carnival of Monsters"]], but with a Dalek instead of a miniscope. Also [[DoctorWhoS15E2TheInvisibleEnemy "The Invisible Enemy"]], when the Doctor and his companion were cloned and shrunken to enter his own body.

** [[Recap/DoctorWhoS34E1DeepBreath "Deep Breath"]] ended with the Doctor being told to fetch some coffee. He finally gets the job done (albeit after having left Clara behind in Glasgow and disappearing for three weeks).
** The Doctor accidentally left a companion behind in Scotland once before, as revealed in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E3SchoolReunion "School Reunion"]].
** Rusty being turned against the Daleks works similar to Dalek Caan's HeelFaceTurn in [[Recap/DoctorWhoS30E13JourneysEnd "Journey's End"]]. Caan turned against his fellow Daleks because he he saw through all time and space, witnessing the true horror of his actions. Rusty is turned against the Daleks through a combination of their atrocities and the Doctor's hatred of them as expressed through his memories.

* DarkAndTroubledPast: One of Danny's students decides to be a an ass and ask if he killed anyone as a soldier. When he asks Danny if he killed anyone who ''wasn't'' a soldier . . . Cue SingleTear. The student promptly puts a cork in it, [[DudeNotFunny knowing he went too far]].

* LiteralMetaphor: When Clara asks what to do with a moral Dalek, the Doctor says he needs to "get into its head." Cue the FantasticVoyagePlot . . .

-->'''Clara:''' How do I look?
-->'''The Doctor:''' Sort of short and round-ish, but with a good personality, which is the main thing.

* OhCrap: When the Doctor is coaxing Rusty to be good again, and the Dalek is beholding the universe the way the Doctor sees it . . . until Rusty sees the Doctor's ''hatred'' for the Daleks.

* RevealShot: After TheTeaser where the Doctor is captured by soldiers, we return to one of them chewing out his squad . . . only it turns out to be Mr. Pink and the Coal Hill School cadet squad.

* SpiritualSequel: The structure of this story follows a similar one to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS12E4GenesisOfTheDaleks "Genesis of the Daleks"]] and [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E6Dalek "Dalek"]]: The Doctor is prodded into action by an organisation which seeks to pacify the Daleks, and, in the process, he confronts his prejudices over whether Daleks can be redeemed. Meanwhile, a lone Dalek survivor is recovered by humans who are experimenting on it for their own purposes. Upon being "fixed", the Dalek goes on a rampage through the facility until an encounter with the Doctor's companion triggers an epiphany. The episode also has much in common with the Second Doctor serial [[Recap/DoctorWhoS4E9TheEvilOfTheDaleks "The Evil of the Daleks"]], wherein the Doctor succeeded in pacifying three Daleks (and more later) by reprogramming them, similarly to what he attempts here.

* TrailersAlwaysLie: The "[[AC:Exterminate . . . Doctor!]]" line of the teasers is never heard in the episode.

** "[[AC:I see into your soul, Doctor. I see beauty, I see divinity, I see . . . ''hatred''.]]"
** "Am I a good man?" "I . . . don't know."

* TookALevelInBadass:
** The Daleks are even more dangerous than usual in this episode. They emerge as a very organized killing force in the cover of darkness, menacingly inching forward and easily mowing down both soldiers and even ''themselves'' with terrifying ease.
** The Doctor starts a RunningGag of insulting Clara's appearance, deliberately or otherwise. More importantly, he shows an overt dislike of soldiers, whereas before (especially during the UNIT years) he'd been entirely willing to work with them, merely snarking at their authoritarian nature and [[WeComeInPeaceShootToKill shoot-first-ask-questions-later]] approach.

** The Doctor starts a RunningGag of insulting Clara's appearance, deliberately or otherwise. More importantly, he shows an overt dislike of soldiers, whereas before (especially during the UNIT years) he's been entirely willing to work with them, merely snarking at their authoritarian nature and [[WeComeInPeaceShootToKill shoot-first-ask-questions-later]] approach.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: The Doctor refuses to take Journey Blue as a companion because she's a soldier.