Doctor Who – Eve of the Daleks Review

“Eve of the Daleks” is the 2022 New Year’s Day special of Doctor Who. This time The Doctor, her companions, and allies are trapped in a time loop on New Year’s Eve.

Sarah (Aisling Bea) is forced to work at a storage facility in Manchester, Nick (Adjani Salmon) is one of her clients who stores one of his items at the facility. Unfortunately, the facility is infested with Daleks and kills the pair. The Doctor and companions also arrive in the facility and The Doctor must figure out a way to escape the time loop.

I have a soft spot for time loop stories, so “Eve of the Daleks” was an episode that appealed to me. It was the Doctor Who version of Edge of Tomorrow and Source Code and considering how good those films were, Chris Chibnall used the right influences. There was an element of the American Dad episode “Yule. Tide. Repeat.” where Stan Smith was stuck in a time loop and he only had a limited number of times to try and save his family.

The big difference in “Eve of the Daleks” was all the characters were aware they were stuck in a time loop. In many other time loop stories only one character was aware they were in a time loop. The episode avoided being repetitive because of the character awareness, so they didn’t keep doing the same actions repeatedly.

Like Edge of Tomorrow, “Eve of the Daleks” was structured like a video game. The characters had to figure out how to escape the time loop. In “Eve of the Daleks” was like an old skool video game because they only had a limited number of lives, and the difficulty was getting harder with each turn.

Chris Chibnall has been criticised for making Doctor Who overly complicated and relies too much on exposition. “Eve of the Daleks” was the antithesis of the usual Chibnall style. It was a tight, simple story that was done extremely well, “Eve of the Daleks” was a tight standalone story that had to work with restrictions.

The restrictions ended up benefiting the episode. It was set mostly in one location and there were only five characters. The audience got a chance to know the new characters: Sarah was a disgruntled Irish woman and Nick a lovelorn man who fancies Sarah. The usually likeable Aisling Bea was made out to be quite unpleasant because her character was rude, aggressive, and blaming The Doctor for not finding a solution. Sarah was willing to ditch the Doctor and her companions in one of the time loops even after coming up with a plan.

“Eve of the Daleks’” simple story meant the characters didn’t have to explain much. It was easy to get invested in the action. There was a sense of urgency because of the lack of weapons and the reduced amount of time the Doctor had to work with One of the better aspects of Chibnall’s time as showrunner was making the Daleks threatening again. “Resolution” showed one Dalek being an unstoppable force and “Eve of the Daleks” had the Daleks acting as relentless killing machines.

Whilst “Eve of the Daleks” was a standalone episode, there were two bits of information that will probably play a big role in the final two Thirteenth Doctor specials. The first was the reveal that the TARDIS cause the Time Loop and by been affected by the Flux Event. The Flux could still affect the TARDIS in the future. The other bit of information involved Yaz because Dan figured out that Yaz was in love with The Doctor. Yaz tries to tell The Doctor about her feelings, but The Doctor was too busy to listen. It was a story thread that’s going to linger.

Out of all the Doctor Who New Year’s Day specials, “Eve of the Daleks” worked the best. In this special the clock was ticking down to midnight and fireworks played an important part in the episode.

“Eve of the Daleks” was a fun episode. It told a story effectively, had high stakes, and it was a good episode for general audiences to watch. It was one of the best Dalek stories in a long while.