It’s long been believed that if you want to get the true measure of a Doctor Who star—who, deep down, their incarnation of the Time Lord really is compared to what came before—you find it in their first encounter with a Dalek. Whether it’s in the writing or performance, the Doctor is formed in their response to the most ancient and iconic of evils the show has, no matter how many stories come before or after that fabled matchup. So it’s kind of wild then, that Ncuti Gatwa‘s first proverbial crack at the Kaled whip is going to be in an extremely limited engagement.
This week the BBC announced A Dalek Awakens, a new escape room experience for fans in the UK developed with Escape Hunt. Tasking players with boarding a ship occupied by a sole Dalek, A Dalek Awakens will see people solve puzzles together to escape the murderous wrath of the Doctor’s greatest foe without being able to rely on the Time Lord’s presence… directly at least.
Help the Doctor defeat a Dalek! Get up close and personal with the Doctor’s deadliest enemy and aid the Fifteenth Doctor in the newly regenerated escape room ‘A Dalek Awakens’ from @EscapeHuntUK 💥 pic.twitter.com/A3hScoNeVO
— Doctor Who (@bbcdoctorwho) November 19, 2024
As seen in the teaser video above, Gatwa will reprise his role as the Doctor for A Dalek Awakens, providing voice over to guide players along in their quest to escape certain doom—and of course provide context for what a Dalek is really capable of. Which means that this is, in fact, the very first time anyone will actually get to hear what the 15th Doctor is like when faced with the threat of the Daleks… rather than in the show itself.
It’s a peculiar choice, but not all that of a surprising one. Although there’s been teases and hints that a new, redesigned Dalek-kind will appear in the latest iteration of Doctor Who at some point, returning showrunner Russell T. Davies has also just as much made clear that the latest era of the show wants to keep the Daleks at plunger’s length for a little while. “I think they’ve been done a lot—people are expecting them every year now. So I think they need a good pause,” Davies told British tabloid the Mirror ahead of last year’s 60th anniversary specials. “Hopefully, there’s some enemies that will become new classics, but it’s always good to move on.”
Of course, Davies was also about to speed-run the 14th Doctor’s three-episode tenure by having David Tennant’s latest take on the Time Lord face off against an early Dalek prototype in a charity mini-episode, so that good pause wasn’t really for all that long, but still.
On the one hand, it makes sense, given that the Daleks had became a regular staple of the New Year’s specials during Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall’s era of Doctor Who just beforehand—making them an expected appearance blunts the Daleks of their special identity and relationship to the Doctor and Doctor Who at large. On the other: pretty insane that the first time some people will actually get to hear Ncuti Gatwa talk about fighting Daleks is going to be for an escape room experience!
Fingers crossed it won’t be all that long until we get something similar within the show itself—something Gatwa is just as eager to see himself. “By the time that I’m done with Doctor Who, I better have faced a Dalek. What on earth would be the point of me being Doctor Who without facing a Dalek,” the actor asked of Entertainment Weekly in a cover story ahead of the premiere of his debut season earlier this year. What would the point be, indeed.
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