Born Dalek

“Inside that shell is a creature born to hate, whose only thought is to destroy everything and everyone that isn’t a Dalek too. It won’t stop until it’s killed every human being alive.”

Doctor Who S3 E4, ‘Daleks in Manhattan’ (2007)

 

Hearty thanks to the talented KrystalFlamingo at newgrounds.com for this hilarious cutesy Dalek.

But then arguably, a Dalek never chose to be born a Dalek either.¹

It can hardly be considered the fault of your random average Dalek that its ancestors underwent genetic modification that turned them into killing machines stripped of every emotion except hatred. The blame can hardly be laid at the door of your random average Dalek for the fact that it is programmed in the very core of its essence to despise and destroy any and every life form it encounters that differs from itself. It wasn’t on the initiative of your random average Dalek that it was brought into existence as a member of the most evil species in the Whoniverse. But nevertheless, it was. And much as it can’t help being what it is, well, it can’t help being what it is, if you catch my drift: it can’t now decide not to be a creature born to hate, any more than it decided to be a creature born to hate in the first place.

A Dalek does what it does because it is what it is. It hates because it was born to hate; it isn’t capable of anything else. To destroy everything and everyone that isn’t a Dalek too is the only course of action it knows how to take, and therefore the only course of action it will ever take. It never chose to be born Dalek, but that’s frankly a million miles away from the point when it’s busy rampaging the universe causing untold death and destruction wherever it goes. It has to be stopped, or else it won’t stop until it’s killed every human being alive (and probably myriad aliens as well).

On top of that, it likes what it is and does, insofar as a Dalek is capable of liking anything. It never chose to be born a Dalek, but given that it is one, it’s committed to the Dalek goal of conquering the universe and exterminating every non-Dalek in it. It values its own Dalek-ness; we see this in ‘Evolution of the Daleks’, for example, when the rest of the Cult of Skaro exterminate their own leader because he hybridised himself with a human and started having funny ideas about Daleks maybe not being the greatest beings in existence after all; and in ‘Victory of the Daleks’, when a group of Daleks agrees to be destroyed by the New Paradigm Daleks they themselves created on the grounds that the latter have superiorly pure ‘original’ Dalek DNA.² It never chose to born a Dalek, but if you were now to ask it whether it would rather be anything else, there’s absolutely no way it would answer with anything but emphatic denial (and then exterminate you into the bargain).

A Dalek is deserving of destruction on account of its nature. You never see the Doctor stopping to make absolutely sure the particular Dalek in front of him is actually guilty of having exterminated someone before he starts concocting a plan to defeat it. It’s a Dalek; that’s enough. And yes, we do get those fun little moral questions about whether the Doctor is really any better than a Dalek if he is as intent on their destruction as they are on everyone’s except their own – he is, after all, a highly flawed character in his own right – but equally, we’re still expecting him to have either killed or banished the Daleks by the end of the episode, otherwise they’ll continue to pose a threat. A Dalek never chose to be born Dalek, but because of what it is it has to be got rid of, or there can never be peace and safety and happiness in the universe. Indeed, in the notoriously tearful Series Two finale ‘Doomsday’, when the Doctor arranged it so that the army of Daleks threatening the earth were all pulled back into the deadspace between universes, the Void – “some people call it hell” – that was a victory. “So you’re sending the Daleks … to hell? Man, I told you he was good,” enthused Mickey at the time.³ When a Dalek gets sent to a place of everlasting calamity, that’s a right and good and commendable thing.

And likewise, none of us ever chose to be born in Adam – that is, to be born in open rebellion against a holy and perfect God, to be born with sin infused into our very essence. It wasn’t on our initiative that our ancestor brought upon himself such curses as were warranted by his disobedience.⁴ And much as we can’t help being what we are, well … we can’t, any more than a Dalek can, help being what we are.

We do what we do because we are what we are:⁵

Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. – Matthew 12:33-35

 

This particular tree-grown fruit looks pretty good to me, but I suppose I’d have to eat some of it to be sure.

And on top of that, we like what we are and do:⁶

You [O mighty man] love evil more than good,

And lying more than speaking what is right.

You love all words that devour,

O deceitful tongue. – Psalm 52:3-4

And we are deserving of destruction on account of our nature:⁷

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” – Genesis 6:5-7

We didn’t choose to be born sinful any more than your random average Dalek chose to be born Dalek. And yet we deserve death on account of what we are exactly like it does. The only possibility of our avoiding that fate is if we can become something other than what we are. Think of ‘Dalek’, the episode that tells the story of the Doctor’s first encounter with his most famous enemy after he thought he had destroyed all of them at the end of the Time War. When Rose touches the Dalek, it’s able to absorb some of her special time-traveller’s DNA to regnerate itself, but it gets more than it expected into the bargain: Rose’s DNA starts turning it human. Its urge to kill all the humans it can begins to wane. It expresses desires to be free and to feel the sunlight. It seems as if there might be some chance of rehabilitation for this Dalek, but only because it has become something other than what it was. Similarly, in ‘Evolution of the Daleks’ (mentioned above), once Dalek Sec has been hybridised with the human Mr Diagoras, he starts suggesting that the new Daleks he and his subordinates are busy creating ought to have emotions other than hatred, and concerns other than establishing themselves as the supreme beings by killing everything else in existence. “Our purpose is wrong,” he says. “If we do not change now then we deserve extinction.” And the Doctor sums up: “So you want to change everything that makes a Dalek a Dalek.”⁸

But the Daleks had to stay the Daleks for the sake of the ongoing saga of the Whoniverse, of course, and so in both instances mentioned above, the new human-Dalek combinations are promptly killed: Rose’s Dalek by himself, and Dalek Sec by his subordinates, but in both cases out of a proper Dalek disgust at such an affront to proper Dalek purity.

Happily, our story has rather a different ending.⁹

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned … death reigned from Adam to Moses … but the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgement following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all me, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. – Romans 5: 12-19

We were born sinful, in Adam, doomed to death because our ancestor’s wrongdoing determined the nature of all his descendants, just as the Daleks’ ancestors did theirs. If we do not change, we deserve extinction. But in Christ we, adelphoi, are changed. We are made something other than sinful, the exact opposite, in fact: we are made righteous. And because we are not what we were, we are no longer deserving of death on account of what we are, but deserving of life, just as Jesus is deserving of life who has life in himself and has won the victory over death. If a Dalek is no longer a Dalek, but the opposite, there’s no longer any need that it be got rid of.

It’s an astonishing turnaround, and it’s brought about entirely by God’s free gift of grace. When we were sinners, we liked the sinfulness of what we were and did: if you’d asked us whether we wanted to be something other than a rebel against God, the way we desperately clung to our idols would have been enough to infer our emphatic denial. And so we sinned because it was the only course of action we knew how to take; we weren’t capable of anything else. It would have been entirely justified for God to have just destroyed us – we were, on account of our nature, deserving of it – but instead he chose to give up his beloved Son to destruction in order to bring about this seismic change in our nature, such as we could never in all eternity have brought about ourselves. Now, therefore, we have it in our nature that we are capable of doing righteous things – only to a certain extent in this life, odd, hybridic, transitional period as it is, but after our full resurrection, our nature will be changed so entirely that it’s sin we’ll no longer be capable of.

“So you want to change everything that makes a sinner a sinner,” someone could sum up. Sounds good to me. God be praised forever for by his grace achieving exactly that.

Footnotes

¹ If you’re a bit unsure on who exactly the Daleks are, here’s an exhaustive history with really thorough referencing: http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Dalek.

² There isn’t any Doctor Who on iPlayer at the moment, but you can get all the episodes mentioned in this post on Netflix if you happen to be one of the happy subscribers to that marvellous procrastination tool: https://www.netflix.com/search?q=doctor%20who&jbv=70142441&jbp=0&jbr=0.

³ Big thanks to Chrissie’s Transcripts Site for all episode transcripts plundered in this post, http://www.chakoteya.net/DoctorWho/index.html, and to NowMyWingsFit for recommending the site.

⁴ The story’s in Genesis 3, of course: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+3&version=ESVUK. I suspect the end of 1 Timothy 2 also has something to contribute as to why Paul focusses so squarely on Adam and not Eve, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+timothy+2&version=ESVUK, but I have yet to get my head round quite what’s going on there. Suggestions appreciated.

⁵ Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+12&version=ESVUK. Lots and lots in this one.

⁶ Or alternatively Psalm 2:4-5, depending on whether you count the little subtitley bit about Doeg the Edomite as part of the psalm or not. The ESV doesn’t: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalm+52&version=ESVUK.

⁷ Here you go: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=genesis+6&version=ESVUK. Of course, then God did blot out the people and animals he’d made in the Flood, but flick forward a few chapters and it becomes clear that even after that, human beings were as bad as they ever were. It was going to take something even more radical to really deal with the problem of our sinfulness…

⁸ Although all that said, it isn’t initially obvious that being more human will make the Daleks less evil, as is clear from this rather fun clip from slightly earlier on in ‘Evolution of the Daleks’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUsj3U9WtmA.

⁹ So if you only read one of these footnoted chapters today, probably best make it this one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans+5&version=ESVUK.