Entertainment

Matt Smith's Human Daleks Return for 'Doctor Who' Season 10

by Caitlin Busch
BBC/Radio Times

The Doctor’s new companion Bill might witness a tragic part of the Time Lord’s past. A new trailer for Doctor Who Season 10 dropped on Monday, mostly focusing on Bill’s (Pearl Mackie) wondrous journey through time and space with the Doctor and the challenges they’ll meet along the way. Peter Capaldi’s 12th Doctor promises Bill that this is what she’s been waiting for her whole life.

But a somewhat familiar foe makes an appearance in the trailer: a very human-looking Dalek.

The first episode of Doctor Who’s seventh season — “Asylum of the Daleks” — introduced Who fans to a human Dalek in the form of Clara “Oswin” Oswald (Jenna Coleman). Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor and his companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill) went up against a planet of mentally ill Daleks, all the while risking being turned into Dalek puppets themselves by a nanogene cloud. The discovery that humans could be turned into not only puppets but full-on Daleks — a la Oswin — was something wholly new and terrifying from the Doctor’s greatest nemesis. These new human-Daleks also showed up in Matt Smith’s last episode — “The Time of the Doctor” — where they possessed the body of Tasha Lem.

The new trailer zooms in on a Dalek blasting its guns only to jump to a young woman, soaking wet and intoning the Daleks’ iconic phrase “Exterminate!” as a mysterious energy fizzles across her skin.

There’s a good chance this human-looking woman has been captured by the Daleks and is being transformed into one of their puppets by having her memory wiped. Or, maybe they’re turning her into a full-blown Dalek as they did to Oswin — maybe she, like Oswin, has a quality or intelligence the Daleks want for themselves. Either way, she’s most definitely in danger.

Doctor Who Season 10 premieres April 15.

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