Dalek (Doctor Who)

Dalek, the sixth episode in the revived BBC Doctor Who series was aired on April 30, 2005. The Daleks are a race of mutants in the Doctor Who series, inspired by the events of the second world war and Nazis. The Daleks are portrayed as a race of merciless cyborg entities, travelling through the universe, demanding conformity and their idea of "perfection," by exterminating any inferior races. They were originally part of the Kaled race, but the engineer Davros mutated them, removing every emotion except hate. This is essentially what made a Dalek a Dalek. Throughout the series, the Daleks demonstrate only one emotion and are ruthless, distiguishing them from almost any other character in the universe. 

In this episode, the Doctor and his companion, Rose land in an underground bunker near Salt lake city in Utah, where they encounter a captive and injured Dalek. Taking pity on the Dalek, Rose touches it at which point the Dalek extracts her DNA and revives itself. The Dalek is unable to exterminate Rose, and even spares others. Realizing that the Human DNA it extracted gave it new emotions, it is repulsed by its own existence and self destructs.

In class we have often tried to distinguish humans from robots and cyborgs, and have questioned what it is to be human. This episode of Doctor Who deals with that question and suggests that our emotions and empathy is what makes us 'human.' The Doctor tells the Dalek that it is part human and since it was no longer 'pure,' it had to self destruct. This suggests that another thing that makes us human is our diversity, both genetically and in terms of our thoughts. The Daleks have only one goal while we have an imagination, allowing us to think more creatively. Doctor Who deals with this topic in another way with Cyber Men (human cyborgs) as well. The main distingusing characteristic in Cyber Men is the fact that they have an emotion inhibitor mechanism. They simply follow orders and similar to the Daleks are after one thing - Conformity.