A note on Danny/Clara chemistry: Didn't they just meet? They realistically shouldn't be showing much more chemistry than "Hey, he/she looks all right..." And that's also about what I saw.
I'm confused by the Doctor's concept of "good" in this episode. Rusty recognizes that the Daleks are evil and wants to destroy them, and on this basis the Doctor calls Rusty "a good Dalek." The Doctor also recognizes that the Daleks are evil and wants to destroy them, but he questions whether he is "a good man." Why does intent to destroy the Daleks automatically make Rusty "good" without entitling the Doctor to that same label?
Because, he keeps going back to that personality critique of Davros, and even the Great Intelligence, that stopping murderous genocidal maniacs makes him the same as the genocidal maniacs. Why won't folks just let mad nutcases do their thing? They're people, too! The Doctor runs around putting the kibosh on the likes of the Daleks and then has the nerve to think he's the good guy for it? Poor, misunderstood Davros. No wonder he wants all other life destroyed.
But Rusty's genocidal aspirations are called "good" and "moral" by the Doctor. Why the double standard?
That's a false equivalence. Stopping the Daleks doesn't make that intention the same as the Dalek's intention.
The only equivalence I am drawing is between Rusty's desire to destroy the Daleks and the Doctor's identical desire. Why does it make one of them "good" and not the other?
Bad writing, they're the ones making the equivalence. I find that tack with the Doctor an annoying feature of the current era. Absolute pacifism against am enemy that has no respect for life just makes that enemy's job of killing you a lot easier. In the old series the Doctor preferred non-violent solutions, but he didn't preclude them. When he was dealing with the post war guilt before the 50th anniversary, that pacifism made some sense as a guilt reaction, but now that he knows that's not how things worked out, this new attitude seems really out of whack.
The problem is not so much the Doctor's desire to destroy the Daleks but rather the fact that he hates them. Rusty almost becomes good but then he discovers the Doctor's hatred and gets stuck on that. The Doctor believes that he's just a good Dalek, not a good man because of this. That's not a good place to be. I agree that the Doctor's doubt about himself doesn't seem to make sense from an in-universe point-of-view because he just spent 900 years defending a small town that meant nothing to him in the beginning. But then again, such feelings aren't rational. People tend to have all sorts of issues with themselves seemingly without reason. And in his long life the Doctor has done some questionable things. And he's been through a rough regeneration which may also have rattled him. He may also just be tired of the fact that saving people and planets so often means death and destruction. I think the outside motivation for giving the Doctor these doubts to tackle is that the Doctor is a rather old-fashioned hero and these days, people have a hard time believing that such heros can exist. "The Robot of Sherwood" basically spelled it out for us. I do believe that it's an intriguing perspective, one that hasn't been done before (because even guilt-ridden Ten never doubted that he was a good man). Certainly, I can relate.
I think "good Dalek" means "good at being a Dalek." It was a derisive comment, not a positive comment. When did he say that Rusy was "moral"?
That was prior to the part where Rusty wanted to kill all the Daleks. When he seemed to want to kill no one he was called moral and good.
No, it wasn't. Your memory is faulty. We need to miniaturize the Doctor and put him in you to fix it.
At that point, he was just saying that he saw a star being born and didn't want to kill. He didn't say he wanted to kill off all the Daleks until after he saw the Doctor's thoughts.
The thing is, a Dalek's nature is to kill/destroy anything that is different. For a Dalek to go against that nature, makes it very good indeed (Wether or not it wishes to destroy it's own kind)
I still think you're basing your opinions on inaccurate recollections of the episode. Their first meeting is quoted in its entirety, above. The line, "A Dalek so damaged it's turned good. Morality as malfunction," came at the start of their second meeting, before all the dialog about the star and beauty. It was based on Rusty's desire to destroy the Daleks and nothing else. There is no other way to interpret it except by misremembering the episode.
I may have been, but that last post was after you provided updated information. After the new information, I still think you're reading too much into that specific comment and confusing something sardonic for something genuine.