Now I should break here to comment on the arrival of Jenna-Louise Coleman’s companion, Oswin Oswald, junior entertainer manager of the Alaska. I was shocked to see her so soon, and that her name wasn’t Clara or Carmen as some sites were claiming she would be called. She did debut to the musical accompaniment of Georges Bizet’s Carmen though so I guess that’s something. She’s playing Alaska survivor, Asylum holdout, and human hacker leading The Doctor and his companions remotely about the planet. Also, she bakes soufflés. Also, The Doctor played the triangle in the original recording of Carmen.
Who wants soufflés?
It turns out that the Asylum is protected by this nanotech iCloud that turns any matter, living or dead, into a Dalek. So if you stay on the planet too long, longer than 45 minutes plus commercials, you turn into a Dalek-puppet and serve the Dalek Empire as a defender of the Dalek planet. Pretty smart, but not good for our Doctor and Co., who seem to have lost one of their LED wrist band protectors. It was Amy. Good going Moffat, it’s always the woman who loses stuff right?
There is a great moment when, all alone, Rory bumps into a degenerated Dalek and thinks the spheres on their sides are called “eggs” and tries to help put them back before realizing, “eggs” is just the first bit of “exterminate” if you say it real slow like. Sorry bro. Also, it seems that Oswin is an Eleven/Rory shipper calling them the Chin and the Nose, so that’s a bit of brevity for the arc-ness of this story.
So Amy is slowly changing to a Dalek meat puppet and can’t remember asking The Doctor what’s going on, because the iCloud slowly eat away your memories to save for human impersonation all the while adding cold hatred to make you a better Dalek. She now sees Daleks not as Daleks, but as people, dancing in the hallways. The Doctor quickly reunites Rory with Amy, telling them to fix their marriage while he runs off to save the day.
Amy gets invited to all the crazy hallucination parties.
Now this, this is the part that I think is the best. Not for any cool effects, funny one-liners, or anything like that, but because it gives humanity to the companions. See if you agree with me. When The Doctor leaves the Pond’s he tells Rory that the Daleks are subtracting love and adding hate, so he has to keep giving Amy memories of love to stall the change. Rory decides it would be best if she wore his bracelet because he believes that throughout their time he has always loved her more than she’s loved him. That his love kept him waiting 2000 years outside the Pandorica so it should be strong enough to keep him from changing into a Dalek. Amy is floored by this and decries him explaining that at Demon’s Run she not only had a child they never got to raise or even celebrate the pregnancy of, that she was also rendered infertile. Since she could never give Rory the children he wanted to have, she gave him up so he could have a better life. She gave him up out of love.
Damn.
Ok, are Matt and I the only ones who think Oswin might not be the new companion? Like, we’re going to be meeting an ancestor of hers or something?
Also, I call foul on the Cast & Crew who thought Moffat made the Daleks scary again. I was not scared for one moment. That was disappointing.
Lastly, word is the title sequence is going to change each week now.
I hope not. I hope they explore the idea of a Dalek with a perception filter of a young Human woman.
I do agree with you on the foul. Not scary at all, more like codependent on the Doctor.
Also, I wasn’t sure, but I felt like Moffat was trying to inject social commentary on how we treat our PTSD Veterans the way the Daleks do. And with turning ourselves into machines because we’re always uploading memories onto cloud devices without saving them for ourselves.
But title sequence change for each week? *le sigh* That just seems like unnecessary work. Unless they do it like Batman: The Animated Series. Those had killer title cards.
It does seem like changing the title sequence each week is a waste of money. I’d rather they spent a little more on behind the scenes stuff, even though Confidential is gone forever.
It’d definitely be interesting to explore Oswin herself as a Dalek with a perception filter of a human, but didn’t Moffat actually say that Jenna-Louise’s character was from the present day, just like all the others? I swear I read that, though I can’t for the life of me remember where now.
Oh, I really like the idea that The Doctor doesn’t know what Oswin looks like as a human though. If they do go the ancestor route, that’d be an interesting way to play it – with us knowing, but him not.
So, I have watched it and now have a head full of wonderment and questions…? I thought the milk and eggs deal was pretty cool. As soon as he said it, I started obsessively thinking about it. As we watched, each of us started questioning why the nanocloud had not effected her and how she could be “protected.” When he came in the room, there was a gasp and I thought ‘she’s inside a Dalek!’ Yea I was wrong. And now for my speculations:
-I think the Doctor is going to go and find her and leave her to experience life as a companion without changing the specific events leading her to a full transition?
-She really is trapped in a dalek incasement?
-Moffatt just took all us companion guessers and said ‘psych!’
I think this one had a lot of potential to knock it totally out of the park but ended as a bit of a near miss, but those of us who love the doctor, we love it when its great and when its a space whale….right?
Erica….o, and new title sequence every week? like applicable to each episode maybe? weird. The theme song is usually when I run to grab a drink or visit the “facilities”
It definitely had a lot of potential that it felt like it didn’t live up to. I think it may have faltered because it was just trying to do way too much in such a short time. I love the idea that they’re trying to make them all epic and film-worthy now, but maybe it’s just not possible to do that and really make it work in a 43 minute episode. Maybe the specials are the only time that can really be accomplished. Then again, much as I loved RTD and Ten, those specials were almost all pretty terrible.