Let’s be honest: We all peed ourselves a little bit when Doctor Who Season 7 came on air last night. We peed ourselves and then sat in our own juices for the next 59 minutes hoping to not soil ourselves again but too afraid to leave the room in search of new, clean garments. Some of us did this alone, some amongst family and friends. The very brave among total strangers and the very strange were prepared with a catheter and a bed pan. To those members belonging to that last group, I respect and fear you.
I assume that we’ve all have changed clothes and are here to discuss, “Asylum of the Daleks” the opener of Doctor Who Season 7. If you’ve not yet watched the episode, heed my warning: turn back for there be spoilers ahead! I seriously mean it. Seriously.
With a half hour before “Asylum” aired I managed to catch the last bit of the prior Christmas Special, “The Doctor, The Witch and The Wardrobe”. To which I remembered, “Oh yeah, I didn’t much care for this one.” So my brain had to do a quick connect the dots from the Christmas Special to Pond Life. During the wee seconds to “Asylums” air I got depressed because I remembered, “Oh yeah, the Ponds have been fighting and Rory walked out.” Sad face.
We open on Skaro. On Skaro? Yes, Skaro! And, yes, I am with you on scratching our heads as to why Skaro, because wasn’t that destroyed/time locked during the Last Great Time War? Timey-whimey is my guess along with the rebooting of the universe in season 5. Anyways, Skaro, were the Daleks love to build huge monuments of themselves and set about doing devious trap like things within them.
While The Doctor has been lying low, the Daleks have learned a few new tricks, one being that they can look like people now. Or they can at least make people into their puppets; provided they allow a glowing LED blue eyestalk protrude from their foreheads. Well these new Daleks have successfully ensnared The Doctors interest and subsequentially ensnared him.
Back on good old planet Earth our Amelia Pond is back at her glamorous modeling career and jokes about no longer having a husband. Queue Rory walking in with the final divorce papers and then what do you know, both are scooped out of their timelines by the Daleks-in-disguise.
Now in Braille!
Theme music! Is it required that every couple of years they change the music a bit and the title cards? The new title cards look okay if not Dalek-y, kind of liked the last seasons better. Oh well.
So, the Daleks have this planet where they send weak, damaged, scarred, and totally mental Daleks because even though they are flawed they are still beautiful because of their hatred. This also leads to a great thought as to why the Daleks have never destroyed The Doctor, it’s because they find his hatred for them and theirs for him too beautiful. Now it would seem that a starliner has somehow crashed into this planet and thus threatens to unleash these Daleks into the universe unless they can send someone down to the surface to turn off the force field so they can burn it. (Don’t ask me why they need someone to turn off a force field if the force field is keeping them in.) So who else is more qualified to go down to the surface but the thing Daleks fear the most? The Predator. And no, not the one Schwarzenegger and Glover fought, this is another of The Doctors many nicknames.
So the three, The Doctor, Amy and Rory, are sent down to the ice planet, because the Daleks recognize that the Doctor always needs companions to do things, to save the Daleks from the Daleks. Amy and The Doctor get picked up by a member of the Alaska, the starliner that crashed into the planet, only to discover two things, Rory’s not with them and the dude from the Alaska is a Dalek Puppet, oh boy!
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.