Doctor Who, S7 Ep1 – Asylum of the Daleks

By
John McDermott
on September 2, 2012Posted in: Featured, Recaps, Reviews, Television
Offical poster for Asylum of the Daleks

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.

Pond LIfeWith 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.

Title screen for new series

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.Dalek Empire with capture TARDIS and Doctor

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!

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