Run Away!…Not From the Insane Daleks, From Divorced Amy Pond - Asylum of the Daleks Review

[u/ZeroCentsMade]

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here)). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 7, Episode 1
• Airdate: 1st September 2012
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Character: Oswin Oswald (Jenna Coleman)*
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Nick Hurran
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

* Credited as Jenna-Louise Coleman

Review

Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet! – The Doctor

Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do with this one?

Series 7 is kind of an odd beast to begin with. What with Showrunner Steven Moffat's attention divided between Doctor Who and his other big popular project at the time, Sherlock, Series 7 was split into two parts. Since each part had different opening title sequences, companions, and airing in different years, there's a definite case that these are, in fact, two different series but officially it's all the same series. The driving creative concept behind the first part was that each episode would have the feel of a short Hollywood blockbuster – "Asylum of the Daleks", for instance, was partially inspired by Die Hard. And that's all well and good. There are critiques to be made of "Asylum of the Daleks'" main plot but it's also in many ways Steven Moffat leaning in to his strengths as a writer. This one has a twist ending that genuinely works so well. And that's all well and good but…

The temptation with "Asylum" is to try to ignore the stuff going on with Amy and Rory. Just leave it over to one side and focus on the plot. But it's just too tied in. Amy and Rory's arc in this episode is integrated into every scene featuring one or the other of them, which is to say, all but a tiny number of scenes. There's even some thematic resonance. What I'm getting at is that Amy and Rory's near-divorce is at the center of "Asylum of the Daleks", as much as the Daleks or the mysterious Oswin Oswald.

So how did we get here? How did we reach the point where a relationship that this show has spent so much time and energy convincing its audience is this grand epic love is on the verge of falling apart? Well, trite as it may sound to say, I kind of feel like the original answer here was, "because we can". To be more specific, from the moment that Amy and Rory got married, Steven Moffat was trying to find ways to tell stories that were unique to having a married couple as companions. And a near-divorce certainly fits that idea.

But, to be fair, I do think there's a valid angle here. Amy and Rory lost a child. Sure, technically, they know what happened to Melody, she became River. But in a practical sense, they lost the chance to become parents to their child. That's something that puts a lot of strain on a relationship. In the real world, that's the sort of thing that often does lead to divorce. We'll get into the specifics of how this is handled in "Asylum" but the point is, there is something about this event that could, theoretically, be used to push this couple apart. And even beyond that, we've never really seen what this couple are when they're not having adventures. The idea that things might be harder for them to navigate under those conditions doesn't feel all that unrealistic to me.

There's a lot of reasons why this doesn't work in practice. I'll start with the most basic. It's something that it feels like the episode itself recognizes. There's a moment where the Doctor asks Amy what happened, and, after a bit of waffling, she responds with "It's life. Just life: that thing that goes on when you're not there." Again, there's something to this idea…but at the same time we don't get to see that part of life that happens when the Doctor's not there either. It's not the last time I'll be making a point like this either by the way. Simply put, a divorce storyline for characters we've gotten to know as well as Amy and Rory requires that we get details on how things fell apart. And Doctor Who, the adventure show, doesn't actually give us enough time away from the adventures to really do that.

This also doesn't work because the actual explanation we do finally get is…bad. And reflects poorly on this marriage that this show desperately wants us to be invested in. Amy chose to leave Rory because she couldn't have kids. And Rory wants kids. And apparently they never talked about this since when Amy explains this to Rory it sure seems like she's conveying new information to him. On some level, this actually does track. There's a running pattern under a lot of episodes that give Amy more focus as a character suggesting that she finds it easier to make a grand gesture of love than to actually deal with the day to day of a real relationship. And what is giving up your relationship with a partner you love because you think it will be best for him if not the epitome of that?

The problem is that the way this is actually framed suggests that Amy is incapable of the most basic of communication. And again, if we'd maybe seen the moment that Amy and Rory discovered that Amy couldn't have kids, seen how the possibility of fatherhood being lost affected Rory, maybe had some explanation why he or Amy didn't want to adopt (at least in that moment) maybe this could have worked. But we don't get any of that, and so it feels oddly abrupt and ends up undermining the idea of this relationship.

Oh and there's other problems that this creates. The other side of this is that it centers Amy's feelings about Rory's feelings about something that happened to Amy. Not only is that convoluted, but it distracts from the fact Amy no longer being able to have children is something that was done to her. A story about how a woman might feel like an inadequate wife if she can no longer have kids is a big complicated thing that needs a lot of very careful storytelling that "Asylum" does not have the time for. It's a framing that is plausible, but a story has to reject, to avoid reducing a woman down to a womb. And now there's that layer of abstraction. It's not that Rory thinks less of Amy, it's that Amy thinks Rory thinks less of her. She has to be thinking less of herself as well in all of this, that she's somehow no longer "worthy" of Rory to give him up because otherwise this doesn't really make sense. But there's no time given to that, and so no time can be given to rejecting that framing. It's just kind of there left implied by Amy's confession. Again, this is an idea that requires time and effort and thoughtfulness, and "Asylum" gives us none of these.

Oh and we shouldn't ignore the actual conversation that happens, because that's bad. It starts with Rory saying "basic fact of our relationship is that I love you [Amy] more than you love me". Now, I don't actually think that's in reality true, or at least not in any appreciable way (Amy's made like seven or eight grand gestures of love by this point), but it sure can feel like it sometimes. There is an imbalance in this relationship that could be addressed here. But it's not really. Instead we get a comparison between Rory's near-2000 year stay outside a box with Amy "giving you [Rory] up". Amy might insist that the latter is the greater sacrifice…but that's just not credible. Some of this is the problems that the sheer length of time that Rory spent outside the Pandorica has been inevitably glossed over ever since, and even in, "The Big Bang". Really, the problem here is twofold. The first is trying to compare grand gestures rather than letting them exist as proofs of genuine, deep love in isolation. The second is that a grand gesture of love that involves making this kind of decision without actual communication is…not great anyway, so the comparison falls apart regardless.

It's not that there's no good moments associated with the divorce. Amy and Rory's first appearance has Rory stop by the studio where Amy is doing her modeling work to drop off divorce papers. Things are obviously rather testy between them, but it's actually Amy has a moment of softness, indicating that things may not be how they seem. I did like how Rory being separated from his wife allowed him to be a bit flirty with Oswin this episode, just because it allowed us to see a side of him we normally don't. There's a fun little moment where he seems to consider whether he wants to let Oswin keep flirting with him and then seems to think, "oh right, I'm more or less single now" which was surprisingly endearing. And speaking of endearing Amy walking back into their house and Rory celebrating with a full double fist pump was undeniably charming. Oh and of course Karen Gillan and Arthur Davill play their material quite well, no matter how bad it was. So yes, good moments, but a bad idea for a subplot badly done.

Okay so that was awful and everything but…wasn't this episode about Daleks?

The episode gets started with the Daleks stunning and capturing our heroes. Probably a bit too easily if we're being honest. The Doctor gets baited into a trap but it just feels like the sort of thing the Daleks would have done, and more lethally, if they could. The episode does offer an explanation for this mind. The Daleks find hatred beautiful, and as such they could never bring themselves to kill the Doctor. But that doesn't really make sense.

Still what follows is one of the most interesting set ups for a Dalek episode in a long time. I feel like past Dalek stories of the Revival – and even arguably going back to the JNT-era Dalek stories in some cases - all seemed to feel a need to be a Big Deal. "Asylum of the Daleks" is the first Dalek story in a long time that doesn't in some way alter the status quo for the Daleks – okay technically the ending does, but the Daleks themselves are unchanged, it's just their relationship to the Doctor that changes. Instead we're presented a new detail to do with the Daleks. It would seem that sometimes Daleks go wrong and fall out of the control of the Dalek hierarchy. In this case, the Daleks send them to an asylum planet (there's your title). The planet is kept shielded and the asylum runs itself. There's no getting in or out. Except it would seem that around a year ago a spaceship crashed on the asylum planet. If someone could get in, it's feasible an insane Dalek could get out. Nobody wants that, including the Daleks. The Daleks would like to just blow up the planet, but the shield controls are on the planet. So instead they're going to shoot the Doctor and two of his friends at the gap in the shields and get him to fix things for him.

And there's yet one more concept that gets thrown at us. There's a nano-cloud on the Asylum planet that converts any organic material "living or dead" into Dalek puppets. The episode actually opens with one of those puppets, the trap that was set for the Doctor (and later Amy and Rory) used one of the Dalek puppets for that purpose. So the instinct here is to say that this feels more like a Cyberman plot than a Dalek plot. That was my first reaction to this episode when I first watched it. But with some thought given – and even taking account the reveal of a human fully converted into a Dalek at the end – this is absolutely a Dalek plot through and through.

So if we imagine a version of this episode that involves the Cybermen, things get weird. The Cybermen wouldn't keep "insane" Cybermen alive in any capacity because that would be a waste of resources. The Daleks though, they absolutely would because an insane Dalek is still a Dalek still, in their minds, an example of the highest order of life. And as for the conversion aspect, again, the way it works in practice feels more Dalek than Cybermen. Aside from the single example of total conversion from the end of the episode, the other "converted" humans (and skeletons) are consistently described as "puppets". This feels very analogous to the Robomen that the Daleks used back in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

And even the full conversion has precedents – most obviously Revelation of the Daleks and "The Parting of the Ways". Daleks being a little hypocritical about their claims of absolute superiority isn't new…it's arguably even sort of the point. The point is, everything about the asylum planet is so quintessentially Dalek the only thing that surprises me is that they don't have these same conversion systems set up on Skaro. It also does allow for the big link between the near-divorce plot and the main plot. The Dalek conversion is primarily an emotional one, they "subtract love, add anger" to quote Oswin. Love being the thing whose elimination signals a transformation into a Dalek is an ideal that actually really appeals to me.

So yes, I actually really like this set up. Even the "parliament of the Daleks" (featuring every Dalek design in Doctor Who history…because why not I guess), while it represents something like the hundredth different governmental system the Daleks operate under, kind of works for me. And it's undeniably an impressive visual, even if it doesn't really figure into the meat of the episode. I do have to roll my eyes a bit at the Daleks giving the Doctor another nickname – he's the "predator of the Daleks" apparently. Still, after the Doctor makes contact with one of the survivors of the crash, a Junior Entertainment Manager called Oswin Oswald, the Daleks fire the Doctor at a planet and the plot gets started in earnest.

Well, okay most of what happens is a lot of running around the planet trying to figure things out while Oswin guides our heroes from what seems like a bunker. But there is a consistent sense of progression throughout. The idea of the Dalek puppets is nicely integrated early when another survivor turns out to be a dead man walking…and several skeletons also grow eyestalks out of their heads. And then it's really kicked into overdrive when Amy loses the gadget that was preventing her from being turned into one of the puppets. Amy's slow conversion is quite well conveyed as well, particularly a scene where it looks like she's found a room full of people, including a young girl who seems to be a dancer repeatedly practicing the same jump and spin…only for it to be revealed they're all Daleks, the "dancer" being a Dalek who is just spinning around. Rory is initially split off from the other two, setting up a surprisingly important pun involving eggs when he thinks a Dalek is saying "eggs". It's just stuck on the first syllable of "Exterminate" naturally.

And through all of this we get Oswin. A genius, apparently, despite her relatively low position on the starship Alaska crew. She's survived, if barely, in her little bunker, holding the Daleks out and hacking their technology. Oh and making soufflés. The Doctor is naturally very impressed, though seems oddly preoccupied with where she's sourcing the milk for her soufflés. The thing that makes Oswin work throughout this episode is that she's just immediately very likable. In retrospect if feels pretty obvious that she's meant to be someone very important, although when I first watched this episode, I actually didn't know that Jenna Coleman was already set to become the Doctor's next companion.

For one thing, Coleman delivers a performance that really stands out from the beginning. She's probably one of the most charismatic people to play a companion on Doctor Who, and as Oswin that really does stand out. For another thing she's got the Steven Moffat Witty Banter™ thing going at 200%. Whether or not that's a good thing at this point when nearly every Moffat character and especially every Moffat-written woman has this going in overdrive already I'll leave as an exercise for a reader. I like it, because it matches up nicely with my own sense of humor. The point is, it feels like Moffat was taking extra care to make sure we liked this character, and the way he does that is to make the character in question snarky as all get out. And through all of that, Oswin does constantly feel believable in her position. There's moments where her fear breaks through her confident façade, and you can believe that this is someone who's been terrorized by the Daleks for some time now.

And then there's that twist. Because Oswin hasn't been surviving against the Daleks. She's the full Dalek-converted human I mentioned earlier, because apparently the Daleks "need genius". Now I do have to wonder who or what made that decision, given that the Asylum runs itself according to the Daleks, but it still makes for one hell of a reveal. Oh, and yeah this is why the "eggs" pun was actually important. Because aside from milk, another things you need for a soufflé is…eggs. And so like the Dalek that Rory ran into before her, Oswin, her world literally shrinking around her, starts saying "eggs…eggs…ex…term…in…ate". Clever. But more than being clever, Jenna Coleman's line read of "Exterminate", probably the single most repeated word in the entirety of Doctor Who, is actually really good. It's probably the most I have ever believed that that line is said out of genuine hatred.

Of course then things turn around, and the Dalek that was Oswin decides to help the Doctor after all. The sound of a Dalek sobbing over the hatred that has been genetically ingrained into the Daleks is one of the most oddly moving things in Doctor Who history. And, tying things back a bit to some of the themes of Series 6, Oswin declared that "we [the Daleks] have grown stronger in fear of you". Like was often done in Series 6, "Asylum" is asking the question of whether the Doctor's notoriety is a good or bad thing. But weirdly enough, Oswin also did something to help with this. She erased information about the Doctor from the "path web" a shared pool of data that all the Daleks have telepathic access to. And initially it seemed like she'd done it just to some of the Daleks in the asylum to fix an immediate issue. But as it turns out she did it to them all. When the Doctor teleports himself and his friends to the TARDIS, right as the Daleks blow up the Asylum, it transpires that they know nothing of him. It is quite something hearing a whole spaceship of Daleks chanting the name of the show and unlike in the ending of "The Wedding of River Song" this one felt a bit more earned, if still awfully self-indulgent.

Beyond his genuine joy at the Daleks having forgotten him, this is really an archetypal episode for the 11th Doctor. He gets to be a little goofy at times, a bit of awkward flirting with Oswin because of course, and underneath it all, he makes some impressive deductions, and of course, the manipulative side comes out. The deduction is narrated by Amy, as he quickly realizes that something is wrong with Amy and Rory. It's nice to see that Amy can actually deduce the Doctor's thought process, feels appropriate for their relationship. And then he manipulates Amy and Rory into having the conversation they should have had some time ago. And sure you can complain about the fact that Amy and Rory should have had this conversation previously, but as a character note for the Doctor this is excellent. The 11th Doctor being so manipulative towards his friends is in character, and simultaneously he's always been very invested in Amy and Rory's relationship. Arguably he has even more reason to be so now that he knows they are his in-laws. On top of everything else, it's such a simple thing, as he puts his nano-cloud stopping device on Amy since, as a Time Lord, he doesn't actually need it. Simple, but it works so well.

Before I wrap up I, sadly, have some miscellaneous complaints to give out. I sort of touched on it earlier but Oswin's more flirty persona did bug me a little. Mostly because of Moffat's tendency to write every woman like this and, especially in an episode that has some questionable writing around women's bodies with regard to Amy, it does feel a little off. To that point, jokes about Amy being violent – especially towards Rory – are really starting to grate around this time. Fortunately they do peter out somewhat after this episode, but it still is a troubling pattern. Oh and we should probably mention a reference to Oswin previously being attracted to another woman as a "phase", though she seems to have been joking to flirt with Rory. I don't have much to add to that, except that unfortunately vague notions of bisexuality mainly being used as a form of titillation will sadly be a recurring thing throughout Jenna Coleman's time on Doctor Who.

But I do think there's more good than bad here. The bad is pretty obvious: it's Amy and Rory's near divorce. Even giving it the best possible read it just doesn't work, and feels somewhat at odds with the versions of these characters presented both before and after this point. Still the actual plot of the episode is quite good, and does mostly make up for that. I've come fully around on the Dalek conversion side of things, and I actually think this episode works really well for the Daleks. And Oswin makes for a really good side character, slight misgivings aside. The twist at the end is a reminder that Steven Moffat's biggest skill as a writer is in building these twist endings that feel like they make perfect sense, at least in the confines of a single episode (or two-parter). "Asylum of the Daleks" is messy, but ultimately a good episode.

Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• Moffat considered writing his first Dalek story for Amy and Rory's departure, but ultimately decided that would be a Weeping Angel story instead.
• Moffat wanted to make the Daleks scarier, by focusing back on their menace and introducing Daleks who were even more insane than the originals. Karen Gillan apparently found the Daleks scary while working on this episode, in a way she hadn't previously.
• Despite the intention of making the Daleks scarier, this is the first Dalek story where the Daleks don't kill anyone – unless of course you count the "converted" humans.
• Of course this episode also features every past Dalek design. There was some intentionality to this. With the New Paradigm Dalek designs having been poorly received in "Victory of the Daleks", Steven Moffat decided to rethink their place in the Dalek Empire, imagining them now as a sort of upper echelon in the hierarchy, also deemphasizing them.
• An early idea for Oswin would have had her be a mad Dalek who had convinced itself (herself?) that it was human. Then Moffat realized that the Doctor would never actually see Oswin as a human.
• One idea the signal the divorce was to have Rory grow out a beard, as Amy had previously indicated she didn't like facial hair. Rory would have shaven off the beard at the end of the episode. However it was decided that the episode would be filmed alongside "The Angels take Manhattan" and so the idea was abandoned. Interestingly he does seem to have some stubble in this episode
• Jenna Coleman was at the time working under the name Jenna-Louise Coleman, and would be for all but one of her appearances in the 11th Doctor era
• Because she'd already been announced as the next companion, Coleman's involvement in this episode was kept a secret.
• Thirteen new Daleks were constructed for this episode. This included five new iterations of the "New Paradigm" Daleks, which took into account complaints from the Dalek operators about the difficult of piloting the original New Paradigm designs.
• Of course several Daleks were also pulled out of storage. This included several bronze Daleks from the RTD era of course, but also several Daleks from the Classic Series. This included a casing from the original Daleks serial, which was sourced from fans.
• Former showrunner Russel T Davies also had his own Dalek prop, which resembled the Daleks used for Genesis of the Daleks. He offered the use of it for this episode and was apparently thrilled that his Dalek prop was "canonised".
• Moffat was pleased with the visual of all the different Dalek designs together, feeling it made them feel more like an actual species, rather than mass-produced robots.
• The location for the outdoor shots used for the Asylum planet was discovered by accident. While filming "A Town Called Mercy", which was filmed in Almeria, Spain, Producer Marcus Wilson realized that the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountain range was ideal for that location. Director Nick Hurran quickly put together the plans to film the footage with a minimal crew.
• The title sequence has been…updated. Actually each episode in the first part of Series 7 has a slightly different title sequence. Dealing with the overall changes first, the time vortex has been recolored for each episode, once for the "default" vortex and a second time for the "fiery" version. Instead of the 3D names in the same font as the logo, we now have 2D names that, rather than swooping past the camera, simply appear before fading into each other with the lightning strikes. Rather than the DW TARDIS being integrated with the logo, the logo first appears, then is replaced by the DW TARDIS which then transforms into the original TARDIS as before. Oh and speaking of the logo, each episode gives it an individual texture.
• These changes are…not great. The textured versions of the logo are the best part, each actually does fit the idea of giving each episode something distinctive. Everything else though feels very artificial. The new colors feel more like the image has been tinted than anything. And, cheesy as it may have been, I definitely preferred the 3D names.
• As for this episode specifically, the first part of the time vortex now appears bluish green, then second part is a more orangish shade of red, and the logo now looks like it's made out of the casing of one of the bronze Daleks. The color choices are alright but it's hard to draw any particular conclusions from them, they don't really feel like they relate to anything. I do like the Dalekified logo.
• As Amy is being converted into a Dalek she starts seeing Daleks as people. A lot of the people were played by Dalek operators.
• Oswin mentions the names of various "wars" that the Daleks in Intensive Care are survivors of, which turn out to mean they're all Daleks that faced the Doctor. She references Spirodon (Planet of the Daleks), Kembel (The Daleks' Master Plan), Aridius (The Chase), Vulcan (The Power of the Daleks), and Exxilon (Death to the Daleks).

Next Time: "The title says it all" has never felt more appropriate

[u/Ribos1]

But with some thought given – and even taking account the reveal of a human fully converted into a Dalek at the end – this is absolutely a Dalek plot through and through.

So if we imagine a version of this episode that involves the Cybermen, things get weird. The Cybermen wouldn't keep "insane" Cybermen alive in any capacity because that would be a waste of resources. The Daleks though, they absolutely would because an insane Dalek is still a Dalek still, in their minds, an example of the highest order of life. And as for the conversion aspect, again, the way it works in practice feels more Dalek than Cybermen. Aside from the single example of total conversion from the end of the episode, the other "converted" humans (and skeletons) are consistently described as "puppets". This feels very analogous to the Robomen that the Daleks used back in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

And even the full conversion has precedents – most obviously Revelation of the Daleks and "The Parting of the Ways". Daleks being a little hypocritical about their claims of absolute superiority isn't new…it's arguably even sort of the point.

Yes, 100%! I've always been slightly baffled by people insisting that this would suit the Cybermen better, but I've never been able to articulate why.

I agree with you on most of your points. It's a good story on balance, with the divorce subplot being the big, obvious flaw the episode has to awkwardly navigate around. To me, it feels like it's trying to repeat the same trick The Girl Who Waited pulled: adding a new trauma to explore Amy and Rory's characters but in such a way it indirectly addresses their existing traumas. Asylum of the Daleks is trying to address what happened to Amy and Rory during the Series 6 arc (as that series didn't give them much space to do so) in the same way The Girl Who Waited addressed Amy's abandonment issues and relationship with the Doctor, by introducing an episodic trauma that acts as a metaphor for the larger one. The issue is, it's easier for The Girl Who Waited to get away with it due to the inherently abstract mechanics of the sci-fi plot as an excuse to mess around with the characters. In contrast, divorce is a real thing, and it's a much harder sell for the audience to accept this without scrutiny. One is easier to pull off in a sci-fi adventure series which will always be limited in how much it can show the home lives of its characters.

[u/DredgeBea]

I do have to disagree on some points

the daleks keeping insane daleks around feels out of character, fascists aren't exactly known for respecting mental health issues and in the past we've seen Daleks be more than happy to kill others for being in some way "impure"

Also the Parliament of the Daleks, idk, it just feels so silly. Do the Daleks vote in elections for a Dalek to represent them? Are there Dalek political parties? It feels like Moffat had an idea for a cool visual and just threw it in without thinking about the implications of it.

By the way, I do love your reviews, but is there anywhere where you group all your character analysis posts? I enjoy them a lot.

[u/ZeroCentsMade → u/DredgeBea]

The mental health thing is fair, but I guess the counter is that the Daleks aren't exactly treating the asylum dwellers with respect. It feels very much like a "as long as you're not going to be our problem, we'd rather not kill you" kind of thing.

The character retrospectives are part of my main listings for the reviews, off at the bottom of the respective pages.

[u/CareerMilk → u/DredgeBea]

Do the Daleks vote in elections for a Dalek to represent them?

A parliament doesn’t inherently require democracy.

[u/TimDRX]

The main thing I remember from this is that it had a very cool slight variation on The Majestic Tale version of Smith's theme at the end with some really hard hitting drums and brass. It never made it onto an OST so I dunno if it even counted as a distinct recording, maybe Murray Gold just messed with the EQ settings or something? :p

I recall really liking Smith's performance when he learns he's "the predator" - IIRC he looks kinda disgusted or shocked? And then at the end when he shows up for a victory lap he calls himself that in a kinda deflated, accepting tone. Was a nice touch.

[u/Toa_of_Gallifrey]

I align a lot with your thoughts on this one. I think the divorce is a pretty bad idea and the execution is overall poor outside of some redeeming qualities (but not enough to make me like it), but I really enjoy the rest of the episode. Even all these years later, the reveal really works for me. The way it's presented is a big part of it for me, I really love the shot where we first see Oswin's true form and the music that plays for it.

[u/Tasty-Committee-8172]

I like Asylum well enough but I HATED the development with Amy and Rory. Yeah I know there was a minisode that showed them breaking up but that didn't make it feel any less abrupt and out of place.

Last time we see the Ponds they're reuniting with the Doctor at Christmas after that lovely admission that they always set a place for him, next thing we know they're split up and sniping at each other.

[u/tyraspanish]

I know this ep gets some guff, and rightfully so to an extent but it’s still one of my favs from Moffat. Love the zippy adventure tone & appreciate it’s a Dalek episode that isn’t just “they’re up to something and I need to blow them up”

[u/GrapplingGengar1991 → u/tyraspanish]

It features one of my favorite dialogue exchanges between Rory and 11 which are almost always gold in their own right

Doctor: "You're going to fire me at a planet? That's your plan? You're going to fire me at a planet and expect me to fix it?" 

Rory: "To be fair that is slightly your MO."

Doctor: "Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet!!!"

[u/[deleted]]

This definitely is an odd one, with two plots running alongside one another that don't really feel like they ever properly come together, and it doesn't help that one of them stinks. I'm not sure I'd give it a 7 out of 10, but the "Asylum" part works very well, thanks to the immediate chemistry between Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman. The two work as well together here as they ever do once she properly joins the show, though I still think Victorian Clara is the best version of the character this season. Unlike you, I was aware Coleman was going to be the next companion, and this episode was enough to convince me she'd be terrific. I wonder how this would have played out if Amy and Rory had actually left at the end of the previous series.

[u/Personal-Listen-4941]

A further thought occurs to me. It seems most people agree that the Divorce half of the plot is awful. Would it be a significant improvement if this episode happened ‘earlier’ in their break-up? So rather than them actually having separated, they are just having marital issues and Amy is suffering from depression, refusing to open up, etc?

[u/Personal-Listen-4941]

Jenna Coleman had been announced with quite a lot of publicity as being the next companion. And even when she was going to debut was announced (I’m not saying when because i’m not sure if that’s a spoiler for you). So going into the start of this season the vast majority of viewers would recognise her as a future companion immediately.

Which adds an interesting extra dimension to the way her appearances are treated. The audience goes from being surprised that she’s started already, to figuring out she’s being set up to return to being shocked that she’s effectively already dead. It did a great job of setting up a real meta mystery as to what was going to happen with the character in future.

[u/Tasty-Committee-8172 → u/Personal-Listen-4941]

Yeah it was a fantastic use of dramatic irony - her death wouldn't have been quite so mind-blowing if we didn't already know she was to be the next full time companion.

[u/AlbertTheAlbatross]

I'm finding loads of episodes on this rewatch where my memory of them really doesn't line up with how much I actually enjoy them when I'm watching. I had a memory of Asylum being a bit rubbish, but I really enjoyed it! There's a lot that's really well done here.

I thought the Oswin twist was well-seeded enough that you could figure it out, while not being too obvious so it still hits when the moment comes. The Asylum itself was a great setting, really creepy. That scene with Amy seeing the daleks as dancers instead was superbly done. And the pacing works for the episode, it feels energetic but not rushed. All in all, there are a lot of positives to acknowledge here. Jenna Coleman is obviously great and really earns her screentime. As much as I dislike the "impossible girl" framing when it appears, I am looking forward to Clara's episodes.

Like many in this thread I'm not a big fan of the whole divorce scenario but at least it's resolved by the end so it's easy enough to sort of just ignore it. I feel like I've done that with 2 or 3 episodes at this point, just elided over the Amy-Rory stuff for the sake of my enjoyment of the rest of the episode, but whatever. Let's do it again!

[u/Zagreus_time]

Yeah I really don't like this episode much but to not dwell on it too much I'll make just two points.

1. The Daleks are wildly out of character imo, they shouldn't have a parliament nor an asylum and they certainly shouldn't be too scared to go down there.
2. This is probably the death knell in me ever liking Amy/Rory's relationship and it is not even just the divorce stuff. When Amy is waking up she slaps Rory and the Doctor says "same old Amy" WTF. Amy has consistently mistreated Rory across the series imo and this seems to cement the idea of her regularly physically abusing Rory and as we have seen at other points too and in fact she slaps him again later this episode.

Edit:Grammar

[u/Baron487]

This is one of those stories that I would probably rate straight down the middle or below-average if it didn't do one thing really well (another example would be The Ghost Monument). It's Eleven's best Dalek story in my opinion (unless you count the Series 5 finale or Time of the Doctor but those aren't really focused on the Daleks) but still not great.

What I like:

While the Doctor and the Daleks being forced to work together has been done before in Death to the Daleks and to a lesser extent, the original Dalek story, here it is done better. Mainly because the alliance actually lasts for a good amount of time.

The idea of the Dalek asylum is creepy and brilliant, though I have some issues with it, but ultimately it is a good idea for an episode and a location.

The Dalek puppets are a bit out there but the Daleks have used plenty of other species as slave labour or other "side jobs" so I'll allow it. They're also quite unsettling, especially for that part with the stranded crew.

References to previous Dalek stories are neat. Now I only started Doctor Who two years ago but IIRC I've heard that this episode was marketed as including fanservice for Dalek fans and so the appearance of the Special Weapons Dalek as well as the mentions of planets from Classic Stories are good. Those other Dalek designs aren't that easy to notice though, at least from what I can remember.

The Oswin twist, this is the thing that saves the episode. It is really well-executed and tragic and it ties into the whole Dalek asylum thing in a different manner. By that I mean, we're made to think this is just someone of sound mind trapped in the asylum but it's actually a Dalekified person who has repressed their transformation. In hindsight this might not be considered great, since we get Clara re-introduced twice, but that's not this episode's fault.

What I don't like:

Yeah Amy and Rory's divorce is dumb. It feels like it comes from nowhere and it doesn't really make much impact and then it's just resolved by the end of the episode. What was even the point?

I feel like the Dalek asylum has the issue of... why would the Daleks even maintain it? Even if insane Daleks are still Daleks, it wouldn't surprise me if their insanity was considered "impure" which would then logically mean they'd just exterminate them. They seem to be erratic enough for them to be a burden. Also it's not exactly uncommon for the Daleks to kill each other, they've nearly made themselves extinct multiple times just due to some of them being different. The Dalek asylum itself is cool, but I fail to see why the Daleks themselves would have built and kept it.

Again, maybe I'm misremembering but aside from the Special Weapons and a classic blue and silver Dalek here and there, it's not really easy to spot many of the classic Dalek designs in this episode due to the lighting.

This is the last we see of the Paradigm Daleks and while the change to a more glossy finish (which I think was already done in Series 6 but I could be wrong) makes them look better, they still fail to make much of an impact at all here.

Oswin can just delete the Daleks' memories of the Doctor through random hacking? Unless I'm misremembering something here, that just feels cheap and makes the Daleks look weak. It also leads to one of those overuses of "Doctor Who?" that I don't like.

6/10.

Oh boy, it's gonna be hard for me to justify my enjoyment of the next episode, it is not a good episode mind you, and it has a number of things that bug me, but it is also a guilty pleasure of mine.

[u/Iamamancalledrobert]

This is self-indulgent of me, but I recently wrote a fanfictional explanation of why the Daleks might have a Parliament, which I am sharing because it at least made sense to me. I think it can be made to be less silly than it initially seems

[u/sun_lmao]

One of these days I'll write the essay I really want to write about this episode (I already have a title – "Bluntly Forced Trauma"), but suffice it to say: I not only consider this bad Doctor Who, not only consider this a poor use of the Daleks, but I consider it Exhibit A of why many like myself have a distaste for Amy Pond as a character. (To put it plainly: She's a manipulative, psychotic asshole.)

But, good review as always.