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Ten Thoughts About Doctor Who: Asylum Of The Daleks

Hooray! New Doctor Who! And series seven starts with a belter. Yes, there will be spoilers. If you haven't seen Asylum Of The Daleks yet then maybe, just maybe, you should come back when you have.

1. The Statue Of Tyranny

Well, I suppose that is what you do if you live on a planet, you build massive statues of yourselves on them. And this is no doubt looking forward to the Angels Take Manhattan and a certain Statue Of Liberty that may be featured in that episode…

2. Far And Distant Things

It's what's been happening to Daleks since that Series One episode, Dalek. Getting these ultimate fascists, killers, destroyers, all messed up with humanity in some way or other, watching them crumble or turn on themselves in the process. Here, it seems, Daleks have just decided to bite the bullet and go for full disguise Daleks. So disguised not even they know it. Human on the outside, Dalek on the inside. More on this to come…

But if the Dalek Parliament can find and trap the Doctor this easily… why haven't they assassinated him so many times before? Are they just dazzled by his beauty as they suggest?

3. Sign Here, Pond

Steve Moffat has been divorced, he write an episode of Press Gang in which a marriage counsellor was hypnotised to say "Divorce the bitch!" repeatedly (on kids' telly as well), then wrote Joking Apart, a sitcom about going through divorce. Been there, done that, signed the papers. It's the callous and cool behaviour masking the love that is still so blatantly there, that just smacks of reality. And sets up Love and Hate as the two opposing forces here today – that are often simultaneous.

4. I Wonder If The Dalek Parliament Is Opened By Black Plunger?

All Daleks of all varieties… including new human-hidden Daleks. What it means to be a Dalek is all on the inside, and then it exhibits on the outside. Hate is in the heart. Daleks that look like humans… and then humans that look like Daleks.

You know, even with all the chanting, this Parliament is far better behaved than the British equivalent. No Dalek swinging the mace here…

But this is about making the Daleks scarier again. Focusing on the maddest of the mad Daleks, the ones that scare the usual Daleks, trrapped in a serious or dark dingy corridors and any second coming back to life and doing something… unexpected.

5. The Logo Has Got Dalek Eggs

The title does it. Destiny Of The… Planet Of The… Genesis Of The… Revelation Of The… always nice. Also, note the Doctor Who logo recreated with Dalek bumps, as Bleeding Cool promised. Expect this every week. Scales for the dinosaurs next week. Hang on five thoughts and we're only up to the credits? Better slow down…

6. She's Dead, Wrapped In Dalek

Her name is Oswin Oswald. But we also know that's Jenna-Louise Coleman, who will be playing Clara, the Doctor's new companion from the Christmas episode onwards. Will she be a relative of Oswin? A parallel dimension equivalent? Or are we, just as with River Song, meeting Clara Oswin Oswald on the day of her death, only to meet her later at a different point in time? Oh the tragedy…

There's a lot about memory here. What Amy has to remember. What the Doctor has to remember. What do we have to remember?

7. Dalek Zombies

Yup, all sorts of Daleks. Including reanimated mummified skeletons.

Run.

8. We Need The Eggs

It's been a long time since we heard them say it. So, yes, bringing it in in such a comic fashion was an expected take. And also sets up the exact same gag, to come. But seriously Rory, stop prodding and talking to the dusty Daleks. You know it can't end well.

9. Two Thousand Years

I knew, I knew that Rory at some point couldn't resist lording the whole "two thousand years waiting outside a box". I mean, seriously, I would, all that fuss over Amy waiting thirty years, Rory has two millennia on that. And of course cople's arguments bring up old issues… just with Amy and Rory, they have more on the clock than most. Who else gets to through being kidnapped and physically assaulted on an alien prison in the far future into their ex's face?

The Doctor said he would fix the Daleks, the planet and Amy and Rory's marriage all at the same time, didn't he?

10. A Corner Of The Dalek Eye

And we're right back to the first Dalek we saw in Dalek. The isolation, the chains, just with better lighting.

Just as Blink originated as a Steven Moffat short story in a Doctor Who Annual, and as we, so Oswin's reality is also based in Corner Of The Eye, a story he wrote in which a man talks to his estranged wife on a computer, until it is revealed that she is just a computer program. Something she is not aware of and trying to hide from herself.

The memory of the Doctor in the minds and records of the Parliament of Daleks is wiped, leaving them asking "Doctor Who?"…. any chance that this could be the way the question grows and grows through time – backwards and forwards? The Daleks are time travellers after all…

It's not just Dinosaurs On A Spaceship. It's also Queen Nefertiti And Ron Weasley's Dad On A Spaceship too!

Roll on Saturday!

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