Rate and Discuss: Asylum of the Daleks

[FlyingBeastie]

Why does that not surprise me ? About 900% better than Pond Life !

One day the British fans might be appreciated...one day......

When money's to be made sorry, but it's the truth.

[Si Hunt]

To be honest, there's a difference between internal plot holes (like being told someone only exists in a dream after them playing music at us earlier on, or a hole in the floor that leads to a lift shaft one minute and deep space the next) and wider so-called continuity issues. Skaro is such a biggie, that I'd have thought it obvious that the Daleks have simply found a new home Planet. As someone on twitter said yesterday "I hear continuity errors and I say what happened to using your imagination?"

Si.

[Logo Polish]

Or it's set before it was destroyed previously. Or the events of Remembrance have subsequently been altered in some way. I mean, in a series which has had rebooted universes and so on, something like that is fairly easily accounted for.

[Jon Masters]

As someone on twitter said yesterday "I hear continuity errors and I say what happened to using your imagination?"

Si.

So why not address the same comment to the writer ? (the tweeter that is - if its the same one as I saw is a DW author ).

Since the whole story took place elsewhere the setting of the trap could have been anywhere, even on a nameless planet. So the mention of Skaro is either gratuitous to look "kewl" or even worse a deliberate piece of fan baiting. Or the usual Moff excuse 'part of a big story we don't know yet' (and we know how many inconvenient questions seem to have been forgotten)

[Stuart Wallis]

Dull. I'd go so far to say Boom Town with Daleks, in that the plot went down from great to dead-slow-to-stop aftewr the first fifteen minutes, and didn't reappear til the last five. The asylum scenes had no atmosphere; and somebody waved a magic wand - unless there's something coming up in future episodes, the Amy/Rory relationship was patched up far too quickly and simply.

3/10

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

The prequel video seems to have been taken down. Can anyone confirm it's not just my work terminal playing up?

[SiHart]

It's working fine here Richard.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Given that I can't seem to get my emails and twitter to work at the moment it obviously is my work terminal. I wish they'd hurry up and migrate me to the new operating system already.

Carry on everyone, nothing to see here.

[Si Hunt]

So why not address the same comment to the writer ? (the tweeter that is - if its the same one as I saw is a DW author ).

I think the same applies as to the local/wider issue thing. I think a viewer on Saturday would want to know why the plot of the story they were watching didn't make sense, but not really be interested in anything to do with Skaro being blown up in a story 20 years before. Anyway, Big Finish have surely long since brought Skaro back haven't they?

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Big Finish clearly doesn't count

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I'd actually forgotten but as has been pointed out elsewhere Skaro came back last year for the Adventure Game "City of the Daleks" which was partially set in Kalaan, the capital city.

That said the American prologue suggests this is the first time the Doctor has clapped eyes on the place since the days of the Time War.

[Rob McCow]

If anyone wants a brilliant example on how to use the Daleks in a new way, I'd insist they listen to Next Universal asap

IAWJ.

Well, it looked a million dollars. Brilliantly polished, full of great locations and visuals.

However, the dialogue was rather stinky and the story was a bit slow and ponderous. Seriously! They spent ages faffing about collecting the team, then we had a big sit down at Dalek HQ and a chinwag with some flapping eyeface, then they get sent down to the planet with their special mission and bump into some guy... and so on...

But to anyone who expected 'Every Dalek Ever' this was a massive, massive disappointment! Even when the buggers were on screen you could hardly make them out, it was so murky.

Oh, Moffat you tease but you didn't deliver! I bet that next week there'll be some vaguely reptile things on a fairly high flying airplane! BAH!

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

On the subject of deleted scenes, you may want to take a look at this

Sorry to harp on about this but there's a lovely moment at about 2:21

I'll swear blind those are Eccleston's eyes we see the Daleks reflected in!

[WhiteCrowNZ]

I had a poorly son to deal with today, so thankful I managed to watch this. Heck it's got Daleks in it.

Story was fun, but not great - a 7 from me. With special weapons Daleks, old style Daleks, mention of Dalek history I got the feeling there would be a lot of 9s being handed around on the basis of just that.

But the story itself ... well didn't really feel there was one - just a long time walking around in corridors and dodging the Daleks. Mind you isn't that most Dalek stories? But it was a fun enough journey.

Felt the Oswin twist coming from the very beginning - I ironically thought "where does she get her eggs from" from the first scene. That said I liked Oswin's character. I have to say I'm somewhat over Amy's character, and going to really look forward to her handing over. She's really starting to become tiresome in a Rose-in-love and Tegan-mouth-on-legs squared kind of way ...

[WhiteCrowNZ]

Oh and agree the Daleks from being supremacists are suddenly going back to being Revelation of the Daleks made-from-the-dead.

And actually though I suspected Oswin to be a Dalek with some kind of split personality (Therapy of the Daleks), I also kind of suspected the Doctor might open that door to find Davros in drag. Thank God I was wrong about that.

Also the Daleks rather than have a heirarchical structure with an Emperor now have a Parliament and a Prime Minister. What changed? Where was the Dalek Luthor King or George Washingdalek who brought about the idea of politics? What kind of constitution does the Dalek Parliament uphold?

[Si Hunt]

There were two moments in this story that particuarly irritated me - the first was the lesbian comment. Because she can't JUST be a girl who fancies Rory, she has drop in that she had a crush on a girl as well so that, along with her tiny little skirt, all the straight blokes can get a quick thrill. The second was yet another dilution of tension in the moment when Amy feels compelled to turn to that Doctor and grin, confessing how much fun she is having ("Is it wrong?"). The companion character is supposed to be our voice, how can we find this tense or scary when it's all such a big joke to her? I wish they would get that.

Si.

[WhiteCrowNZ]

A few questions ...

* How come there were survivors of Spiradon etc, when the Time War seemed to wipe out all Daleks everywhere ... except for all these ones we keep finding.
* An asylum which can only be unlocked from inside. Huh? What kind of prison is that.
* Why are Daleks now recruiting people.
* Why make a big deal of wiping out the bronze Daleks in Victory ... to have them right back again.
* Have we really seen the last of the Daleks being afraid of the Doctor?
* Amy's sterility. Doesn't the Doctor usually just stick his sonic screwdriver in, and reverse this kind of thing?

[Stuart Wallis]

There's no answer to that!

Also the Daleks rather than have a heirarchical structure with an Emperor now have a Parliament and a Prime Minister. What changed? Where was the Dalek Luthor King or George Washingdalek who brought about the idea of politics? What kind of constitution does the Dalek Parliament uphold?

Typically for the Daleks, one Dalek, one vote: The Prime minister is the Dalek, he has the vote. Rather like David Cameron, really...

[J.R. Southall]

Also the Daleks rather than have a heirarchical structure with an Emperor now have a Parliament and a Prime Minister. What changed?

The production regime. Rather like when the production regime changed between The War Games and The Deadly Assassin - and fandom kicked up a right stink about that, at the time. I'd rather take each of these stories on its own merit than worry about writers having to subsume their craft to previous orders of the day...

Your other points 2, 4 and 5 are pretty spot-on though. I'd rather not think about Pond's pudding, however.

[Logo Polish]

"Parliament" was only the Doctor's chosen way of describing it - I don't think we're obliged to take it that literally. It was effectively an assemblage or rally. Not that parliaments are necessarily always democratic anyway. And even the term "Prime Minister" could just be thought of as a translation convention.

[Rob McCow]

OK this is bugging me now, so here are a few things I didn't like about Asylum of The Daleks.

- The way the divorce was handled. Coming at the start of the episode, I don't think it had any emotional impact whatsoever. I saw the divorce and I thought 'This should be huge!' but it was like a bucket of cold water. I think it would have been so much better if it had been a mystery why Amy and Rory were so cold with each other, then revealed later on, maybe even in a later episode. It should have been such a gut-punch for the audience but for me it didn't work at all.

- The dialogue. Really ruined right at the start by the absolutely stinky 'On a scale of 1 to 10, how much trouble are we in?'
*BIG PAUSE*
'Eleven'.
Such a dreadful, clichéd bit of rubbish. I was sitting there thinking that surely they could do better!

- Too many ideas, not enough Daleks. OK, so once again there were more Daleks on screen than ever before, but they were spread thinly through the episode. The Dalek/Human hybrids were pretty cool. The Dalek Parliament was very cool. The insane-Daleks-seen-as-humans by Amy were absolutely f***ing awesome... but none of these ideas had space to breathe! It was as if Moffat crammed every Dalek idea he'd ever had into 45 minutes and it just meant that every idea seemed to lack something. They all seemed a bit flat.

Asylum of The Daleks should have been one of the greatest Who episodes of all time. But, like Oswin's soufflés, it was overcooked. That said, I'll never work out where he gets the milk from...

[Si Hunt]

It's a shame there wern't more bits like the Cyberman coming to life set peice from "Pandorica Opens". Remember that? That was brilliant. Original, scary, exciting, it didn't matter it didn't particuarly advance the plot it was just something you could say "Cor, remember that bit?". At times during "Asylum" I looked at the clock and got a bit bored. There needed to be more Moments, and with all those Daleks we could have had loads - tops coming off, mutants crawling out etc. but there were hardly any. It beggars belief why a room specifically labelled as containing Daleks from all the Doctors old adventures still only had new series Daleks in!

Si.

[Stuart Wallis]

- The dialogue. Really ruined right at the start by the absolutely stinky 'On a scale of 1 to 10, how much trouble are we in?'
*BIG PAUSE*
'Eleven'.
Such a dreadful, clichéd bit of rubbish. I was sitting there thinking that surely they could do better!

During the pause between question and answer, I was thinking it would make a refreshing change if the Doctor answered "Twelve".

[Rob McCow]

During the pause between question and answer, I was thinking it would make a refreshing change if the Doctor answered "Twelve".

Or, looking completely serious and staring straight down the camera lens: "This is gonna be a twelve changes of underwear trip."

[Jason Thompson]

During the pause between question and answer, I was thinking it would make a refreshing change if the Doctor answered "Twelve".

Or indeed any number other than eleven would have been nice. Honestly, how many people watching that scene wouldn't have been going 'eleven' in their heads during the pause before the Doctor said it?

Another bit that bugged me was the Doctor carrying an unconscious Amy through the debris of the Daleks after he reversed the self-destructing one into the middle of them all. It was slo-mo-ed to the point of being a pointless cliche, and Rory, who had been separated from them for some time, didn't even react to the fact that Amy was being carried. He didn't know if she was alseep or dead, and didn't even try to find out. All he wanted to know was who killed all the Daleks. And the Doctor's 'who do you think' response was massively overplayed. That scene worked well in the trailer, but stuck in the episode proper it just made me groan.