Asylum of the Daleks
Sep. 29th, 2012 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
purplecatI enjoyed this episode, it wasn't flawless by a long shot, but it did a lot of nice interesting things, with a good promise of hanging plot threads that can get resolved in unexpected ways later.
The Ponds' marital troubles were the weakest part of the episode. Not because they were necessarily particularly unrealistic but because it was so cursory for such a tangled subject. We were literally given a marriage break-up and reconciliation in less than an hour, an hour which included fighting Daleks. It made the situation look like a stunt rather than some serious attempt to develop their characters. I did like Rory explicitly stating his, and I think most viewers', assumptions about who loved who more within the marriage though I'm not really convinced by Amy's response, but that was really the only bit of the sub-plot I liked. There was interesting stuff there but it was all over too quickly and the Doctor's magic "quick fix" was ultimately unsatisfying.
Oswin's story was more interesting. The "twist" was pretty clearly telegraphed from early on in the episode, but I don't think it suffered from being something the viewers were encouraged to guess in advance of the reveal. If anything the suspense was about Oswin discovering her own nature and what she would do then. Of course there was a secondary "twist" which depended entirely upon the viewer being au fait with the series publicity, which is an interesting take on story-telling suspense. I simply don't believe the show can manage a Dalek as a companion, it would be too difficult in terms of suspension of disbelief. Although the Doctor and companions frequently wander around all sorts of unlikely places without comment, I think people will less readily buy into a Dalek wandering unhindered around, say, medieval England than they do 20th century humans wandering around alien planets. It would also run into all the problems they had with K9 both in terms of prop reliability, and preventing the companion becoming an instant get-out-of-trouble-free card. They might just go for a hologram of some sort with a hand-wave that Oswin somehow uploaded herself into the Tardis memory banks, but my money is on the new companions being either a relative of Oswin's, or a human Oswin either before or after Asylum of the Daleks (with some sort of magic escape if it's afterwards). I do rather hope it isn't before since I think a doomed companion could get old really fast and a clever escape from her doom would need to be really carefully handled to be satisfying. I did like Oswin as a character. She was terribly perky, but it is nice to see a companion who will potentially challenge the Doctor on a technical level.
The asylum concept was a nice addition to Dalek lore (and I actually liked the parliament too, with all the different styles of Dalek in it!). It's realisation was a little patchy. I loved the moment when Amy saw all the Daleks as people. But, in the end, having built the Daleks up as the ultimate scary it is a bit hard to differentiate mad scary Daleks from regular scary Daleks. I was a little bit put out by the Daleks converting people into Daleks (after all that is what Cybermen do!) but then I realised this can be blamed fairly and squarely on Revelation of the Daleks and clarifies one of the reasons I've always felt that story was a bit off, in some way. The moment where the converted woman reveals she knows she has a daughter, because she's read her own file, was genuinely chilling. I liked that. I've seen it suggested elsewhere, that the Daleks were primarily interested in getting the Doctor to eliminate Oswin since she was busy hacking their systems and pretty much everything they told him about the situation was a half-truth at best. If Oswin created the forcefield around the planet then it explains why it could only be deactivated from inside the forcefield. Similarly the Daleks are surprisingly happy to destroy the asylum, given all the guff they feed the Doctor about how inconceivable it is for them to kill its inhabitants, however if that is all a cover for something else... Anyway, I hope we see more of the set up later in the season and we learn that the Daleks were actually being really sneaky here.
So in summary I liked the Daleks. I liked Oswin. I was less keen on the Pond soap opera.
The Ponds' marital troubles were the weakest part of the episode. Not because they were necessarily particularly unrealistic but because it was so cursory for such a tangled subject. We were literally given a marriage break-up and reconciliation in less than an hour, an hour which included fighting Daleks. It made the situation look like a stunt rather than some serious attempt to develop their characters. I did like Rory explicitly stating his, and I think most viewers', assumptions about who loved who more within the marriage though I'm not really convinced by Amy's response, but that was really the only bit of the sub-plot I liked. There was interesting stuff there but it was all over too quickly and the Doctor's magic "quick fix" was ultimately unsatisfying.
Oswin's story was more interesting. The "twist" was pretty clearly telegraphed from early on in the episode, but I don't think it suffered from being something the viewers were encouraged to guess in advance of the reveal. If anything the suspense was about Oswin discovering her own nature and what she would do then. Of course there was a secondary "twist" which depended entirely upon the viewer being au fait with the series publicity, which is an interesting take on story-telling suspense. I simply don't believe the show can manage a Dalek as a companion, it would be too difficult in terms of suspension of disbelief. Although the Doctor and companions frequently wander around all sorts of unlikely places without comment, I think people will less readily buy into a Dalek wandering unhindered around, say, medieval England than they do 20th century humans wandering around alien planets. It would also run into all the problems they had with K9 both in terms of prop reliability, and preventing the companion becoming an instant get-out-of-trouble-free card. They might just go for a hologram of some sort with a hand-wave that Oswin somehow uploaded herself into the Tardis memory banks, but my money is on the new companions being either a relative of Oswin's, or a human Oswin either before or after Asylum of the Daleks (with some sort of magic escape if it's afterwards). I do rather hope it isn't before since I think a doomed companion could get old really fast and a clever escape from her doom would need to be really carefully handled to be satisfying. I did like Oswin as a character. She was terribly perky, but it is nice to see a companion who will potentially challenge the Doctor on a technical level.
The asylum concept was a nice addition to Dalek lore (and I actually liked the parliament too, with all the different styles of Dalek in it!). It's realisation was a little patchy. I loved the moment when Amy saw all the Daleks as people. But, in the end, having built the Daleks up as the ultimate scary it is a bit hard to differentiate mad scary Daleks from regular scary Daleks. I was a little bit put out by the Daleks converting people into Daleks (after all that is what Cybermen do!) but then I realised this can be blamed fairly and squarely on Revelation of the Daleks and clarifies one of the reasons I've always felt that story was a bit off, in some way. The moment where the converted woman reveals she knows she has a daughter, because she's read her own file, was genuinely chilling. I liked that. I've seen it suggested elsewhere, that the Daleks were primarily interested in getting the Doctor to eliminate Oswin since she was busy hacking their systems and pretty much everything they told him about the situation was a half-truth at best. If Oswin created the forcefield around the planet then it explains why it could only be deactivated from inside the forcefield. Similarly the Daleks are surprisingly happy to destroy the asylum, given all the guff they feed the Doctor about how inconceivable it is for them to kill its inhabitants, however if that is all a cover for something else... Anyway, I hope we see more of the set up later in the season and we learn that the Daleks were actually being really sneaky here.
So in summary I liked the Daleks. I liked Oswin. I was less keen on the Pond soap opera.