Asylum of the Daleks - REWRITTEN
I loved the ideas in Asylum of the Daleks, but I found myself a bit disappointed in the plot, and the plotholes. So I decided to do something about it. I rewrote the episode.
This is not so much a full rewrite, as simply an edit. This is the same story, but buffed up. I filled the plotholes, tweaked some of the designs, added a bit more tension in some of the scenes (they are in an asylum of insane Daleks, someone should be scared) and generally tried to do all those things that I think the script editor should be doing.
Maybe that's arrogant of me. But I thought the ideas in this story were so fantastic that it was a real shame that I found myself going "WTF?" at dumb things, and looking at my watch during the first 20 minutes of the episode, wondering when the story was going to start.
So if you had problems with Asylum of the Daleks, give this version a try, Asylum of the Daleks REVISED, maybe all the story needed was a bit of a tweak.
(I know loads of us on LJ are writers, I'd love your input on whether this version works or not, and what you liked or disliked about it. This is an editing exercise, to show how just small changes can make a big change in a story.)
(Author's Note: This story is light on descriptive detail, it assumes you've seen the episode and can fill in the descriptions from that. If you have not seen the episode yet and don't want to be spoiled, don't read this. This is, hopefully, an exercise in how only small editing changes can make a big difference. This is what the story might have been like with a few more edits.)
[Note: I had to split this into three parts to fit it in LJ's posts. But it's all here.]
-
Asylum of the Daleks REVISED
-
"First there were the Daleks." We fly in across a devastated alien city, the camera pans up and up, across the huge statue of a Dalek, old, battered, moldering.
"And then, there was a man who fought them." A woman's voice narrates. "And then, in time, he died." We close in on the Dalek eyestalk. "There are a few, of course, who believe this man somehow survived. And that, one day, he will return." A hooded woman stands behind the lens of the Dalek eye. "For both our sakes, dearest Hannah, we must hope these stories are true."
Within the statue's eyestalk, the woman hears a noise, she turns. Her feet are dirty, in broken sandals. A shadow on the wall...
"I got your message," the Doctor says. "Not many people can do that. Send me messages."
"I have a daughter," she says pleadingly. "She's in a Dalek prison camp. They say you can help."
"Do they?" he says quietly. "I wish they'd stop.
"I love your choice of meeting place," he says morosely, going to the window.
"They said I'd have to entreat you," she says behind him.
"Skaro," he says, looking out over the broken city. "Another planet of the Daleks. Broken and subjected."
He turns. "Who told you about me?"
"Does it matter?" she asks.
"Maybe not," he says quietly, intensely. "But you're very well informed." He reaches up and pulls her hood down. Revealing a woman, red hair, worried expression, dressed in ragged clothes.
"If Hannah's in a Dalek prison camp, tell me, why aren't you?" he turns, disbelief in his voice.
"I escaped."
He laughs, softly, sinister. "No. Nobody escapes the Dalek camps." He takes her hand, brushing his thumb across it. "You're very cold." He touches her cheek, she moves her head away. His eyes become worried. He looks around.
"What's wrong?" she asks.
He backs away from her. "It's a trap."
"What is?" she asks, stalking closer.
"You are." He backs off, eyes locked on her. "And you don't even know it."
She stares at him. Her eyes glow blue. The pupils as blue as a Dalek eyestalk, the irises black as metal, with tiny Dalek vanes around the edges. Her expression changes, dropping the worried mother, becoming calm and triumphant. Arrogant.
Her hand comes up. A Dalek gunstick emerges from her palm. She shoots.
Extermination noise, a bright flash of light throws the Doctor backward, he screams, the screen goes black.
-
Loud, raucous music, Amy appears, her hair in curls, heavy makeup, one fist comes up to the screen, HATE written on the knuckles. The other fist comes up, showing LOVE.
Lightbulbs flash. Big jewelry, a woman blowing a hairdryer at her, blowing her hair while a photographer snaps photos. Costume change, black leather and studs, black eyeliner. Amy doesn't look happy. Just doing her job.
A secretary comes up, waving for attention.
She nods to the photographers. "I'll just be a minute." She slides down the banister.
"Your husband is here," the secretary says.
She sashays off, annoyed, "I don't have a husband."
"Oh, well, apparently you still do," the secretary says with a nervous laugh, smiling at her.
She leaves him behind and walks into her dressing room, to find Rory sitting at her makeup table. He looks at her in the mirror, disgusted. He holds up a sheaf of papers.
"You have to sign these."
She stalks over and grabs them. "And then we're not married?" she demands.
He throws his hand up. "Just like magic."
She signs them, signing her legal name, Amelia Williams. Dotting the i with a decisive stroke.
She hands them back. "Can't chat," she brushes him off. "Working."
"Really?" he accepts the divorce papers. "I thought you were just pouting at a camera." He gets up and leaves. Both of them angry.
Just as he reaches the door, Amy falters, "Rory?" she entreats.
He holds his hands up in an, "I don't want to hear it," gesture and detours around her makeup artist who's just walked in.
A light on the mirror starts to flicker.
"Sorry, love, was I interrupting?" the makeup woman asks.
Amy shakes her head, "No," resigned.
"Gosh, look at you, you look so pale," she cups Amy's cheek. "Come on, take a seat, we'll soon sort that out." Amy sits down. The light continues to flicker.
Amy hears a wet, crunching noise behind her, senses something wrong, she turns, the light flickers, a Dalek gunstalk fires.
-
Outside, Rory hails a cab with the sheaf of papers. He looks downcast, but resolute. The cab pulls up and he gives directions, slipping into the back seat.
The driver nods at him, Rory goes back to studying the papers. The driver's eyes glow blue in the rearview mirror, looking like tiny Dalek lenses. He turns.
Light flares, shooting out of all the cab windows.
-
Rory, lying on a blank white surface. He wakes up, then jerks upward with a gasp.
He turns, Amy is standing beside him. They're in a featureless white round room.
She gives him a silent, defensive look. "Where are we?" he asks dubiously.
She nods toward a grilled window.
He looks outside, they are in space, surrounded by a Dalek fleet.
"So," he asks. "How much trouble are we in?"
The door whooshes open, a Dalek glides in. "How much trouble, Mr. Pond," the Doctor's voice says. He walks into the room after the Dalek, another behind him, clearly a prisoner.
He stalks into the room, looking cocky, and somewhat happy to see them. "Out of 10?" His face drops the cheerful facade, becoming ominous. "Guess."
The ceiling suddenly hisses hydraulically and breaks apart into wedges, opening up. The floor shakes, and starts to rise.
They stare around, nervous, keeping on their feet, all they can see is starspangled dome overhead.
They rise up, into the middle of an amphitheater. They look around, and their blood runs cold. Daleks. Everywhere. Thousands of them.
Ranks upon ranks of Daleks of every conceivable type. Silent. Watching. The Doctor stares around.
"Where are we?" Amy asks. "Spaceship, right?" The Doctor nods.
"Not just any ship," he says, his voice dark. "The Emperor's ship. This is the Convocation of the Daleks."
The floor locks into position. He turns to look at them. "They only convene like this in the most dire of circumstances."
Rory looks sick behind them.
"What do we do?" Amy asks.
"Wait for your chance," the Doctor says, his eyes darting toward the Tardis beyond them. "They wouldn't have brought us here if they wanted us dead."
He stepped back, away from the Ponds, and turns to the waiting Daleks. "Well come on then." He throws his arms wide. "You've got me. What are you waiting for? At long last, Here I Am!"
He turns in a circle, daring them.
"Save us."
The Doctor turns, startled, to the transparent tube at the head of the dais. The one that holds the only visible Dalek mutant.
He stares in disbelief, as if he isn't sure what he just heard.
"You will save us," the same Dalek voice says again.
"I'll what?" His arms flop down to his sides.
"You will save the Daleks," the Emperor said.
"Save the Daleks. Save the Daleks. Save the Daleks," the others all started chanting.
Amy and Rory stared around in consternation. Every Dalek, all several thousands of them, dome lights flashing, chanted the same thing.
"Well," the Doctor turned, a quizzical smile on his face. "This is new."
-
Intro sequence.
-
A plastic ballerina turned on a music box. "Carmen" blared in the background.
A young woman's voiceover. "Day 363." An attractive, long-haired young woman stands up, nails in her mouth. Voiceover, "The terror continues." She nails a board on top of other boards, all of them blocking an airlock.
"Also, made another souffle." She smiles and opens the oven, to find a burnt, fallen souffle. Her smile falls. "Very nearly." She pulls it out and dumps it in the trash, patting the lid to the beat of the music.
"Check defenses." She checks the airlock, to find that one of the boards has been removed. "They came again last night,' she says. "Still, always at night. Maybe they're vampires," she conjectures.
She lies in a hammock, the music box twirling in the foreground, the messy confines of her lifepod around her. Recording her voiceover diary on a handheld recorder. "Oh, and it's my mum's birthday. Happy birthday, mum. I did make you a souffle, but it was too beautiful to live," she says cheerily.
Suddenly something pounds on the door, heavily. Slurred Dalek voices demand, "You will let us enter!" a cacophony of babbled, aggressive Dalek voices make demands as they pound on the door.
Her expression falls, fear turning to determination. She turns up the music. Drowns them out. She puts her fingers in her ears, refusing to listen...
-
Back in the Emperor's ship, the Doctor paces.
"What's he doing?" Rory whispers to Amy.
The Doctor stalks, looking at everything, like a tiger in a cage.
The Daleks all watch him, silent, mesmerized, eyestalks swinging back and forth, tracking him as he moves.
"He's thinking," Amy says.
Rory bites his fingernails.
The Doctor stops, frowns. And adjusts his bowtie.
Amy grins. "And, he has a plan."
"We have arrived!" The Emperor's voice booms.
The Doctor takes a deep breath and steels himself. "Arrived where?"
"Doctor."
The human woman from the trap steps forward, eyes glowing blue. Dalek arrogance and pride in every line of her, revealing the tatters she wears as the costume they were.
"The Emperor will see you now," she intoned in a hybrid female/Dalek voice.
"The Emperor has been seeing me for the last few minutes," the Doctor snarked as he stalked up the incline.
He stopped beside her. He leaned in, staring into her Dalek-blue eyes. "What are you?" he asks curiously, quietly, "Some sort of advanced Roboman? Do you even remember who you were? Before they emptied you out and turned you into their puppet?" he asks sadly.
She answered in a human voice, her eyes changing becoming deliberately human, as if to emphasize her artificial nature. "My memories are only reactivated if they are needed to facilitate deep cover or disguise."
"You had a daughter," he reminded her.
"I know," she said. She leaned in, her voice turned Dalek. "I've read my file."
The Doctor jerked back.
She stared at him with blank blue eyes, and waved a hand toward the Emperor.
He stalked up the ramp. Planted himself before the Emperor. "Well?"
The Emperor's voice was screeching and harsh. "What do you know of the Dalek Asylum?"
"According to legend," the Doctor said. "You have a dumping ground. A planet where you lock up all the Daleks that go wrong. The battle-scarred, the insane, the ones even you can't control. It's never made any sense to me."
"Why not?" the Emperor asked.
"Because you'd just kill them," the Doctor said, as if stating the obvious.
"Why? Such destructiveness is beautiful. Such purity. If such genius of hate could be harnessed..." the Emperor said.
The Doctor sneered. "And you wonder why I despise you. You think destruction, hatred, is beautiful..." he trailed off, disgusted.
"Perhaps, that is why we have never been able to kill you..."
The Doctor jerked, as if suckerpunched.
The floor in the center of the atrium clanked open. Amy and Rory jumped back as a round portal opened in the floor.
The Doctor walked down to investigate.
The Robowoman followed him. "The Asylum," she said in her hybrid female/Dalek voice. "It occupies the entire planet."
They looked down through the hole in the floor, to the shielded planet below.
"How many Daleks are in there?" the Doctor asked.
"A count has not been made. Millions, certainly," she said.
"All alive?" the Doctor asked.
"It has to be assumed," she said in her human voice. "The asylum is fully automated. Supervision is not required."
"Armed?" Amy asked.
The Robowoman turned blue eyes on her. "Daleks are always armed."
"And they're all nuts," Rory said with resignation.
The Robowoman turned to him, decided to take it as a question, "They are not normal Daleks, at least."
Rory snorted. "Like that narrows it down."
A white Dalek moved to a communications panel. "This signal is being received from the very heart of the asylum," the robowoman said.
"Carmen" blared out over the sound system. So incongruous in this sterile Dalek space. The Doctor grinned and started ghost-conducting.
"What is this noise? Explain. Explain!" the White Dalek demanded.
The Doctor conducted, enjoying the music, arms raised over his head. "It's me."
"Sorry, what?" Rory demanded.
"It's me. Playing the triangle," the Doctor said, dinging an imaginary triangle. "Okay, so I got buried in the mix."
"'Carmen!' Lovely show!" he said, twirling and stalking back up to the communication's panel. Sonicing it with the screwdriver. He looked at it. "Someone's transmitting this. Have you considered tracking back the signal and talking to them?" The Daleks all stared at him blankly. "He asked the Daleks," he muttered.
"I'm guessing no, so..." He flipped the controls. "Hello. Hello. Carmen! Hello."
The young woman in the pod stopped and stared to hear a human voice. "Hello?" she asked with desperate hope.
"Hello, Carmen, come in!" the Doctor said.
The girl ran to her communications console. "Yes, yes! Hello, sorry," she sat down at her controls opening the channel. "Do you read me?"
"Yes!" the Doctor said, throwing his hands up in triumph. "Reading you loud and clear. Identify yourself and report your status."
"Hello," the girl said. "Are you real? Are you actually, properly real?"
"Yep, confirmed," the Doctor said, laughing. "Actually, properly real."
"Oswin Oswald," she stood to attention. "Junior Entertainment Manager, Starship Alaska. Current status, crashed and shipwrecked somewhere..." she looks toward the airlock, "not nice," she said with emphasis. "Been here a year, rest of the crew missing. Provisions good, but keen to move on."
"A year?" the Doctor said softly. "Are you okay, are you under attack?"
"Some local lifeforms," she said. "Been keeping them out."
"Do you know what those lifeforms are?" he asked.
"I know a Dalek when I hear one, yeah."
"What have you been doing?" he asked quietly, "On your own, against the Daleks? For a year?"
"Making souffles?" she said tentatively.
"Souffles? Against the Daleks?" he laughed softly in delight, looking at the Daleks. "Where do you get the milk?" he suddenly asked, curious.
"This conversation is irrelevant!" the White Dalek said, advancing menacingly.
"No it isn't!" the Doctor protested, turning to confront him. The Dalek cut off the signal.
"No!" the girl jumped forward to try to reestablish the link. "Hello. Hello!"
"Because a starliner has crashed into your asylum, damaging your shield," the Doctor continued loudly. "And if a ship's got in. Then everyone can get out. A tsunami of insane Daleks. Even you don't want that."
"The asylum must be cleansed!" the White Dalek decreed.
"Then why is it still here?" the Doctor asked. "You've enough firepower on this ship to blast it out of the sky."
"The asylum forcefield has regenerated itself, it can resist our barrage," the robowoman said behind him.
"Send a bomb," the Doctor said.
"All bombs have been neutralized in transit," she said.
"Then turn the shield off," the Doctor said, annoyed.
"We cannot. The shield generator is in the core of the planet, inaccessible. A signal from inside the asylum is blocking our access," she said.
"A small taskforce can sneak through the forcefield and turn off the signal. Surely you've got a way to put inmates in. Send a couple of Daleks," the Doctor said, stalking back down to the atrium floor.
"None have reported back," the White Dalek grated.
The Doctor stopped, halfway down the ramp. "Oh," he said in realization. He started clapping, sardonically. "That's good, that's very good." He stalked back up the ramp to confront the White Dalek, "And what do Daleks do when they can't do the job themselves..."
"The Predator of the Daleks will be deployed," the White Dalek said, looking him in the eye.
"I'm not a predator," the Doctor said firmly. "And even if I was, why would I turn off the signal for you?"
"Because you will have no other choice," the Emperor's voice boomed.
The two blank male robomen grabbed the Doctor by the arms. The female roboman slapped a Dalek bracelet on his wrist. "You will need this, it will protect you from the nanocloud."
"Nanocloud? What?" he said as the robomen hustled him down to the portal on the main floor.
"The gravity beam will convey you close to the source of the transmission," the robowoman said in her Dalek voice. "You must find a way to deactivate it from there."
"You're going to fire me at a planet?" the Doctor said, struggling against his captors. They held him still with rigid Dalek strength. "That's your plan?" he continued talking, trying to find an out. "I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it?"
He looked down into the hole at the planet below.
Rory spoke up. "In fairness, that is slightly your M.O."
"Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet!" the Doctor said.
The two Dalek guards by Amy and Rory backed off but kept their guns trained on them as the robowoman fitted them with bracelets.
"What do you want with them?" The Doctor protested.
"It is known the Doctor requires the help of associates," the White Dalek grated.
Rory threw his head back. "Oh, Good-O!" he shouted in frustration.
"Don't worry," the Doctor whispered. "We'll get through this, I promise."
"No offense, Doctor, but I'd really rather not go," Rory said, eying the distance to the Tardis. All the Daleks had their gunstalks aimed on them.
"Don't worry, Rory, it's not that bad," Amy said.
"Planet full of insane Daleks? Hello?" Rory retorted.
"The Doctor will find us a way out," Amy said with complete confidence. She looked at him.
The Doctor wrung his hands. He whispered. "They had to have built the Asylum at some point. Where there's a way in, there's a way out."
"And that is your motivation," the Emperor's voice boomed out.
The Doctor's voice rose, facetiously indignant. "It's impolite to eavesdrop on a private conversation."
The Roboman shoved him into the gravity beam. Amy and Rory followed.
"AAAAHHHHHH!" they screamed as they fell.
"Wrong way up! Wrong way up!" Rory yelled as he fell, head down, past them.
-
A black man in a snowsuit looked up from drilling at an airlock that was buried in the snow. Three gravity beams landed not far off.
He went to investigate.
He found Amy lying in the snow.
He approached cautiously, "Hello? Hello, who are you?" he asked.
Amy woke up. She stared up at him in surprise. "You okay?" he asked.
She stood up, dizzy, disoriented.
"Rory? Doctor!" she yelled, not seeing the men.
"I'm Harvey," the man in the snowsuit said, trying to calm her down. "Who's Rory?"
Amy stared at him, then rushed off, looking for the others.
"Where are you going?" he yelled, and scrambled after her.
-
On an incline, a Dalek eyestalk shoved up through the snow, looked around, and retreated. It repeated the procedure a little farther away. Finally it turned and spotted the Doctor, it studied him. He was lying in the snow, breathing, but unconscious.
He woke up, and started laughing when he found himself lying in snow. He tried to sit up, scrunching the snowdrifts with his elbows. Delighted with the sensation he scrunched some more, then noticed the eyestalk, watching him.
He closed one eye against the glare of the whiteness. The Dalek pupil widened as if getting a better view. "Carmen" suddenly started blaring from it.
"Sorry, sorry!" the Souffle Girl's voice replaced the music. "Pressed the wrong switch."
"Souffle Girl?" the Doctor asked in disbelief, staring at the eyestalk.
"You could always call me Oswin," she said back. "Seeing as that's my name."
The Doctor crawled toward the eyestalk. She could see him on her monitor. "You okay?" she asked.
"How are you doing that? This is Dalek technology!" he said, tapping on the eye glass.
"Well it's very easy to hack," she said.
"No it isn't," the Doctor protested. He soniced the eyestalk. "Where are you?"
"Ship broke up when it crashed. I'm underground, I think. You coming to get me?" she asked.
"Doctor?" Amy's voice yelled.
There was a feedback squeal, the signal started breaking up. "Hey, hey! Souffle Girl, come back!" The Doctor yelled. She tried to reestablish the signal.
Amy blundered up grabbing the Doctor, unsteady in the snow. "I found you," she looked past him. "What's that?"
"Dalek surveillance system," he said. "Where's Rory?" He looked past her to the stranger in the snowsuit.
"There was another beam," Harvey said. "There," he pointed. "Over there." They ran. "Are you the rescue team?" Harvey asked hopefully, following them.
On the other side of the ridge they found a ravine. At the bottom, glinted bronze Dalek metal. A vertical stripe of melted snow pointed directly down into a fissure in the metal. Scattered snow showing where something had slid. Amy and the Doctor looked at each other. "Rory!" Amy yelled.
-
Rory lay on a wet concrete floor, water pouring in around him. Something green and glowing dripped onto his face. He wiped it away. He looked up. Directly into a Dalek eyestalk.
"Whoa!" He jerked and rolled frantically away from the base of the Dalek. He scrambled to his feet. It hadn't moved. Eyestalk still looking down.
Rory panted. He looked around. He was in a decrepit underground bunker. Cable and roof beams littered the floor. There were other Daleks standing around, immobile.
He considered, and carefully approached one of the Daleks. They looked rusty. Silent. As if they hadn't moved in centuries.
He approached one, watching for any signs of life. He carefully touched it, and jumped back.
It didn't move.
He placed a hand on it and shoved. It rolled back like a rusty old wagon.
He breathed a sigh of relief. He took out a pocket torch, turned it on, and went exploring.
( Read Part 2)
This is not so much a full rewrite, as simply an edit. This is the same story, but buffed up. I filled the plotholes, tweaked some of the designs, added a bit more tension in some of the scenes (they are in an asylum of insane Daleks, someone should be scared) and generally tried to do all those things that I think the script editor should be doing.
Maybe that's arrogant of me. But I thought the ideas in this story were so fantastic that it was a real shame that I found myself going "WTF?" at dumb things, and looking at my watch during the first 20 minutes of the episode, wondering when the story was going to start.
So if you had problems with Asylum of the Daleks, give this version a try, Asylum of the Daleks REVISED, maybe all the story needed was a bit of a tweak.
(I know loads of us on LJ are writers, I'd love your input on whether this version works or not, and what you liked or disliked about it. This is an editing exercise, to show how just small changes can make a big change in a story.)
(Author's Note: This story is light on descriptive detail, it assumes you've seen the episode and can fill in the descriptions from that. If you have not seen the episode yet and don't want to be spoiled, don't read this. This is, hopefully, an exercise in how only small editing changes can make a big difference. This is what the story might have been like with a few more edits.)
[Note: I had to split this into three parts to fit it in LJ's posts. But it's all here.]
-
Asylum of the Daleks REVISED
-
"First there were the Daleks." We fly in across a devastated alien city, the camera pans up and up, across the huge statue of a Dalek, old, battered, moldering.
"And then, there was a man who fought them." A woman's voice narrates. "And then, in time, he died." We close in on the Dalek eyestalk. "There are a few, of course, who believe this man somehow survived. And that, one day, he will return." A hooded woman stands behind the lens of the Dalek eye. "For both our sakes, dearest Hannah, we must hope these stories are true."
Within the statue's eyestalk, the woman hears a noise, she turns. Her feet are dirty, in broken sandals. A shadow on the wall...
"I got your message," the Doctor says. "Not many people can do that. Send me messages."
"I have a daughter," she says pleadingly. "She's in a Dalek prison camp. They say you can help."
"Do they?" he says quietly. "I wish they'd stop.
"I love your choice of meeting place," he says morosely, going to the window.
"They said I'd have to entreat you," she says behind him.
"Skaro," he says, looking out over the broken city. "Another planet of the Daleks. Broken and subjected."
He turns. "Who told you about me?"
"Does it matter?" she asks.
"Maybe not," he says quietly, intensely. "But you're very well informed." He reaches up and pulls her hood down. Revealing a woman, red hair, worried expression, dressed in ragged clothes.
"If Hannah's in a Dalek prison camp, tell me, why aren't you?" he turns, disbelief in his voice.
"I escaped."
He laughs, softly, sinister. "No. Nobody escapes the Dalek camps." He takes her hand, brushing his thumb across it. "You're very cold." He touches her cheek, she moves her head away. His eyes become worried. He looks around.
"What's wrong?" she asks.
He backs away from her. "It's a trap."
"What is?" she asks, stalking closer.
"You are." He backs off, eyes locked on her. "And you don't even know it."
She stares at him. Her eyes glow blue. The pupils as blue as a Dalek eyestalk, the irises black as metal, with tiny Dalek vanes around the edges. Her expression changes, dropping the worried mother, becoming calm and triumphant. Arrogant.
Her hand comes up. A Dalek gunstick emerges from her palm. She shoots.
Extermination noise, a bright flash of light throws the Doctor backward, he screams, the screen goes black.
-
Loud, raucous music, Amy appears, her hair in curls, heavy makeup, one fist comes up to the screen, HATE written on the knuckles. The other fist comes up, showing LOVE.
Lightbulbs flash. Big jewelry, a woman blowing a hairdryer at her, blowing her hair while a photographer snaps photos. Costume change, black leather and studs, black eyeliner. Amy doesn't look happy. Just doing her job.
A secretary comes up, waving for attention.
She nods to the photographers. "I'll just be a minute." She slides down the banister.
"Your husband is here," the secretary says.
She sashays off, annoyed, "I don't have a husband."
"Oh, well, apparently you still do," the secretary says with a nervous laugh, smiling at her.
She leaves him behind and walks into her dressing room, to find Rory sitting at her makeup table. He looks at her in the mirror, disgusted. He holds up a sheaf of papers.
"You have to sign these."
She stalks over and grabs them. "And then we're not married?" she demands.
He throws his hand up. "Just like magic."
She signs them, signing her legal name, Amelia Williams. Dotting the i with a decisive stroke.
She hands them back. "Can't chat," she brushes him off. "Working."
"Really?" he accepts the divorce papers. "I thought you were just pouting at a camera." He gets up and leaves. Both of them angry.
Just as he reaches the door, Amy falters, "Rory?" she entreats.
He holds his hands up in an, "I don't want to hear it," gesture and detours around her makeup artist who's just walked in.
A light on the mirror starts to flicker.
"Sorry, love, was I interrupting?" the makeup woman asks.
Amy shakes her head, "No," resigned.
"Gosh, look at you, you look so pale," she cups Amy's cheek. "Come on, take a seat, we'll soon sort that out." Amy sits down. The light continues to flicker.
Amy hears a wet, crunching noise behind her, senses something wrong, she turns, the light flickers, a Dalek gunstalk fires.
-
Outside, Rory hails a cab with the sheaf of papers. He looks downcast, but resolute. The cab pulls up and he gives directions, slipping into the back seat.
The driver nods at him, Rory goes back to studying the papers. The driver's eyes glow blue in the rearview mirror, looking like tiny Dalek lenses. He turns.
Light flares, shooting out of all the cab windows.
-
Rory, lying on a blank white surface. He wakes up, then jerks upward with a gasp.
He turns, Amy is standing beside him. They're in a featureless white round room.
She gives him a silent, defensive look. "Where are we?" he asks dubiously.
She nods toward a grilled window.
He looks outside, they are in space, surrounded by a Dalek fleet.
"So," he asks. "How much trouble are we in?"
The door whooshes open, a Dalek glides in. "How much trouble, Mr. Pond," the Doctor's voice says. He walks into the room after the Dalek, another behind him, clearly a prisoner.
He stalks into the room, looking cocky, and somewhat happy to see them. "Out of 10?" His face drops the cheerful facade, becoming ominous. "Guess."
The ceiling suddenly hisses hydraulically and breaks apart into wedges, opening up. The floor shakes, and starts to rise.
They stare around, nervous, keeping on their feet, all they can see is starspangled dome overhead.
They rise up, into the middle of an amphitheater. They look around, and their blood runs cold. Daleks. Everywhere. Thousands of them.
Ranks upon ranks of Daleks of every conceivable type. Silent. Watching. The Doctor stares around.
"Where are we?" Amy asks. "Spaceship, right?" The Doctor nods.
"Not just any ship," he says, his voice dark. "The Emperor's ship. This is the Convocation of the Daleks."
The floor locks into position. He turns to look at them. "They only convene like this in the most dire of circumstances."
Rory looks sick behind them.
"What do we do?" Amy asks.
"Wait for your chance," the Doctor says, his eyes darting toward the Tardis beyond them. "They wouldn't have brought us here if they wanted us dead."
He stepped back, away from the Ponds, and turns to the waiting Daleks. "Well come on then." He throws his arms wide. "You've got me. What are you waiting for? At long last, Here I Am!"
He turns in a circle, daring them.
"Save us."
The Doctor turns, startled, to the transparent tube at the head of the dais. The one that holds the only visible Dalek mutant.
He stares in disbelief, as if he isn't sure what he just heard.
"You will save us," the same Dalek voice says again.
"I'll what?" His arms flop down to his sides.
"You will save the Daleks," the Emperor said.
"Save the Daleks. Save the Daleks. Save the Daleks," the others all started chanting.
Amy and Rory stared around in consternation. Every Dalek, all several thousands of them, dome lights flashing, chanted the same thing.
"Well," the Doctor turned, a quizzical smile on his face. "This is new."
-
Intro sequence.
-
A plastic ballerina turned on a music box. "Carmen" blared in the background.
A young woman's voiceover. "Day 363." An attractive, long-haired young woman stands up, nails in her mouth. Voiceover, "The terror continues." She nails a board on top of other boards, all of them blocking an airlock.
"Also, made another souffle." She smiles and opens the oven, to find a burnt, fallen souffle. Her smile falls. "Very nearly." She pulls it out and dumps it in the trash, patting the lid to the beat of the music.
"Check defenses." She checks the airlock, to find that one of the boards has been removed. "They came again last night,' she says. "Still, always at night. Maybe they're vampires," she conjectures.
She lies in a hammock, the music box twirling in the foreground, the messy confines of her lifepod around her. Recording her voiceover diary on a handheld recorder. "Oh, and it's my mum's birthday. Happy birthday, mum. I did make you a souffle, but it was too beautiful to live," she says cheerily.
Suddenly something pounds on the door, heavily. Slurred Dalek voices demand, "You will let us enter!" a cacophony of babbled, aggressive Dalek voices make demands as they pound on the door.
Her expression falls, fear turning to determination. She turns up the music. Drowns them out. She puts her fingers in her ears, refusing to listen...
-
Back in the Emperor's ship, the Doctor paces.
"What's he doing?" Rory whispers to Amy.
The Doctor stalks, looking at everything, like a tiger in a cage.
The Daleks all watch him, silent, mesmerized, eyestalks swinging back and forth, tracking him as he moves.
"He's thinking," Amy says.
Rory bites his fingernails.
The Doctor stops, frowns. And adjusts his bowtie.
Amy grins. "And, he has a plan."
"We have arrived!" The Emperor's voice booms.
The Doctor takes a deep breath and steels himself. "Arrived where?"
"Doctor."
The human woman from the trap steps forward, eyes glowing blue. Dalek arrogance and pride in every line of her, revealing the tatters she wears as the costume they were.
"The Emperor will see you now," she intoned in a hybrid female/Dalek voice.
"The Emperor has been seeing me for the last few minutes," the Doctor snarked as he stalked up the incline.
He stopped beside her. He leaned in, staring into her Dalek-blue eyes. "What are you?" he asks curiously, quietly, "Some sort of advanced Roboman? Do you even remember who you were? Before they emptied you out and turned you into their puppet?" he asks sadly.
She answered in a human voice, her eyes changing becoming deliberately human, as if to emphasize her artificial nature. "My memories are only reactivated if they are needed to facilitate deep cover or disguise."
"You had a daughter," he reminded her.
"I know," she said. She leaned in, her voice turned Dalek. "I've read my file."
The Doctor jerked back.
She stared at him with blank blue eyes, and waved a hand toward the Emperor.
He stalked up the ramp. Planted himself before the Emperor. "Well?"
The Emperor's voice was screeching and harsh. "What do you know of the Dalek Asylum?"
"According to legend," the Doctor said. "You have a dumping ground. A planet where you lock up all the Daleks that go wrong. The battle-scarred, the insane, the ones even you can't control. It's never made any sense to me."
"Why not?" the Emperor asked.
"Because you'd just kill them," the Doctor said, as if stating the obvious.
"Why? Such destructiveness is beautiful. Such purity. If such genius of hate could be harnessed..." the Emperor said.
The Doctor sneered. "And you wonder why I despise you. You think destruction, hatred, is beautiful..." he trailed off, disgusted.
"Perhaps, that is why we have never been able to kill you..."
The Doctor jerked, as if suckerpunched.
The floor in the center of the atrium clanked open. Amy and Rory jumped back as a round portal opened in the floor.
The Doctor walked down to investigate.
The Robowoman followed him. "The Asylum," she said in her hybrid female/Dalek voice. "It occupies the entire planet."
They looked down through the hole in the floor, to the shielded planet below.
"How many Daleks are in there?" the Doctor asked.
"A count has not been made. Millions, certainly," she said.
"All alive?" the Doctor asked.
"It has to be assumed," she said in her human voice. "The asylum is fully automated. Supervision is not required."
"Armed?" Amy asked.
The Robowoman turned blue eyes on her. "Daleks are always armed."
"And they're all nuts," Rory said with resignation.
The Robowoman turned to him, decided to take it as a question, "They are not normal Daleks, at least."
Rory snorted. "Like that narrows it down."
A white Dalek moved to a communications panel. "This signal is being received from the very heart of the asylum," the robowoman said.
"Carmen" blared out over the sound system. So incongruous in this sterile Dalek space. The Doctor grinned and started ghost-conducting.
"What is this noise? Explain. Explain!" the White Dalek demanded.
The Doctor conducted, enjoying the music, arms raised over his head. "It's me."
"Sorry, what?" Rory demanded.
"It's me. Playing the triangle," the Doctor said, dinging an imaginary triangle. "Okay, so I got buried in the mix."
"'Carmen!' Lovely show!" he said, twirling and stalking back up to the communication's panel. Sonicing it with the screwdriver. He looked at it. "Someone's transmitting this. Have you considered tracking back the signal and talking to them?" The Daleks all stared at him blankly. "He asked the Daleks," he muttered.
"I'm guessing no, so..." He flipped the controls. "Hello. Hello. Carmen! Hello."
The young woman in the pod stopped and stared to hear a human voice. "Hello?" she asked with desperate hope.
"Hello, Carmen, come in!" the Doctor said.
The girl ran to her communications console. "Yes, yes! Hello, sorry," she sat down at her controls opening the channel. "Do you read me?"
"Yes!" the Doctor said, throwing his hands up in triumph. "Reading you loud and clear. Identify yourself and report your status."
"Hello," the girl said. "Are you real? Are you actually, properly real?"
"Yep, confirmed," the Doctor said, laughing. "Actually, properly real."
"Oswin Oswald," she stood to attention. "Junior Entertainment Manager, Starship Alaska. Current status, crashed and shipwrecked somewhere..." she looks toward the airlock, "not nice," she said with emphasis. "Been here a year, rest of the crew missing. Provisions good, but keen to move on."
"A year?" the Doctor said softly. "Are you okay, are you under attack?"
"Some local lifeforms," she said. "Been keeping them out."
"Do you know what those lifeforms are?" he asked.
"I know a Dalek when I hear one, yeah."
"What have you been doing?" he asked quietly, "On your own, against the Daleks? For a year?"
"Making souffles?" she said tentatively.
"Souffles? Against the Daleks?" he laughed softly in delight, looking at the Daleks. "Where do you get the milk?" he suddenly asked, curious.
"This conversation is irrelevant!" the White Dalek said, advancing menacingly.
"No it isn't!" the Doctor protested, turning to confront him. The Dalek cut off the signal.
"No!" the girl jumped forward to try to reestablish the link. "Hello. Hello!"
"Because a starliner has crashed into your asylum, damaging your shield," the Doctor continued loudly. "And if a ship's got in. Then everyone can get out. A tsunami of insane Daleks. Even you don't want that."
"The asylum must be cleansed!" the White Dalek decreed.
"Then why is it still here?" the Doctor asked. "You've enough firepower on this ship to blast it out of the sky."
"The asylum forcefield has regenerated itself, it can resist our barrage," the robowoman said behind him.
"Send a bomb," the Doctor said.
"All bombs have been neutralized in transit," she said.
"Then turn the shield off," the Doctor said, annoyed.
"We cannot. The shield generator is in the core of the planet, inaccessible. A signal from inside the asylum is blocking our access," she said.
"A small taskforce can sneak through the forcefield and turn off the signal. Surely you've got a way to put inmates in. Send a couple of Daleks," the Doctor said, stalking back down to the atrium floor.
"None have reported back," the White Dalek grated.
The Doctor stopped, halfway down the ramp. "Oh," he said in realization. He started clapping, sardonically. "That's good, that's very good." He stalked back up the ramp to confront the White Dalek, "And what do Daleks do when they can't do the job themselves..."
"The Predator of the Daleks will be deployed," the White Dalek said, looking him in the eye.
"I'm not a predator," the Doctor said firmly. "And even if I was, why would I turn off the signal for you?"
"Because you will have no other choice," the Emperor's voice boomed.
The two blank male robomen grabbed the Doctor by the arms. The female roboman slapped a Dalek bracelet on his wrist. "You will need this, it will protect you from the nanocloud."
"Nanocloud? What?" he said as the robomen hustled him down to the portal on the main floor.
"The gravity beam will convey you close to the source of the transmission," the robowoman said in her Dalek voice. "You must find a way to deactivate it from there."
"You're going to fire me at a planet?" the Doctor said, struggling against his captors. They held him still with rigid Dalek strength. "That's your plan?" he continued talking, trying to find an out. "I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it?"
He looked down into the hole at the planet below.
Rory spoke up. "In fairness, that is slightly your M.O."
"Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet!" the Doctor said.
The two Dalek guards by Amy and Rory backed off but kept their guns trained on them as the robowoman fitted them with bracelets.
"What do you want with them?" The Doctor protested.
"It is known the Doctor requires the help of associates," the White Dalek grated.
Rory threw his head back. "Oh, Good-O!" he shouted in frustration.
"Don't worry," the Doctor whispered. "We'll get through this, I promise."
"No offense, Doctor, but I'd really rather not go," Rory said, eying the distance to the Tardis. All the Daleks had their gunstalks aimed on them.
"Don't worry, Rory, it's not that bad," Amy said.
"Planet full of insane Daleks? Hello?" Rory retorted.
"The Doctor will find us a way out," Amy said with complete confidence. She looked at him.
The Doctor wrung his hands. He whispered. "They had to have built the Asylum at some point. Where there's a way in, there's a way out."
"And that is your motivation," the Emperor's voice boomed out.
The Doctor's voice rose, facetiously indignant. "It's impolite to eavesdrop on a private conversation."
The Roboman shoved him into the gravity beam. Amy and Rory followed.
"AAAAHHHHHH!" they screamed as they fell.
"Wrong way up! Wrong way up!" Rory yelled as he fell, head down, past them.
-
A black man in a snowsuit looked up from drilling at an airlock that was buried in the snow. Three gravity beams landed not far off.
He went to investigate.
He found Amy lying in the snow.
He approached cautiously, "Hello? Hello, who are you?" he asked.
Amy woke up. She stared up at him in surprise. "You okay?" he asked.
She stood up, dizzy, disoriented.
"Rory? Doctor!" she yelled, not seeing the men.
"I'm Harvey," the man in the snowsuit said, trying to calm her down. "Who's Rory?"
Amy stared at him, then rushed off, looking for the others.
"Where are you going?" he yelled, and scrambled after her.
-
On an incline, a Dalek eyestalk shoved up through the snow, looked around, and retreated. It repeated the procedure a little farther away. Finally it turned and spotted the Doctor, it studied him. He was lying in the snow, breathing, but unconscious.
He woke up, and started laughing when he found himself lying in snow. He tried to sit up, scrunching the snowdrifts with his elbows. Delighted with the sensation he scrunched some more, then noticed the eyestalk, watching him.
He closed one eye against the glare of the whiteness. The Dalek pupil widened as if getting a better view. "Carmen" suddenly started blaring from it.
"Sorry, sorry!" the Souffle Girl's voice replaced the music. "Pressed the wrong switch."
"Souffle Girl?" the Doctor asked in disbelief, staring at the eyestalk.
"You could always call me Oswin," she said back. "Seeing as that's my name."
The Doctor crawled toward the eyestalk. She could see him on her monitor. "You okay?" she asked.
"How are you doing that? This is Dalek technology!" he said, tapping on the eye glass.
"Well it's very easy to hack," she said.
"No it isn't," the Doctor protested. He soniced the eyestalk. "Where are you?"
"Ship broke up when it crashed. I'm underground, I think. You coming to get me?" she asked.
"Doctor?" Amy's voice yelled.
There was a feedback squeal, the signal started breaking up. "Hey, hey! Souffle Girl, come back!" The Doctor yelled. She tried to reestablish the signal.
Amy blundered up grabbing the Doctor, unsteady in the snow. "I found you," she looked past him. "What's that?"
"Dalek surveillance system," he said. "Where's Rory?" He looked past her to the stranger in the snowsuit.
"There was another beam," Harvey said. "There," he pointed. "Over there." They ran. "Are you the rescue team?" Harvey asked hopefully, following them.
On the other side of the ridge they found a ravine. At the bottom, glinted bronze Dalek metal. A vertical stripe of melted snow pointed directly down into a fissure in the metal. Scattered snow showing where something had slid. Amy and the Doctor looked at each other. "Rory!" Amy yelled.
-
Rory lay on a wet concrete floor, water pouring in around him. Something green and glowing dripped onto his face. He wiped it away. He looked up. Directly into a Dalek eyestalk.
"Whoa!" He jerked and rolled frantically away from the base of the Dalek. He scrambled to his feet. It hadn't moved. Eyestalk still looking down.
Rory panted. He looked around. He was in a decrepit underground bunker. Cable and roof beams littered the floor. There were other Daleks standing around, immobile.
He considered, and carefully approached one of the Daleks. They looked rusty. Silent. As if they hadn't moved in centuries.
He approached one, watching for any signs of life. He carefully touched it, and jumped back.
It didn't move.
He placed a hand on it and shoved. It rolled back like a rusty old wagon.
He breathed a sigh of relief. He took out a pocket torch, turned it on, and went exploring.
( Read Part 2)