Asylum of the Daleks Belated Proper Review
I am so mad. I wrote an entire review and then lj borked and deleted it all. Fail. So anyway, attempt at incisive meta Take Two begins...
Though this episode wasn't as good as The Eleventh Hour (which had the advantage of rebooting the show) or The Impossible Astronaut which was just epic in all kinds of ways, I still loved this episode, especially because it picked up the s5 and 6 theme of What's in a Name? and ran with it. I love this about Moffat Who- he is almost doing a Life on Mars. In that show, whether Sam was mad, in a coma or back in time was a blind for the show's real heart, which was a Wizard of Oz-esque story of where did Sam feel most home? All of the episodes came back to this. I feel that with Moffat's Who, the question is literally, Doctor Who? Who is The Doctor? What's in a descriptive name? Does a name truly define an identity? What does The Doctor want to become?
If RTD era Who was about pulling The Doctor apart after the ravages of The Time War, then Moffat's Who is about stitching him back together after that trauma. It's an exploration of friendship, loyalty, memory as power, names as power, dreams and hope as a kind of magic.
Vincent Van Gogh: It seems to me there's so much more to the world than the average eye is allowed to see. I believe, if you look hard, there are more wonders in this universe than you could ever have dreamt of.
The Doctor: You don't have to tell me...
- Vincent and The Doctor
Rory Williams: I don't understand. Why am I here?
The Doctor: Because you are. The universe is big. It's vast and complicated and ridiculous and sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles... and that's a theory. Nine hundred years and I've never seen one yet, but this will do me.
- The Pandorica Opens
Rory: So the Universe ended. You missed that. 102 A.D. I suppose this means you and I never get born at all. Twice in my case. You would have laughed at that. Please laugh. The Doctor said the Universe was huge and ridiculous and sometimes there were miracles. I could do with a ridiculous miracle about now. {The Doctor suddenly appears in a fez holding a mop}.
- The Big Bang
By the Christmas special when The Doctor cries human tears and realises that's OK because he has what he most needs- companionship, that's when the healing has nearlly been completed. s5 built him up for a change to a positive attitude. s6 gave him a family, in Amy and Rory as both companions and in laws and River as lover, companion child, and equal, the TARDIS as a person made real who always takes him where he needs to go.
But The Wedding of River Song threw a final challenge for The Doctor. He now knows life is full of miracles, he has a family and true friends but what is his purpose now Gallifrey and endless angst is gone? What is the price he is to pay for his new awakening? I think the answer will lie in s7. Or maybe the answer was already in A Good Man Goes to War and in River's speech...
River appearing: Well then soldier, how goes the day?
The Doctor: Where the hell have you been? Every time you've asked I have been there! Where the hell were you today?
River: I couldn't have prevented this.
The Doctor: You could have tried!
River: And so, my love, could you. {to Amy} I know you're not all right. But hold tight, Amy. Because you're going to be.
The Doctor: You think I wanted this? I didn't do this! This, this wasn't me!
River: This was exactly you. All this. All of it. You make them so afraid. When you began all those years ago, sailing off to see the Universe, did you ever think you'd become this? The man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name. "Doctor." The word for healer and wise man throughout the Universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean? To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word Doctor means "Mighty Warrior." How far you've come. And now they've taken a child. The child of your best friends. And they're going to turn her into a weapon just to bring you down. And all this, my love, in fear of you.
- A Good Man Goes to War
The Doctor needs to be forgotten to restore balance but what will be the price of doing so?
In Asylum of the Dalek's, The Doctor is a story, a powerful story and myth, whose function in civilisation's memory can change the entire make up of the galaxy (mirrored in The Wedding of River Song when all of time and space collapses for love and in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang when the same thing happens, and presumably at the fields of Trensilore when silence falls and the question is asked... oh Moffat you clever bastard)
Darla: First there were the Daleks. And then there was a man who fought them. And then in time he died. There are a few, of course, who believe this man somehow survived and that one day he will return. For both our sakes, dearest Hannah, we must hope these stories are true.
The Doctor: I got your message. Not many people can do that-send me messages.
Darla Von Karlsen (Anamaria Marinca): I have a daughter. Hannah. She's in a Dalek prison camp. They say you can help.
The Doctor: Do they? I wish they'd stop.
The Doctor was foolish in The Wedding of River Song to think that people did not care about The Doctor- to think that he didn't matter.
The Doctor: What's this? Oh, it's a timey-wimey distress beacon. Who built this?
River: I'm a child of the TARDIS. I understand the physics.
The Doctor: But that's all you've got is a distress beacon?
River: I've been sending out a message. A distress call. Outside the bubble of our time. The universe is still turning and I've sent a message everywhere. To the future and the past, the beginning and the end of everything. "The Doctor is dying. Please, please help."
The Doctor: River! River! This is ridiculous! That would mean nothing to anyone. It's insane. Worse, it's stupid! You embarrass me.
Amy: We barricaded the door. We've got a few minutes. Just tell him. Just tell him, River!
River: Those reports of the sun spots and the solar flares. They're wrong. They're aren't any. It's not the sun. It's you. The sky is full of a million million voices, saying, "Yes of course. We'll help." You've touched so many lives, saved so many people. Did you think when your time came you'd really have to do more than just ask? You've decided that the universe is better off without you. But the universe doesn't agree.
The Doctor: River, no one can help me. A fixed point has been altered. Time is disintegrating.
River: I can't let you die-
The Doctor: But I have to die!
River: Shut up! I can't let you die without knowing you are loved. By so many and so much. And by no one more than me.
The Doctor: River, you and I, we know what this means. We are ground zero of an explosion that will engulf all reality. Billions and billions will suffer and die.
River: I'll suffer if I have to kill you.
The Doctor: More than everything living thing in the universe?!
River: Yes.
s7 will be all about the ways that he matters and the ways that such a weapon can be dangerous as River already indicated in A Good Man Goes to War. The Daleks call The Doctor "The predator," and Oswin herself questions such a name and wonders.
Oswin: Why do they hate you so much? They hate you so much. Why?
The Doctor: I fought them many, many times.
Oswin: We have grown stronger in fear of you.
The Doctor: I know. I tried to stop.
Oswin: Then run.
The Doctor: What did you say?
Oswin: I'm taking down the force field The Daleks above have begun their attack. Run!
The Doctor: Oswin, are you-
Oswin: I am Oswin Oswald. I fought the Daleks and I am human. Remember me.
The Doctor: Thank you.
Oswin: Run! {to herself} Run, you clever boy. And remember.
In one 45 minute episode, all of Moffat Who was summed up; the power of memory, of remembering, the importance of naming, the confusion of identity, the power of hate and love. Even Amy and Rory folded into this with Amy's modelling shoot of Love/Hate and her inability to communicate with Rory after Demon's Run. The shared ballerina hallucination and the colour red also link Amy and Oswin together. As we know from The Girl Who Waited and The Pandorica Opens, even false memories can still feel real and if they feel real, they might as well be. Rory still remembers waiting 2000 years and Amy still remembers older Amy and no doubt, Oswin will remember being locked up in a Dalek body... but even with all of this pain, brought about because companions to The Doctor get put in bad situations as a result of proximity to the eye of the storm, they still give up all for him, because The Doctor matters. He is an enabler, he is a warrier, he is a predator and a protector, full of joy and full of rage, simplistic and yet so, so complex and really, regardless or where he goes and what he does, quite simply just a mad man who stole a box and ran away to have adventures.
Who isn't like Amelia Pond sitting on her suitcase waiting for someone like that? Who doesn't dream of the stars?
That's why Oswin gives The Doctor the greatest gift of all; a new beginning with his oldest enemies.
Dalek: Identify yourself!
Daleks: Identify!
The Doctor: Well it's me. You know me. The Doctor. The Oncoming Storm. The Predator.
Darla: Titles are not meaningful in this context. Doctor who?
Dalek: Doctor who?
The Doctor: Oh, Oswin. Oh, you did it to them all. You beauty.
Dalek: Doctor who! Doctor who!
The Doctor: Fellas, you're never gonna stop asking.
We, the audience, will never stop asking, if I've got Santa Moff pegged, because we don't need to know. Doctor Who has never been more post modern. Multiple interpretations have never been so inbuilt into the program. The Doctor is all manner of things to all manner of people and planets, the way it should be and always will be.
In a complex story within a story about the inherent reflexive nature of stories, in a story about history and oral history and memory, in a story about hope and love and the power it has in a vast, big, terrifying universe, in a story about forgetting and remembering and why that matters, in a story about why details matter, why metaphors and allegories matter, why myth making matters, I have never loved Doctor Who more.
Though this episode wasn't as good as The Eleventh Hour (which had the advantage of rebooting the show) or The Impossible Astronaut which was just epic in all kinds of ways, I still loved this episode, especially because it picked up the s5 and 6 theme of What's in a Name? and ran with it. I love this about Moffat Who- he is almost doing a Life on Mars. In that show, whether Sam was mad, in a coma or back in time was a blind for the show's real heart, which was a Wizard of Oz-esque story of where did Sam feel most home? All of the episodes came back to this. I feel that with Moffat's Who, the question is literally, Doctor Who? Who is The Doctor? What's in a descriptive name? Does a name truly define an identity? What does The Doctor want to become?
If RTD era Who was about pulling The Doctor apart after the ravages of The Time War, then Moffat's Who is about stitching him back together after that trauma. It's an exploration of friendship, loyalty, memory as power, names as power, dreams and hope as a kind of magic.
Vincent Van Gogh: It seems to me there's so much more to the world than the average eye is allowed to see. I believe, if you look hard, there are more wonders in this universe than you could ever have dreamt of.
The Doctor: You don't have to tell me...
- Vincent and The Doctor
Rory Williams: I don't understand. Why am I here?
The Doctor: Because you are. The universe is big. It's vast and complicated and ridiculous and sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles... and that's a theory. Nine hundred years and I've never seen one yet, but this will do me.
- The Pandorica Opens
Rory: So the Universe ended. You missed that. 102 A.D. I suppose this means you and I never get born at all. Twice in my case. You would have laughed at that. Please laugh. The Doctor said the Universe was huge and ridiculous and sometimes there were miracles. I could do with a ridiculous miracle about now. {The Doctor suddenly appears in a fez holding a mop}.
- The Big Bang
By the Christmas special when The Doctor cries human tears and realises that's OK because he has what he most needs- companionship, that's when the healing has nearlly been completed. s5 built him up for a change to a positive attitude. s6 gave him a family, in Amy and Rory as both companions and in laws and River as lover, companion child, and equal, the TARDIS as a person made real who always takes him where he needs to go.
But The Wedding of River Song threw a final challenge for The Doctor. He now knows life is full of miracles, he has a family and true friends but what is his purpose now Gallifrey and endless angst is gone? What is the price he is to pay for his new awakening? I think the answer will lie in s7. Or maybe the answer was already in A Good Man Goes to War and in River's speech...
River appearing: Well then soldier, how goes the day?
The Doctor: Where the hell have you been? Every time you've asked I have been there! Where the hell were you today?
River: I couldn't have prevented this.
The Doctor: You could have tried!
River: And so, my love, could you. {to Amy} I know you're not all right. But hold tight, Amy. Because you're going to be.
The Doctor: You think I wanted this? I didn't do this! This, this wasn't me!
River: This was exactly you. All this. All of it. You make them so afraid. When you began all those years ago, sailing off to see the Universe, did you ever think you'd become this? The man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name. "Doctor." The word for healer and wise man throughout the Universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean? To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word Doctor means "Mighty Warrior." How far you've come. And now they've taken a child. The child of your best friends. And they're going to turn her into a weapon just to bring you down. And all this, my love, in fear of you.
- A Good Man Goes to War
The Doctor needs to be forgotten to restore balance but what will be the price of doing so?
In Asylum of the Dalek's, The Doctor is a story, a powerful story and myth, whose function in civilisation's memory can change the entire make up of the galaxy (mirrored in The Wedding of River Song when all of time and space collapses for love and in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang when the same thing happens, and presumably at the fields of Trensilore when silence falls and the question is asked... oh Moffat you clever bastard)
Darla: First there were the Daleks. And then there was a man who fought them. And then in time he died. There are a few, of course, who believe this man somehow survived and that one day he will return. For both our sakes, dearest Hannah, we must hope these stories are true.
The Doctor: I got your message. Not many people can do that-send me messages.
Darla Von Karlsen (Anamaria Marinca): I have a daughter. Hannah. She's in a Dalek prison camp. They say you can help.
The Doctor: Do they? I wish they'd stop.
The Doctor was foolish in The Wedding of River Song to think that people did not care about The Doctor- to think that he didn't matter.
The Doctor: What's this? Oh, it's a timey-wimey distress beacon. Who built this?
River: I'm a child of the TARDIS. I understand the physics.
The Doctor: But that's all you've got is a distress beacon?
River: I've been sending out a message. A distress call. Outside the bubble of our time. The universe is still turning and I've sent a message everywhere. To the future and the past, the beginning and the end of everything. "The Doctor is dying. Please, please help."
The Doctor: River! River! This is ridiculous! That would mean nothing to anyone. It's insane. Worse, it's stupid! You embarrass me.
Amy: We barricaded the door. We've got a few minutes. Just tell him. Just tell him, River!
River: Those reports of the sun spots and the solar flares. They're wrong. They're aren't any. It's not the sun. It's you. The sky is full of a million million voices, saying, "Yes of course. We'll help." You've touched so many lives, saved so many people. Did you think when your time came you'd really have to do more than just ask? You've decided that the universe is better off without you. But the universe doesn't agree.
The Doctor: River, no one can help me. A fixed point has been altered. Time is disintegrating.
River: I can't let you die-
The Doctor: But I have to die!
River: Shut up! I can't let you die without knowing you are loved. By so many and so much. And by no one more than me.
The Doctor: River, you and I, we know what this means. We are ground zero of an explosion that will engulf all reality. Billions and billions will suffer and die.
River: I'll suffer if I have to kill you.
The Doctor: More than everything living thing in the universe?!
River: Yes.
s7 will be all about the ways that he matters and the ways that such a weapon can be dangerous as River already indicated in A Good Man Goes to War. The Daleks call The Doctor "The predator," and Oswin herself questions such a name and wonders.
Oswin: Why do they hate you so much? They hate you so much. Why?
The Doctor: I fought them many, many times.
Oswin: We have grown stronger in fear of you.
The Doctor: I know. I tried to stop.
Oswin: Then run.
The Doctor: What did you say?
Oswin: I'm taking down the force field The Daleks above have begun their attack. Run!
The Doctor: Oswin, are you-
Oswin: I am Oswin Oswald. I fought the Daleks and I am human. Remember me.
The Doctor: Thank you.
Oswin: Run! {to herself} Run, you clever boy. And remember.
In one 45 minute episode, all of Moffat Who was summed up; the power of memory, of remembering, the importance of naming, the confusion of identity, the power of hate and love. Even Amy and Rory folded into this with Amy's modelling shoot of Love/Hate and her inability to communicate with Rory after Demon's Run. The shared ballerina hallucination and the colour red also link Amy and Oswin together. As we know from The Girl Who Waited and The Pandorica Opens, even false memories can still feel real and if they feel real, they might as well be. Rory still remembers waiting 2000 years and Amy still remembers older Amy and no doubt, Oswin will remember being locked up in a Dalek body... but even with all of this pain, brought about because companions to The Doctor get put in bad situations as a result of proximity to the eye of the storm, they still give up all for him, because The Doctor matters. He is an enabler, he is a warrier, he is a predator and a protector, full of joy and full of rage, simplistic and yet so, so complex and really, regardless or where he goes and what he does, quite simply just a mad man who stole a box and ran away to have adventures.
Who isn't like Amelia Pond sitting on her suitcase waiting for someone like that? Who doesn't dream of the stars?
That's why Oswin gives The Doctor the greatest gift of all; a new beginning with his oldest enemies.
Dalek: Identify yourself!
Daleks: Identify!
The Doctor: Well it's me. You know me. The Doctor. The Oncoming Storm. The Predator.
Darla: Titles are not meaningful in this context. Doctor who?
Dalek: Doctor who?
The Doctor: Oh, Oswin. Oh, you did it to them all. You beauty.
Dalek: Doctor who! Doctor who!
The Doctor: Fellas, you're never gonna stop asking.
We, the audience, will never stop asking, if I've got Santa Moff pegged, because we don't need to know. Doctor Who has never been more post modern. Multiple interpretations have never been so inbuilt into the program. The Doctor is all manner of things to all manner of people and planets, the way it should be and always will be.
In a complex story within a story about the inherent reflexive nature of stories, in a story about history and oral history and memory, in a story about hope and love and the power it has in a vast, big, terrifying universe, in a story about forgetting and remembering and why that matters, in a story about why details matter, why metaphors and allegories matter, why myth making matters, I have never loved Doctor Who more.