7x01 Asylum of the Daleks discussion post

[_thirty2flavors]

When we restarted this comm most people voted for us to have discussion posts for new episodes as they aired. Since we do rewatch posts on Saturday, we figure we'll do the discussion posts for the new episodes on Sunday, after you've hopefully had a bit of time to digest.

Comments

[foxmoonfade]

1. Daleks
This didn't bother me as much since as early as the end of season one there were thousands of Daleks again (though they were obliterated). I think it's weird that so many Daleks AND SKARO have returned, but no Time Lords and no Gallifrey. That also doesn't bother me as much, since they shouldn't bring it all back or else what was the point. It just makes me think that possibly the Time Lords/Gallifrey could come back eventually. JUST NOT UNDER MOFFAT, PLEASE.

The Daleks not killing the insane Daleks because they thought they were beautiful was stupid. The paradigm Daleks killed their predecessors because they were genetically imperfect. So did that mean they didn't hate as much? I don't know, just seemed like something that was intended to be profound, but came off like purple prose to me. BUT--over all, the Dalek stuff wasn't a deal breaker for me. What was closer to a deal breaker was how the Doctor dealt with them. I totally missed any form of hesitant humanity from the Doctor. It felt like all of his development with regards to treatment of life in the universe went out the window. But idk if that's just how Matt Smith plays the Doctor. I just felt like David Tennant conveyed stuff like that so plainly without having to even say anything. Eccleston too.

2. The Ponds
The divorce bit was poorly written, poorly developed, came out of nowhere and was resolved in like thirty seconds. I was really curious to hear a child's perspective on this issue, so I asked my friend's kid (who is 10) and he had no idea what was going on or why they were fighting.

While I understand that it's very possible they would have marital issues around this problem, I felt like it was just so terribly written! They needed to elude to the breaking down of communication a lot earlier. Also, it came off like Rory had no idea why he handed Amy divorce papers until that moment. And instead of reassuring her, he had to throw his 2,000 years in her face. Which, ok, I kind of understand saying something flippant like that when you have no fucking clue what's going on and you're at a loss for how to get the truth out of someone... but whatever. They really missed a huge mark when they didn't use Pond Life to explore their relationship breakdown. Even better, they should have explored it after Demon's Run.

Amy has gone through so much. SO MUCH... but it's never addressed. She is never fully in control of her body or her mind in any story arc. Her emotional turmoil and tendency to shut him out is understandable in that context, but it came off like she was mostly upset that she couldn't give her man a child. Did she want one herself? Had they even discussed adoption? I just really felt like the divorce bit was a) fan service: people had complained about the baby thing being glossed over, so this is his way of dealing with it and b) ratings bait: he wanted people to watch the damn episode more than anything.

Amy being a model...eh it seemed superfluous. She was never developed to to this extent so he could have made her anything and it wouldn't matter. I just didn't care. I don't know anything about her personal life other than she's married to Rory. Did she go to modeling school? Did she work as a kissogram to support her modeling pursuits? I see she posed for ads in the previous season, but that's the only clue. I felt like in RTD era, it didn't take a lot of diversion of the plot to establish basic, fundamental aspects about each companion's history and personal life that helped make them into a three dimensional person. I don't know why it's so hard for Moffat to put little things like that into the narrative.