i fought the daleks, and i am human. remember me.

[falling_voices]

Re: Asylum of the Daleks

er

well

that was a bloody mess of an episode, wasn't it?

Comments

[kim47]

Amy and Rory's break-up and reconciliation, for one, was something I was very much looking forward to - I knew something like this was coming since some set photos came out a few months ago of rory carrying divorce papers, and Pond Life very much carried that point home - but I assumed it was going to be part of the greater story arc, not a one-episode issue that will (presumably) never be talked of again. It had such potential for angst and pining on both of their parts, and you guys know I adore this trope - the best friends or lovers being drawn apart by their differences, and coming to reconcile over time?

akjsdh I was really looking forward to it, too. I do love that trope and to be honest I find it so, so believable for these two, between the stuff they included explicitly (Amy's infertility because of what they did to her at Demon's Run), and the stuff they didn't. Like the way Amy says "Is it bad that I've missed this?" and the look on her face that says this is what she really loves, this running with the Doctor, however much she knows it can't be forever. It seems like she's always going to be a little bit dissatisfied, just being back on Earth and trying to live a normal life, whereas Rory's always been somewhat of a reluctant companion, there because he loves Amy, but not really because he loves the life. And Rory's clearly still present insecurities over how much he loves Amy versus how much she loves him. THESE TWO HAVE SO MANY ISSUES and it would be gloriously messy to have them try and sort them out and I was really hoping for that. But, nope, cleaned up and tied in a bow in the first episode. And even though it's clear to me they still have all these issues, I doubt they'll be addressed :(

I'm almost 100% sure the dalek memory-wipe thing is going to be retconned, but I wouldn't mind waiting until the next showrunner to have it happen. I get bored of the daleks pretty quickly, so if they don't make another appearanace for a while, I'll be happy. RTD was awfully dalek-happy, and I feel like they need a little break. Moffat's not used them nearly as much, which I like, but I feel like if they were retired until the next person takes over, it would only be a good thing. (Not entirely related, but what I was writing below about Eleven's darkness made me think of it: my favourite Dalek episode ever is the one in series one. A lot of the episode was meh, but Nine's interactions with the Dalek were fantastic. I adore the ending, when he wants to kill it, when he's standing there, pointing a gun at it (and iirc, it was the first time in the renewed series that we really, really saw some darkness in the Doctor) and Rose won't let him kill it. Guh. Anyway, I guess I feel like the more and more you use and reuse the daleks, the less scary they become and ESPECIALLY with their collective memory of the doctor wiped. There's no point to them without those memories.)

Eleven is getting darker and darker, in a way that Ten never was - because Ten's darkness came from loneliness first and power second, and Eleven's is coming from a place between fear of himself and sheer megalomania.

I both like and dislike this. I think Matt is amazing at showing Eleven's darkness and it's usually glorious and terrifying to watch, but I fear them making him too dark, too, for lack of a better word, genocide-happy. It's good to see that side of The Doctor, one that he absolutely must have when you look at the history of the things he's done, but focusing on it too much makes me...uncomfortable? He's dark and dangerous and fucked up, but I like the little-boy adventurer we see as well, and I don't know how far you can push the dichotomy before it starts to ring false.

[falling_voices]

Absolutely. I mean, the fact that Amy came out of Demon's Run traumatized by her experience is actually canon, and the show has done very little to focus on that aspect of her personality beyond her ruthless cruelty to Madame Kovarian in The Wedding. They could have gone a long way portraying her attempting to cope with that, and dealing with her issues with Rory and their respective insecurities - which I think are very much the same in the end, because they both fear being left behind by those they love.

There's something very close and personal to me in the way Amy chose to send Rory away because she was scared of being rejected first (because it's obvious that's what it's about, not about Rory's feelings towards biological children in the first place - I'm sure Rory would suggest adopting children, for that matter - this is about what Demon's Run did to Amy as a mother, not about Rory), and it could have been dealt with and presented to us in a way that would have felt credible and intelligent, rather than just being displaced to second-best. It would have made a magnificent story arc, the two of them sorting through their issues and talking their shit out slowly, and instead we got a five minutes fight that was emotionally satisfying but intellectually bull.

What I found really interesting about the Asylum is that it's the Daleks' greatest fear for a reason: it's the place where Daleks with feelings are sent to die. It's the Daleks who used to be human; it's the Daleks who rebelled against their order; it's the Daleks who met the Doctor and were so unbalanced by the encounter that they had to be imprisoned. Moffat could have done something so interesting with that, with the fact that Eleven is faced with Oswin-as-a-Dalek and forced, like Nine was, to reassess his own beliefs about them - and instead they all got blown up and the other Daleks got dumbed down by forgetting the very thing that makes them ruthless. Retcon can't come fast enough; Moffat does have a way to come up with something really clever and then blow it off completely in favour of something a lot more obvious and with a lot less ground for future elaboration.

He's dark and dangerous and fucked up, but I like the little-boy adventurer we see as well

Yeah, I agree. That's what makes and breaks the Doctor, in the end, and going too much in one direction or the other would destroy the character. But I'm not sure this is going any farther than Ten's own dark moments - it's just a different form of danger growing inside him, and it's going to have different, potentially gorgeous consequences.