I wrote meta?
Historically speaking, I’ve not been much for writing meta, but I am a recovering English major and writing mathematical proofs is really not the same as writing literary analysis. So. Here I am.
I suppose this all started a few days ago, when the last “Pond Life” images started leaking and we were all hiding under rocks crying over the potential of a Pond divorce. lonewytch wrote a short spec fic (which is lovely, by the way, and which you should read) on the subject, with the title taken from the Mumford & Sons song “Hold On To What You Believe.” I looked the song up and listened to it a lot, because it was a good song, and also because it made me worry less. (I have way too many feelings about Amy and Rory, oh goodness gracious.)
Since I had been listening to this song quite a lot, I was thinking about it when I was thinking about the new episode. And I think what the song is about is, in a lot of ways, what the episode is about and what Doctor Who is about in a larger sense. There’s not really room for all the lyrics, so I’ll put the link here, and just post the chorus:
But what if I was wrong?
But hold onto what you believed in the light
When the darkness has robbed you of your sight.
The Daleks
Oswin: Do you know how you make someone into a Dalek? Subtract love, add anger.
What does it mean to be a Dalek? A Dalek rages, a Dalek fears, a Dalek hates. The Daleks tell the Doctor at the beginning of the episode that this is not simply part of their nature but their ideal-hatred is their beauty. That’s why they can never kill the Doctor, and that’s why they make him so sick. And that is why he can never stop fighting them, even if it turns him into a monster as well, because the Daleks want to drive love out of the world. That is something the Doctor cannot brook, and that is why we love the Doctor.
The Daleks don’t even talk about what they do. The average Dalek gets one line of dialogue-“Exterminate.” They’re made of weapons and they’re made into weapons and they’re extremely efficient and they kill, kill, kill. Now, the Doctor isn’t efficient; he’s not even particularly coordinated. But he can ramble and he can make diversions, and while the Daleks are robots with slugs where their souls should be, the Doctor is a man with two hearts. The weapon he has, à la Harry Potter (which I know only through fandom osmosis, sorry), is love[1].
The Doctor
The Doctor: Well it's me. You know me. The Doctor. The Oncoming Storm. The Predator.
The Doctor has been working very hard for his absolution since the Time War, but right after he fakes his death he runs into his worst enemies, who not only remember him but call him “Predator,” throw him into a deathtrap full of the kinsmen that even they are afraid to face, and leave him to fight his way out with the knowledge that should he escape, they will kill him on sight. And Amy and Rory are fighting. It’s not a very good start to the day. In fact, it looks like the setup for another of those days where the Doctor tries to fix everything and realizes that he’s making the universe worse. Oswin goes so far as to tell him that the Daleks “have grown stronger in fear of you.” How can he keep fighting on the side of love when he’s forced to confront the very Daleks that have survived him in battle? He isn’t, in any uncomplicated way, a good man anymore, much as he’d like to be.
The Doctor is scared. He’s much less gleeful in this episode than in others-he really seems displeased to be in the Parliament of the Daleks, he’s very worried about both Amy and Rory’s marriage and Amy’s potential conversion, and we rarely see him as genuinely frightened as he is when he encounters the Daleks in the wreck of the Alaska. But he keeps going, because he doesn’t know how to give up. He can’t leave the TARDIS in that horrid Dalek ship, and he can’t leave Amy and Rory converting slowly and painfully on that teleporter, and he can’t leave Oswin all by herself for the years to come, not if there’s anything he hasn’t tried yet. There’s nothing to see and there’s nowhere to run, but he holds on to what he knows-that he’s here because he is, that the universe is big. It's vast and complicated and ridiculous and sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles[2].
Amy and Rory
Rory: How long can we wait?
Amy: The rest of our lives.
Amy and Rory have been going through a tunnel for a long time. Amy was taken, their baby was stolen, and Rory can barely keep both feet on the ground. They watched the Doctor die and had to carry the secret. They’ve both spent more time waiting-for each other, for the Doctor, for River, for answers-than is really fair to either of them. You’re only young once, but they’ve lived so many lives now that it must be getting properly exhausting. And they’re not very good at talking about any of it. Amy can’t give Rory the family he’s always dreamed of, and Rory remains very insecure in himself. Amy still doesn’t see that she’s all Rory’s ever really wanted, and Rory still doesn’t realize that Amy pushes him away only because she does love him. In trying to give him a chance at what she thinks he wants, Amy inadvertently convinces him that she doesn’t really love him after all they’ve been through. Ouch.
But who does Amy call for first when she comes round in the snow? And who does Rory want to give his wristband to, even when he really doesn’t think she loves him? And how do you keep from becoming a Dalek? It’s Daleks who won’t talk about anything, who hide away their own families, who let fear and anger and unworthiness rule their lives. You don’t have to go to the Asylum to become a Dalek. Doesn’t she seem a bit too angry to you? Bad things often begin in good intentions. But you can stop it the same way it starts. You stop running from love.
Amy and Rory are stuck on a garbage planet with only four seconds to live if their hope holds out. All they have left is what they used to believe-that whatever happened, they’d have each other. They’re willing to stake the rest of their lives on it. And that’s what gets them home.
Oswin
Oswin: I am Oswin Oswald. I fought the Daleks and I am human. Remember me.
How do you make someone into a Dalek? You take away their love, you make them angry. Oswin had a full conversion. She is not human by the time we meet her; she is a slug in a robot suit, trapped in a little white room. But something went wrong with Oswin-or very, very right. The Daleks couldn’t take her love. The first time we see her, she is listening to opera, baking a soufflé, recording a message for her mum. Daleks don’t have hobbies. Daleks don’t miss their families. Even the converted only register their memories very mechanically. Darla shows us as much.
Oswin fancies girls, and Oswin fancies boys. She is afraid of monsters, but she doesn’t let that fear rule her life. She chats with everyone to keep them safe and cheerful. Living in the shell of a dying ship all alone has naturally shaken her, but while she’s wary she hasn’t become jaded. She’s been hooked into the Dalek web for a whole year, and what has she come up with? Eggs, from “Exterminate.” They haven’t been able to take her from herself.
Oswin, more than anyone, has held on to what she believed in the light, even when that meant living in a dream because the world was too terrible to look at. When she is forced to confront the reality of the Asylum, she doesn’t crumble. As her heart breaks and she realizes what the Doctor says is true, she continues to insist that her name is Oswin, that she is human, that she fought the Daleks and must not be forgotten. She will not be another cog in their machine.
If Oswin won’t give up her humanity or her hope, then how can the Doctor? How can Amy or Rory? In her last moments, she wipes the slate clean and dismantles the force field. And this is the legacy of the Asylum of the Daleks: the Daleks will not remember the man who killed them, but the Doctor will remember the Dalek who saved him. The Dalek who wasn’t really a Dalek at all but a girl, a human girl. And the weapon she had was love.
Cited:
[1] Having not read any of the Harry Potter books, I don't have a clue where the quote "The weapon we have is love." originates. Thanks to hermitknut for identifying it as the slogan of The Harry Potter Alliance. It also seems to have appeared in a song by Harry and the Potters.
[2] “The Pandorica Opens”