I haven't been following Who religiously any more, but I watched Asylum (and I must watch the dinosaur/spaceship episode even I don't think it'll be as good as it sounds).
My impression was that it was an awesome concept: the idea of all the defective daleks, the ones murderous by dalek standards, giant daleks? daleks almost out of power, even daleks with feelings etc all imprisoned together is quite chilling and provocative.
But the episode itself was a bit "meh". It seemed rather contrived that the Daleks spring an elaborate trap on the doctor which just happens to work the one time they want to capture him and not kill him. And that they literally push a reset button at the end of the episode. And that they introduce the "predator" nomenclature, which could have been quite scary, only to wipe it away at the end of the episode.
And there were a lot of things that didn't absolute have to make sense, but was a bit gratuitous. If Dalek teleporters can teleport inside the Tardis, why don't the Daleks teleport a bomb in? If they don't know who the Doctor is, why don't they just zap him when he steps out of the Tardis? Surely all the characters know whether human ships of that period carry emergency supplies good for a year or not, but it varies between episodes, so it's a very cheap trick for the episode to casually assume that Oswin has food for a year, and then suddenly pull a switch and say "Aha! But she doesn't have eggs! Isn't that a super-clever hint for all the viewers who memorised WHICH emergency supplies are carried on starships? Except, each episode makes that sort of thing up as it goes along, so the Doctor is clever only insofar as the plot forces the viewer to be stupid however observant they ah."
And they didn't do much with the concept of the Asylum planet. The mention of Daleks destroyed by the doctor was interesting, but otherwise, most of the daleks were just powered down, and the big idea was the dalek virus which (a) was interesting, but didn't have much to do with the asylum planet specifically and (b) if they have that why waste time conquering planets with physical Daleks, just drop the virus, and poof, instead win.
My impression was that it was an awesome concept: the idea of all the defective daleks, the ones murderous by dalek standards, giant daleks? daleks almost out of power, even daleks with feelings etc all imprisoned together is quite chilling and provocative.
But the episode itself was a bit "meh". It seemed rather contrived that the Daleks spring an elaborate trap on the doctor which just happens to work the one time they want to capture him and not kill him. And that they literally push a reset button at the end of the episode. And that they introduce the "predator" nomenclature, which could have been quite scary, only to wipe it away at the end of the episode.
And there were a lot of things that didn't absolute have to make sense, but was a bit gratuitous. If Dalek teleporters can teleport inside the Tardis, why don't the Daleks teleport a bomb in? If they don't know who the Doctor is, why don't they just zap him when he steps out of the Tardis? Surely all the characters know whether human ships of that period carry emergency supplies good for a year or not, but it varies between episodes, so it's a very cheap trick for the episode to casually assume that Oswin has food for a year, and then suddenly pull a switch and say "Aha! But she doesn't have eggs! Isn't that a super-clever hint for all the viewers who memorised WHICH emergency supplies are carried on starships? Except, each episode makes that sort of thing up as it goes along, so the Doctor is clever only insofar as the plot forces the viewer to be stupid however observant they ah."
And they didn't do much with the concept of the Asylum planet. The mention of Daleks destroyed by the doctor was interesting, but otherwise, most of the daleks were just powered down, and the big idea was the dalek virus which (a) was interesting, but didn't have much to do with the asylum planet specifically and (b) if they have that why waste time conquering planets with physical Daleks, just drop the virus, and poof, instead win.
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