New Who 7.1 Asylum of the Daleks
I watched this last night with big_daz, and felt so-soish about it. It had a few neat ideas and surprises - the new companion way before we expected her; lots of stuff about remembering, forgetting, humans-who-are-Daleks and Daleks-who-are-humans - but didn't really wow me. There wasn't much in the way of punchy character moments or intriguing puzzles. I guess in a way that shows how the bar has been raised over the course of New Who, by both Rusty and the Moff. This was a decent enough episode really, but I was somehow expecting more. I've watched it again this morning to see how knowing about Oswin's real situation from the start changes it, and spotted some things which made me slightly more impressed than I was last night. But then again I've also confirmed that some of the things which didn't appear to make sense last night genuinely don't, and also been made angry by a line which I missed the first time round, but which the internet did not. So in the end I feel much the same as after the first viewing - so-soish, but with an extra hint of *growl*.
My obviously very spoilerific thoughts after re-watching are gathered below under a series of headings.
Things which didn't make sense
The very idea of a Dalek Parliament, as swisstone has pointed out. If I didn't know better, I might almost think this was done just for the sake of a lot of cool shots of rank upon rank of Daleks screeching 'Save us!' But obviously that would be unfair!
The nature of the Dalek Asylum, and the mission which the Daleks set for the Doctor. Surely it is very, very silly indeed to set up a forcefield around an asylum which can only be operated from within, when its main purpose must be to keep the inmates in?
Who did the full Dalek conversion on Oswin? The other Asylum inmates after she had crashed there? Or the non-insane Daleks, who perhaps after all occasionally visit the planet to drop off and / or treat its inmates? If the Daleks don't visit the planet occasionally, who chains up the inmates or treats them in an 'intensive care' suite? If they do, how do they get through the forcefield, given than it can only be operated from within? If they did convert Oswin, they ought to have known all along what the source of the signal from the Asylum was - though of course it's perfectly plausible that they did, and withheld this information from the Doctor in order to trap him on the Asylum and kill two birds with one stone by blowing them both up at the same time.
The Doctor notes that the Daleks are 'too scared' to go down and deal with whatever has got into the Asylum, but later tells Amy, who is afraid of being turned into a Dalek, that it is OK to be scared, because 'scared isn't Dalek'. As above, it is quite likely that the Daleks weren't actually scared at all, and were just pretending to be so that they could trick the Doctor. But if so, this idea got lost in production.
How exactly did the Alaska manage to crash on the Asylum anyway if the planet is protected by a forcefield? Again, maybe it didn't really, and this was all part of the Daleks' elaborate plan - but if so, it would have been nice to include an in-story reveal about this.
Careful structuring and symbolism
It seems odd that a story whose plot suffers from the basic problems set out above can also be carefully structured, but Asylum of the Daleks shows that the two are not incompatible. It's just that the careful structuring is all about foreshadowing and thematic resonances, creating a sense of links between different parts of the story but without necessarily implying logical coherence. I think this is quite a serious flaw with Moffat's writing generally - the structuring is first-class, but the world-building and plotting isn't always. Anyway, these were the bits of structuring and symbolism which particularly struck me:
As pointed out on Planet Zog Blog, the pre-credits sequence in which the Doctor meets with the red-haired, booted lady (Wikipedia says her name is Cassandra, but parrot_knight tells me in the comments below it is actually Darla) inside the head of a giant Dalek statue sets us up right from the start for Oswin's situation later on. It mainly made me think of the 15-mile-high statue of Arthur Dent throwing a vending machine cup on the planet Brontitall, though.
The first post-credit shot is also important, but in order to explain why I first need to say that I think this person on the doctorwho community is dead right in saying that Amy's hallucination of Daleks as people was more than just a hallucination. Because she is becoming 'tuned in' to the path-mind at that point, she is seeing "the people those Daleks used to be" - people who have been converted in the same way as Oswin. On that basis, it matters a lot that the first post-credit shot, which introduces us to Oswin's fantasy-world, is of a red-headed music-box ballerina. Later on, one of the 'humans' from Amy's hallucination is basically this figure - a little red-headed ballerina girl doing pirouettes. So this points from the start to Oswin also being tuned in to the other once-human Daleks around her. One of them was once this little girl, and Oswin has incorporated that image into her fantasy-world.
Oswin's first question when she establishes direct contact with the Doctor is 'Are you real?', again establishing the key theme of the episode straight away.
And we get some neat shots of both Rory and then Amy seen through mirrors in the make-up suite at the location where Amy is doing her modelling shoot. I don't think this meant anything in particular within the episode itself, but mirror images were a bit of a running visual theme throughout last season as well. I take it as nothing much more than part of the signature 'look' of the series now, evoking generalised ideas about parallel worlds and inversions. But it's interesting to see that it continues into this season, and wasn't just a feature of the last. Unless, of course, it's simply that mirrors and reflections are just really common and crop up in pretty much every episode of every television series ever. That's also possible.
Oswin
Well, obviously the big surprise of the episode was Jenna-Louise Coleman cropping up in it, and then dying at the end, when we all thought she wasn't due to join the series full-time until the Christmas episode. Her character's name in this episode was Oswin Oswald, and pre-series publicity and speculation has had the name of the new companion as 'Clara Oswin'. This name may have been part of the bluff, but if it's still correct then it seems likely that the new companion, Clara Oswin, will turn out to be a relative of Oswin Oswald who looks just like her - just as has been done in the past with Anne Chaplet / Dodo, Gwyneth / Gwen Cooper and Adeola Oshodi / her cousin Martha Jones. But we'll see.
Anyway, the character of Oswin in this episode got a little bit annoying around the half-way point with her smug smart-arsery, but once I understood her true situation at the end I was happy to forgive that. Of course she would create a slightly brittle 'I'm so awesomely-cool' persona to try to get herself through her awful situation. Meanwhile, her reaction when she realised the truth spoke of a much more real strength, as did the very fact that she had managed to maintain a sense of her humanity after being converted so much more effectively than any of the other human-conversions whom Amy saw in the Asylum. That said, she did say one line which really annoyed me, but I'll deal with that under a different heading below. Basically, if this is what the new full-time companion is going to be like, then I provisionally quite like her. But I'm reserving full judgement until I get the chance to see what she's going to be like under more normal circumstances.
Amy and Rory
Argh! I'm afraid I couldn't buy into Amy and Rory's emotive reunion at all, because it's blindingly obvious that they would never have needed to break up at all if they had just talked about their issues properly in the first place! And Amy bears all the responsibility for that. Did she really kick Rory out after everything they'd been through without just saying to him "Darling, I've discovered I can't have children normally any more after my forced alien pregnancy, and I'm kind of upset about that, so I'd like to talk about it. Also, I know you really want kids, so can you tell me what you want to do in this situation, and maybe we can work through it and find a way of dealing with it within our relationship? Like perhaps we could look into adoption maybe?" It's not that hard!
Mind you, her willingness to undergo pointless martyrdom for his sake without discussing what he actually wants first is at least consistent with what Older Amy did in The Girl Who Waited - making the decision on Rory's behalf to given him the life with Young Amy which she had judged would be better for him. It's not a characteristic I admire very much, but at least it is a consistently-written flaw.
Meanwhile, when Amy and Rory realise that the Doctor has given her his wristband without telling them, Amy makes some comment about how he is a Time Lord so didn't need it, and we cut to a shot of him fixing his bow-tie - established earlier in the episode as the gesture he makes when he is fact 'fixing' their relationship. So we are given to understand that he deliberately didn't tell them that Amy would actually be fine anyway in order to trick Rory into trying to save her, and therefore salvage their relationship. OK, fine. But! The Doctor has really let Amy get into quite a lot of danger already by the time this happens, including allowing her to wander into a roomful of Daleks while under the influence of a hallucination which makes her think they are people. Isn't this rather irresponsible? I know, that's kind of the Doctor's modus operandi anyway - but really, he could have just given her his wristband straight away if he didn't need it. It seems a huge risk to take just to set up a reunion between Amy and Rory (and this seemed particularly stupid to me as a viewer, given how unnecessary the whole reason for their break-up was in my view in the first place).
Racist, sexist and biphobic clap-trap
Yeah, so this is the stuff that made me growly. The first two things I noticed myself, but the third I didn't pick up on the first time in amongst all the snappy dialogue. The internet noticed, though.
The one black character not only dies first, but is in fact already dead before the story even begins. In this particular story, this is a clear consequence of black people only usually being cast as supporting characters (though obviously Martha Jones is the exception to that rule). There are only (really) three human characters in this story besides the Doctor and his companions: Cassandra Darla who summons the Doctor at the beginning, the black guy and Oswin. (Yes, there are the people at Amy's modelling shoot, the bus-driver who 'acquires' Rory and the people in Amy's hallucination, but these are all tiny bit-parts). Developed yet secondary characters are very often cannon-fodder, and that's exactly what happens here. As an isolated incident, fine, but with Steven Moffat it's a recognised trope (see the 'Live Action TV' folder at that link).
Amy giving up the man she loves because she can't 'give' him the children he wants. Without apparently even discussing what his priorities actually were, considering adoption or anything. This whole set-up is just stupid, as I've already said. But even leaving aside the fact that Amy would surely have discussed this with Rory if she really loved him, it also rests on the idea that a woman's only function is to give a man children, and that if she can't do this then it's perfectly logical to launch herself into massive and unnecessary acts of self-punishment. WTF?
The line I didn't catch first time round, spoken by Oswin to Rory when she is trying to guide him through the Asylum: "Lovely name, Rory. First boy I every fancied was called Rory. Actually, she was called Nina. I was going through a phase. Just flirting to keep you cheerful!" You know, when I was thirteen, I developed a massive crush on a girl in my class. I'd had sort of childish crushes on female teachers before, but this was the first time I'd fallen for a girl of my own age, and in a full-blown romantic-sexual way. It was all-consuming, to the extent that I couldn't hide it, try as I might - and I did try, because I knew full well I wasn't 'supposed' to feel like that. So some of my classmates noticed, and one of them took me into an empty classroom to talk about it. She meant well and was trying to help, but one of the things she said to me was, "It doesn't necessarily mean you're a lesbian. It might just be a phase you're going through." Hers wasn't the only voice I listened to at this time, of course. There were also advice columns in magazines, my parents saying things like "I don't know why 'they' have to rub it in everybody's faces!" and the general tittering attitude of my friends. But they all added up to much the same sorts of messages - not normal, not wanted, just a phase. And that's why I pushed it down inside, treated it as a weird kink in myself that I would just have to keep in its place, and didn't do anything about it for another eight years. So, frankly, FUCK YOU Moffat, still telling that shit to the next generation. Fuck you.
Things that were fun / cool / scary
Oh dear, I don't feel much like enthusing about these now after that little rant above. That's how just one crappy throwaway biphobic line makes me feel about the rest of the show around it. Still, there were things I enjoyed, like:
The Doctor's line when he walks into Amy and Rory's cell on the Dalek ship: 'How much trouble are we in, Pond? Out of ten? Eleven.' It's not the first time we've had a joke based on the numerical incarnation of the Doctor, of course - The Eleventh Hour made a whole episode title out of it. But they always tickle me.
Amy relishing being fired at a planet and escaping zombie Daleks.
Rory's experience in a dripping underworld full of mad, rusty Daleks just waking up from a long slumber actually was reasonably scary. Although on the whole I felt that the madness of the Asylum inmates was not particularly well-conveyed. Daleks are pretty insane anyway, so it's rather difficult to portray them as more than usually so.
Amy's hallucination of Daleks-as-the-people-they-once-were. It was creepy and (having seen it recently) very Carnival of Souls-esque - the beckoning guy and the dancing couple are both straight from the dream-sequences in the pavilion.
The Daleks all yelling "Doctor Who?" at the end. Much like the 'Eleven' line earlier, these are always good value.
Past continuity
The Radio Times published a Dalek bingo card so that we could spot all the different types featured in this episode. And they certainly were there, stretching right back across the whole history of the series. I'm not sure how that is supposed to work in light of a) the Time War and b) the fact that several of the different factions of Daleks have historically been enemies of one another. What I'm glad about, though, is that this didn't matter a jot within this story. Call me a massive racist if you like, but honestly, all Daleks look pretty much the same, and any plot which rests on the audience spotting that one lot of them are a slightly different design from another is doomed to horrible failure. So I am very, very glad indeed that Moffat has basically announced in this episode that he is not going to bother with that, and is just going to treat them all as a single race.
I had thought Skaro had been completely wiped out in the Time War, but apparently there is some explainy stuff in Doctor Who: The Adventure Games about how the Daleks got it back with something called the Eye of Time or something. OK, whatever.
This morning I geekily looked up the names of the battles which the Doctor says that the inhabitants of the intensive care unit survived (like a lot of other people, I'm sure). I managed to identify all but one, and sure enough they are real, and indeed all from the Classic series: Spiridon, Kembel, Iridius (can't track this one down), Vulcan, Exxilon. Exxilon is perhaps particularly interesting, because it is the home of a Great City full of traps in the Third Doctor story Death to the Daleks, and thus bears a thematic similarity to the Asylum full of lurking dangers in this story.
And this person on the doctorwho community has already pointed out the deliberate visual reference to The Daleks, which was also generally evoked by things like the Dalek-shaped doorways throughout the Asylum.
Future implications
Now that we know that people who appear to be normal human beings can actually be Sleeper Daleks, they could be anywhere. I'm pretty sure this will come up again.
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.
My obviously very spoilerific thoughts after re-watching are gathered below under a series of headings.
Things which didn't make sense
The very idea of a Dalek Parliament, as swisstone has pointed out. If I didn't know better, I might almost think this was done just for the sake of a lot of cool shots of rank upon rank of Daleks screeching 'Save us!' But obviously that would be unfair!
The nature of the Dalek Asylum, and the mission which the Daleks set for the Doctor. Surely it is very, very silly indeed to set up a forcefield around an asylum which can only be operated from within, when its main purpose must be to keep the inmates in?
Who did the full Dalek conversion on Oswin? The other Asylum inmates after she had crashed there? Or the non-insane Daleks, who perhaps after all occasionally visit the planet to drop off and / or treat its inmates? If the Daleks don't visit the planet occasionally, who chains up the inmates or treats them in an 'intensive care' suite? If they do, how do they get through the forcefield, given than it can only be operated from within? If they did convert Oswin, they ought to have known all along what the source of the signal from the Asylum was - though of course it's perfectly plausible that they did, and withheld this information from the Doctor in order to trap him on the Asylum and kill two birds with one stone by blowing them both up at the same time.
The Doctor notes that the Daleks are 'too scared' to go down and deal with whatever has got into the Asylum, but later tells Amy, who is afraid of being turned into a Dalek, that it is OK to be scared, because 'scared isn't Dalek'. As above, it is quite likely that the Daleks weren't actually scared at all, and were just pretending to be so that they could trick the Doctor. But if so, this idea got lost in production.
How exactly did the Alaska manage to crash on the Asylum anyway if the planet is protected by a forcefield? Again, maybe it didn't really, and this was all part of the Daleks' elaborate plan - but if so, it would have been nice to include an in-story reveal about this.
Careful structuring and symbolism
It seems odd that a story whose plot suffers from the basic problems set out above can also be carefully structured, but Asylum of the Daleks shows that the two are not incompatible. It's just that the careful structuring is all about foreshadowing and thematic resonances, creating a sense of links between different parts of the story but without necessarily implying logical coherence. I think this is quite a serious flaw with Moffat's writing generally - the structuring is first-class, but the world-building and plotting isn't always. Anyway, these were the bits of structuring and symbolism which particularly struck me:
As pointed out on Planet Zog Blog, the pre-credits sequence in which the Doctor meets with the red-haired, booted lady (Wikipedia says her name is Cassandra, but parrot_knight tells me in the comments below it is actually Darla) inside the head of a giant Dalek statue sets us up right from the start for Oswin's situation later on. It mainly made me think of the 15-mile-high statue of Arthur Dent throwing a vending machine cup on the planet Brontitall, though.
The first post-credit shot is also important, but in order to explain why I first need to say that I think this person on the doctorwho community is dead right in saying that Amy's hallucination of Daleks as people was more than just a hallucination. Because she is becoming 'tuned in' to the path-mind at that point, she is seeing "the people those Daleks used to be" - people who have been converted in the same way as Oswin. On that basis, it matters a lot that the first post-credit shot, which introduces us to Oswin's fantasy-world, is of a red-headed music-box ballerina. Later on, one of the 'humans' from Amy's hallucination is basically this figure - a little red-headed ballerina girl doing pirouettes. So this points from the start to Oswin also being tuned in to the other once-human Daleks around her. One of them was once this little girl, and Oswin has incorporated that image into her fantasy-world.
Oswin's first question when she establishes direct contact with the Doctor is 'Are you real?', again establishing the key theme of the episode straight away.
And we get some neat shots of both Rory and then Amy seen through mirrors in the make-up suite at the location where Amy is doing her modelling shoot. I don't think this meant anything in particular within the episode itself, but mirror images were a bit of a running visual theme throughout last season as well. I take it as nothing much more than part of the signature 'look' of the series now, evoking generalised ideas about parallel worlds and inversions. But it's interesting to see that it continues into this season, and wasn't just a feature of the last. Unless, of course, it's simply that mirrors and reflections are just really common and crop up in pretty much every episode of every television series ever. That's also possible.
Oswin
Well, obviously the big surprise of the episode was Jenna-Louise Coleman cropping up in it, and then dying at the end, when we all thought she wasn't due to join the series full-time until the Christmas episode. Her character's name in this episode was Oswin Oswald, and pre-series publicity and speculation has had the name of the new companion as 'Clara Oswin'. This name may have been part of the bluff, but if it's still correct then it seems likely that the new companion, Clara Oswin, will turn out to be a relative of Oswin Oswald who looks just like her - just as has been done in the past with Anne Chaplet / Dodo, Gwyneth / Gwen Cooper and Adeola Oshodi / her cousin Martha Jones. But we'll see.
Anyway, the character of Oswin in this episode got a little bit annoying around the half-way point with her smug smart-arsery, but once I understood her true situation at the end I was happy to forgive that. Of course she would create a slightly brittle 'I'm so awesomely-cool' persona to try to get herself through her awful situation. Meanwhile, her reaction when she realised the truth spoke of a much more real strength, as did the very fact that she had managed to maintain a sense of her humanity after being converted so much more effectively than any of the other human-conversions whom Amy saw in the Asylum. That said, she did say one line which really annoyed me, but I'll deal with that under a different heading below. Basically, if this is what the new full-time companion is going to be like, then I provisionally quite like her. But I'm reserving full judgement until I get the chance to see what she's going to be like under more normal circumstances.
Amy and Rory
Argh! I'm afraid I couldn't buy into Amy and Rory's emotive reunion at all, because it's blindingly obvious that they would never have needed to break up at all if they had just talked about their issues properly in the first place! And Amy bears all the responsibility for that. Did she really kick Rory out after everything they'd been through without just saying to him "Darling, I've discovered I can't have children normally any more after my forced alien pregnancy, and I'm kind of upset about that, so I'd like to talk about it. Also, I know you really want kids, so can you tell me what you want to do in this situation, and maybe we can work through it and find a way of dealing with it within our relationship? Like perhaps we could look into adoption maybe?" It's not that hard!
Mind you, her willingness to undergo pointless martyrdom for his sake without discussing what he actually wants first is at least consistent with what Older Amy did in The Girl Who Waited - making the decision on Rory's behalf to given him the life with Young Amy which she had judged would be better for him. It's not a characteristic I admire very much, but at least it is a consistently-written flaw.
Meanwhile, when Amy and Rory realise that the Doctor has given her his wristband without telling them, Amy makes some comment about how he is a Time Lord so didn't need it, and we cut to a shot of him fixing his bow-tie - established earlier in the episode as the gesture he makes when he is fact 'fixing' their relationship. So we are given to understand that he deliberately didn't tell them that Amy would actually be fine anyway in order to trick Rory into trying to save her, and therefore salvage their relationship. OK, fine. But! The Doctor has really let Amy get into quite a lot of danger already by the time this happens, including allowing her to wander into a roomful of Daleks while under the influence of a hallucination which makes her think they are people. Isn't this rather irresponsible? I know, that's kind of the Doctor's modus operandi anyway - but really, he could have just given her his wristband straight away if he didn't need it. It seems a huge risk to take just to set up a reunion between Amy and Rory (and this seemed particularly stupid to me as a viewer, given how unnecessary the whole reason for their break-up was in my view in the first place).
Racist, sexist and biphobic clap-trap
Yeah, so this is the stuff that made me growly. The first two things I noticed myself, but the third I didn't pick up on the first time in amongst all the snappy dialogue. The internet noticed, though.
The one black character not only dies first, but is in fact already dead before the story even begins. In this particular story, this is a clear consequence of black people only usually being cast as supporting characters (though obviously Martha Jones is the exception to that rule). There are only (really) three human characters in this story besides the Doctor and his companions: Cassandra Darla who summons the Doctor at the beginning, the black guy and Oswin. (Yes, there are the people at Amy's modelling shoot, the bus-driver who 'acquires' Rory and the people in Amy's hallucination, but these are all tiny bit-parts). Developed yet secondary characters are very often cannon-fodder, and that's exactly what happens here. As an isolated incident, fine, but with Steven Moffat it's a recognised trope (see the 'Live Action TV' folder at that link).
Amy giving up the man she loves because she can't 'give' him the children he wants. Without apparently even discussing what his priorities actually were, considering adoption or anything. This whole set-up is just stupid, as I've already said. But even leaving aside the fact that Amy would surely have discussed this with Rory if she really loved him, it also rests on the idea that a woman's only function is to give a man children, and that if she can't do this then it's perfectly logical to launch herself into massive and unnecessary acts of self-punishment. WTF?
The line I didn't catch first time round, spoken by Oswin to Rory when she is trying to guide him through the Asylum: "Lovely name, Rory. First boy I every fancied was called Rory. Actually, she was called Nina. I was going through a phase. Just flirting to keep you cheerful!" You know, when I was thirteen, I developed a massive crush on a girl in my class. I'd had sort of childish crushes on female teachers before, but this was the first time I'd fallen for a girl of my own age, and in a full-blown romantic-sexual way. It was all-consuming, to the extent that I couldn't hide it, try as I might - and I did try, because I knew full well I wasn't 'supposed' to feel like that. So some of my classmates noticed, and one of them took me into an empty classroom to talk about it. She meant well and was trying to help, but one of the things she said to me was, "It doesn't necessarily mean you're a lesbian. It might just be a phase you're going through." Hers wasn't the only voice I listened to at this time, of course. There were also advice columns in magazines, my parents saying things like "I don't know why 'they' have to rub it in everybody's faces!" and the general tittering attitude of my friends. But they all added up to much the same sorts of messages - not normal, not wanted, just a phase. And that's why I pushed it down inside, treated it as a weird kink in myself that I would just have to keep in its place, and didn't do anything about it for another eight years. So, frankly, FUCK YOU Moffat, still telling that shit to the next generation. Fuck you.
Things that were fun / cool / scary
Oh dear, I don't feel much like enthusing about these now after that little rant above. That's how just one crappy throwaway biphobic line makes me feel about the rest of the show around it. Still, there were things I enjoyed, like:
The Doctor's line when he walks into Amy and Rory's cell on the Dalek ship: 'How much trouble are we in, Pond? Out of ten? Eleven.' It's not the first time we've had a joke based on the numerical incarnation of the Doctor, of course - The Eleventh Hour made a whole episode title out of it. But they always tickle me.
Amy relishing being fired at a planet and escaping zombie Daleks.
Rory's experience in a dripping underworld full of mad, rusty Daleks just waking up from a long slumber actually was reasonably scary. Although on the whole I felt that the madness of the Asylum inmates was not particularly well-conveyed. Daleks are pretty insane anyway, so it's rather difficult to portray them as more than usually so.
Amy's hallucination of Daleks-as-the-people-they-once-were. It was creepy and (having seen it recently) very Carnival of Souls-esque - the beckoning guy and the dancing couple are both straight from the dream-sequences in the pavilion.
The Daleks all yelling "Doctor Who?" at the end. Much like the 'Eleven' line earlier, these are always good value.
Past continuity
The Radio Times published a Dalek bingo card so that we could spot all the different types featured in this episode. And they certainly were there, stretching right back across the whole history of the series. I'm not sure how that is supposed to work in light of a) the Time War and b) the fact that several of the different factions of Daleks have historically been enemies of one another. What I'm glad about, though, is that this didn't matter a jot within this story. Call me a massive racist if you like, but honestly, all Daleks look pretty much the same, and any plot which rests on the audience spotting that one lot of them are a slightly different design from another is doomed to horrible failure. So I am very, very glad indeed that Moffat has basically announced in this episode that he is not going to bother with that, and is just going to treat them all as a single race.
I had thought Skaro had been completely wiped out in the Time War, but apparently there is some explainy stuff in Doctor Who: The Adventure Games about how the Daleks got it back with something called the Eye of Time or something. OK, whatever.
This morning I geekily looked up the names of the battles which the Doctor says that the inhabitants of the intensive care unit survived (like a lot of other people, I'm sure). I managed to identify all but one, and sure enough they are real, and indeed all from the Classic series: Spiridon, Kembel, Iridius (can't track this one down), Vulcan, Exxilon. Exxilon is perhaps particularly interesting, because it is the home of a Great City full of traps in the Third Doctor story Death to the Daleks, and thus bears a thematic similarity to the Asylum full of lurking dangers in this story.
And this person on the doctorwho community has already pointed out the deliberate visual reference to The Daleks, which was also generally evoked by things like the Dalek-shaped doorways throughout the Asylum.
Future implications
Now that we know that people who appear to be normal human beings can actually be Sleeper Daleks, they could be anywhere. I'm pretty sure this will come up again.
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.