Thoughts on Asylum of the Daleks
This is my attempt at some coherent thoughts about yesterday's episode. There will be massive spoilers of course, so don't read on unless you really don't care if your fun is ruined.
First reaction to the whole thing = WOWMINDISBLOWNOMGDED!
I couldn't form any coherent sentences so I watched it again to try to find a proper reaction. Then I couldn't think straight due to the fact it was almost 2am so I decided to go to bed (actually I was already in bed and in PJs, I just closed the laptop, left it on the nightstand, turned to the other side and closed my eyes).
This morning, I read other people's reactions and mainly my response is ditto to everything but I also started to have ideas that I wanted to share.
First, there is this thing with the Doctor and the Ponds. I love Eleven and I love the Ponds, both Amy and Rory. I think the fact that the Doctor can't leave the Ponds behind to have a normal life is adorable and I don't think he ever did something like that to any other companion. The Doctor doesn't come back after he leaves them behind and yet he keeps doing that with them.
How many times has that happened? First after they got married and had their honeymoons. Then when he left them behind "for good" and we had that whole emotional moment with the house and the car. Then he goes back on Christmas. Then we find out he keeps visiting them, leaving them phone messages, showing up in their bedroom in the middle of the night and even leaving them an Ood butler. Of course, in this episode it wasn't the Doctor going back for them, but them being captured by the Daleks, but we know they will be in a few more episodes again.
My question is why.
The Ponds have a different relationship with the Doctor. Amy doesn't know how life is without the Doctor. She has known him and dreamt about traveling with him since she was 7. Rory has lived in the Doctor's shadow for just as long. They had a baby that ended up marrying him which makes them literally family. The Doctor cares about them way more that he should at this point in his life and he knows that but he is just being the careless Doctor that we know and not thinking about it at least until the next crisis hits and they almost die again.
After the deal with the Daleks got solved, he left them again back at their house to continue life. He knows he can't keep doing this but he can't stop it. Maybe he thinks he can just be more present for them and see how that goes because we already know what happens when he simply locks them out of the TARDIS without even saying why to never come back again.
That cannot end well. I'm thinking the Pond's farewell will be of a huge emotional impact. It seems to me that Moffat is preparing both the characters and the audience for a big heartbreaking departure. One the Doctor will not be able to fix and will make him wonder if he should have come back or if he should have just left them to try to move on and forget him.
Moffat is ready to be evil and break everybody's heart once again and you know, I think it's time. The Ponds are great but they have been around for 3 series already and for the Doctor for more than 200 years if we consider his age during the picnic in series 6. It's time to move on. For someone that shouldn't get involved with the companions' lives, he really did kind of exaggerate this time.
Onwards to talk about the episode itself.
It was about time we got some kind recognition of Amy's emotional trauma from Demon's Run. Amy, being the Amy that she is and always so independent seemed to me that she always kept all of that in and tried to soldier on as Vincent said once without showing what it was really doing to her. She's a bit of a wreak as she is and then you add the fact that she was captured, impregnated, forced to deliver a baby she didn't even know she was having, only to lose her to Madame Kovarian to be brainwashed, programmed and transformed into an assassin in order to kill her best friend and then only see her again as an adult that she already knew all along that did in fact suffer through all of that and didn't kill the Doctor once, but twice and then you tell her she can't have any children ever again?
It makes me wonder just how much of everything she actually shares with Rory.
So, even though I think they should have delivered some kind of emotional fallout earlier, I was really satisfied with Amy and Rory's moments together and they made me almost teary.
I also liked the Dalek story. Doctor Who stories with Daleks have been done to death so it's really refreshing to see something new being done. And there was I thinking this episode would be filled with the ordinary silly looking pepper shakers going around while the Doctor kept doing the whole kill all the Daleks plot because they hurt Amy. It seems the Daleks really can be creepy as hell. I was never scared of them, but in this one my hairs stood up. An insane asylum of broken Daleks? CREEEEEEEPY!
Yes, the whole thing was really cheap of the explanation, but it did make a little bit of sense, even though all the Daleks decided to blow up the whole thing all of a sudden after going through all the trouble of making an asylum in the first place and sending all of them there. But who cares if it makes senses? Certainly not the fans because we all love how silly and unexplainable our show is.
Creepy human!Daleks also worked for me. Yes, it's another thing that only make a little bit kind of sense, but they are scary and now this means that anyone could be a Dalek from now on.
In my opinion the cleverest bit of the episode was the amnesia Oswin gave all the Daleks. Everyone knows the Daleks grew stronger because of the Doctor. Out of fear for him. And now, who knows what's gonna happen? Will they be more dangerous because they think there is no one standing in their way? Will their plans have more flaws because they have stopped having to anticipate the Doctor's plans? Will they now underestimate him? All in all, this is Moffat making the Doctor go back into the shadows and be less of this big feared superhero popstar he had become.
And leaving the best for last. Wow! What a surprise Jenna-Louse Coleman was! Her presence in this episode alone was already a shock and I really didn't think I would love her this much this quickly for being all the things that people rolled their eyes to. A beautiful, sassy, sexy, flirty, genius young girl. I kept wondering if Moffat was exaggerating a bit on the genius thing with her doing things that even River or Jack wouldn't be capable of doing. And then she did the thing that even the Doctor said he couldn't do and I knew there was something wrong with her but I never saw that one coming!
Now, we have to wait and see where it all goes. Will fandom survive? Stay tuned and find out.
First reaction to the whole thing = WOWMINDISBLOWNOMGDED!
I couldn't form any coherent sentences so I watched it again to try to find a proper reaction. Then I couldn't think straight due to the fact it was almost 2am so I decided to go to bed (actually I was already in bed and in PJs, I just closed the laptop, left it on the nightstand, turned to the other side and closed my eyes).
This morning, I read other people's reactions and mainly my response is ditto to everything but I also started to have ideas that I wanted to share.
First, there is this thing with the Doctor and the Ponds. I love Eleven and I love the Ponds, both Amy and Rory. I think the fact that the Doctor can't leave the Ponds behind to have a normal life is adorable and I don't think he ever did something like that to any other companion. The Doctor doesn't come back after he leaves them behind and yet he keeps doing that with them.
How many times has that happened? First after they got married and had their honeymoons. Then when he left them behind "for good" and we had that whole emotional moment with the house and the car. Then he goes back on Christmas. Then we find out he keeps visiting them, leaving them phone messages, showing up in their bedroom in the middle of the night and even leaving them an Ood butler. Of course, in this episode it wasn't the Doctor going back for them, but them being captured by the Daleks, but we know they will be in a few more episodes again.
My question is why.
The Ponds have a different relationship with the Doctor. Amy doesn't know how life is without the Doctor. She has known him and dreamt about traveling with him since she was 7. Rory has lived in the Doctor's shadow for just as long. They had a baby that ended up marrying him which makes them literally family. The Doctor cares about them way more that he should at this point in his life and he knows that but he is just being the careless Doctor that we know and not thinking about it at least until the next crisis hits and they almost die again.
After the deal with the Daleks got solved, he left them again back at their house to continue life. He knows he can't keep doing this but he can't stop it. Maybe he thinks he can just be more present for them and see how that goes because we already know what happens when he simply locks them out of the TARDIS without even saying why to never come back again.
That cannot end well. I'm thinking the Pond's farewell will be of a huge emotional impact. It seems to me that Moffat is preparing both the characters and the audience for a big heartbreaking departure. One the Doctor will not be able to fix and will make him wonder if he should have come back or if he should have just left them to try to move on and forget him.
Moffat is ready to be evil and break everybody's heart once again and you know, I think it's time. The Ponds are great but they have been around for 3 series already and for the Doctor for more than 200 years if we consider his age during the picnic in series 6. It's time to move on. For someone that shouldn't get involved with the companions' lives, he really did kind of exaggerate this time.
Onwards to talk about the episode itself.
It was about time we got some kind recognition of Amy's emotional trauma from Demon's Run. Amy, being the Amy that she is and always so independent seemed to me that she always kept all of that in and tried to soldier on as Vincent said once without showing what it was really doing to her. She's a bit of a wreak as she is and then you add the fact that she was captured, impregnated, forced to deliver a baby she didn't even know she was having, only to lose her to Madame Kovarian to be brainwashed, programmed and transformed into an assassin in order to kill her best friend and then only see her again as an adult that she already knew all along that did in fact suffer through all of that and didn't kill the Doctor once, but twice and then you tell her she can't have any children ever again?
It makes me wonder just how much of everything she actually shares with Rory.
So, even though I think they should have delivered some kind of emotional fallout earlier, I was really satisfied with Amy and Rory's moments together and they made me almost teary.
I also liked the Dalek story. Doctor Who stories with Daleks have been done to death so it's really refreshing to see something new being done. And there was I thinking this episode would be filled with the ordinary silly looking pepper shakers going around while the Doctor kept doing the whole kill all the Daleks plot because they hurt Amy. It seems the Daleks really can be creepy as hell. I was never scared of them, but in this one my hairs stood up. An insane asylum of broken Daleks? CREEEEEEEPY!
Yes, the whole thing was really cheap of the explanation, but it did make a little bit of sense, even though all the Daleks decided to blow up the whole thing all of a sudden after going through all the trouble of making an asylum in the first place and sending all of them there. But who cares if it makes senses? Certainly not the fans because we all love how silly and unexplainable our show is.
Creepy human!Daleks also worked for me. Yes, it's another thing that only make a little bit kind of sense, but they are scary and now this means that anyone could be a Dalek from now on.
In my opinion the cleverest bit of the episode was the amnesia Oswin gave all the Daleks. Everyone knows the Daleks grew stronger because of the Doctor. Out of fear for him. And now, who knows what's gonna happen? Will they be more dangerous because they think there is no one standing in their way? Will their plans have more flaws because they have stopped having to anticipate the Doctor's plans? Will they now underestimate him? All in all, this is Moffat making the Doctor go back into the shadows and be less of this big feared superhero popstar he had become.
And leaving the best for last. Wow! What a surprise Jenna-Louse Coleman was! Her presence in this episode alone was already a shock and I really didn't think I would love her this much this quickly for being all the things that people rolled their eyes to. A beautiful, sassy, sexy, flirty, genius young girl. I kept wondering if Moffat was exaggerating a bit on the genius thing with her doing things that even River or Jack wouldn't be capable of doing. And then she did the thing that even the Doctor said he couldn't do and I knew there was something wrong with her but I never saw that one coming!
Now, we have to wait and see where it all goes. Will fandom survive? Stay tuned and find out.