Review: Asylum of the Daleks

I really should learn how to do that cut-away link thing so people have to take an extra step for spoilers.

In the meantime... um... spoilers. Lots of dots to follow.
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Still there?

Excellent. So yesterday was the premiere of Season Seven of the revived "Doctor Who". The episode title: "Asylum of the Daleks".

Let me preface this by saying that I feel the Daleks have been done to death and should have been retired as monster/villains a long time ago. "Victory of the Daleks" from the last season (or was it the one before?) was terrible.

Killer salt-shakers. Seen it. Been there. Done that.

They sort of peaked out as the adversaries of the Time Lords in the Time War. Once you've gone there, you can't really bring them back with any credibility. I mean, Time War. Two godlike super powers duking it out.

If there are Daleks left after that, they sort of win by default. Nobody can really stop them. I mean, the Doctor can step up and do his thing, but in the grand scheme of things, he can't possibly stop them and still be the violence-loathing Doctor we all know and love.

*breathe*

Okay, to the ep. So the Doctor, Amy, and Rory are recruited by the Daleks to "save them". There's something on a planet known as they legendary Asylum of the Daleks where they keep their worst of the worst crazy types.

Why don't the Daleks, homicidal killer blobs that they are, just blast these crazies? Oh that answer was a good one.

Anyway, there's someone trapped down on the Asylum. The Daleks are afraid of that someone for very vague reasons. They want to blow up the planet housing the Asylum, but it's protected by a force field. So instead, they "volunteer" the Doctor and his latest companions for the honor.

Cue the creepy. Turns out there's nanites in the air there that will transform an unprotected person into a Dalek puppet (which is a surprisingly well-executed concept and rather disturbing).

Good thing the Daleks gave the Doctor, Amy, and Rory those oh-so-easy-to-remove-and-lose bracelets that protect them from the nasty nanites.

So what's down there? A rather attractive, fast-talking, souffle-making genius lady trapped from a crashed ship.

No, I have no idea how a spaceship got through the planet's force field. Clearly humans build better spaceships than Daleks do. Try not to think about it too much.

Why isn't she affected by the nanites while the other survivors (or their corpses) have been turned into Dalek puppets? (Oh, zombie Dalek puppets? Pure win.) That's a great question and central to the episode.

There's a side plot involving marital difficulties betwixt Amy and Rory. It's hammy and overdone, but the actors have such chemistry that I found myself dredging up sympathy for their situation. Hating the Silence all that much more now.

All-in-all, I thoroughly enjoyed the episode. Moffatt made the Daleks a semi-cool foe again and the twists were very well-done. I liked the last bit, though it was also overdone. Enough with the big question already. We get it.

That last bit makes more sense after you've seen the ep.

I have more speculation I'd like to make, but it involves speculation further down the season and there's folks I know who don't want that kind of info polluting their mind, so I shall restrain myself.