Asylum of the Daleks

For about two minutes, I wondered if this might actually turn out to be a good story. It turned out to be typical sleep-inducing New Series waffle. Asylum of the Daleks has some pretty impressive visuals- lots of Daleks, flying saucers, impressive sets. Unfortunately it has no substance at all.

Despite the title, this story is not about the Daleks. These Daleks are not doing anything interesting like conquering the universe or enslaving humans. The paper thin premise of the Daleks enlisting Dr Who's aid is simply a cheap device to launch a big mawkish story about the power of LOVE. Once again, the companion's personal emotional drama is the biggest, most important thing in the universe. We get told lots of stuff about how the Daleks call Dr. Who 'the Pretador' and how he is the biggest enemy of the Daleks ever. However, there is no evidence of this onscreen. This is just verbiage. We can only believe that Dr Who is the enemy of the Daleks if we actually see him foiling their invasion plots, blowing up Dalek spaceships and the like. It's a shame we didn't see much of the yellow 'Eternal' Daleks either. I was looking forward to seeing them. Moffat evidently chickened out of using too many of the fun and cool New Paradigm Daleks.

It turns out that Skaro still exists, so presumably the premise of War of the Daleks, with the Daleks fooling Dr. Who into believing he had destroyed Skaro was all true.

Rory and Amy have very much outstayed their welcome. It's clear that the writers have run out of ideas for them because they have them getting divorced (what else do you do with a married couple?). Watching them argue and make up just fills one with a sense of crushing deja vu. Incidently, Amy was making some remarkably sexual poses for such an everyday style outfit. One would expect her to be wearing a slinkier sort of outfit for the poses she was striking. It's incredible how Amy seems to wear that leather jacket ensemble in nearly every story (even when she is supposed to be dressed for Brazil). It's like we are back in the days of JNT, when Tegan had to always wear her stewardess uniform and Nyssa always had to wear that hideous puffy sleeved velvet thing.

The big surprise of this story is the early revelation of new companion Oswin, played by Jenna-Louise Coleman. Only she's died. So it looks like we are going to get another stupid timey-wimey story about Dr. Who meeting a character backwards. What we see of Oswin is not encouraging. She is just another overconfident character who flirts and makes wisecracks all the time.

Not only is Oswin dead, but she has been turned into a Dalek (did anybody fail to see that coming?). I know Revelation of the Daleks had people being converted into Daleks, but that was Davros' idea. Turning people into Daleks is a denial of what Daleks are about. They are obsessed with their own racial superiority and purity. They would not want to turn people into Daleks.

The story ends with a chorus of Doctor Who? How many times have we heard that joke? Dr. Who really is just his name. He really is called that. Get over it.

Dr. Who has clearly never seen an episode of Star Trek Next Generation. Surely it must be obvious she got the milk from a replicator.