Doctor Who and the Asylum of the Daleks

by

‘Asylum of the Daleks’

Written by Steven Moffatt
Story 7.01
Transmitted 1 September, 2012
“They’re subtracting love… don’t let them.”

Deep in space there is a planet where the insane and scarred Daleks are kept under close supervision, an asylum. However, strange transmissions have started to emanate from beneath the asylum’s impenetrable force field. Fearful of the threat of their own deranged brethren, the Daleks have kidnapped the Doctor and his companions to solve their problem for them. Using nano-cloud technology, the Daleks have transformed human beings into their agents and sent them after their most hated enemy, their ‘predator,’ the Doctor.

The 50th anniversary season of Doctor Who is here and the opener is a blockbuster story featuring the Doctor trapped on a planet populated by insane Daleks. However, the ‘real story’ is Amy and Rory’s falling out and the Doctor fixing their marriage. Yep, we have taken a step back to 2006 where nothing is more important than the companion, or in this case, the companions finding love for each other.

The plot for Asylum of the Daleks could be written on the back of a match book. For a story running almost an hour in length, there was a lot of dead air in which characters asked stupid questions, wandered down corridors slowly (even when they ran it was in slow motion) and the very monsters the viewer was meant to fear failed to do anything at all other than scream and wander around like old rusted dodgem cars.

I know that Nicholas Briggs is a die-hard fan of classic Doctor Who and I have long enjoyed his Big Finish audio productions such as the stellar Dalek Empire. Therefore it is always painful when I hear him voicing the Daleks in drek like this. Honestly, the CGi mob of Daleks all shouting the same thing was about as impressive as the cardboard cut out Daleks way back in 1966’s Power of the Daleks. The only problem is that Power of the Daleks was actually about something, included rich compelling characters and a gripping drama that established the Daleks as a very real threat. It’s also Briggs’ favorite classic Dalek story.

“While it was interesting to open the story on Skaro where the Dalek Empire is horrifically powerful, there is something inherently wrong with a Dalek story in which the Daleks do not kill a single character and the Doctor’s big win is to get his enemies to forget who he is then dance through the TARDIS as if this makes anything better.”

Asylum of the Daleks opens with one of those woeful scenes that are all too familiar now, a narrator telling no one at all about how deadly and powerful the Doctor is and how he is the only person the Daleks fear. Again, the script fails to show this and instead just tells us because it has no faith in its audience or in the material (at least they are right on one count). The Doctor is summoned by a woman desperate to get her sister out of a Dalek slave camp on Skaro, a blasted ruin of a planet (I still say the rumored title ‘The Ruins of Skaro’ is a far better one than ‘Asylum of the Daleks’). The Doctor can see that this is a ruse but before he can escape he is zapped as the strange woman sprouts an eyestalk from her head, a gun from her palm and becomes a humanized Dalek.

This is quite possibly the goofiest idea in Doctor Who and will be an unimpressive action figure.

Meanwhile Amy Pond is pursuing a modeling career (I think she’s cute, but… a model?? Amy???) and Rory interrupts her photo shoot to get their divorce papers finalized. Then they are both kidnapped by humanized Daleks and taken off to to a Dalek spacecraft. Despite the publicity that this story would feature every Dalek ever, there are far more of these silly humanized ones than anything else.

The Doctor waits patiently to be killed by the Daleks but instead is hired by a contractor to infiltrate an impenetrable force field. Sure, it’s impenetrable unless you hurl a person directly at it. Breaking through the impenetrable force field is a radio transmission of Carmen (which of course the Doctor played in… isn’t the writer silly?). A spaceliner has crash landed on the asylum leaving one survivor, a cute-as-a-button gal named Oswin, who has managed to call for help. So human bodies and opera are the only things that can get through this otherwise damned impressive force field. The Daleks are terrified that if the crashed space-liner could get through (so human bodies, opera and massive space ships can break through the honestly pretty impressive force field) the incarcerated Daleks might too. Given that the longer this story goes on more things can break through the force field, I have to agree with the Daleks on the need for immediate action.

The Doctor and Amy get separated from Rory who comes into contact with the flirt short dress wearing Jenna Louise Coleman who is baking souffles and listening to music while happily recording a diary while she waits for rescue. She flirts with Rory (really?) and acts as a more resourceful plot contrivance than any sonic screwdriver ever could. While it’s unclear why there is an asylum at all, why the Daleks can’t solve this problem, perhaps by shooting zombie Daleks at the planet or another space-liner or just leaving… who knows. But what makes matters less clear is that Oswin can somehow hack all of Dalek security and talk the Doctor and his companions through every step of their mission which never made any sense in the first place.

The Doctor and Amy encounter another survivor of the crash, who takes them into his sunken escape pod, but it is soon revealed that he too is a humanized Dalek and that the pod is full of zombified humanized Daleks. It’s not a bad visual, but unnecessarily spooky for the kids in my opinion and it serves no real purpose since they can be stopped by just closing the door on them. In fact none of the monsters in this story are capable of opening a door. Bad luck, that.

Rory narrowly avoid an army of kill crazy Daleks (including a special weapons Dalek who can’t even be bothered to move!) and is reunited with the Doctor and Amy… who has lost her magic wrist watch which was meant to shield her from the cloud of nano bots that are now transforming her into a humanized Dalek. But the Doctor has a cunning plan to not only save Amy’s life but her marriage to Rory as well despite the fact that Amy has pointed out he can do no such thing.

See, the transformation into a Dalek can be halted by just loving a lot. Coincidentally this is also the Achilles heel of the cyber conversion process. So all the Daleks and Cybermen need in order to stop killing everyone is a good loving relationship. Huh. Thanks, Steven Moffat, for once more transforming Doctor Who into a soap opera/comedy. It’s Coupling with space/time travel! Rory forces the magic bracelet that prevents you from becoming a Dalek because he knows he can last longer since he loves her more than she loves him. They then have a couples’ fight over who loves who more, get all puffy-faced and cry a lot then realize that the Doctor has saved their marriage. Ta-da. As if I really cared about that plot thread. What about the Daleks? Why does the asylum exist? How did Oswin survive? At least one of these questions gets answered.

The Doctor leaves the couple to sort this out while he tries to rescue Oswin but must walk down THE CORRIDOR OF THE DALEKS! Here, survivors are kept from conflicts on Spiridon (Planet of the Daleks), Aridius (The Chase), Kembel (Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks’ Master Plan), Vulcan (Power of the Daleks), and Exxilon (Death to the Daleks). Why they all look liker the McKinstry MKI Dalek rather than classic ones, I don’t understand.

The good Doctor has a freak out as he waits for Oswin to open the way out and then gets the shock of his life (the only impressive moment for me in this story), Oswin is not a trapped human but a fully transformed Dalek wrapped up in a delusional fantasy to cope with her situation.

Even though she is a Dalek, Oswin really really really doesn’t want to be one so she betrays her programming and helps the Doctor escape into the middle of an army of Daleks on board their mother ship. Rather than kill him outright (again), the Daleks are confused as to why they cannot remember the Doctor at all (because Oswin erased his record from their database) and rather than shoot him they just chant ‘Doctor WHO?’ over and over, waiting patiently for their nemesis to leave.

After the impressive Dalek back in 2005, fans have been waiting patiently for another good outing for the most popular of Doctor Who’s monsters (Doomsday came close)… but this was not it. There was zero potential for this story to rise above passable but it failed at even that thanks to the nonsensical plot, sorry special effects and the woeful focus on Amy and Rory’s love life.

Next time: ‘Dinosaurs on a Spaceship’ (in which Rory deals with a deadbeat father that never loved him while historical characters fight… dinosaurs on a spaceship)

“Brothers and sisters, we are here to get through this thing called life.”

_______________________________________________________

Overnight ratings from Doctor WhoTV:

1. Asylum of the Daleks – 6.4 million (overnight)
2. Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
3. A Town Called Mercy
4. The Power of Three
5. The Angels Take Manhattan

41 thoughts on “Doctor Who and the Asylum of the Daleks”

  1. I very much disagree and think this episode is a thrilling, well-plotted masterpiece. I tend to look at things, including Doctor Who episodes, as a whole entity and am not one to inspect details and focus on minor elements at the expense of the whole experience, so I won’t do that here, but I will say that I sat in rapt awe of the event as it aired on BBC One, and then immediately watched it twice more on iPlayer just to relive the magnificence. Kudos to the Moff and his crew!

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  3. Ok… looks like I’m diving first (after Jameson, of course)…

    I didn’t hate this episode. I thought I might, but then I didn’t… (did that make you think of Dr Moon?)

    There are LOTs of little things to nitpick… but in fairness, most shows I watch I can nitpick to death… and I do it too 🙂 but the nits don’t ruin it for me… only the big stuff ruins things… because, if all the nits bothered me I would just quit watching.

    So… the biggest gripe I really had was why there was an Asylum at all… The Daleks are “offended” by the idea of killing other Daleks? Since when? With no hesitation we have seen Daleks kill other Daleks… so why on Skaro (see what I did there?) would they create an asylum instead of just ex-ter-min-ating their rogues? And worse… why give that planet a force field that can only be disabled from the surface, so if something goes wrong you can’t blow it up even then?!

    I don’t usually like the memory wipe solution… making the Daleks forget the Doctor in this case… BUT it actually works and is in some ways consistent with a BIG plot hole from last season… that being, how is the Doctor going to be anonymous if he keeps running into his worst enemies? So I’ll accept this IF Moffat sticks to it.

    But… the Daleks shouting “Doctor Who”… really, they need to stop that. And the Doctor himself shouting it at himself? That was a groaner to be sure.

    I’m nervous as to the new companion to be… will she be a past version of this character whom the Doctor doesn’t know he already met? (Remember, he sees her as a Dalek not as a human so he won’t recognize her)… will she be an ancestor? I don’t know what to “hope” for… but I am surprised that they kept this surprise under wraps.

    The marriage on the rocks… I agree we don’t need more soap opera… but this was tremendously pointless when you also consider: Prior to this episode, we didn’t know their marriage was on the rocks… so in one single episode they broke up and repaired things… so where’s the drama?

    Oh… and I disagree with Jameson on one thing… while I agree the human Daleks are a terrible idea… they might actually make for fun action figures 🙂

    But I guess I need not point out how we are seeing Moffat once again re-use a story idea… Are you my mummy? only this time instead of gas masks on your face you get Dalek parts!

    One interesting and subtle thing, though… the Doctor leaves the Daleks without doing anything to them… I mean, he lets them live and everything… that actually was refreshing… not to ultimately defeat them only to see them come back later… This time they are mindwiped so he lets them go… will they be kinder gentler Daleks next time?

    If only we could have had the ultimate final battle, though, between Oswin and Osx… 😉

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  5. If you had watched the 7 part Pond story on Youtube, you would know that Rory and Amy had broken up. It was shown in Part 7. If they had shown that to us 7 months ago, it might’ve been more suspenseful. Otherwise it is just a plot device. Take out the “divorce” aspect of the story, and then replay the “Who loves who more argument between Rory and Amy. It still works even with them married.

    But here is my real issue, this is the Asylum of the Daleks, where are the insane Daleks? These Daleks are dust covered but act the same as any other Dalek. I could understand the aged and broken ones who had previously fought the Doctor and survived, but really Oswin was the only insane Dalek. To me these Daleks weren’t to be feared and pitied.

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  6. Thank you, Jameson, that was an excellent well-argued review and best of all you are RIGHT! I was worried that you were going to like it and I would feel (even more :)) alienated than I do when I read praise for this drek, as I just don’t get that enthusiasm for junk!
    Here are my observations: firstly, Moffat and co. have been hyping this (mini-) series as a handful of blockbusters and many of the reviews have (surprise!) agreed that Asylum was blockbusterish yet I doubt those reviewers could explain what that actually *means*. The one thing that Asylum had in common with many modern “blockbusters” is that it had a nonsensical plot and a *Big Explosion*, otherwise it’s hard to see how this was a “cliched mini-movie” (seriously, Mr Moffat don’t be ashamed of making *television* and get rid of the idea that claiming stories to be mini-movies somehow elevates them – Transformers Revenge of the Fallen was a movie and was *crap*!). As for any claim that this was a “well-plotted masterpiece”, well, to each their own but as usual with recent Moffat the plot is “perfect” mechanism to hit certain beats and to get to specific points but the *fundamental* elements make little or no sense, as you so wisely point out Jameson, therefore it *isn’t* a masterpiece. It isn’t “nit-picking” to point out that the fundamental elements of a story *don’t* work or are under the surface extremely forced and dumb, it’s good criticism. As you say, Amy as a prominent model is (no offence to the pretty Karen) not very convincing. Now that from me is a nit-pick but then the rest of the episode is riven with really *fundamental* problems that hole the story beneath the water-line and lead to it being rather stupid. Cont’d…

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  7. Cont’d
    Your review is one of the very few that correctly takes Asylum to task for it’s many failures of logic and for the fact that it muffs its central premise in favour of more soap opera dross from Amy and Rory (why are they still in it, exactly?) and the “hilarious” ending with those dumb Daleks screeching “Doctor? WHO?” in stead of uh shooting him, the major reason for this – apart from the inability to notice or criticize things that don’t make sense 😉 – would seem to be the major “twist”. To be fair, seeing Jenna-Louise Coleman was a surprise and she is *Cute* but if she hadn’t already been promoted as the new companion this would not have had the impact it did but I suppose it saves on telling a proper story not tied to the ack story “arc”/meganarrative. People loved the *surprise* but if one takes away the knowledge that J-L (mmm) is the new companion then it doesn’t work as well. I knew that she was going to turn out to be transformed but as she’s been announced as the new companion I thought that the Doctor would help her fight the transformation so it *was* a surprise to see her as a full Dalek.
    As you say, all the hype has been about *every* Dalek appearing but they were hardly used, what a waste! The plot sets up the asylum as a terrifying place yet um where were these absolutely *bonkos” Daleks? Not such a good plot if it doesn’t follow through. I *loved* your sarcasm about the force-field. So *dumb*. Since when was the Doctor such a Berk? It’s the “Power of Love”, yet more manipulative idiocy for the emotionally incontinent. What purpose does this serve except to fool people into thinking this dross is “mature”? Doctor Who : Marriage Counsellor, Amy: Dim-witted Harpy. Ugh.
    Eggs. Sooo painful. In my view this was nowhere near scary *enough*, the Dalek-Heads were ridiculous (and useless!) but that supposedly “funny” scene with Rory was *dreadful* it could have been truly scary instead Rory was portrayed as a total moron, way to destroy the suspense, Moff. And then near the climax we have Cont’d

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  8. Cont’d (phew)

    Oswin saying “Eggs” in a callback to that earlier scene and then further linking it to her imaginary baking of souffles, gah, such terrible writing and *this* is “well-plotted”, it *is* linked I’ll give it that but it is *gibberish* and is very, very poorly done. If Moffat had lost the Rory scene and just had Oswin talking about the “eggs” for her souffle it might have worked better, it would still have been pretty terrible but not as dumb as when it is linked to a failed comic scene.
    “Chin Boy”? Is Oswin Amy Mark II?
    So, the *all* the Daleks are “telepathically-linked” now are they but can be reprogrammed? And now they can’t remember the Doctor? Pointless. Just tell good Dalek stories, enough with this illogical nonsense. Gee, they’ve been made really formidable now haven’t they? Oh right, they’ve been made useless. So much for the New Paradigm (by the way Victory of the Daleks status quo was dumped here, odd that. Heh heh heh) I suppose.
    Finally, you note a very important point that many “critics” failed to, this thing *dragged*, the original run is often insulted for “padding” yet this episode was *So Slow* and enervated, half of it was vamping. The scenes with Amy and Rory were particularly snail-like while the jokey “Eggs” scene was ssstretchhhed out, and yet this is *praised*. Huh? Great work, Jameson. Thus my screed ends. Masterpiece schmasterpiece. Disasterpiece.

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  9. However, the ‘real story’ is Amy and Rory’s falling out and the Doctor fixing their marriage.

    I thought the “real story” was the emotional gut-punch about Oswin.

    I think she’s cute, but… a model?? Amy???

    Well, the actress started out in modeling; so why is it a stretch that her character — who unsurprisingly looks just like her – might be a model also?

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  10. Well, seeing as all the other non-human turned out to be Dalekified was it *really* so difficult to work out that Oswin to be that way too? Albeit turned into a full Dalek because she was “so intelligent”. Speaking of which plot point, it’s not as if the killer pepperpots have ever seemed over-burdened with intelligence tho maybe that’s why wanted Lil Ms Genius ;). However, the most important question is this: would the story have the “emotional gut-punch” you and others feel it did if you didn’t know Jenna-Louise is skedded to be the new companion? After all their were plenty of clues that she would turn out to be in someway Dalekified (I suspected she might turn out to be a Dalek *pretending* to be human, tho’ that didn’t make sense), logic alone suggested that this would turn out to be so. I suspect you would still say “yes” but I found the mechanical contrivances and clumsy manipulation in Moffat’s script unconvincing in the extreme. It’s nice it worked for you.
    As for bringing up the fact that Gillan used to be a model, I’ll give you that, I could question whether Amy would be as successful as she has apparently been but that *would* be nitpickery. That said, it’s curious that of all the pertinent points Dailypop brings up you choose to pick the nit that he wasn’t convinced by Amy’s success as a model. Interesting. But as I say Moffat’s plot machinations work for you so there’s nothing more to say!

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    • On a serious note for a moment… so… back in “Dalek” we saw that Rose merely touching a Dalek allowed it to self-heal because of her time-traveling DNA…

      We saw aspects of this again as Mickey was able to accidentally open that Dalek prison to let all the Daleks out to battle the Cybermen, again just by touching…

      So… how is it that Rory touching the “dead” Daleks doesn’t cause a similar healing effect to begin?

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    • But see… now we know the Daleks have always been misunderstood… it was never about getting rid of “positive” emotions or becoming the perfect war/killing machine or conquering the universe…

      No…

      It was about the quest to become the Universe’s Top Chef…

      It’s all there from the very beginning!

      The “pepper pot” design, I mean come on… the very design echoes that of an oft-used spice container…the plunger to unclog the sink after peeling all the vegetables…all leading to the revelation of their tragically misunderstood “battle cry” all these years… not meant to be an attack warning, but a modest description of the quest to create the ultimate Souffle and the desired end-game of seeing others enjoy that souffle…

      Imagine a tragic episode of Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsey critiquing the failed souffle… it brings a tear to my eye 🙂

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  13. A tragedy… Wait, imagine an episode of Hell’s Kitchen in which the Daleks exterminate Ramsey – I’d watch that!
    There’s a breakaway group of Daleks with a liking for a particular food stuff. Their name? The Dill-eks. Oh yes.

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    • And you probably thought the ancient war between the Kaleds and the Thals was for dominance over the planet… it was over that very souffle recipe that is now tragically lost, and they say if you listen closely you can hear the silent scream of the Daleks trying in an infinite futile effort to recreate that recipe… but someone left that cake out in the rain, and it took soo long to bake it, and they’ll never have that recipe again (apologies to anyone who gets that last bit!) 🙂

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  14. There’s always someone who comes across as a whiner. Sorry but I heard enough whiners during the Colin Baker era and I’m so sick of them. Whining and nitpicking. It’s one of the reasons I don’t use the word “fan” to describe myself.

    True, it wasn’t a perfect episode.

    Personally, I loved the voice-over and the opening shots. It makes things look a little epic.
    I really wanted to see more old Daleks though and I wanted the abomination (special weapons dalek) to take center stage.

    The dalekized humans were interesting and it was a nice effect. It would have been cool to reference “resurrection” when doing so though,

    The doctor Who! thing was a bit much but it was whimsical, like Billy Hartnell wishing everyone a Merry Christmas or the start of the show in Remembrance. At 50 years, the show is entitled to a little.

    Amy was fine as a model, nothing wrong there, it’s a silly thing to nitpick.

    The eggs was cool.

    More old daleks though. I could hardly see them.

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  15. @sjv: Kudos on that MacArthur Park reference! Dalek Masterchef Coming Soon.
    @GavinBollard: One person’s “whining and nitpicking” is another’s *Legitimate Criticism*!

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    • Hal, a fair bit of seriousness for a moment and a question… ask yourself this…

      IF this was the first new episode you had seen (forget about series 5 and series 6) in a while… would you have had as many nitpicks as we all obviously had?

      I asked myself this… and IF I evaluate this episode on its own merits… it is no worse in many ways than the Eleventh Hour or the Impossible Astronaut. There were flaws to be sure… but Eleventh Hour was fine until we got to the Pandorica… the Impossible Astronaut was fine until we got to the Wedding of River Song.

      That is my consistent and biggest gripe.

      When Davies was the showrunner and Moffat just wrote episodes… he had to write his episode to be self-contained… so he had to be smarter and more clever and undeniably those Moffat-penned episodes of series 1-4 were some of the best of the new series.

      But… with Moffat running the whole show… he now gets to spread out over the whole season… and frankly, his stuff just isn’t as clever as he thinks it is to spread that thin. Give a bum a $20 and maybe he blows it on beer… but it’s a one-shot thing… but give that bum $1 million, and in all likelihood he blows that too… and you have to ask yourself, why would you give that person that kind of freedom to fail?

      I maintain that Davies had his flaws, but his flaws and Moffat’s actually worked together to form really good episodes. Maybe a showrunner change was in order… but I think Moffat was a mistake. I don’t think he runs the show as well as it could be… and I think his own good ideas get watered down quite a bit.

      I would much rather have a different showrunner, with a tighter control of the series arc… and then let Moffat run wild on say 3-4 episodes each series… I value what he brings to the table… I just also recognize what he doesn’t, and what he also is taking from the table.

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  16. I think that even if it was the first episode I had seen in a while I still would not have been impressed. I don’t think that recognizing the many problems with this episode is nitpicking as those problems are too fundamental to be described as nits to be picked. Now you quite enjoyed this episode and I um didn’t so we’ll have to agree to disagree there. To be honest I don’t like Moffat’s approach and find his plotting far too forced and mechanical (it often doesn’t make real sense if you think about it), I don’t even like his trying-too-hard pseudo-witty dialogue, so as much as I might try to enjoy his work and agree with others in their opinion of him, I can’t. I thought his episodes in Season 27/1 were the best (even if they did introduce Captain Jack!) but found the follow-ups problematic as I could see the flaws in plotting and logic and the feeling of forcedness (particularly as regards emotional manipulation and dialogue – ooh catchphrases!) was too much apparent to me. This increased ten-fold when he became showrunner. I know lots of people liked The Eleventh Hour (good for you and them!) but I found it a cutesy mess while The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon some ok visual moments apart felt too much the forced epic, setting up another another of those unsatisfying “how’ll-they-get-out-of-that? mysteries” which fool the audience into thinking it’s meaningful while continueing the mystery from the previous season and it’s STILL dragging on! My favourite of his recent stories was Time of the Angels/Flesh and Stone – despite the presence of River Song – as it had some good ideas and scary scenes with neat plotting. All in all though, I don’t like his Doctor Who, one can hear the gears grinding away while some of the audience tend to rely on his hype-pronouncements to interpret the series (note how there is as much parroting of the term “blockbuster” as there was “fairy tale”) which is odd. So, nope I don’t rank his work highly, there’s much less there than meets the eye. And the tone – ack!

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  17. I just realized… even the repeating “Doctor Who” over and over again… that’s Moffat stealing his own idea!

    Remember in “Silence in the Library” at the end… the “Who turned out the lights” and “Donna Noble has been saved” repeating over and over and over…

    He even rips off the little stuff from himself!

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  18. Indeed he does! Nanogenes turning people into zombies with things protruding from their faces (The Empty Child), catchphrases (The Empty Child, Silence in the Library, Blink, The Eleventh Hour, anything with River Song, etc), the twist (all stories), “witty” dialogue (all stories), messages sent through time and space (Blink, Time of the Angels, etc), someone thinking they’re human when they aren’t (The Pandorica Opens), “dead”, fossilized or statue-like things coming back to life (Blink, The Pandorica Opens, The Big Bang)I’m too tired to remember more but you get the point!

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    • Steven Moffat is really Bad Wolf… we thought it was Rose + Tardis matrix… but no, Moffat is that which creates itself!

      He is a genius because he says he is a genius… and he says he is a genius because he has observed his own genius… and because he observed his own genius, he writes of the genius things that he creates and calls himself genius.

      Oh, and I am working on a song… and truly it will be a genius of a song… it is NOT a river song… but an actual song… or rather, new lyrics for an old song. It will be enjoyed when I finish it.

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  19. Surprising, I didn’t have to change much of anything for this to just work… oh, and apologies to Jim Henson!

    “It’s the Moffat Show with our Very Special Guest Star, Amy Pond!
    (Also: Rory Pond, River Song, and a cameo by the Doctor)

    It’s time to play the music
    It’s time to light the lights
    It’s time to meet the Moffat on the Moffat Show tonight.

    It’s time to put on makeup
    It’s time to dress up right
    It’s time to raise the curtain on the Moffat Show tonight.

    Why do we always come here
    I guess we’ll never know
    It’s like a kind of torture
    To have to watch the show

    And now let’s get things started
    Why don’t you get things started
    It’s time to get things started
    On the most sensational inspirational celebrational Moffatational
    This is what we call the Moffat Show!

    (Gonzo blows his trumpet)”

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  20. …if you think The Eleventh Hour was a “cutesy mess”…
    …if you consider the corpse!daleks “unnecessarily spooky for the kids”…
    …if you think Moffat is “transforming Doctor Who into a soap opera/comedy” or that’s a bad thing…

    ..you’re doing it wrong.

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    • Do you watch Family Guy?

      There was an episode where Peter & Lois were writing a song to perform at an amateur night… and they got high to write their song… they made a performance and after the show were told that while they *thought* they had been performing an excellent song, they were in fact so high that they were oblivious to how bad it was. I think an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” hit a similar note at a high school reunion episode.

      My point here is… Moffat isn’t creating what he seems to think he is creating… and some folk are clearly seeing things that aren’t actually there 🙂

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  21. @sjv – you are on a roll! I liked the Muppet Show song-parody, everything is better with Gonzo 😉
    @dailypop, well done on your reply to “Seriously?” (is his first name But or perhaps Butt?!), misuse of ellipses apart the “

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  22. @sjv – you are on a roll! I liked the Muppet Show song-parody, everything is better with Gonzo 😉
    @dailypop, well done on your reply to “Seriously?” (is his first name But or perhaps Butt?!), misuse of ellipses aside the “…you’re doing it wrong” ending doesn’t make grammatical sense either! And that’s after someone wrote “the Eggs was great” above too (am I *nitpicking*?). Now, everyone’s entitled to their opinion (apparently!) but it’s odd that your well-argued review is countered by someone who offers *no* reasonable explanation for why you’re wrong other than “waaah! You just *have* to be!”. I may be being rather sarcastic here but that looks like evidence of “Seriously?” swallowing the Kool Aid nice and smoothly. Sure, if he likes it “good for him” but if he’s going to attack those who don’t (and calling himself “Seriously?” suggests that he can’t imagine anyone not loving it, so much for free thinking) then perhaps he should offer more of an explanation for why you’re wrong beyond “just because”.

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  23. Moffat has driven the final nail into Doctor who. I can’t watch this garbage anymore. This was one of the worst episodes yet, The entire plot of this episode could have been written better by my dog.

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  24. I was thinking about this earlier…

    Amy and Rose have a lot in common…

    They each had a thing for the Doctor… they each have poorly developed/evolved characters over the course of their stories… they each are pretty girls, who may or may not be good actresses, who are seldom given much to play with in the script… they each had their own companions! (Mickey and Rory)… and I don’t really like either one of them that much.

    So… nothing new there… BUT… this is the new bit I thought of…

    Adric.

    Let that sit there for a moment… Everybody hated Adric… loved when he was killed off… but I dare you to think about this… other than being a boy and not romantically attracted to the Doctor… was Adric written or acted any worse really than either Rose or Amy? Would Adric have been more fondly remembered IF instead he was Adrianna? Somehow I suspect so.

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  25. Spoiler Alert!

    Steven Moffat has been asked to come in and rework some of the script for Iron Man 3… It will be revealed that Pepper Potts is actually a human Dalek.

    Think about it…

    🙂

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  26. Something random but Doctor Who related, and a positive thought for a change…

    I just got through re-watching Once Upon a Time… and while looking up some stuff on Robert Carlyle (plays Rumplestiltskin in the series) was surprised to find he was in “28 Weeks Later” and I had completely forgotten that! I knew he was in the most recent StarGate Universe series… but I wasn’t into Stargate and hadn’t watched most of any of those TV series…

    Anyway, seeing him in some interviews and extras… so, seeing him as he is and not the role he plays… I immediately thought he would be a good Doctor. Surprise surprise, to see then rumors that he might have been considered back before Matt Smith was cast perhaps if not for the Stargate role he took.

    Anyway… while I’m not looking to run Matt Smith out of town… if the rumors are to be believed, Carlyle sounds like he would enjoy being the Doctor if only he were asked… so I’m crossing my fingers he gets cast whenever Smith decides to leave.

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    • If the actors chosen to date are any benchmark, Cralyle is too old… and too good of an established actor. Though I like Smith a lot, I was pulling for Paterson Joseph and Sean Pertwee when Tennant was on his way out the door.

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  27. I thought Paterson Joseph might make a good Doctor, too. Carlyle feels too “cold” for me, like he might head-butt you as soon as look at you!

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  28. Oh, and to continue my roll… Oswin (of Eggs, Stir, Men, Ate fame) will meet a different fate after the Doctor goes back in time to save her… she avoids being Dalekized… only to find herself converted to, you guessed it, a Cyberlady who doesn’t know she is a cyber…

    Deal
    Eat

    🙂

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  29. SJV – Yes that’d make sense – Doctor Hardcase!
    As for your Cyber-spin on Oswin’s cooking obsession – Aaargh! Wait, I met Cyber-Oswin and she tried to force me to eat something she’d made tho’ she was fighting the Cyberconversion all the way, what did she say? “Veal? EAT! Veal? EAT! Veal? EAT!”, hahahaha! Gotcha! Sooo terrible!

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  30. And then Oswin was infected by nanogenes that were transforming her into the Roger Delgado-Master though she bravely resisted the transformation by mistaking herself for food, she said “I am The MASTER and you will Sautee Me!”. Bwahahaha!
    I was also thinking that it was lucky that the Dalek “Guns” emerged from the Dalekified people’s hands, imagine if they had emerged from people’s groin-areas say if they met Amy! Sooo cruuude! “Is that a Dalek Gun or you just pleased to see me?!”. It’s also lucky that the Dalek eyestalks didn’t droop or move up and down on people’s heads because that wouldv’e looked *really* perverse! Oh my mind!

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