Jump to content

Asylum of the Daleks: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
Credited only as Oswin
Line 9: Line 9:
| cast =
| cast =
| guests =
| guests =
*[[Jenna-Louise Coleman]] – Oswin Oswald
*[[Jenna-Louise Coleman]] – Oswin
*[[Anamaria Marinca]] – Darla Von Karlsen
*[[Anamaria Marinca]] – Darla Von Karlsen
*David Gyasi – Harvey
*David Gyasi – Harvey

Revision as of 13:22, 2 September 2012

225 – "Asylum of the Daleks"
Doctor Who episode
Cast
Others
Production
Directed byNick Hurran
Written bySteven Moffat
Produced byMarcus Wilson
Executive producer(s)
SeriesSeries 7
Running time50 minutes
First broadcast1 September 2012 (2012-09-01)[1][2]
Chronology
← Preceded by
"The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" (episode)
Pond Life (mini-serial) 		Followed by →
"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship"
List of episodes (2005–present)

"Asylum of the Daleks"[3][4] is the first episode of the seventh series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. This episode marks the return of the Daleks. It was broadcast on BBC One, BBC America and Space on 1 September 2012, and will be on ABC1 in Australia on 8 September 2012. The episode was the first to feature Jenna-Louise Coleman, who is due to appear as the Doctor's next companion.

The episode features the alien time traveler the Doctor (Matt Smith) being captured by the Daleks, along with his companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), who are about to divorce. They are sent by the Daleks to the Asylum, a planet where insane Daleks are exiled, to enable the Asylum to be destroyed before the insane Daleks can escape. The Doctor is helped along the way by Oswin (Jenna-Louise Coleman), a woman who lives on a spaceship that crashed on the planet a year ago and has been trapped there since then.

Plot

The Doctor is lured to Skaro by a humanoid Dalek automaton, who teleports him to the Parliament of the Daleks. There he meets Amy and Rory, who have been similarly kidnapped from present-day earth, just after Rory has delivered Amy their divorce papers. Within the Parliament, the Prime Minister of the Daleks explains to them that the Daleks have a planet known as the Asylum, where they keep Daleks which have gone insane—the Daleks were reluctant to get rid of them, since destroying such pure hatred face-to-face would contravene their sense of 'beauty', much to the Doctor's revulsion. The Parliament has received a transmission of the "Habanera" from Carmen from a woman, Oswin Oswald. She is on board the Alaska, a ship which has crashed into the Asylum, and has been fending off Dalek attacks for a year. This crash has ruptured the planet's force-field, thus risking the escape of the planets' inmates. The Parliament now wishes to destroy the planet remotely to prevent this, but the force-field is not ruptured sufficiently to allow them to do this. The force-field can only be deactivated from the planet itself but, afraid to face such a mission themselves, the Daleks of the Parliament task the Doctor, Amy and Rory with doing so.

The three are given bracelets to protect them from the planet's nano-field which would convert them into Dalek puppets to serve the facility's security systems, before being dropped through the force-field breach via a gravity tunnel onto the surface of the planet. The Doctor and Amy land close to each other and are discovered by Harvey, another survivor from the Alaska. Rory, however, is dropped to the bottom of a long shaft into the Asylum—there he accidentally awakens some of its inhabitants, but is saved and guided to a safe room by Oswin, who has accessed the computers. Meanwhile Harvey is revealed to be a Dalek puppet, converted by the nanogene field. A similar fate has befallen the corpses of other Alaska survivors, who re-animate and attack the Doctor and Amy, stealing her nano-field bracelet just before the pair are saved by Oswin and guided to Rory. Now unprotected from the nanogenes, Amy begins to be converted into a Dalek puppet and begins experiencing memory loss and hallucinations.

The Doctor realises that the Daleks will destroy the planet as soon as he deactivates the force-field, before they can escape. However, he realises that Rory's hideout is a telepad via which they can teleport onto the Dalek Parliament ship. Oswin agrees to deactivate the force-field in return for the Doctor coming to save her. While the Doctor is gone, Rory reveals that he still loves Amy—trying to trump her by reminding her of his 2,000 year wait during "The Pandorica Opens", she sadly replies that she still loves him but "gave him up", since she is infertile as a result of the events of "A Good Man Goes to War" and thus unable to bear the children he desired. At the end of the argument, they realise that the Doctor has given Amy his nano-field bracelet.

The Doctor makes his way to Oswin, though he has to venture through the 'intensive care section', containing Daleks who survived encounters with him. They begin to re-activate, but he is saved from them by Oswin, who deletes the Doctor from the Daleks' collective, telepathically shared knowledge, leaving them with no memory of him. The Doctor enters Oswin's chamber only to discover to his horror that she has been fully converted into a Dalek. Unprotected from the nanogenes and the insane Daleks for nearly a year, she could not prevent herself from being converted in order to preserve her genius-level intellect for Dalek use. Unable to cope with her conversion, her mind retreated into a fantasy of survival as a human which was picked up as the Carmen transmission. Oswin is nearly overcome by a Dalek personality at this revelation, though she still possesses human emotions and is unable to kill the Doctor. Oswin fulfils her promise of deactivating the force-field, on the condition that the Doctor remember her as the human she once was.

The Doctor returns to Amy and Rory and teleports them back to inside his TARDIS on board the Parliament ship as the planet is destroyed, where the Daleks on board fail to recognise him due to his removal from their hive intelligence. He leaves the ship and drops the reconciled Amy and Rory back home. He then departs alone, as he revels in the Dalek Parliament's question to him—"Doctor who?".

Continuity

Amy and Rory sign divorce papers; Rory moved out of their home in August 2012, as depicted in part 5 of Pond Life. The divorce papers confirm that their house since the end of "The God Complex" is in southwest London, not Leadworth.[5] In her opening speech, Darla refers to the Doctor fighting in the Time War and also states "and then [the Doctor] died", referring to the events of "The Impossible Astronaut" and "The Wedding of River Song". The nanogenes' behaviour in rewriting biology is similar to those introduced in "e Empty Child]]"/"The Doctor Dances", a pair of Ninth Doctor episodes also written by Moffat. In the closing exchange in the Parliament, the Doctor also refers to one of his nicknames as 'the Oncoming Storm', introduced in the novelisation of Remembrance of the Daleks. The final question of "Doctor who?" was the "question that must not be answered" asked by Dorium at the end of "The Wedding of River Song".

Daleks

Some of the Daleks are survivors of previous encounters with the Doctor 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); however, they all share the 'modern age' Dalek body type. There are several references to Remembrance of the Daleks in the episode. There is no explanation as to why Skaro still exists, despite being destroyed in Remembrance by the 7th Doctor tricking the Daleks into blowing Skaro up, although one comic stated that the capital planet of the Dalek empire at any time is always called Skaro. It is also possible that the Doctor is appearing on Skaro some time prior to its being blown up.

Many of the Daleks from both the classic and revived series featured in this episode, most notably the Special Weapons Dalek, only previously featured in Remembrance of the Daleks, as well as many appearances from the Daleks that appeared from "Dalek" in 2005, up until their final appearance in "Victory of the Daleks" in 2010.

Production

"Asylum of the Daleks" contains every kind of Dalek that has ever faced the Doctor, including the Special Weapons Dalek from the 1988 story, Remembrance of the Daleks.[4] Executive producer Steven Moffat announced in 2011 that he intended to give a "rest" to the Daleks.[6] It is also the first Dalek story Moffat has written for the show; he stated that he "couldn't resist" the opportunity.[7] The reason for the rest was that Moffat felt their frequent appearances made them the "most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe".[6] Moffat recalled that the Daleks were remembered for being scary, but due to their legacy as British icons they had become "cuddly" over the years and their true menace forgotten;[8] with "Asylum" he intended to make them scary again, reminding the audience of their intentions.[8][9] He thought the best way to do this would be to show Daleks that were considered even madder than usual.[8] Gillan admitted that she had not been scared of the Daleks before working on the episode.[10]

According to The Daily Telegraph, the production team located the remaining models of the various versions of the Daleks and shipped them to the studios in Cardiff Bay. This included a Dalek owned by Russell T Davies, Moffat's predecessor.[11] Executive producer Caroline Skinner knew Davies well and asked to borrow his replica. She stated that he was "thrilled" that it was canonised.[12] The total number of different Daleks was around 25, with models from 1963 to 2010; Skinner said that "there was just a real magic and sense of history about having them".[13]

Broadcast

"Asylum of the Daleks" was broadcast on 1 September 2012 on BBC One in the United Kingdom,[2] BBC America in the United States,[14] and on Space in Canada,[15] and on 2 September on the ABC iView service.[16][17] It will premiere on 8 September 2012 on ABC1 in Australia.

"Asylum of the Daleks" was preview screened at BFI Southbank on 14 August,[3] and at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival during 23–25 August.[18] On 25 August it was also screened in New York City[19] and Toronto.[20]

The episode was watched by 6.4 million overnight in the UK.

References

  1. ^ "Steven Moffat spills the beans on seventh Dr Who series". BBC. 14 August 2012. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  2. ^ a b "Doctor Who | Series 7 - 1. Asylum of the Daleks". Radio Times. 22 August 2012. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
  3. ^ a b Sperling, Daniel (25 June 2012). "'Doctor Who' season seven premiere title, first screening revealed". Digital Spy. Retrieved 25 June 2012.
  4. ^ a b "Asylum of the Daleks". BBC. 25 June 2012. Retrieved 26 June 2012.
  5. ^ Their jointly owned house is referred to above where Amy signs, its address ends "...Avenue, London SW[blurry]
  6. ^ a b "Doctor Who writer to 'rest' Daleks". BBC News. 31 May 2011. Retrieved 5 August 2012.
  7. ^ Moffat, Steven (28 August 2012). "Steven Moffat's Doctor Who Episode Guide: Asylum of the Daleks". Radio Times. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  8. ^ a b c "Steven Moffat: The Return of the Daleks" (Video). BBC. 29 August 2012. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  9. ^ "Enter the Asylum". BBC. 15 August 2012. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
  10. ^ "Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill Introduce Asylum of the Daleks" (Video). BBC. 30 August 2012. Retrieved 31 August 2012.
  11. ^ Hogan, Michael (14 August 2012). "Doctor Who, Asylum of the Daleks, spoiler-free first review". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  12. ^ Brown, David (24 August 2012). "Doctor Who's Caro Skinner on Confidential's axe, the 50th anniversary and the return of the Daleks". Radio Times. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  13. ^ Setchfield, Nick (22 August 2012). "Doctor Who producer Caro Skinner talks series 7 and the 50th anniversary". SFX. Retrieved 26 August 2012.
  14. ^ "BBC America's 'Doctor Who' Returns Saturday, September 1 With Five Blockbuster Episodes". BBC America. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  15. ^ "Doctor Who Season 7 Premiere Date Announced!". Space. 22 August 2012. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  16. ^ "@ABCTV Twitter status". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 22 August 2012. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  17. ^ "The Doctor To Premiere on iView". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 28 August 2012. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
  18. ^ Golder, Dave (9 May 2012). "Doctor Who Series 7 To Premiere At Edinburgh TV Festival in August". SFX. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  19. ^ Wicks, Kevin (25 August 2012). "Photos: 'Doctor Who' Premiere Screening in New York". BBC America. Retrieved 25 August 2012.
  20. ^ "SPACE Takes Over Fan Expo Canada This Weekend, With Panels, Autograph Sessions, and INNERSPACE". Bell Media. 23 August 2012. Retrieved 1 September 2012.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Eleventh Doctor.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Asylum_of_the_Daleks&oldid=510425569"