Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks
This post contains spoilers about the Doctor Who episode entitled "Asylum of the Daleks", the first episode of the seventh new series.
So, overall, I wasn't impressed. I didn't hate the episode, but it wasn't up to much either. There were the usual selection of plot holes, the usual running in corridors, and the fact that the Doctor is a time traveller had, for the first time in a long time, no real relevance.
The Rory/Amy thing was interesting at first, and then, when resolved, felt a bit pointless. I feel it'd have been much more interesting if they'd gone ahead with the divorce, or if one of them had been Daleked, or... well, anything except the return to the status quo, to be honest.
I do find it interesting that Amy's day job is as a model. That's a nod to the modern world that you don't often see; we're usually supposed to believe that the stunningly attractive woman on the screen is, within the fiction, just of average looks. Acknowledging that she's not is new and different, and I did like that.
The dialogue, or at least the stuff people said, was pretty awful, to be honest. It had none of the cleverness that I've come to expect from a Steven Moffat script, and indeed, I thought it was Chris Chibnall's writing at first. Matt Smith's delivery seemed underused, most notably in the "Who do you think?" line about who killed the Daleks, which puzzled me. The trailer made it look as though it were Amy. It would have been far more in-character if it had been, given the long, long history of the companions doing the fighting and gunnery and explosives handling for him, and so the fact that it was the Doctor felt a bit flat.
And finally, I really dislike the use of the phrase "Doctor Who" in the series itself. It's not so much self-referential as completely fourth-wall-breaking, and not in a pleasant sort of knowing way, either.
I'll watch the next one, but I won't be in a hurry to catch it at broadcast time. It can wait.
Posted by Drew Shiel at September 4, 2012 1:15 PM
