Asylum of the Daleks (2012)

So its back, after what has felt like an eternity we have the Doctor back. For only the fourth time in Doctor Who history, the series starts off with a Dalek story and we were promised every Dalek design in this story. Whether we got that is unclear but that’s sort of unimportant because the story starts off with the Doctor being captured by the Daleks and the same fate falls upon Amy and Rory who by the start of the episode are about to be ex-Ponds. The plot is that the Daleks wants the Doctor to turn of the forcefield to allow them to blow up this planet which contains the maddest Daleks. There is a wonderful scene where the Daleks talk about the concept of beauty and that is the reason why the Daleks never could kill the Doctor. Lovely little scene.

The fact that there was a scene on Skaro did through me a bit because in Remembrance of the Daleks, the Doctor destroyed Skaro with the hand of Omega so it does through up a question as to when the opening scene is set. Looked bloody cool though. The development of eye stalks coming out of peoples heads is quite a creepy thing especially when the people appear quite normal but once you get clued up about them then it still manages to work. The ‘parliament’ of the Daleks was an impressive achievement and everytime I see it I think that it’s the best shot of many Daleks since the show returned. The revelation that Oswin was infact a Dalek was something that I didn’t see coming. There was an explanation why she was on her own and didn’t come out of that room but I really didn’t see that one coming. I loved how there were different rooms and in particular the final room with the Daleks which had Oswin roll off a whole list of alien names that the Doctor has faced over the years.

The introduction of Jenna Louise Coleman was another big surprise because I thought that she wouldn’t be appearing until the fifth episode. It’s going to be interesting to see how she becomes the Doctor’s companion and shows that Moffat has a plan/story arc ready. Despite not interacting with anyone I thought that she was very good, she seems like she is going to be different to the previous companions that we have seen before. Matt Smith was very good in this as he starts his third series in the role its clear that he has got a firm handle to the role and the story allowed him to show the more dramatic side of his character which was nice. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill were also very good in this but if I’m honest I am finding the whole married thing to be a tad bit problematic. Ok so there was a purpose to it in this episode but usually its not really necersary. 

It’s seems that Steven Moffat has taken on board the critiscm of the last series when people said that it was too complicated and has instead managed to blend the two, it was the sort of Doctor Who story that we would have got in 2010. I thought that it was a very solid story that managed to do something different. We were treated to an opening episode that gave us more Daleks than we have seen for quite sometime with the most recent version of Daleks kept to an almost cameo appearance. Asylum of the Daleks is a welcome return to Doctor Who and it bodes well for the rest of the series.

Rating - 8/10