Ok, so I realize that Doctor Who has become a bit of an obsession for me. In fact my friends tell me that when I was severely out of it at the hospital all I talked about was Doctor Who. It’s kind of a cringe worthy thought that I almost died and the last thing I would have talked about was Daleks, but seeing as I don’t spend all of my money and time on Doctor Who (I just talk about it at least once a day and to be fair it’s usually with other Whovians) I’m going to say that this obsession is still on the side of healthy. Honestly I’m going to blame my hospital Who-rant on whatever I was on at the hospital plus withdrawal from the show. A withdrawal that has been sated (for now at least) by Saturday’s Doctor Who season premier “Asylum of the Daleks”. It’s Wednesday now so if you haven’t seen it yet then you need to rectify that immediately and go watch it before coming back and reading the rest of that because there will definitely be some spoilers in this post. Go watch the episode. That’s right, go on, shoo…
Are they gone? Ok, good.
Now back to the topic at hand.
All of the week prior to the premier BBC posted little 50sec segments on YouTube called Pond life. These were basically the Doctor sending phone messages to the Pond’s (Amy and Rory) about random things he had been doing since, well basically since last season. There were five of them Mon-Fri and Monday through Thursday were things that felt inconsequential. There was a cute one about an Ood and just random little things that fans thought, or at least I did, were there to tide them over before the big Saturday premier. Then came Friday, Friday’s showed a scene of Amy and Rory arguing with Rory leaving the house and Amy crying. It was like being hit in the stomach, taking the wind out of you. All week we had been watching these cutesy little scenes and then WHAM! out of no where there is this huge situation, and no explanation for it. Just arguing, leaving, and crying.
Then came Saturday, where I am happy to report they changed the opening theme graphics and left out Amy’s introduction that they had in season six. I wasn’t happy about Amy talking at the beginning of the show, it made the show feel too much about her and less about the Doctor and the hijinks and the monsters etc. This seasons opening was exactly how it should be, with nifty graphics and the iconic theme song. It’s not Doctor Who until I hear that theme, all cool old school sci-fi, i.e. heavy on the theremin. That song has been the theme for Doctor Who since 1963 (with variations for different Doctors) and that’s all you need to open the show. So with that back to normal my brain is ready to take on whatever Moffat is ready to throw at me this season (or series as it’s known in the UK). My mind was like “That’s right Moffat bring it on! I’ve watched this show for 6 years, you threw me for a loop (or two) last year but I’m ready for you this year. I’ve got your number and you can’t surprise me anymore!”. Boy was I wrong. The man knows how to throw a curve-ball. It’s why I love this show; you think you have everything figured out, then two seconds later nothing is what you thought it was. So then you have to go back and see the subtle signs you might have missed, and you spiral further and further down the rabbit hole until you are completely obsessed with the show. Well played Moffat, well played.
So the show starts out with the Doctor on planet Skaro (home planet of the Daleks) meeting a woman who turns out to be some kind of sleeper Dalek agent who knocks the Doctor out and kidnaps him. Meanwhile, Amy and Rory are filing for divorce. No explanation why or anything just an angry couple and some divorce papers. Rory gives Amy the papers and leaves in a huff. Amy is then kidnapped by a sleeper Dalek and Rory is soon to follow. When they wake up all three are on a spaceship hovering above a planet that the Daleks made as an asylum for, you guessed it, insane Daleks. There was a problem on the asylum planet and the Daleks had come up with the brilliant idea of sending their greatest enemy down to fix it along with his companions because the Doctor never goes anywhere without his companions. So they are given bracelets that stop little nano-Dalek robots from turning them into sleeper Daleks. That’s right Daleks can turn us into them with nanobots now.
They go down to the planet and Rory ends up getting separated from everyone (of course). The Doctor and Amy go to find Rory, Amy loses her bracelet in an attack and begins turning into a Dalek. All along the way they are being helped by a stranded girl named Oswin Oswald (cool name), who says she had been stranded there for a while and was using her genius tech skills to keep the Daleks at bay. The Doctor and Amy don’t physically meet her while she is helping them, Oswin is talking to them through technology as she has the mad hacker skills. When Amy and the Doctor finally meet up with Rory the Doctor goes to find Oswin so that Oswin will take down the shields on the planet and they can all escape before the Daleks blow up the planet.
While the Doctor goes for Oswin, Amy and Rory talked (more like argued) about their relationship. Rory thought Amy didn’t love him as much as he loved her, seeing as he had waited for over 2000 years for her. Amy got really angry and said that wasn’t true and that she had given him up because after everything that had happened at Demons Run (see last season for more details) she can no longer have kids and Rory had always wanted kids. So of course they made up after everything had come to light.
Meanwhile the Doctor has to work his way through “intensive care” to get to Oswin. We find out that intensive care, meaning the most insane Daleks, are all the Daleks that had faced the Doctor and lived. They attack the Doctor and Oswin hacks into their brains (she says the Daleks have like a hive mind) and deletes the Doctor from their memory. So the Daleks stop attacking, the Doctor opens the door to find Oswin and we find out that Oswin had been turned into a Dalek and she didn’t know it. So she flips out but lets the Doctor go and she gets blown up with the rest of the planet. Sadness. We find out that Oswin made all the Daleks forget who the Doctor is, so that should be interesting. Then the Doctor takes a newly reconciled Amy and Rory home and the episode ends.
So I had a couple of things really stick out to me that I wanted to go over. 1. Skaro. Maybe I missed something but I thought the Doctor had destroyed Skaro along with Gallifrey, the Time Lords, and the Daleks. He sacrificed his home and people to get rid of the Daleks and end the time war. Now there are like a bazillion Daleks around and Skaro is still there?! Not cool. So basically he sacrificed everything he loved and held dear for…nothing. Gah!!!
2. Amy & Rory. The big reveal with Amy and Rory was that everything they did to Amy when she was kidnapped at Demons Run made her unable to have children anymore. Wow. With every companion we see the toll of traveling with the Doctor. With Amy, who has been traveling with the Doctor the longest we see how much of a price she has to pay as a companion. The things that both Amy and Rory have been through is just insane. Amy has had a weeping angel try to pry its way out of her skull, she’s died, she’s been kidnapped and had who knows what done to her while she was pregnant, one version of her was stranded for almost 40years and then that version was abandoned. Her child was stolen and turned into an assassin against the Doctor. And then Rory, Rory has died…more than once. He became a plastic centurion and waited for Amy for over 2000yrs while being conscious for every minute of those 2000+ years. They’ve both gone through so much and they still have a “tragic ending” awaiting them. Damnit Steven Moffat! How much pain must a person go through before you’re happy?!
3. Oswin Oswald. Steven Moffat had done it again, he has given us a situation that seems set in stone and he has to write his way out of it. Like with the Doctor dying last season, this season we have Miss Oswin Oswald played by actress Jenna-Louis Coleman. For those who don’t know Jenna-Loise Coleman has already been announced as the new companion after Amy and Rory leave the show in the middle of this season. But Oswin Oswald turned out to be a Dalek and then she blew up. So this is another situation that I’m wondering ‘how the heck is Moffat getting out of this one?’. I can tell already it’s going to be another roller-coaster ride.
What do I think of the new companion? Well besides her having been turned into a Dalek and then her being dead, I really like her. She is saucy and sarcastic and sooooo much fun. She is way more lively and upbeat then past companions and I can see her bringing back the whimsicality that Doctor Who was lacking for me last season. If she stays that way she will easily become my favorite companion. Now to see how she actually becomes a companion.
P.s. I will try to get these out sooner than I did this week. Though I kinda like a Wednesday review, it gives people enough time to catch up so what I put in my post wont be a spoiler. Hmm, I’ll think about it.
So it’s been a while since I’ve ranted about Doctor Who and as the date nears for the rest of season 7 and then later this year the 50th anniversary special (March 30th and November 23rd respectively) I feel the need to rant once more and get some of these fangirl nerves out of my system. Recently BBC America showed two episodes of something called Doctor Who: The Doctors Revisited (check your local listings) and it started me on the oh so familiar path of impatient waiting and obsessing. Usually I’m good at waiting (no really I am…stop laughing) especially if it’s a long wait because then I can wean myself off of the obsession in question and distract myself with others. Luckily I had Arrow (another show I should talk about) this year to blissfully distract me from the gnawing hole in my heart when Doctor Who goes away. It helps that Arrow has comfortingly familiar actors like *spoilers, well not really but still* John Barrowman (my favorite person on the planet) and now, since this weeks episode, Alex Kingston. Ah! It’s so great! My favorite people in other shows! I’m being spoiled, Moffat must be up to something diabolical like making me super happy to crush my soul even further and watch my emotions take a suicidal swan dive from a higher place. That’s it isn’t it? I’m getting all these cool things in Arrow and Moffat can tell I’m happy (and so are other Whovians) and will make a super evil episode of Doctor Who to return us to our normal state of dazed devastation (the look you see on the faces of disaster survivors is the exact same as a Whovian who just lived through a Moffat episode).
Emotional Currency 
