Missed my guess on where this episode was filmed - while we were watching, I said to my wife, “I wonder if they filmed this when they were in the US (filming The Impossible Astronaut)?”
I did like that Moffat & Co had an American character played by an American actor, with, y’know, an actual American accent.
I didn’t recognize Ben Browder by sight at all behind that mustache and shaggy hair, but his voice gave him away.
Is it canon that the first Doctor had never regenerated before? And how old was the first Doctor in 1963 - was it stated?
That was a surprisingly dark episode for a MOTW - discussing responsibility for war crimes in prime family viewing time. I did very much like it though.
For the bigger picture: what was it Amy said “Our friends are noticing that we are ageing much faster than them”? Damn, I’m going to miss the Ponds.
The Tardis wiki has the First Doctoraround 447-450 years old at the beginning.
“The matter of this incarnation’s age and how long this incarnation lived was unclear, although Susan once called him an adolescent by Time Lord standards; (CC: Here There Be Monsters) shortly after his regeneration, his next incarnation stated that he was around 450 years old. (DW: The Tomb of the Cybermen)”
I think Amy says that they need to go back or else their friends will start noticing that they’re aging faster then the rest.
Amy said that she was worried that the Doctor was weaning them off him, but it seems as if it is the other way around. Whenever he wants to do more she turns him down.
The Wikipedia article on the Doctor has a whole section on the Doctor’s age. Shortly after he regenerated into Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor) he said he was 450 years old. Romana said that the Fourth Doctor was 749. I recall that he claimed to be slightly younger, but she called him out for lying about his age, which he attributed to vanity. The Seventh Doctor was said to be 953, which was presumably accurate, since it was a semi-important plot point that he and the Rani were the same age.
Unfortunately, Russell T. Davies must have liked the sound of “900 years old” because he repeatedly used it as a round estimate for the Doctor’s age, and eventually established that the Tenth Doctor was exactly 903 in “Voyage of the Damned.” Right before he regenerates into Matt Smith, he says that he’s 906, and he tells Amy Pond that he’s 907 during their first season together. During “The Impossible Astronaut” the Doctor says he’s 1103 right before he lets the Astronaut shoot him, but when he shows up later, he tells Amy he’s only 909, implying (given the somewhat twisted chronology of that season) that he spends about 200 years traveling on his own after the gives Amy and Rory their house at the end of “The God Complex.”
Moffat has said that in fact, the Doctor has no real idea how old he is given how much bouncing around time he does. Personally, I think the following scene would be a much better explanation for the discrepancies:
DOCTOR: Oh no!
RORY: What is it? What’s wrong?
DOCTOR: An asteroid! We’ve landed on an asteroid!
AMY: Is that bad? What’s wrong with asteroids?
DOCTOR: Oh, nothing I suppose. They’re just boring. Really boring! I spent seven hundred years on an asteroid once. I programmed the TARDIS to pick me up there, but I accidentally entered the wrong temporal co-ordinates, so I had to sit around and wait for her. Terrible time! Nothing to do! Nothing to read! No monsters to fight!
AMY: Wait a minute, Doctor, you told us you’re–what?–twelve hundred years old?
DOCTOR: [Distractedly] Twelve hundred and one.
AMY: Do you mean to say that you’ve spent most of that time sitting around on an asteroid waiting? That’s it?
DOCTOR: What? No, of course not! Weren’t you listening? I said it was boring! Nothing to do!
RORY: So you’re saying that time on the asteroid doesn’t–?
DOCTOR: Doesn’t count. No of course not. I wasn’t doing anything.
AMY: So what, time only “counts” for you if . . . what, if you’re having fun?
DOCTOR: [Suddenly paying attention to the PONDS] Let me ask you something. You two are–what, how old?
RORY: Thirty-one.
AMY: Yeah, we’re thirty-one.
DOCTOR: And when you say that you’re both thirty-one years old do you mean that you’re counting . . . everything?
AMY: Yeah.
RORY: Of course.
DOCTOR: Even the boring times? Even when you’re asleep?
AMY: Yeah.
DOCTOR: [Starts punching buttons and pulling levers on the TARDIS CONSOLE] And I let you spend all those months by yourselves living in that stupid little house in Leadworth? I thought I was doing you a favor! Well now that I know how short those pitiful human lives of yours are, I think we’d better make sure you spend them doing something exciting for a change!
Let me see if I’ve understood this.
Say for the state of argument that the Dr collected Amy and Rory from their home at noon one day, and took them off on an adventure which (from their subjective perspective) lasted one month. In order to avoid anyone noticing Amy & Rory had “disappeared” for a month, the Dr then returns them home at - let’s say - one minute past noon on the same day they left.
In that situation, Amy & Rory would have physically aged one month, but their next-door neighbours by only one minute.
Is that how Amy and Rory’s faster aging works?
Must be, unless the stress of all those daleks causes wrinkles and gray hairs
I was really pleasantly surprised by this episode. I went in to it worried we’d see a bunch of riffs on western cliches and some cheesy Americana. The last two episodes have been trying very hard to be “cinematic,” and I think Doctor Who works much better when it gives the characters time to stand and talk and think.
This was a really strong monster-of-the-week episode. Fun.
Funny, I don’t mean to threadshit, but I didn’t enjoy this week’s episode. I was so bored by it, I wandered off to do the washing up and hoovering instead. 
(I *did *like the line about Susan the horse though, and do respect his life choices.) 
Oh, and next week’s episode looks good. And has anyone else spotted the recurringtheme?
Not the best episode, nor the worse. Just a little meh, for me. Still, some good quotes, like always:
*Doctor: Anachronistic electricity. Keep Out signs. Aggressive stares. Has someone been peeking at my Christmas list?
Doctor: I speak horse. He’s called Susan. And he wants you to respect his life choices.
Jex: But that wasn’t the plan. He’s not following the plan.
Amy: Welcome to my world.
Security Breach. You have ten seconds to enter the passcode or this vehicle will self destruct. Thank you for choosing Abaraxas security software. Incinerating intruders for three centuries.
Isaac: Everyone who isn’t an American, drop your gun.
Amy: This is what happens when you travel alone for too long.
Doctor: Okay, so! Our next trip. Oo! You know all the monkeys and dogs they sent into space in the '50s and '60s? You will never guess what happened to them.*
Don’t feel bad, I hated the first episode of the season and didn’t much care for last week’s, either. I was starting to think I should drop my Doctor Who subscription on Amazon and just give up on the whole thing. Fortunately, I thought this one was really good, and it restored my Who love. I don’t like people who come into a TV thread and say nothing but negative things or declare that each episode is a jump-the-shark moment, but no one likes everything.
Those were all really great lines!
I have to admit, even though Matt Smith won me over right away as Eleven, he just doesn’t have the range of Tennant or Eccleston, and I’m missing them more and more. Hopefully the new companion will give him some different things to play off of. I really hated her in “Asylum,” but it wasn’t really her, was it?
Anyway, this was a great episode in my book, and I’m very relieved that the Doctor’s murdering the pirate at the end of last week wasn’t just poor characterization. Amy even says to the Doctor in this one, “When did killing people become an option?” Oh, Amy, you have no idea. I kind of thought the whole thing about needing his companions to keep him in check was a Ten thing, but I think (and hope) that Moffat’s playing the long con with this show, and that a lot of loose ends that we thought were dropped are going to come back and be resolved. We already know River Song is coming back later this season, and I’m hoping it’s good! But even just as a stand-alone episode this was really, really good. I’m a sucker for sci-fi westerns ever since Firefly, and they really did this one right.
I especially liked the fact that almost all the characters were multifaceted and believable, even the kid who was ready to shoot the Doctor at one point. The scene of them play-shooting each other at the end was a little cheesy, but it really brought home the extent to which the Doctor was leaving these people better off than he left them. He almost became the Oncoming Storm, willing–like the other doctor–to sacrifice anyone for righteousness and leaving people safe but scarred and scared in his wake. Instead, he became, like the Gunslinger, a sign of hope as someone who overcame his own anger and self-righteousness and inspired others to do the same. Everything in this episode focussed on that theme, and it pulled it off very, very well without sacrificing any of the silliness that makes Doctor Who kid-friendly fun.
I couldn’t disagree more. When Eleven first appeared he seemed to me to just be the same but more of Ten, but he’s grown as a character into a Doctor who really feels alien and detached and impossibly old - not as bitter about it as Nine, or as grouchy about it as Three, but it’s definitely a struggle for him to connect with human beings and their understanding of the universe.
The limited number of episodes makes it hard for me to get excited about this season. We barely start watching and it’ll be over.
I feel bad for BBC America. They’re trying hard to build an American audience for Doctor Who. It disappeared for an entire year (except for the Christmas special) and now its only back for five weeks. You can’t keep a new audience that way.
As long as it’s not Amy and Rory causing it. At the end of Asylum, were we supposed to assume that their tender moment completely defeated their imminent Dalekification or is that something still to pull out of the bag later? Or did I miss something?
The Doctor gave Amy his bracelet
By the way, I felt as if ‘Abraxas’ was a reference to something specific in the sci-fi field but couldn’t immediately place it. Googling found a Doctor Who novel, ‘The Cabinet of Light’, but I’d never read that so figured that wasn’t it. Can any of my fellow dopers help out?
Given the shape of Jex’s ship, I’m assuming it’s a Herman Hesse reference. I’m surprised I even caught that, considering I’m a couple decades removed from that ‘literature and psychoanalysis’ class in undergrad.