I saw the Doctor’s happy dance at the end differently. I thought he was celebrating that thousands of years of bad blood and anger was washed away. He had a fresh start with these creatures. Sure, they are still evil creatures, but there’s no personal vendetta against him anymore.
I didn’t much like it either. A little too ‘on the nose’ though it was an echo of Dorium shouting it in The Wedding of River Song.
So essentially, the Daleks have been rebooted. They get to relearn to ‘divinely’ hate the Doctor all over again? I guess this fits with the Doctor stepping down a bit from becoming “too big” though that plot point seems more like it’s actually the writers who are stepping back from being obligated to top themselves every episode/season.
I blame Russell T Davies with his ridiculous finale plots involving things like Reality Bombs.
Spoiler tags just in case…
I’m shocked no one has yet speculated further on the surprise appearance of Jenna-Louise Coleman in this episode (Moffat’s ‘no long story arcs’ disclaimer be damned!).
So, will Jenna-Louise Coleman’s companion be an earlier, human Oswyn - in which case I guess she’ll be the first non-20th Century companion in NuWho plus, as her end has already been shown, it will give Smith plenty of opportunities to put on a manically brave face for his companion while looking sadly aside to camera. Or perhaps Oswyn-Dalek survived the Asylum’s destruction and we’ll end up with our first Dalek companion! That would be… odd.
Personally, I don’t think Oswyn and the Coleman companion will be the same character, but there has to be a reason they chose her to play this role rather than just some random other young thing.
OB
We were speculating about how this might work out. She has her own DNA to work with (her brain) :- I personally think she’ll use that to clone herself her own body. If that’s the case, the Doctor’s new companion will be an insanely intelligent, computer hacker genius, ex-Dalek who created her own human body by cloning herself :- I think that’s pretty much the Doctor’s dream girl.
Haven’t we sort of had that before with River Song and the fate of Amy’s child?
We were all intrigued by the possibility of a new companion in the Liz Shaw / Nyssa mode – someone who’s able to keep up with the technical expertise of the Doctor and occasionally surprise him with her cleverness. That’s territory new Who hasn’t explored yet.
Are you forgetting Martha? She was no slouch in the brains department.
My daughter watches it with closed captioning on for that reason!
What was that about Amy not being able to give Rory a child? Didn’t she already give birth to River Song? And wasn’t Rory the father there? Or has all this been magicked away in some sort of continuty reboot?
She said they did something to her at Demon’s Run so she can’t have children anymore.
I think the idea was that he wanted lots of kids that they’d raise together. River’s theirs, but they didn’t get to raise her.
Also, according to the closed captioning, what Oswin said was, “No sense of humour **and **that chin.”
That’s an enormously intriguing way to introduce the next companion. I had heard that there was a massive thing in the first episode, but I just assumed that it was going to be the Pond’s marital problems, but no, no, it was quite something else. A good start I think. 
Then you adopt or at least talk about adopting. Mrs. and Mr. Pond really need to work on their communication. :smack:
Because couples NEVER suffer from basic communication problems, totally unrealistic.
Since when do the Daleks “convert” other species into them, like the Borg or something. I thought they were space nazis obsessed with genetic purity, remember how the Dalek leader in the 10th Doctor run was considered so out there for making a desperate attempt to use human DNA it inspired a coup?
:dubious:
No arguments on that. A theme I really hate to see anywhere is one person in a couple making a decision that affects both, for the other’s “own good”, but not talking with the other about it.
Yeah, it was really bizarrely weak writing. I think the point was supposed to be that the Doctor tricked them into thinking that Amy was going to be converted into a Dalek (and yeah–that’s the Cybermen’s schtick!) in order to save their marriage, but they didn’t make it clear, and it ended up seeming really contrived and pointless. Suddenly out of no where they’re split up and unreconcilable, and then after a single two minute conversation they’re all happy again? It was like they combined two really bad sitcom tropes: one where a simple miscommunication causes all kinds of avoidable havoc (“TOMORROW I’M GOING TO DYE . . . my hair.”) and one where everything depends on some incredibly important and character-defining element that only appears to drive a single plot, has never been mentioned before and will never be mentioned again.
Before he took over I was really impressed with Moffat for crafting exceptionally tight, well plotted episodes. Now it seems like everything is loose ends and reset buttons. I liked a lot of the early Moffat/Smith episodes that other people seemed to hate, like Victory of the Daleks, but I’m finding myself missing Davies and Tennant more and more.
And yeah, I’m completely expecting the next Doctor to start wearing question marks again, after that ending!
I thought it was a weakly written episode. Too many non-twist twists (seriously, the Doctor doesn’t get that he’s the “predator?”) and absolutely no sense of danger. As a viewer, you know Amy, Rory, and the Doctor are getting out alive. Suspense has to come from outside consequences…if you trap them on a planet full of insane zombie Daleks, the worst case scenario is that a bunch of insane zombie Daleks die.
Daleks are stupid monster on screen. The more they talk and pontificate, the less scary or interesting they are. Their appeal is that they don’t stop to ask questions or investigate or learn; they just destroy. The more “humanized” they get, the more they just become…jerks in pepper pots.
I’m willing to accept that they’re the most iconic villains and need to show up now and again, but, man, at least try to make them seem like dangerous monsters instead of neurotic boobs. “Dalek” in the first season is still, by a wide margin, the most interesting treatment they’ve had in the new series. One Dalek was terrifying; it turns out a million are just irritating.
This was a first-class episode, the best from Moffat since he took over as showrunner. The plotting was superb, especially the way he brought in clues as to what was going on that were mysterious even though you knew they were clues. The use of “eggs” was particularly brilliant.
The Daleks weren’t converting other people to Daleks – they would be stuck on Asylum as undesirable and dangerous. (Though I think Moffat missed a chance: a Dalek is more likely to fear and imprison a good Dalek, not one that was more evil.)
The subplot about the breakup was handled extremely well: it was established (again a bit of very smart writing) that it had been going on for some time; the resolution worked because, when you are facing imminent death, it frees you to talk about things you could never bring up before.
This was terrific on all levels. The only problem is that it will be hard to top.
And on a completely pointless side… er… point:
I have the same model of phone as the Ponds 