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I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this
episode as much as I did. But it’s a visible step up from Moffat’s last three
scripts, as he manages to put together, an efficient and skilfully constructed
episode, after the hot messes of “Let’s Kill Hitler”, “The Wedding of River
Song”, and The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe”. “Asylum” isn’t quite
Moffat back to his best, but it is a strong episode that dares to try something
new, confidently setting out the new style for the new season.
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But first up, it seems worth addressing
the episode’s biggest weakness, as it is a significant one. Amy and Rory’s
divorce subplot doesn’t quite work, not being set up enough for the viewer to
be prepared for what’s coming, and not getting enough focus for the resolution
to feel satisfying. Trying to explore the lingering hurt Amy feels from Demon’s
run is commendable, and her and Rory’s failure to communicate is true to the
trouble Amy has opening up to people to discuss her hurt. But there’s a
lingering sense that this storyline could have been done better, and with more
sensitivity.
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However, Amy and Rory’s subplot does
have some benefits, as we see a return of the everyday to Doctor Who’s
aesthetic, which has disappeared from the show over the course of series six,
which is not an inherently bad thing, but is nice to see back after an absence.
The pre credits scenes at Amy’s workplace, with Top 40 chart music playing over
Amy’s photoshoot, feel grounded in the contemporary in a way that Doctor Who
hasn’t in the whole Moffat Era. While the “everyday life” aspects of the
episode don’t quite work here, they will do good things for Doctor Who over the
course of this season, and will be the source of some of the show’s high points
come the Capaldi era.
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And there is stuff genuinely good stuff
going on with Amy in this episode, it’s just not related to her and Rory’s
marital issues. The subplot surrounding the nanogenes taking over Amy and
nearly converting her into a Dalek slave produce a threat that is very specific
to the things that are important to Amy. Amy has been established as a
character whose identity and sense of self are structured around fairy tales
and stories, and the threat posed by the nanogenes is that she will be
“unwritten”, as the Daleks hijack her memories and stories, rewriting her to
become their puppet. The Daleks pose a direct threat to her identity as a
storyteller, threatening to take away her ability to care about the stories
that make Amy who she is, just like Darla, who is able to consult files and
gain academic knowledge about the person she was, but is unable to feel loss
for the Daughter she once knew, unless the Daleks choose to reactivate those
feelings. For all the complaints about the Daleks not exterminating anybody in
this story, I think they are as unsettling here as they’ve ever been. Between
the threat they pose to Amy, and the fates of Darla and Oswin, the Daleks pose
an existential threat they don’t get just by shooting extras and secondary
characters (who, on the whole, are the only kind of characters the Daleks ever
exterminate anyway).
·
One of the episode’s biggest strengths
comes in the form of Nick Hurran’s direction: “The God Complex” and “The Day of
the Doctor” are better episodes, and are also tremendously accomplished pieces
of visual storytelling, but this might be his best achievement directing Doctor
Who, as he takes a packed script and gives it clarity through clearly conveyed
visual information, and gives us some wonderfully striking shots and visual
sequences. We get a focus on bright and primary colours: a vast white
snowscape, the brightly lit expanse of the Dalek Parliament, and Oswin’s bright
red dress standing out as as the immediate images that come to mind, all held
in contrast to the grimy underbelly of the Asylum, with its dank corridors and
broken, dying inhabitants. We get sweeping pans across the wreckage of Skaro,
that capture the sheer scale of the Dalek shaped towers, and a moving overhead
shot as the Doctor, Amy, and Rory ascend on a platform from their cell into the
Dalek Parliament. The episode has a wonderful variety of visuals that still
cohere neatly, establishing “blockbuster” visual tone for the season with
aplomb.
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Particularly striking are the dream-like
visuals when Amy hallucinates, seeing Daleks as people. There are seven people
in the room: a woman in a dark dress, kissing a man on the cheek, a man who
makes a gesture of welcome to Amy, a man and a woman talking and laughing, a
man swaying unsteadily on the spot, and a ballerina, much younger than the
other people, who the sequence dwells on. The ballerina is positioned at the
centre of the shot, where all the other people are positioned to the left or
the right, and wearing a white costume where they wear dark clothes. The
sequence slowly focuses in on her, as she starts in the distance, at the back
of the shot, but the camera continues to move towards her, pushing the other
characters out of the shot or to its margins, until we cut to a closer,
overhead shot of her spinning on the spot. Her vibrant red hair, which the
viewer is led to focus on as she spins in slow motion, links her to Amy, but
she is also linked to Oswin, whose voice we first hear while we look at a shot
of a model ballerina spinning on a music box, and who is wearing a red dress,
which we see her wearing seconds after cutting away from the ballerina. As a
result, Amy and Oswin are tacitly linked by their connection to the Daleks. But
what is this link? This sequence is a piece of foreshadowing: we know Amy is
being converted by the Daleks, and by tacitly linking her to Oswin, the
sequence prepares the viewer for Oswin being subject to a similar fate. This
sequence is perhaps the best example of the way Hurran’s packed visual
symbolism is perfectly tailored to the ton of information packed into Moffat’s
script.
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And then we get to thing giving the
script much needed focus: the surprise of Jenna Coleman’s appearance. It’s a great
way to showcase her talent ahead of her proper first appearance in “The
Snowmen”, and she’s very good here, hinting at a deeper character beneath
Oswin’s wisecracking nature that is presented over the course of the episode,
and taking any opportunity to hint at Oswin’s subconscious awareness of her
conversion such as the scene where she deflects the Doctor’s question about his inability to see her, even though she can see him.
·
Which leads us to the character Coleman
plays in this story. Oswin’s character arc centres around the divide between
dreams and reality. The first thing she asks the Doctor is “are you real? Are
you really real?”, hinting at just how deep she has buried herself in her dream
world of soufflé baking and messages to her mother: she can no longer be
certain of what is real and what is not. This dream breaks down when the Doctor
reveals the truth to her, but her death sees her reclaim her own reality, and
identity: “I fought the Daleks, and I am human”, she tells the Doctor. Like a
phoenix rising from the ashes, she sacrifices herself to save the Doctor, beat
the Daleks, and reclaim the self she had lost, ascending to a higher narrative
plane as she looks into the camera and, for the first time, starts the meme
that is tied to her character this season, in and out of universe: “Run you
clever boy, and remember me”.
·
And
here, I want to address a common criticism of the episode: the claim that the
regulars hear Oswin’s human voice over the intercom even though she has been
converted to being a dalek is accused of cheating the viewer for the sake of a
twist. It’s a criticism I agreed with, until I realised on this rewatch that
there’s actually a perfectly reasonable explanation. As Jane Campbell points
out in the comments for El Sandifer’s essay on this episode: “There's no
microphone in the white room [where Oswin is imprisoned]. Oswin's patched
directly into the pathweb and presumably any communications servers. She can
dial up the opera Carmen – it's not like she's really got an
iPhone to play it. It's not actually a stretch that if she can fill the comm
lines with music that only exists in her head, she can fill it with the voice
in her head as well.” What is often cited as major plot hole actually isn’t,
for my money. This isn’t to suggest that the episode doesn’t have its flaws,
but its plot holds together better, and is less superficial, than its
detractors would suggest.
·
We end a story with the Daleks forgetting
the Doctor, erased by Oswin, who reclaims her reality and caps it off by
altering the Daleks’. This also neatly continues the “stepping into the
shadows” arc, as the Doctor has now disappeared from all of the universe,
including the memories of his greatest enemies. And it hints at the true nature
of the “Question” arc: “Doctor Who?” Isn’t a question about the Doctor’s true
name, but his identity, his true nature. The real answer to the arc is hidden
in plain sight from the very beginning.
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