Adventures in the Cavern of Rusted Daleks

Asylum of the Daleks or “How the Daleks Forgot the Doctor”

Apparently, there are Daleks even the Daleks don’t want to deal with. They send the Doctor down, where he deals with Jenna-Louise Coleman and the Ponds’ deteriorating marriage. And something about milk.

We start with a Dalek. That a man fought the Daleks and then died. But he will come back…like King Arthur? A woman hopes the stories are true. The Doctor shows up to reveal we are on Skaro to meet the woman. He wants to know what she knows, especially about him. She wants him to rescue her daughter, who is in a Dalek prison camp. The Doctor wonders why she isn’t and notes she is cold. She is a trap as the Doctor gets blasted. The Daleks celebrate.


We then cut to Amy on a photo shoot. Her assistant comes to tell her her husband is there and she replies “I don’t have a husband.” Rory comes with divorce papers. What’s going on? The makeup person turns out to be a trap as they take Amy. Rory gets on a bus…the bus driver is a trap, isn’t he? Yep. Is it just me or does Arthur Darvill look a bit like Christian Borle in his first shots? Rory wonders how much trouble they are in as the Doctor comes in to reveal that on a scale of 1 to 10, they are “Eleven.” Ha. They rise up to face many, many Daleks as it is their parliament. The Doctor tells Amy to be brave and to make them remember her. He steps forward, waiting to be exterminated.

Instead, a Dalek implores him to save them. SAVE THE DALEKS! They repeat it as we cut to…

CREDITS! SANS AMY! THANK YOU! This better not be like last year where it was only a one-episode reprieve, though.

We then hear opera music as Jenna-Louise Coleman voiceovers about checking her defenses, making a souffle “that was too beautiful to live” as she tells her mother in a recording. It’s her mother’s birthday. As she lies in a hammock, the Daleks clamor outside.

COMMERCIALS!

The Doctor keeps pacing and Amy says he’s noticed something’s wrong with them. The Daleks announces they have arrived. The woman from earlier is there and the Doctor asks if she remembers who she was before the Daleks emptied her. The Dalek prime minister asks the Doctor if he knows about the Dalek Asylum. Apparently it’s a place where they stick the battle scarred, the crazy and the difficult to control. He thinks it’s a myth because they would just kill them. The prime minister says it is offensive to kill something so full of hate. It’s beautiful. The Doctor is sickened and the Daleks imply he is full of hatred.

They look down at the asylum as the opera music starts playing. The Doctor tracks the signal back down to talk to Jenna-Louise Coleman. She is surprised to talk to someone and checks if he is real. Jenna-Louise reveals she is Oswin, from a starship that crashed. I’m gonna keep calling her Jenna-Louise. She says she’s been keeping out the Daleks for a year. The Daleks think it is irrelevant but Doctor says that if someone got in, the others can get out. There is something about turning off a force field and realizes no one wants to go down there. They are too scared. The prime minister reveals the predator will go down and the woman reveals he is the predator. The Doctor is going down and they are sending Amy and Rory with him. He tells them not to be scared. Amy replies “Scared? Who is scared? GERONIMO!”

And they jump. A guy on top of snowy mountains spies them and chases after them.

COMMERCIALS!

The man finds Amy and asks if she is okay. She calls for Rory and the Doctor. She runs away and the guy gives chase. A camera emerges from the snow, looking around to find the Doctor. He sees it and the opera music begins again. Jenna-Louise apologizes and asks if he’s okay. The Doctor questions how she got Dalek technology. She replies it’s easy to hack and if he’s coming to get her. Amy finds the Doctor. The man points to where there was another beam. Jenna-Louise tries to find them again. Outside, the others come on a hole as Amy yells for Rory.

He awakens around water before spying a bunch of Daleks. They look rusted. Don’t blink, Rory. You never know. He cautiously approaches one before rolling it out of the way. Pulling out a flashlight, he goes to explore.

The man reveals he has been there 12 days and Amy discovers he is from the Starship Alaska. Like Jenna-Louise, but she claims to be there a year. The man introduces his crew to the Doctor and Amy but it turns out they are dead. The man is surprised and it looks like they have been dead for some time. The man then realizes he died outside and turns out he was turned into a Dalek robot. The nano cloud processes the organic, living or dead, into a Dalek puppet. Amy realizes they are surrounded by puppets and they run. Because it’s not a Doctor Who episode unless someone runs. Amy asks if it’s bad that she missed it.
Jenna-Louise mocks the Doctor’s appearance and then helps him out. He still wonders how she can do everything. The Doctor asks what happened with her and Rory. She says nothing he can fix, it was just life.  They then realize Amy lost her protective band and grow concern.

COMMERCIALS!

Rory continues his exploration of the Cavern of Rusted Daleks. All he finds are, surprise surprise, rusted Daleks. He turns one that turns back. He then wakes the rusted Daleks. The Dalek tries to communicate and just says “Eggs.” Rory is like “What?” He picks something up and offers it to the Dalek. But then it recovers enough vocal capacity to reveal it was just trying to say “EXTERMINATE!” Jenna-Louise tells him to run for the door at the end. So, when we going to learn Jenna-Louise is a puppet? It has to be coming, right? Anyway, she introduces herself and likes the name Rory. And reveals she fancied girls at one point.

Amy and the Doctor climb down a ladder. He tells the nano genes are being rewritten. First her memories and feelings go. She asks how he knows it’s happening. “We’ve had this conversation four times.” She reveals she is scared but the Doctor likes that. It isn’t Dalek. Meanwhile, Jenna-Louise helps Rory and then asks him to take off his coat. The Doctor wonders why he can’t see her. She says lack of power, bad hair and reveals she has Rory. Meanwhile, Amy trips out and sees people standing around as well as a red-haired girl dances as a ballerina. The Doctor rushes into reveal they are Daleks. They chase after the two but have little power.

The Doctor realizes this and pops his head out. He asks the Dalek to identify him. He is identified as “the Predator” and must be destroyed. But how is the Dalek going to destroy him? And so self-destruct is activated. The Doctor gets him to backwards and blow up around the other rusted Daleks. Rory asks Jenna-Louise what that was. He asks who killed all the Daleks as the Doctor emerges, carrying Amy.

COMMERCIALS!

Rory asks if the Doctor can slow down the process. Jenna-Louise says they better hope so because she will kill them. Rory asks if she remembers him and she slaps him. They take this as a good sign while Jenna-Louise says that to make a Dalek, you subtract love and add hate. She questions Amy’s response. To which Amy asks “Have you ever been to Scotland?” The Doctor asks why she isn’t a puppet and Jenna-Louise says it’s because she’s a genius who barricaded herself. She’s had time to mess with the Daleks and not a lot to do otherwise. But the Doctor presses on, questioning where she gets the milk for her souffles. Jenna-Louise doesn’t answer, asking why he is called the predator. He says he is a man with a plan.

Rory asks what it is. He says they need to neutralize the Daleks, rescue Jenna-Louise and fix the Williams’ marriage. Amy says she counts three lost causes. He asks her if she can drop the force field because they are on a teleporter. Once the forcefield is down, the Daleks will blow up the asylum. They will go to the Dalek ship. Jenna-Louise asks them to come get her as the Doctor asks her to come to them. But the Doctor goes to get her. He tells Rory to keep Amy remembering and tells Amy to not let them subtract love.

The Doctor creeps through the Cavern of Rusted Daleks, hearing them panic behind the walls. Rory tells Amy he is going to be cold and logical. He offers to put his wrist watch on her. He’ll be safer because he loves her more than she loves him. Two thousand years, anyone? She slaps him and reveals she didn’t kick him out. She gave him out because he wants kids and she can’t have them. But Rory discovers she is wearing the Doctor’s.

COMMERCIALS!

The Doctor gets close to Jenna-Louise. She says he’s about to pass through intensive care, which is bathed in an eerie green light. Jenna-Louise reads off some names and he reveals they all survived him. The Daleks begin chanting “Doctor.” He gets to a door but it won’t open. She tries to find a release code as the Daleks move closer. And break chains to do so. He asks her to open the door and begs for help. The Daleks stop their advance and retreat. He asks Jenna-Louise what she did. She says she hacked the hive mind and deleted the Doctor from their memory. She opens the door and the Doctor pauses. Jenna-Louise says he should come in as he says they have a problem. He asks if where she is looks real. It’s a dream because the truth was too terrible.

She’s not a puppet, she is a Dalek. Jenna-Louise refuses to believe she is a Dalek. She was human once, climbed out of the pod and encountered a Dalek. They fully converted her because they needed a genius. He apologizes and asks where everything came for the souffles. She keeps repeating eggs until it turns into “EXTERMINATE!” He pleads with her and the Dalek stops its advance. She cries in a corner and asks why they hate the Doctor so much. He reveals he fought them many times (at least once a season since the new series began). She tells him to run because she lowered the forcefield, she fought the Daleks and she is human. She asks him to remember her and sits back to wait.

The attack begins as Rory and Amy stand on the teleporter. They share a kiss as the Doctor runs for them. He activates the teleporter as the Daleks destroy the asylum. The parliament prepares to destroy the incoming danger. The Doctor emerges from the TARDIS to learn the Daleks no longer recall who he is. 
WHAT? Wow.

He leaves and drops the Williams off at home. It looks like all is well in their marriage. The Doctor dances around his bridge, declaring “Doctor Who!”

Wow. And I thought nothing could top last season’s opener. This was great, though the Amy/Rory subplot was a bit weak. When Amy said she let Rory go because she couldn’t give him kids? My first thought was “It’s called adoption? Hello? Amy seems wealthy enough to afford it.” Or surrogacy? Something? Moving on, I liked Jenna-Louise Coleman in the Titanic miniseries ABC aired around the anniversary and I liked her in this. But I’m a bit confused. She’s supposed to be the new companion and IMDB registers her name as Clara. So how is “Clara” tied to “Oswin”? I know there’s a connection because this is Steven Moffat. There’s always a connection.

Next week: A cargo ship? Rory’s dad? Dinosaurs?

Quote of the Episode

“The nose and the chin. You two can fence.” –Jenna-Louise about Rory and the Doctor.