New Who Reviews - "Asylum of the Daleks"

Though I know it's been quite a while since I did an "Old Who Review" and I do intend to get back into that as soon as I stop finding other things that steal my attention away, that hasn't stopped me from watching the return of "Doctor Who" in the present day. The newest series of "Doctor Who" -- which, depending on who you ask, is either the seventh series, the third series, or the thirty-third series, but I prefer calling it the seventh series since I consider Moffat's run to be connected to Davies' run, but I consider them both separate from the original run oh god this sentence is still going I'm sorry I'll shut up now -- has a lot of expectations surrounding it.

Since Steven Moffat took over as show-runner in 2010, it's difficult to deny that the show has gotten quite a bit better overall. While I'm sure that many still love David Tennant's Tenth Doctor over Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor, I for one was quite glad that the Tenth Doctor ended his run when he did. To be perfectly honest, I was getting rather bored with him.

It felt like Russell T. Davies was circling the drain with his character development and was always returning to the same points again and again without actually doing anything with them. To make matters worse, Davies had no idea how to actually deliver on a narrative climax either due to an over-dependence on deus ex machina (i.e. TIME MAGIC) or through simply copping out on whatever implications he had explored (i.e. the long-awaited return of the Time Lords which lasted a whole five minutes).

Steven Moffat, on the other hand, has a tendency to turn every single episode he does into wall-to-wall climax. Every time the audience thinks they know what's going on, he throws in a surprise like a horse on a spaceship or a Sontaran nurse. More often than not, this approach works really well. It keeps the audience guessing and no matter what else you might say about one of his episodes, they are rarely boring. The problem is that it only really works when he actually ties everything back together so that it all makes sense in the end. If he fails to do this, then it becomes rather frustrating and disappointing.

For example, at the beginning of the last series, he showed us what was believed to be the Doctor's final, permanent death. While I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't seen that series, just the fact that another series exists should suggest that Moffat had to cop out on this to some degree.

In any case, while I generally liked that series, I concede that it showed that Moffat is by no means infallible. While his mistakes are still miles better than some of Russell T. Davies better days, they are still mistakes and he still failed to live up to the standard he himself set.

Anyway, like I was saying, this series is surrounded by expectations. This series has to find a way to make up for the cop out of the end of the last series. This series has to deliver on the promise of "the question that must never be answered", and now that we know what that question is, most are skeptical that it ever actually will be answered, let alone that it will be answered in a satisfying capacity. This series is leading up to the 50th anniversary of "Doctor Who", so something big has to happen. This series will see the departure of Amy and Rory, who have probably been the best companions since the reboot first occurred, and it will introduce a new companion that will invariably be resented by fans who first got into Doctor Who with Amy as the companion (the same thing happened when Rose was replaced by Martha).

As if that wasn't enough to live up to already, the episode that opened the previous series, "The Impossible Astronaut", was one of the greatest series premieres in television history, at least in my opinion.

So this episode, "Asylum of the Daleks", which continues the long-lived "Doctor Who" tradition of titling an episode "   (noun)   of the Daleks", has a high bar to reach.

And, while it is a very good episode, it doesn't quite get there.

I think it is a very good episode and gets me excited for the rest of the series, but it also has a number of faults, some of which will negatively impact the next few episodes.

OK, SPOILERS beyond this point.