The Rings of Akhaten review [Neil Cross]

Clara goes on her first adventure in the TARDIS, asking to be taken "somewhere awesome". The Doctor takes her to Tiaanamat, an asteroid orbiting Akhaten where a song that's kept a god in slumber for millions of years is about to end...

When and Where: Tiaanamat, an asteroid within the Rings of Akhaten. For Clara, this is the morning after the Doctor left in The Bells of Saint John, making it still the autumn of 2013.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Did it?" / "Well, it's what they believe. It's a nice story."
• "Quite a big thing, locally. Like Pancake Tuesday."
• "We don't walk away."
• "I've seen bigger." / "Really?" / "Are you joking? It's massive."
• In Cold War, we'll be told exactly where and when we are from a message on the screen. The Rings of Akhaten does this was far more subtlety, playing Ghost Town by The Specials and showing us a 1981 issue of Beano. It's a far more creative and interesting way to telling us where we are. The classic series didn't broadcast the location and date at the beginning of the story, after all.
  
• Dave and Ellie's romance is a sweet story that not only shows us how ordinary and human Clara is (in terms of the "impossible girl" arc) but gives us a little insight into her. Her mother died eight years ago and she has the 101 Places to See book to remind her of her. Going travelling as she planned to before deciding to stay for the Maitlands was a way of honouring her mother. Probably.
• Although the Doctor travels with his companions so that they can see and experience new things, we haven't had a whole lot of them actually immerse themselves in a new world and enjoy their time there. The Doctor and Clara get to, looking around the marketplace and listening to Merry sing before the plot kicks into action. Exploring the world like this is something that was done in the classic series and in, say, The End of the World, another companion's first adventure.
• The CGI in this episode is flawless. The shots of the Rings of Akhaten and the Old God are all without fault and look absolutely marvellous. It's a shame the actual sets feel so small.
  
• The Vigil do end up in the section below, but they do have a good design. They're scary-looking and scarily-voiced.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Somewhere awesome."
• The plot is easily the weakest link in this episode. Simple plots can be effective if done right but the plot here is paper-thin and yet somehow manages to be confusing. For example, is Akhaten the Old God? Is it Grandfather as well, or is the mummy Grandfather? The plot seems to say that they both are. Does the mummy absorb the Queen of Years' soul? If so, does he somehow transfer it to Akhaten, or does he have some other purpose? What is it? Unfortunately the mummy fails to feel like much of a threat when it spends so long just banging against some glass, and Akhaten is defeated far too easily. 
• Steven Moffat hasn't created a character in Clara Oswald. She was generic in The Bells of Saint John, but that was forgivable under the assumption that she would develop and show different layers. However, it feels as though each writer for series 7b might be told to write in a generic companion. This could be Rose, Ace or Sarah and absolutely nothing would change. She comes across as bland despite us learning about her parents because we can't see what her parents' story has to do with hers. What does her mother's death mean for her? Why does she want to travel with the Doctor? What is she like as a person? She's bland and in need of being coloured in with a personality.
  
• Clara's parents almost never come up again. Her father appears briefly in The Time of the Doctor and their names are mentioned in Death in Heaven when Clara's giving details about her supposed fake identity to the Cybermen, but otherwise Clara never has any concern for them. In Dark Water/Death in Heaven, the dead become Cybermen to attack the living, but Clara doesn't have a moment to think about how her mother is now a Cyberwoman Cyberman or to worry for her father's wellbeing in this or any other earthbound crises. Bill had a dead mother whose absence affected her character. Rose had a dead father that was one of the reasons she joined the Doctor, so that she could save him, and her mother was a significant guest character. Martha's relationship with her mother was used by the Master in his plan against the Doctor, and Project Indigo took Martha where she wanted to be most in a crisis - at her mother's side. Do we not see much of Dave because he's still in Blackpool? Clara could at least spare him a thought. Her unnamed grandmother lived in London, so we could have at least seen her more than twice. More to the point, the story of the Oswalds' lives should have played more of a role with regards to Clara's characterisation in this story, otherwise it becomes mostly superfluous.
  
• There wasn't any real reason for the Vigil to be a part of this story. They appear briefly in order to introduce Merry (although their presence even then wasn't mandatory) and later materialise in the pyramid to serve Merry to the mummy. They don't do very much there and aren't even defeated - they vanish because the Old God is awake and they have no further purpose. The only thing they do is have a dull fight with the Doctor that's about as tense and necessary as his fight moments before with the door. They should have been excised or given something more to do.
• When characters are no longer of importance to what little plot there is, they literally vanish from the screen. Chorister Asbethix and the Vigil alike do it. It feels lazy and leaves unanswered questions that we know we're never going to get an answer to.
  
• The CG landscapes might be very good but the episode feels (and was) setbound. When you don't have a magnificent backdrop, the place feels very small. The place where Merry sings to the pyramid is probably the best example. This is a grand event that people have come from far away to witness, yet Merry is stood four feet from the door and we only get to see a few rows of spectators. It's all the more worse when you consider that this is the same series that gave us the planet of the Dalek Asylum in Asylum of the Daleks, the American West in A Town Called Mercy, the streets of London in The Power of Three and New York City in The Angels Take Manhattan. It can't stand up alongside the stories of series 7a.
• The sonic screwdriver was removed from the show in The Visitation because it had become too easy a way for writers to wrap up a story. Whilst that isn't really the case here, it is too prolific. There's the unnecessary door struggle and the fight with the Vigil (where the screwdriver's given powers we've never seen before), along with being pulled out of his coat pocket twice before. The Doctor shouldn't need a magic wand.
  
• The moped isn't very convincing and is probably the only example of duff special effects in the episode. Having the Doctor and Clara ride a motorbike again is a bit silly. Clara's going to think that's all there is to saving worlds.
• Keepsakes being used as currency is a nice idea but one that I find difficult to buy. 

I'll Explain Later:

• How did Ellie Oswald die? Is it a coincidence that it was on the night of the 2005 Auton attack?
• Why does the Doctor leave the door to the TARDIS wide open after landing on Tiaanamat? He said in the last episode that he never took the TARDIS into battle because of what could happen if the wrong people got their hands on it, yet now he's being so careless as to leave the door wide open in a marketplace. 
• When Clara and Merry get to the TARDIS, the door is closed. Does it lock itself?
• Why isn't the TARDIS translation circuit working for Clara in the marketplace?
• With Akhaten gone... what happens to Tiaanamat?
• The leaf that the Doctor took out of Clara's book in The Bells of Saint John was a maple leaf. The leaf Clara has here isn't. Was she smart and did she use a decoy leaf? How did the production make this mistake?
• The Doctor says he has nothing of sentimental value but his screwdriver. What about Amy's glasses that he was wearing just a moment before?
• Couldn't the Doctor have used the TARDIS to save Merry like he did River in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone and The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon?
• What happened to Chorister Asbethix?
  

This Reminds Me...:

• Rose and Amy's first trips in the TARDIS were to the future, both of which contained a lot of red imagery.
• The Doctor mentions Susan.
• The Doctor and Clara rode a bike together in the previous episode.
• The way that the Doctor attempts to defeat the Old God isn't entirely unlike how he defeats the villain in Phobos.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I find it difficult not to draw comparisons between this episode and The Beast Below, both of which are pretty much empty and serve as the first adventure for a poorly-defined new companion. Clara is a placeholder waiting for a real companion (perhaps Oswin Oswald) to leap into the script and inject a little personality into the role of the Doctor's assistant. The story is both thin and contrived - there's a song that keeps a mummy asleep and a girl must sacrifice her soul to it, but it's actually just the alarm clock for the real Old God - and, although the world is immersive enough, it fails to engage. Matt Smith does deliver a good speech, though. The Rings of Akhaten is atrocious, and that earns it an F.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Bells of Saint John  |  The Rings of Akhaten  |  Cold War

The Bells of Saint John review [Steven Moffat]

Miss Kizlet is a businesswoman working at the skyline-dominating Shard. She has a client, a client who lives in the WiFi. A client who's hungry.

Clara Oswald doesn't know anything about computers. She calls a helpline. A helpline to the year 1207, where the Mad Monk sits meditating on the girl he watched die twice.

When and Where: London (again) in autumn 2013. The year comes from the official synopsis on iPlayer.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Actually, he's about to go on holiday. Kill him when he gets back. Let's not be unreasonable."
• "Also, your dad phoned. Mainly about the government, he seems very cross with them. I've got a few pages on that. I said I'd look into it."
• "Human souls trapped like flies in the World Wide Web. Stuck forever, crying out for help." / "Isn't that basically Twitter?"
• "Where are my mummy and daddy? They said they wouldn't be long. Are they coming back?"
• We were promised an urban thriller and, while we didn't really get it, we do get the very tense sequence where the lights around the Maitlands' house are all switched on whilst all others go out, telling a plane where to crash. It's an idea I haven't seen before and I really liked it.
  
  
• Richard E. Grant and Ian McKellen in the last episode and now Celia Imrie (and a Grant cameo). That's some stellar British talent we've got onboard. Miss Kizlet isn't the most memorable of villains - the script doesn't really allow her to be and we're never under the misconception that she's the one in charge here - but Imrie's performance is to be praised, as is Moffat for some of her lines. Her big moment, however, is her last, where she restores herself to how she was before the Great Intelligence involved itself in her life: a lost child. It's unexpected and heart-wrenching and could easily have been embarrassing and unconvincing in the hands of a weaker actress. If you trust The Doctor: His Lives and Times, then her parents left her at Russell Square station during the Intelligence's attack in The Web of Fear. 
• The Great Intelligence was Kizlet's client, wanting to increase his strength before The Name of the Doctor. It's good to see a recurring villain, especially one that isn't a big name like the Daleks, the Cybermen or the Master.
• Clara tracks down Kizlet by hacking her employees' webcams and finding their place of work through social media. It's an inspired idea.

 The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
  
• "Doctor who?" / "Do you know, I never realised how much I enjoy hearing that said out loud. Thank you."
• "Is it a snogging booth?"
• "Do you just crook your finger and people just jump in your snog box and fly away?"
• The episode is named after the ringing of the TARDIS phone, although I have no idea why. There are plenty of far better names that this episode could have been given relating to WiFi or the snatching of souls or something. The Bells of Saint John could apply to a number of episodes and is quite generic. The whole Cumbria 1207 thing is unnecessary anyway. In The Power of Three, the Doctor said that patience was for wimps and was completely unable to sit still in one place, as he was in Vincent and the Doctor. For some reason, though, he's chosen to sit in a 13th century monastery trying to "divine" the truth behind Clara. This is a proactive man who can't sit still - he should be out there looking rather than wasting time in a monk's robes achieving absolutely nothing.
• This is the third Oswald that we've met. We had the computer genius Oswin Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks, the governess-with-a-secret Miss Montague (AKA Clara Oswin Oswald) and here we meet a version in the modern day. As far as this episode goes, this Oswald is the most human. Oswin and Miss Montague were both fun and interesting characters but both were a little too perfect, Miss Montague in particular. Nothing really seemed to faze her too much and she took everything in her stride, although she had a great moment with the TARDIS key before she was pulled to her death. Oswin was better, having a wonderfully tear-jerking scene where she breaks down upon learning that she's a Dalek. Clara is somewhere inbetween, feeling more real than Miss Montague but failing to be as engaging as Oswin, nor does she feel like a real person like Rose, Martha, Donna or, to a lesser extent, Rory did.
  
• Series 7a went for big, blockbusting ideas whilst The Bells of Saint John is going for a genre, that genre being an urban thriller. Aside from the plane flying towards the Maitlands' street, I never got this vibe. There's some typing that goes on and the Doctor driving a motorbike up the Shard (which was silly) but it's pretty weak and definitely isn't James Bond as Moffat was going for.
• "Doctor who?" is a question that should never be answered. After Asylum of the Daleks, The Snowmen and now The Bells of Saint John, I'm thinking it should also never be asked. The scene is painful to watch, a waste of a good few seconds of screentime and isn't remotely clever or funny. It's indulgent.
• Kizlet uploads human souls into the WiFi where they're pulped and fed to the Great Intelligence. However, we've never been given any hint before that it fed on souls. In The Snowmen it wanted human form, in The Abominable Snowmen it wanted to spread across the world, in The Web of Fear it wanted the Doctor's body and in Downtime it again wanted physical form. Never has there been any implication that he feeds on human souls and nor is any reason given here for why he's suddenly on this diet. He says that it's made him become stronger, but that's all the explanation we get. 
• Clara trying to access the WiFi isn't cute or endearing. It's embarrassing and there's no way she's gotten to her age without knowing how to do it. Anyway, typing the wrong password does absolutely nothing unless you press enter and declaring the password to be wrong because she somehow managed to accidentally click the 4 instead of the 3 is stupid. It gives away the number of characters in the actual password. Why does she click on the evil WiFi anyway
• Keyboard battles are tricky to make tense and the Doctor and Alexei clickety-clacking away at their computers isn't very exciting. It looks like what it is: two people tapping keys whilst computery nonsense is typed across the screen.
• The Doctor doesn't take the TARDIS into battle? What a lie.
  

I'll Explain Later:

• Would everyone's response to being uploaded be to repeatedly say "I don't know where I am"? It wouldn't be mine.
• Why did the Doctor leave the TARDIS in a cave so far away from the monastery?
• Does the Doctor not care to find out who Miss Kizlet's client was?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Spoonheads are reminiscent of the Nodes in Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.
• We saw the Tenth Doctor ride a motorbike in The Idiot's Lantern.
• The Doctor sent in a fake version of himself (in that case the Tesselecta) in The Wedding of River Song.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: A weak and insubstantial first half followed by a decent second half, The Bells of Saint John doesn't feel as though it's bringing anything new to the table and is definitely one of the weakest companion introductions. Clara is more human than Miss Montague, but is still rather closed-off and unknowable unlike Rose, Martha and Donna. This Clara and the Doctor have a chemistry that is (thankfully) lacking in the lust that we got in The Snowmen, although Moffat is still sexualising the Doctor, the TARDIS and the show at large. When the episode kicks in, it's rather good, with a great performance by Celia Imrie (even if her character was somewhat limited) and her creepy way of following the Doctor around by hacking people to speak through. The Bells of Saint John is okay and earns itself a C.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Snowmen  |  The Bells of Saint John  |  The Rings of Akhaten

The Snowmen review [Steven Moffat]

The Doctor has retired to a life of non-intervention in London 1892, assisted in his isolation by Vastra, Jenny and Strax. Then a new face approaches him, one that turns out not to be so new after all...

Snowmen are popping up around the city and inside a frozen pond grows an icy horror that the Great Intelligence has its designs on. 

When and Where: London, from the 23rd to the 25th December, 1892. A significant period has apparently passed for the Doctor since The Angels Take Manhattan. For Vastra, Jenny and Strax, it's been four years since A Good Man Goes to War. For the Great Intelligence, this is before The Abominable Snowmen.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Typical middle child of six million."
• "Is it one of your stories? Your definitely true ones?" / "Ha! All my stories are true." / "Like how you were born behind the clock face of Big Ben?" / "Accounting for my acute sense of time." / "And you invented fish." / "Because I dislike swimming alone." 
• "It's smaller on the outside."
• Moffat has chosen to make snowmen the monsters for this Christmas special, which is a gamble. If he can't justify them and explain them in an interesting way that makes sense in the Doctor Who universe then they're going to seem ridiculous. Fortunately, the explanation is one that makes sense. It's telepathic snow that can remember its previous forms and is being used by the Great Intelligence (a former-snowman who had the darkest of Dr Simeon's thoughts poured into it, granting it power and independence) to create an ice being that will give the Intelligence form and allow Dr Simeon to build an ice-army. 
  
• Clara being touched at being given a TARDIS key is a really sweet and emotional moment and has her showing more emotion in a few seconds than modern-day Clara will over the course of her run. It makes her shocking death all the more surprising and poignant, even if she isn't the first prospective companion to die. Speaking of: Moffat had the balls to kill a girl at Christmas. Davies did it with Astrid Peth, but she got a happy ending out of it and she wasn't nearly as endearing or engaging a character (nor was Kylie Minogue ever going to stay on for more than a Christmas special).
• The Great Intelligence is one of the more memorable villains from the black and white era, having appeared in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear (two decent stories) and Downtime. It's fitting that the 50th year of Doctor Who should feature an old enemy and it's far more interesting for it to be a lesser-known but formidable one rather than the Daleks or something else we've seen dozens of times before. The Intelligence was never explained or explored in the classic series, leaving it practically begging for the origin story that it finally gets here. Ian McKellen does a great job of bringing the Intelligence to life with his menacing voice.
• Dr Simeon is an intimidating villain who Richard E. Grant plays as stoic and scowling for almost the entirety of the episode, which works. It makes his moment of vulnerability where he learns that his snowman was actually just reflecting his own personality back at him that much more powerful, leaving me wanting for more vulnerability and insight on Simeon's relationship with his snowman. It's sort of a reverse of Amy and the Doctor: Amy loses her friend, waits for his return and becomes a better person whilst Simeon stays with his friend and becomes a worse person because of it reflecting back his darkest dreams and impulses.
• The Doctor has had companions that he's had to leave behind, companions that left him and companions that died. He's sad for a time but quickly moves on, because that's who he is. He understands better than anyone that these things happen. However, after Rose died he spent all series 3 mourning for her because of how special she was to him and, here, the Doctor has full-on retired because of the loss of Rory and Amy. I began writing this for the next section where I was going to discuss how indulgent it is of the showrunner to paint the companion that they created as being so much more important to the Doctor than any of his previous ones, but then I realised that, for the Doctor, this is 300 years after The Eleventh Hour. He's known them for three centuries, so mourning does make sense.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Over a thousand years of saving the universe, Strax, you know the one thing I learnt? The universe doesn't care." 
• "Spoken like a man!"
• Moffat seems to be incapable of writing a female companion who isn't obsessed with the Doctor and has unfounded faith in him. Clara's just met the man and gives chase after he leaves. Was it because of what he said about the snowman? She was a barmaid and has surely heard far more ludicrous things on the job than that. And just like Rose, Martha, Amy, River and Nefertiti, she has a thing for him, ogling him as he climbs the ladder. She gives him a snog and tells him that he likes her. The kiss adds nothing, means nothing and shouldn't be here. The Doctor can interact with females without it being so sexually-charged, Moffat.
• My only other complaint about Clara is that she's a little too perfect and wouldn't work as a long-term companion without some development. She takes things in her stride a little too easily.
• The universe doesn't care about the Doctor for his efforts? The Wedding of River Song said the exact opposite and we learnt in series 6 how famous the Doctor is (or was) across the universe. Since when has the Doctor ever asked for thanks, anyway? Didn't Martha say that he never asked to be thanked in Last of the Time Lords?
• So... the Great Intelligence was defeated because the mass of snow at the Latimers' was overpowered by the family's tears over Clara's death, meaning that the snow that the Great Intelligence existed as became tears. Why is the Intelligence so connected to the snow at the Latimers'? Why does it become tears? Why does this strip the Intelligence from Dr Simeon's body? The implication is that the snow is no longer mirroring Dr Simeon but the Latimers' tears, but hadn't the Intelligence become more than just a reflection of Dr Simeon by this time?
  
• Strax is funny but if the Sontarans are ever going to be a credible threat again he's made it very hard for the writer.
• The Sherlock Holmes thing isn't funny or clever.

I'll Explain Later:

• Why does the Doctor need a memory worm to erase Clara's memories? He managed to erase far more than an hour of Donna's memories without one.
• Did women give handshakes in 1892?
• What was the point of Dr Simeon's visit to Captain Latimer?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor met Oswin Oswald in Asylum of the Daleks.
• The Intelligence used snowmen of a different kind in The Abominable Snowmen and The Web of Fear.
• The Doctor has invited people to join him who've subsequently died before, like Lynda in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The Doctor has known and travelled with Amy and Rory for two and a half seasons and now it's time for a fresh start. He's uncharacteristically moody and not much fun to watch until Clara reawakens his sense of adventure, after which the episode properly begins. His new companion is a breath of fresh air after Amy (although she's too squeaky-clean and perfect) and her death is shocking and heart-breaking. The Intelligence's origin is presented although its relationship with Dr Simeon could have been explored more and the gimmicky snowmen are sufficiently justified. This is a very good episode and deserves an A.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Angels Take Manhattan  |  The Snowmen  |  The Bells of Saint John

The Angels Take Manhattan review [Steven Moffat]

When Rory is sent back in time to New York 1938, the Doctor and Amy must overcome a mass of temporal-distortion to find him whilst he and Professor Song face the Weeping Angels. 

When and Where: New York in 2012 (for some reason - remember that Amy and Rory aren't from the year that this aired but from 2020 at the earliest) and 1938. For Amy and Rory, this must be after their ten-year anniversary visit to Cwmtaff in The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood. For River, this is after The Diary of River Song: Series 3 and just before The Husbands of River Song.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "I'm only human." / "That's exactly what they're thinking."
• "It means, Mr Grayle, just you wait until my husband gets home."
• Amy's choice has been a recurring theme during her tenure on the show. She waited for the Doctor and left with him on the night of her wedding, apparently falling for him a little and later trying to have sex with him a few feet from her wedding gown. She was, frankly, a terrible person and I maintain that series 5 Amy is one of the worst of the Doctor's companions. In Amy's Choice she finally made her decision between the Doctor and Rory, finding that she couldn't live without Rory and killing herself knowing that she would either wake up and be with Rory or die forever. Amy makes this choice twice more, firstly by again risking killing herself and then condemning herself to a life in 20th century New York to be with him.
  
• For enemies to remain interesting they have to have something new whenever they appear, or it quickly gets stale. In The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, we saw Angels at full-strength, killing people, speaking with the voices of the dead, emerging from video footage, effectively turning Amy into one of them... In this episode, we get baby Angels in the form of giggling cherubs, reminding us that - when unobserved - they are biological creatures that only turn to stone as a defence mechanism. They have children who grow and become Angels. They're creepy and we get a sense of them moving in the dark from their footsteps scurrying about, which we never get from the Angels. Additionally, we've gone back to the Angels' original M.O. of sending people back in time rather than the more generic killing that they did in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone. It's good that the thing that made them fresh hasn't been forgotten about and the idea of a farm where they send people further and further back to get more and more energy from them is a clever one, again giving us something new.
• River doesn't have a massive role to play and doesn't really need to be here, but her choosing to hide her broken wrist from the Doctor to protect him is awfully sweet. It's easy to forget that River is a woman who loves the Doctor. Not who lusts after him or flirts with him like most companions and female guest stars these days, but who genuinely has a deep affection for him. This attempt to cheer him up and protect him from the harsh reality if only for a time is a rare reminder that there's more to their relationship than double entendres and snogging.
  
• Is Sting's "Englishman in New York" a moment of perfection or is it too on the nose? I'm going to be nice and put it in this section.

The Valeyard's Case:

• The Statue of Liberty being an Angel is a ridiculous idea. Even worse, she's superfluous and the episode would have been no different without her. The great hulking Lady Liberty couldn't possibly get off her plinth and stomp around the city to Winter Quay without being seen. This is the city that never sleeps, after all - there are always eyes. It's a "wouldn't that be cool?" idea that should have been nixed from the script for its stupidness and irrelevance.
• It's strange that after getting so much closer to Amy and Rory this series that they feel so distant in their last appearance. Since series 5 (God, Amy was terrible), the pair have become living, breathing characters that we care for and feel a sense of closeness to, particularly after The Power of Three, but where are Amy's worries for Rory after he's sent back in time the first time? Why do they seem to care so little for River? The jump is a highlight but the two feel so far removed this episode.
  
• I spoke about it extensively in my review of The Power of Three, but this isn't the natural end to Amy and Rory's arc this season. They've struggled to choose between the Doctor and their lives on Earth and have grown increasingly attached to the latter. What was the point in all that if it comes to nothing? Their departure here is entirely unrelated to their journey in series 7a, which suggested that they would eventually choose to leave the Doctor to live on Earth rather than the Weeping Angels forcing their hand. This way is more shocking, of course, but it's not good storytelling. Rose's departure was satisfying because she had become so attached to the Tenth Doctor and was suddenly ripped away from him. Martha loved the Doctor and came to realise that she deserved better than to be the Doctor's rebound companion living in Rose's shadow. Donna spent series 4 becoming a better, more well-rounded person and this was snatched away from her when the Doctor was forced to remove her memories and cause her to lose who she had become. Amy and Rory were realising that they wanted to live ordinary lives with friends and jobs and this ending doesn't honour that at all.
• River was in this episode, of course, because it's Amy and Rory's departure and Moffat wanted to have her be there. The problem is that River and her parents have absolutely no relationship. River grew up with them as Mels, met them out of order so had to keep the fact that she was their daughter to herself, and as such this was the only episode where the three Ponds were together all aware of their relationship. There was the reveal at the end of A Good Man Goes to War and a brief scene of them in Amy and Rory's back-garden in The Wedding of River Song, but this is the first and last real time for us to see them together as a family. And there's nothing there. No chemistry, no relationship. Nothing. If somebody tuned in without having seen series 6, they would have had no idea that River and the Ponds were anything more than casual acquaintances without River them Dad and Mother. My solution to this would have been The Power of Three (yes, I do seem unable to stop bringing that episode up. I apologise). They could have had River drop by and choose to stay for the Long Invasion, giving us the time to see not only River and the Doctor living together in our everyday world but also letting us see River spending time developing a relationship with her parents. The Angels Take Manhattan did absolutely nothing for them and was more about River and her husband than River and her parents. A big mistake given that they're leaving and never returning.
  
• Amy and Rory get two endings in this episode. Firstly, Rory makes the brave and selfless decision to kill himself to wipe out the Angels and save New York, with Amy choosing to jump with him so that, whatever happened, they were in it together. This was the far more effective and emotional ending. They survive and arrive in the 2012 graveyard, where Rory gets sent back in time and Amy joins him. Both times, Amy is making her choice and choosing her husband but the second time has none of the poignancy that the first did. Perhaps Amy and Rory jumping and their status being ambiguous would have been a better ending since the graveyard scene added little more.
• The Doctor not being able to get Amy and Rory back has been criticised at length, so I won't focus too much on how little sense it makes. Here's a quote from Moffat explaining why the Doctor can't collect them:  "[...] in normal circumstances he might have gone back and said, ‘look we’ll just put a headstone up and we’ll just write the book’. But there is so much scar tissue, and the number of paradoxes that have already been inflicted on that nexus of timelines, that it will rip apart if you try to do one more thing. He has to leave it alone. Normally he could perform some surgery, this time too much surgery has already been performed." (Source) It's a rubbish explanation given that the Angel situation has been resolved and never happened. The Twelfth Doctor later returns to New York to "calm down" the time-distortions but... it's all sorted. Even if there is scar tissue around New York, the Doctor could just land in the next state over, hail a taxi and find them in no time. Or use a vortex manipulator. There's no real reason he could never see Amy and Rory again.
• River advises Amy not to let the Doctor see her age because he doesn't like endings. What a load of rubbish. 
  
• River slaps the Doctor. A wife should never slap her husband. Imagine the uproar there would have been if the Doctor slapped River. Spousal-slapping shouldn't be seen as something funny or acceptable and if the sexes were reversed it would be seen as abuse.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Williams grave lists Rory as "Rory Arthur Williams". Why isn't Amy listed as "Amelia Jessica Williams"? We learnt her middle name in The Beast Below.
• Why exactly won't River travel with the Doctor full-time? "One psychopath per TARDIS" isn't an answer.
• "That which holds the image of an Angel itself becomes an Angel." Surely the Angels should have overrun the country at the very least given the amount of photos and postcards featuring the Statue of Liberty.
• How come River and the Doctor both referred to the Angel in Mr Grayle's office as a she? 

This Reminds Me...:

• This is the second episode this series to begin with an American narrator.
• Mr Grayle's house is the same set as the Tyler house in Pete's world (Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel).
• Rory dies and comes back again. We've seen him die and return (or were led to believe that he was dead) in Amy's Choice, The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, The Curse of the Black Spot and The Doctor's Wife.
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: I have a number of problems with Amy and Rory's swan song, the main one being that this isn't an organic end to their story. If I let that go, there's still the issue of the characters not being at their best in this episode and that they have absolutely no connection to their daughter, who's here not because the plot demands it but because her parents are leaving and she should be there. There are some nice ideas and the Amy/Rory suicide is a deeply touching sequence that could pull any heart-string. The Angels are well-handled and the noir-feel of the episode is immersive and consistent. Ignoring Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, series 7a has been a great half-series with three stellar (or near-stellar) episodes. It's unfortunate that it should end on a somewhat disappointing note. Still, The Angels Take Manhattan is a good story and earns itself a B.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Power of Three  |  The Angels Take Manhattan  |  The Snowmen

The Power of Three review [Chris Chibnall]

Amy and Rory awake to find that the world is littered with perfect cubes that have appeared overnight. It's an invasion. Of course it's an invasion. But why do they do absolutely nothing?

Previously on Doctor Who...: Not even remotely required to understand this episode, but Kate Stewart was first seen in Downtime, where she was living on a canal boat as a single mother with a son called Gordon. She had grown estranged from her father but reconnected after helping him and Sarah Jane Smith fight against a group of students controlled by the Great Intelligence.

When and Where: Don't ask when this takes place. Kate meets the Doctor for the first time but The Day of the Doctor takes place in 2013 (which we can work out thanks to Class) and this could only take place between 2016 and 2020. Bear with me here. Amy and Rory are married in June 2010, watch the Doctor die at Lake Silencio in April 2011 and travel with the Doctor before being returned after A Good Man Goes to War. They stay on Earth before rejoining the Doctor in Let's Kill Hitler at the end of summer 2011. In The God Complex, they are returned to Earth in April 2011 for some reason (which we know because we see them and a newspaper bearing the date in Closing Time). The Doctor visits them at Christmas two year later in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe (making it December 2013, i.e. post-The Day of the Doctor). Pond Life takes place from April to August 2014 and then have their divorce almost finalised in Asylum of the Daleks. Divorce in the UK tends to take roughly ten months, so it's June 2015 at the very earliest given that they might not have started divorce proceedings immediately after Amy kicked Rory out. The pair return home and are picked up ten months later in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship (making it April 2016 at the earliest), then return to Earth for a few more months (whilst Brian is abroad travelling) before A Town Called Mercy. This makes it June 2016 at least, although it was presumably more than two months. The Power of Three begins in July. This could be July 2016 or 2017. Perhaps even later, but given that Amy says that it's been ten years of travelling with the Doctor for them but not for the rest of the world, it's before 2020.

To conclude, The Power of Three takes place from July 2016-2017 at the earliest and July 2019-2020 at the latest. We have to assume that, for some reason, Kate is pretending not to know the Doctor to maintain the timeline or something. It's impossible to reconcile this with the Clara-era, because The Day of the Doctor was 2013 and Clara was dead by 2016 (which we know thanks to For Tonight We Might Die). Damn you, Class. Without the Class date, The Day of the Doctor could have been post-The Power of Three, but that would mean that Clara travelled with the Eleventh Doctor for at least four years, which clearly isn't the case.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
  
• "I want them vulnerable with a nice Achilles' heel."
• "What happened to the other people who travelled with you?" / "Uh... Some left me. Some got left behind. And some, not many, but some died. Not them, Brian. Never them."
• We've seen the Eleventh Doctor in an ordinary setting living an ordinary life before, in The Lodger and Closing Time. This is definitely the best of the three because it's not the selling-point of the episode. It's funny to see him trying to pass the time and it's sweet to see him try because he misses Amy and Rory.
• This is the first appearance of Kate Stewart since Downtime, this time played by Jemma Redgrave with a convincing dye-job. At the time of writing (between series 10 and 11) I find this to be Kate's best appearance. She's got a humility and vulnerability to her that's completely excised by Dark Water/Death in Heaven when she's delivering sassy dialogue about having the Doctor on the payroll and throwing Cyberman heads. She has a tender moment with the Doctor when they discuss the Brigadier and she's delightfully warm and chatty when they first meet. She loses these aspects and becomes a steely, stolid leader, which is the version we got in Extinction and the rest of UNIT: The New Series.
• In Asylum of the Daleks, Amy and Rory have been away from the Doctor for at least ten months and Amy says that she's missed life-or-death situations. In Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, another ten months have passed and, after the adventure, Amy asks the Doctor to come back for them in a few more months. The struggle between the two lives continues in A Town Called Mercy and comes to a head here, where the couple have started making long-term commitments and have started to lead and enjoy a normal life. It's been interesting to watch this little arc unfold and seems to be leading to the Ponds choosing to settle down and say goodbye to the Doctor once and for all. As Amy says, there was a time in her life when she needed the Doctor, but she doesn't anymore. They want to have friends and jobs and a normal life together. Unfortunately, the way that this arc concludes is in the section below.
  
• Series 5 (to a lesser extent), 6 and 7 have all been more cinematic and Hollywood than the Davies era was. The show under Moffat is less quintessentially British, which was part of his plan to gain traction with the US. In The Power of Three, we get a dose of Daviesness. There are the news reports and the appearances of British pop culture like Professor Brian Cox and Sir Alan Sugar. Even something like the Doctor playing on the Wii would never have fit in with series 6 or the past three episodes. Overall, I prefer the tone of the Davies era and I enjoy having the Eleventh Doctor and his companions exist in this sort of world.
• The Tenth Doctor's heart stopped working in The Unicorn and the Wasp. David Tennant gave an embarrassing and excessive performance in a scene that I truly despise. I like to think that Matt Smith saw it and made sure to do it so much better.
• I don't have much to say about Brian Williams, but he's an endearing character that (as I said in my review of Dinosaurs on a Spaceship) really should have been introduced sooner. He's nothing groundbreaking and is somewhat reminiscent of Wilf but he's played very well by Arthur Weasley. A shame it's his last appearance and that we never get any closure for him after Amy and Rory disappear.
  

The Valeyard's Case:

• I was so sure that this episode was going to score an A. (I'm reluctant to give an A* to anything but Heaven Sent. How amazing is Heaven Sent?) Then it got to the final ten minutes. The Shakri are uninteresting characters with an uninteresting motivation that might have worked in another episode, but not here where they're tacked onto the end. The cubes were such a great idea and I loved the rest of the episode, so it's a massive shame that the conclusion is so disappointing with the Doctor saving the day with his sonic screwdriver (but more on that below). Whoever it was that sent the cubes should have remained anonymous and unseen. After the cubes are made harmless, the Doctor should have theorised about why someone might have sent the cubes or if they even ended up here deliberately. It should have been ambiguous.
• Well, once again everybody lives. A third of the population is killed - a third! - and then the Doctor brings them back with a buzz of his screwdriver. It's bad enough that the amount of death that happened wasn't emphasised enough when it's even more than were killed in The Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords, but to have them brought back in so mundane a way is very disappointing. Fewer people should have died and then Kate and the Doctor should have found a way to stop the signal and stop further people from dying. The dead would stay dead and the cubes made harmless.
  
• Amy and Rory have had their struggle juggling their two lives and are being increasingly magnetised towards their lives on Earth. The only thing keeping them from the lives that they now want is the Doctor, who decides at the end to leave them to their ordinary lives. It's a satisfying end to their little journey this season. But then Brian says that they shouldn't give up the Doctor and should travel with him and that their lives will still be here when they want to return. That's not satisfying at all and means that their journey has had no conclusion. They decide to continue travelling with the Doctor and return to Earth between adventures? That's what they've been doing all this time. This isn't a conclusion and is deeply unsatisfying, just like the marriage troubles plotline that existed only in the confines of Asylum of the Daleks.
• Amy writes travel articles for magazines now. What was the point in us being reminded of her modelling job from Closing Time in Asylum of the Daleks? Has this writing job been thrown in to make Summer Falls and Other Stories more believable?

I'll Explain Later:

• Was Brian really in the TARDIS for four days, without food, water or knowing where the toilet is?
  
• How could Rory tell that the man on the stretcher at the far end of the corridor was his dad?
• The bad guys just happened to pick the hospital that the Doctor's companion works at?
• Did we ever get an explanation for the hospital kidnappings?
• The Doctor mentions his hovering tin dog. Did he ever see K9 hover?
• What happened to the red berets? Were they too camp? I liked them.

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor tells Brian what happened to his previous companions.
• Some left him, like Ian, Barbara, Vicki, Steven, Dodo, Ben and Polly, Victoria, Liz, Jo, Harry, Leela, Romana, Nyssa, Tegan, Turlough, Hannah Bartholomew, Erimem, Evelyn, Mel, Chris Cwej, Hex, Sally Morgan, Izzy, Fitz, Mary Shelley, Mickey and Martha.
• Some got left behind, like Susan, Sarah, Thomas Brewster, Flip, Bev Tarrant, Lysandra Aristedes, Charley, Jack, Rose (in a way) and Donna.
• Some died, like Katerina, Sara Kingdom, Oliver Harper, Joshua Douglas, Adric, Kamelion, Peri (sort of), Roz Forrester, Gemma Griffin, C'rizz, Lucie, Tamsin, Molly, Sheena (well, she was erased from time) and River. Clara is the next to die.
• In addition to this, we also get a mention of K9.
• The Doctor says that he hates not knowing things. The Twelfth Doctor will later agree with and then contradict this.
• The Doctor suffered the tediousness of living life in the slow lane in Vincent and the Doctor.
• We see the Doctor, Amy and Rory in Henry VIII's bedroom, where the Doctor said that Rory left his phone charger in A Town Called Mercy.
• As already mentioned, the Tenth Doctor had a heart stop working in The Unicorn and the Wasp.
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Flawless is a word that I could use to describe most of The Power of Three. I've never been a big fan of Amy and Rory but they've been pretty good in the buildup to their departure and its great to feel that we're growing closer to them by seeing them living their normal lives (even if their emotional arc was organically leading towards them choosing to leave). Kate Stewart isn't only a sweet nod to the Brigadier but a lovely character in her own right who doesn't have to be sassy to be a strong woman (although this does become the case) and provides the reinvention of UNIT that we need after having them be mostly faceless throughout New Who. Until the last ten minutes, The Power of Three was well on its way to earning an A*. Unfortunately, given the villain and the resolution this story can get no higher than an A.

Update: I can't do it. I'm giving it an A*, poor ending be damned.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

A Town Called Mercy  |  The Power of Three  |  The Angels Take Manhattan

A Town Called Mercy review [Toby Whithouse]

The Doctor, Amy and Rory land in the wild west where electricity is brand new (although ten year early), a gunman is at large (and he's a cyborg) and a doctor helps keep a community alive and well (but he caused the deaths of millions on his home planet).

When and Where: Amy asked the Doctor to come back for her and Rory a few months into their future, so this is presumably a number of months after Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "Tea, but the strong stuff. Leave the bag in."
• "He shoots people's hats!?"
• "Two alien doctors! We're like buses."
• "His name's Susan and he wants you to respect his life choices."
• "Oi! Get out of it."
• The Doctor leaving Solomon to die seemed very uncharacteristic, particularly of the new series Doctors. In this episode, however, he has more of a reason to because giving Jex up to the Gunslinger will save lives in addition to avenging the millions whose deaths he caused, whilst nothing was to be gained from killing Solomon other than as retribution for a few thousand Silurians. Both are understandable but the latter is entirely un-Doctorlike and here his actions present a moral quandary and are challenged rather than just being accepted as they were in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship.
• The Gunslinger is a villain that feels genuinely powerful and threatening, mostly because of his appearance, his gun design and how heavy he sounds when stomping around. We only see him kill two people (and one of them was accidental) but he still manages to be a domineering presence throughout the episode. Him getting a purpose and protecting the town is an unexpected but fitting ending to the story. His self-destruction would have been far less satisfying.
  
• Jex is an interesting parallel to the Doctor, both having committed atrocities during wartime and trying to make up for it afterwards by saving people. Interesting, then, that the Doctor's first instinct is to throw Jex to be killed by the Gunslinger.
• Matt Smith's performance in this episode is absolutely stellar: the comedy, the anger, the difficulty he had watching Jex's records... By the end of series 7 he's mostly a jumble of quirks, but this is the Eleventh Doctor at his absolute finest.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "You're a mother, aren't you?" Surely women can be kind without having had children.
• "The fact that I'm both bewilders you."
• I heard that Amy and Rory were leaving in The Angels Take Manhattan, but it seems that Rory's already left. He contributed very little to the plot and wasn't given the opportunity to explain more fully why he believed that Jex deserved to die.

This Reminds Me...:

• Amy confirms that she's a mother.
• The Doctor wore a stetson in The Impossible Astronaut.
• The Doctor mentions the victims of the Master and the Daleks.

This Doesn't Remind Me... even remotely of The Gunfighters. Thank God.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: A scary villain, an ethical dilemma and an excellent performance from Matt Smith make this an episode to remember. The Doctor doesn't often get to go through any real development, so it's good to see him learn a lesson. It's sort of like Boom Town with a budget and set to eleven, pun intended, and is a highlight of the Matt Smith era. This episode is a masterpiece, and that earns it an A*.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship  |  A Town Called Mercy  |  The Power of Three

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship review [Chris Chibnall]

It's all there in the title.

When and Where: A Silurian ark. For Amy and Rory, this is ten months after Asylum of the Daleks. It's been quite some time for the Doctor as well.

The Doctor's Case:

• A time-travelling nurse who collects bits of medical technology from the future to help during his adventures. It's a shame we never got to see Rory as the main or sole companion because one throwaway line made him more interesting than he's ever been. It's easy to forget that he's a nurse and it's good to see him away from his wife, teamed up with the Doctor and his father. Amy was terrible in series 5 and improved dramatically with series 6, but it's nice to see her as such a pleasant person in the build-up to her leaving.
• We've had Jackie Tyler, Wilfred Mott, Sylvia Noble and (considerably less successfully) Francine Jones, but in Moffat's era we've been missing out on the companions' family members. Amy's parents were rewritten into reality in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang and we've not seen or heard anything of Augustus or Tabetha Pond since, nor Amy's aunt and legal guardian Sharon. At last, just as Amy and Rory are about to leave, we meet Rory's father Brian, who's something of a Hobbit in that he's a normal man with a few old-man quirks who opens his eyes to the wonder of adventure. Brian Williams would have been a great part of the series if we'd met him early on. We could have learnt of Rory's feelings towards Amy through him and had a connection to Earth's invasions... Still, better late than never.
• The dinosaurs are very impressive for a BBC TV series. They're used sparingly but always look great, even when the pterodactyls attacking the Doctor and the Williamses could have looked like Birdemic.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Dad, I'm thirty-one. I don't have a Christmas list anymore." / "I DO!"
• Ancient Egypt, the ISA, the African plains, London, a spaceship... Moffat first did the jumping thing in The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone, where it was fresh and new and exciting. Then we saw it in The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, where it effectively drew together the previous stories of the series by having a number of previous guest stars return across space and time. Then we had Day of the Moon, where it was unnecessary but quite the spectacle. Now even the other writers have started doing it. It's become quite tiresome and is no longer the awe-inspiring thing it once was.
• The Doctor's never needed a gang before. How lucky he happened to bring one made up of the perfect people for the story of the week. Brian's needed to pilot the ship because he shares genes with Rory, Riddell is a game hunter who proves to be good at shooting dinosaurs and Nefertiti is valuable and allows Solomon to move the plot along by kidnapping her. Brian allows us to see a little more of Amy and Rory's life before they depart (and until now we've only seen Amy's parents and only briefly), but the other two are entirely unnecessary.
• Ever since the Eighth Doctor and Grace Holloway, the Doctor has become more and more a romantic character. He fell in love with Rose, slept with Queen Elizabeth I and kissed (or was kissed by) Reinette, Christina de Souza, River, Joan Redfern, Donna, the TARDIS (in Idris's body), Astrid Peth, Cassandra (in Rose's body), Martha, Captain Jack and Amy. With Moffat, he's become increasingly sexual a character and here we have Queen Nefertiti lusting for him and Riddell telling us of two disappointed dancers. It's gross. Not only is it gross, but it's pointless and does absolutely nothing for the character other than confirming Clara's later claim in The Bells of Saint John that the TARDIS is his snog box.
• It's ten months later for Amy and Rory and they're living as happily as ever, in which case the divorce drama from Asylum of the Daleks was not only forced but entirely inconsequential. There was absolutely no point to that subplot.
• Solomon deserved to die, yes, but the Doctor wouldn't really leave him there knowing he'd die. He's not a Dalek, after all. He's a man. 
• The robots aren't funny.

I'll Explain Later:

• The Doctor disagrees with Solomon selling dinosaurs but is friends with a man who hunts down and kills animals?
• Why ride the triceratops? Running would probably be quicker given how slowly it seems to move.
• If the Silurians had space-travel technology as advanced as the ark, why are there small pockets of Silurians still on Earth? Why didn't they all take to the skies to wait it out?

This Reminds Me...:

• The Doctor had an adventure with dinosaurs in his third incarnation (Invasion of the Dinosaurs).
• Amy and Rory met Silurians early on in their travels (The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood)

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is one of the worst Doctor Who story titles around and, whilst it's not the worst Doctor Who story, it's not very good. Nothing really lands - the robots aren't funny, Nefertiti and Riddell feel like they've both been cut from another episode so they decided to get it on this one, and Solomon is a villain who's become retroactively memorable because he's played by David Bradley (AKA, the third First Doctor). The plot isn't incompetent but it's just not very good and a big step down from Asylum of the Daleks. This episode is very bad and that earns it an E.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

Asylum of the Daleks  |  Dinosaurs on a Spaceship  |  A Town Called Mercy

Asylum of the Daleks review [Steven Moffat]

What can the Daleks do when faced with a task so terrifying that they won't dare attempt it themselves? They call the Doctor.

When and Where: The Dalek Asylum at an unknown time.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You think hatred is beautiful." / "Perhaps that is why we have never been able to kill you."
• The main villains of this story are the insane Daleks, but the far more successful foes are the latest addition to the Dalek mythos - the puppets. The idea of Daleks mutilating a dead body without respect and turning it into a mindless drone is a gruesome idea and a frightening one given that anybody could be one without even knowing it. Why an eyestalk is needed I'm not sure but it can't be denied that it's a scary image, far more than the Robomen of The Dalek Invasion of Earth.
• Oswin Oswald proves to be an exceptionally good character that, even if Jenna Coleman didn't return, would prove memorable. She's a technological marvel and a certified genius who boarded the Alaska as junior entertainment manager so that she could see the wonders of the universe, asking the Doctor at the end to take her to see the stars. A shame, then, that she's a Dalek. In a shocking twist that I didn't see coming, Oswin was a Dalek the whole time. It makes for a tragic turn for the confident and cheery character and makes for the best sequence of the story where Oswin realises that she's no longer human. The episode's gain is the show's loss because Oswin is far more interesting and engaging than the vacuum that will fill the role of companion by the name of Clara Oswald. Had Oswin joined, we could have had a relationship similar to Second and Zoe or Fourth and Romana - two geniuses travelling the universe and butting heads. There's nothing more for the show to say about Amy and Rory, but a wealth to be gained from an adventure-deprived genius entertainment manager from the future.
  
• The Daleks haven't been scary since... probably Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways, with the reason being that nobody acts as though they're frightening. The biggest offender by this point is Victory of the Daleks, in which neither the Doctor nor Amy fear them. They don't even seem to take them seriously. In this story, we get to see the Doctor scared of them again, yelling with his back to a locked door as Dalek suckers approach him.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet."
• "Doctor... who? Doctor... who? Doctor... who?"
• The Doctor is told by the Dalek puppet at the beginning that her daughter is in a Dalek camp and that she arranged her meeting with the Doctor because the best way of getting him to help was to intrigue him. Firstly, the Doctor shows absolutely no signs of caring about her daughter or expressing any disgust at the Dalek camps like any of his predecessors would. Secondly, the Doctor shouldn't have to be intrigued in order to help someone. Sherlock Holmes, yes, but not the Doctor.
• The Parliament of the Daleks isn't just stupid. It's unnecessary, which is the worst kind of stupid. Daleks aren't a parliamentary race and nor would they elect a Prime Minister given that they don't have any individual identities. The story could have been about the Doctor, Amy and Rory landing on the asylum and trying to get back to the TARDIS - cutting out the Parliament doesn't change the plot in any way at all. The Prime Minister being a thoroughly unconvincing rubber prop doesn't help, especially not when Metaltron from series 1 looked so much better.
  
• Series 5 was about Amy's cold feet before realising that she truly did want to marry Rory, who always doted on her. Series 6 has the married couple have a child that they look for and learn that they raised all along thanks to time travel. Now Amy and Rory are a signature away from divorce and the break-up happened off-screen between seasons? It doesn't make any sense and, even worse, it has absolutely no lasting effects. The two would have had a good exit being left with a new house in The God Complex by the Doctor to keep them safe, or after learning from River that the Doctor is alive in The Wedding of River Song. Perhaps even after sharing Christmas dinner with the Doctor in The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe. The pair are outstaying their welcome at this point with absolutely nowhere new to go with these characters. Oh, and their marriage troubles which led them to divorce are resolved with one short conversation mid-episode.

I'll Explain Later:

• How is Skaro back? The Doctor destroyed it in Remembrance of the Daleks.
• The episode is called Asylum of the Daleks, but what separates the committed Daleks from the usual ones? They don't seem any more insane than those on the spaceship.
• The only way to disable the shields of the asylum planet is actually in the asylum? How daft is that?
  

This Reminds Me...:

• The intensive care Daleks come from Spiridon (Planet of the Daleks), Kembel (The Daleks' Master Plan), Aridius (The Chase), Vulcan (The Power of the Daleks) and Exxilon (Death to the Daleks).
• The Daleks turned humans into Daleks in Revelation of the Daleks and Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways.

The Inquisitor's Judgement: Asylum of the Daleks has faults. If Amy and Rory are going to have marital troubles, we should see them happen, not be reintroduced to them signing the divorce papers and then making up half an hour later. However, this episode is probably the best since The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon and was actually far better than I remember it being. Dalek Parliaments aside, the Daleks are for the most part scary once again and we have an engaging guest character who turns out to be a Dalek. Throw in some decomposed bodies with Dalek eyestalks and what more could you want from a Dalek story? A little daft in places, yes, but this episode is very good and earns itself an A.

Doctor Who (Series 7)

The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe  |  Asylum of the Daleks  |  Dinosaurs on a Spaceship