We watched the show on iView last night, via a recent update to our venerable PS3 which allowed us to hook our TV directly into ABC’s iView interface. Noice. It will be broadcast on Australian free-to-air next Saturday September 8th. Who else has geeked out already?
My own view is that it was a romp at rattleneck pace and whoa so many plot corkscrews. Where will this season go? Who knows? (well, some of us who read the fan-sites have a few ideas of where it goes, obviously – and how the hell are they going to manage those rumoured things after that ending to this first episode?)
- ABC Official Doctor Who website
- BBC Official Doctor Who website
- Non-spoiling review | LA Times
- Spoiler-free review | Den of Geek
Spoilers below:
Spoiler-rich reviews/speculations (including casting spoilers for later in this season and even next season), including a surprising number of reviewers who really should catch up on the facts about Daleks and stairs:
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Like this: <div class="spoiler"> [spoilerific text here] <div>
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Otterday! And Open Thread 
100 books by women in 2016 
Today was a singing day 
Hoyden About Town 
The people at Demon’s Run sterilised Amy? A government decided to murder all of its mentally ill citizens?
Yeah I was a little upset, gotta tell you.
The amount of trauma that’s been thrown at Amy is pretty unprecedented for a Doctor Who companion.
The high point for me was unquestionably Oswin. Aside from her awesome and her tragedy, because… well, I don’t know how international this news is (probably much more than I’m giving it credit for here), but Jenna-Louise Coleman is playing the new companion: Clara Oswin, from WWII I think.
And this smells to me like a Chekhov’s gun. Moffat writes stories where this sort of shit matters – two identical Oswins centuries apart – so we can assume ancestor and descendant. And that means I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Dalek-Oswin. And I like the idea of that very much. Because she’s fascinating.
The thing I hope for, that I mentioned: that the Doctor saves Dalek-Oswin somehow, or she escapes somehow, and the Doctor uses ancestor Oswin’s DNA to make her a Flesh-dupe (as in the Almost People Flesh) so she has a human body to remotely walk around in, but when necessary ditch to go out in Dalek form.
MY SPOILER TAGGING FAILED – DO NOT READ THE PREVIOUS IF YOU ARE AVOIDING SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Fixed it for you, Nick.
Thankyou, Chally.
Dinosaurs on a spaceship!!! I have a very excited child
Pretty much my opinion of things: http://theumbrellaseller.tumblr.com/post/30678525163/obligatory-aslyum-of-the-daleks-rant
I assumed Amy was infertile for psychological trauma reasons rather than physical ones, but I guess there’s no difference really.
re Amy’s infertility, I must admit I assumed it was a negligent side effect of what happened to her at Demon’s Run rather than a deliberate part of their program, but again, I guess that doesn’t make much difference either.
I suspect the Dalek parliament’s actions regarding blowing up the asylum planet are very much meant to be seen as utterly monstrous, too. After all, it is the Daleks.
Sorry, minor spoiler-marking-fail on my part too.
Spoilered you up, Chris.
Mary – thanks!
In more Who News, Hugo! Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form Winner: “The Doctor’s Wife” (Doctor Who), written by Neil Gaiman; directed by Richard Clark (BBC Wales)
I’m sorry you felt horrible about Amy’s infertility/sterilisation (though I also think it was probably an unintentional side effect thing). However I do find that it finally shows some sort of emotional continuity about the whole Demon’s Run episode – something we needed a lot more of.
I was a little frustrated by the way that Amy and Rory’s relationship seemed to be fixed all of a sudden, just like that. But overall I liked the episode, it had a good, interesting plot. When did everyone start realising that something was wrong with Oswin? For me it was right at the beginning, when she made the souffle – because I immediately thought “if she’s been there a year, how does she still have supplies?”
Any thoughts on how they’ll resolve the Dalek!Oswin/Clara-the-future-companion issue? My headcanon at the moment is that Eleven meets her again coincidentally just before she’s about to leave and decides to step in to save her from becoming a Dalek – and that that might result in some big paradox-like thing because of the whole Dalek situation. Either way, I liked Dalek!Oswin. But do they always have to flirt so much? *grumbles*
Damn it, my spoiler code didn’t work either! *internet fail*
And that first comment was meant to be addressed to you, Chally. It was a pretty horrible thing. 😦
Fixed the spoiler tags, Jo.
One day, I will get it. Thanks TT. (And for the thread too!)
My guess on saving Oswin is *begin-dalek-voice* “Emergency Temporal Shift” *end-dalek-voice* after the shields came down, which could explain the WWII thing. But knowing Moffat, I am so wrong there isn’t even a word for how wrong I am.
[Knowing Moffat through his work, The Doctor is the trickster, the manipulator, the one in control, Amy is his other half, the other, the alternate, and Rory is there to expose the flaws in any female types who are almost human, and to get himself voided, killed or deleted. Next time I see a female showing interest in Rory, I’m going to assume she is an alien techno nonhuman person who is actually flesh/tardis/dalek, and that Moffat’s got his fingers on his control character, his alternate character, and is just trying to get his finger across his keyboard to the delete character, so he can get them stuck and reboot AGAIN. It may be the first time you’ve done that in this universe, that is because you restarted the universe two episodes ago.]