Asylum of the Daleks (TV story)

 was the first episode of the seventh series of Doctor Who produced by BBC Wales. It was the first television story to prominently feature the Daleks since 2010's Victory of the Daleks, following their deliberate side-lining.

Synopsis
Kidnapped by his oldest enemies, more powerful than ever, The Doctor is forced on a mission - to a place even the Daleks are scared of... the Asylum. A planetary prison confining the most terrifying and insane of their kind - The Doctor and ex-companions Amy and Rory must find a way to escape. But with Amy and Rory's marriage in meltdown, it is up to the Doctor to save his oldest enemies... and his friends' marriage.

Plot
On Skaro, a woman called Darla meets the Doctor in a huge Dalek statue. She asks the Doctor to save her daughter from a Dalek prison camp, and she says she escaped before. However, the Doctor realises that this is all a trap: unbeknownst to Darla, she has actually been converted into a sleeper agent of the Daleks. Right as he says this, her programming becomes active, and she stuns the Doctor, and a Dalek saucer arrives.

On Earth, Amy Pond is posing for the camera when her secretary tells her that her husband wants to see her. She remarks that she doesn't have a husband anymore. She walks in to a makeup room, where Rory asks her to sign the divorce papers. Once she has done so, he leaves as Amy's make-up artist enters. Unfortunately, it turns out she is also a Dalek puppet, and she teleports Amy away.

Meanwhile, Rory gets on a bus, but the bus driver turns out to be yet another puppet, who in turn teleports Rory to the Daleks.

He wakes up to see Amy, and looks outside a small window to see an armada of Dalek saucers. The Doctor then enters, escorted by a Dalek, and they are taken to the Parliament of the Daleks. Much to the Time Lord's surprise, the assembled Daleks ask him to save them; a new development for Daleks.

The Daleks bring them to a planet they call the Asylum; a place that the Doctor has heard of only in legend: it's a place where the Daleks dump those of their kind who go wrong: the insane, the battle-scarred and the uncontrollable. The whole planet is automated and surrounded by an impenetrable shield, but the Daleks have detected a signal of unknown origin on the planet: The Doctor traces the signal to a woman called Oswin Oswald who has been hiding out on the remains of a crashed starliner for a year.

The Doctor realises when the starliner crashed, it ruptured the planet's shield, leading to the risk of the inmates escaping. A planet of insane Daleks roaming free is something that scares even the Daleks, who captured the Doctor and his allies to deal with the threat. The shield is still strong enough to resist an assult from orbit, so the Doctor and the Ponds will be sent down to the planet to deactivate the shield so the planet can be "cleansed". The three are given protective bracelets so they will not be affected by the Nanocloud that surrounds the planet and are sent down.

Amy is the first to come to after landing... And sees a man in a white coat approaching her. Panicking, she runs away, with him chasing after her. Eventually, she runs into the Doctor, and the man reveals that he was a crew member of a ship that crashed into the planet's surface.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Matt Smith
 * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan
 * Rory Williams - Arthur Darvill
 * Oswin - Jenna-Louise Coleman
 * Darla - Anamaria Marinca
 * Cassandra - Naomi Ryan
 * Harvey - David Gyasi
 * Voice of the Daleks - Nicholas Briggs
 * Dalek 1 - Barnaby Edwards
 * Dalek 2 - Nicholas Pegg

Daleks

 * The Daleks have a Prime Minister.
 * The Daleks refer to the Doctor as the "Predator of the Daleks".
 * The Daleks have the ability to turn people into their puppets, via the use of nanogenes. Time Lords are immune to this technology.

The Doctor

 * The Doctor described himself as "the Oncoming Storm".

Individuals

 * Amy is now physically unable to have children due to the events on Demons Run.

Foods and beverages

 * Oswin says she's been surviving in her crashed ship by baking soufflès; this troubles the Doctor, as she has no access to milk or eggs.

Music

 * The music played by Oswin Oswald is from the opera Carmen.
 * The Doctor claims to have played the triangle for the recording of "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" that is heard in the Parliament of the Daleks.

Planets

 * Skaro is the original planet of the Daleks, it still exists with the remains of a large Dalek-shaped building.

Transport technology

 * The Doctor brags that he has exceptional aim with teleports after he teleports himself and the Ponds into his TARDIS.

Story notes

 * The presence of Jenna-Louise Coleman in this episode was successfully kept secret, despite the episode having several preview showings prior to broadcast. After broadcast, Coleman and Moffat both issued statements thanking fans and the media for keeping Coleman's debut - months before her official first episode, the 2012 Christmas special - a secret.
 * This story premiered in Australia on the 's on-demand and catch-up service at 5.10am AEST; immediately following the UK broadcast. This was the first time Doctor Who had debuted on Australian TV in this way. A traditional free-to-air screening on ABC1 will follow on the 8 September.
 * This story marks the first appearance of a new title sequence. It contains the same music and time vortex animation as the sequence used for the two previous seasons, but the font of the opening credits and the style of the logo have changed. The sequence appears to have some colour adjustments as well - the vortex has hints of green, while the TARDIS itself is a slightly darker blue with vibrant yellow lighting emanating from the TARDIS windows. The footage also has less-sharp focus, casting a more dream-like atmosphere to the sequence.
 * The production team have confirmed that the title sequence for every episode in series 7 will have slightly different opening titles, including stylized versions of the Doctor Who logo. For this episode the logo appeared to have a bumpy texture, as though covered in Dalek "bumps."
 * A prequel was released on iTunes shortly before the release of the episode.

Ratings
This story was initially seen by 6.4 million people in the UK

Filming locations
to be added

Production errors

 * The first Dalek Rory approaches inside the asylum has indicators on both sides from his perspective, but when the camera is behind the Dalek the light on the right hand side is missing.
 * The Doctor has a plaster on his finger that keeps disappearing and reappearing.
 * In the ending scene where The Doctor is in the TARDIS, you can see the overhead camera reflected in the glass floor next to the console.
 * When the Doctor, Amy and Rory are in the Dalek Holding Cell, the circular platform they are standing on lifts. on one shot, it shows them and the Daleks looking all around them - the Doctor is looking towards 'us' - but in the next shot, the Doctor is looking upwards into the Dalek Parliament.
 * When the Doctor says "It's Christmas!" in the Dalek Parliament, the shot shows bronze RTD era Daleks and a few Paradigm Daleks. Except the shot has been reversed and the suckers are where the guns should be, and the guns are where the suckers should be.
 * The wide shots of the Dalek Parliament do not match the close-up shots.

Continuity

 * The Asylum is stylistically similar to the city in DW: The Daleks.
 * The Doctor's death is public knowledge across the Universe. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
 * Rory mentions waiting outside a box for two thousand years. (DW: The Big Bang)
 * On the Dalek Asylum, Nanogenes turn people both living and dead into Daleks. The Doctor has come across nanogenes which altered humans into hostile creatures before. (DW: The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances)
 * Various models of the Daleks from different points in the series are visible in the Asylum. These include many of the bronze, post-Time War Daleks, (DW: Dalek onwards) one Strategist Dalek and one or more Supreme Daleks of the New Dalek Paradigm, (DW: Victory of the Daleks onwards) a Special Weapons Dalek, (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks) several Renegade Daleks, (DW: Resurrection of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks) several of the earlier silver Daleks, (DW: The Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks) the grey wooden-looking Dalek models, (DW: Day of the Daleks to DW: The Five Doctors) and a black Dalek identical to Dalek Sec. (DW: Doomsday, Daleks in Manhattan, Evolution of the Daleks)
 * The Daleks in the intensive care section of the Asylum are survivors of encounters with the Doctor on planets such as Spiridon (DW: Planet of the Daleks), Kembel (DW: The Daleks' Master Plan), Aridius (DW: The Chase), Vulcan (DW: The Power of the Daleks), and Exxilon (DW: Death to the Daleks).
 * The Doctor is seen on Skaro. The planet was last seen on-screen in Doctor Who (despite its destruction in DW: Remembrance of the Daleks). It has also appeared more recently in the Adventure Game City of the Daleks, in which it looks the same as it does in this episode, complete with acid rain.
 * The Doctor brags that he has exceptional aim with teleports after he teleports himself and the Ponds into the TARDIS. Rose Tyler had previously remarked that the Doctor was "good with teleports." (DW: Boom Town)
 * The chair Oswin sits in appears to be identical to the chair in Jenny's spaceship. (DW: The Doctor's Daughter)

DVD releases
to be added

Blu-ray releases
to be added