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. It turns out she is a Dalek puppet, with an eyestalk inside her head. She shoots the doctor, as 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 make up room, where Rory asks her to sign the divorce papers. Once done so, he leaves as Amy's make-up artist enters. It turns out she is also a dalek puppet and she teleports Amy away.

Rory gets on a bus, and the bus driver turns out to also be a dalek puppet who in turn teleports Rory to the Daleks.

He wakes up to see Amy, and looks outside a small window to see lots of Dalek saucers. The Doctor enters with a Dalek and they are taken to the Parliament of the Daleks. The Daleks ask him to save them, and he remarks that this was new.

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".

Individuals

 * Amy can no longer have children due to what happened on Demons Run.

Music

 * The music played by Oswin Oswald is from the opera Carmen.

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

 * 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.

Ratings
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Filming locations
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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.

Plot holes

 * Skaro was destroyed in the Time War – which is to say, declared nonexistent and irretrievable – and nobody mentions this.


 * The Daleks were destroyed in the Time War – meaning they can only show up if they’re listed as having escaped it somehow, which these ones aren’t – and nobody mentions this.


 * Apparently there are human prison camps on Skaro, even though it is their purpose, not to enslave, but to exterminate.


 * Daleks are small pink creatures with one eye. The eyestalk and the weapon is simply a part of their armor, so naturally the people who've been partially converted into Daleks should not have had these things in their body.


 * Daleks are obsessed with their own genetic perfection: there are had multiple episodes detailing their disgust for human impurity, to the point of committing genocide against a human-Dalek hybrid race. But according to this episode, they think it is alright to manipulate human corpses and putting the resultant hybrid entities in positions of command.


 * Thousands of Daleks, their entire Parliament, the ship in which they reside and the asylum planet have all apparently survived the Time War, even though this is impossible.


 * The Doctor is called ‘the Predator of the Daleks’, a name he’s never heard before, even though he’s known in their mythology as the Oncoming Storm.

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. (DW: The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances)
 * Various models of the Daleks from different points in the series are visible in the Asylum, mostly in the background. These include many of the gold, post-Time War Daleks, (DW: Dalek onwards) a Supreme Dalek of the New Dalek Paradigm, (DW: Victory of the Daleks onwards) a Special Weapons Dalek, (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks) a Renegade Dalek, (DW: Resurrection of the Daleks) several of the earlier silver Daleks, (DW: The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks) and 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 on is of that which Jenny sits on in the space ship in DW: The Doctor's Daughter.

DVD releases
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Blu-ray releases
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