This is going to be brutally brief, as I expect many of these posts will be for the next two months. I started rehearsal for a new show and I need to be completely off book by Sunday, so I need to go memorize like crazy. That doesn't mean I am skimping on treadmill time, though. I put in my hundred pushups and fifty five minutes. By God I am going to see this ridiculous project through to the end.

So let's talk about today's surprise debut.

Asylum of the Daleks

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

It turns out the Daleks have a loony bin planet where they throw all of their rejects who have gone insane. Which, it's kind of hard to imagine what a sane Dalek would be, but there you have it. Unfortunately, someone is inside the planet and might manage to escape and unleash all of the crazy Daleks, and so the Doctor is forcefully recruited to go sort it out. Amy and Rory are also recruited, primarily as motivation. They are having marital issues, but of course they get sorted out by the end of the story.

The big surprise, though, was when actress Jenna Coleman appeared significantly in the episode, well ahead of her publicized joining of the series in the upcoming Christmas episode. In a world rampant with spoilers, show runner Steven Moffat managed to keep her appearance in this episode a complete surprise. Good on him. And she really was quite good in this story as Oswin Oswald, the shipwrecked genius who triggers the entire story. And then the big gut punch at the end, when it turns out that she really was Bruce Willis the whole time. 

Wait. I mean...

She really was a Dalek the whole time and didn't know it. Her intelligence and personality was so strong that it bucked the reprogramming and forced the entire crisis.

The second nicest thing about this episode is that, by the end of the story, the Doctor has been removed from all Dalek memory -- thus resetting the status quo and building on his apparent death. Moffat really was trying to get the series back to its roots and shake off nearly five decades of accumulated cruft.

The nicest thing, though, was the complete rebuke of the Candy Colored Daleks introduced at the end of Victory of the Daleks. They are still there, but where that previous episode floated the notion that all of the old Daleks would be swept away and replaced with plastic toy Daleks with huge butts, this episode firmly reverses direction and gives us a complete resurgence of classic Dalek designs. Good call. The rumor was that the story would feature every single Dalek design ever, but I don't think it quite manages that. I could be wrong. I don't recall seeing a Crystal Dalek anywhere (Remembrance of the Daleks) or an Emperor Dalek. But I did squee like a schoolgirl when the Special Weapons Dalek made a brief appearance.

Oh, I almost forgot... this batch of episodes, a set of five and the only ones aired in 2012, were each given some special marketing treatment. The logo at the beginning of each of them gets a different look (for this one it has Dalek Bumps), and each one got a theatrical-style poster. It was cool stuff. So check this one out, and I will catch you again tomorrow.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Eleventh
Companion(s): Amy Pond, Rory Williams
Episode(s): Asylum of the Daleks
Steps Walked: 7,323 today, 3,213,557 total
Distance Walked: 3.87 miles today, 1,678.66 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 100 today, 5,964 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 929 total
How Many Times has Rory Died?: 4
How Many Times has Amy Died?: 3
Is Anything Cool?: Well, Oswin Oswald certainly thinks she is cool
Weight: 251.38 lbs (five day moving average), net change -55.92 lbs