#asylum of the daleks

[foolishlyzephyrus]

no one talks about how horrifying of a concept asylum of the daleks has. to be so convinced of your humanity that you cannot accept the fact that you have become a monster, to have lived in a dreamt up world inside your head despite its nonsensical rules because the reality is far too disturbing to bear.

[comicaloverachiever]

Breaking the Fourth Wall

Doctor Who | 7x01 / 8x01

[bowtiesarecool11]

"That's your plan!? I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it?"

"In fairness, that is slightly your mo."

"Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet!"

[thefiresofpompeii]

sleeper is so fucking heartbreaking. not even the sex jokes balance it out. the ‘murderous alien desperately wants to be human/believes they’re a human until they discover that they’re not and haven’t been for a long time’ trope has been done like 7 times in doctor who but it gets me EVERY TIME!!!

the scientist from victory of the daleks. dalek oswin. cyber-bill. auton rory. sleeper beth… and, in a way, john smith, ruth, and professor yana. they just want to be human. they just want to be able to love. they just want to help… tragedy in its purest form. the universe had other plans

[notyoujamie]

[lonelyzarquon]

—  Doctor Who?

[nkp1981]

[yournewlodger]

oswin oswald aboard the alaska inside of her dalek mind hallucination should have had a pink gamer chair and cat ear headphones. there has to be an egirl twitch streamer clara echo out there somewhere. it just feels so natural

[thematrix-theuniverseofdoctorwho]

Jenna Coleman As Oswin Oswald “Doctor Who - Asylum Of The Daleks”

[vsenyatargaryen]

“Where am I?”

[comicaloverachiever]

The Lives and Deaths of Clara Oswald

From childhood to adulthood

[clairedelune-13]

You know what, people say Rose getting trapped in the AU or Donna losing her memories is saddest. But I think Oswin realizing she’s a Dalek is the ultimate horror, and truly sad.

[thefiresofpompeii]

wait waitwait wait. clara keeps getting dalekified because that’s all part and parcel of her doctorification. she’s just like him and he is always one bad day away from turning into a good dalek thus, evidently, so must she be. as the narrative rules dictate

[notyoujamie]

[oswinpond]

My Clara Rewatch, Episode 1: Asylum of the Daleks

I'm going to ignore the silliness in this episode in favour of focusing on Oswin. Fabulous Oswin.

(But for one second, can I just say about how truly silly it is that the Daleks have a parliament? They're Daleks, they have nothing resembling a democracy. Are we supposed to believe they held a Dalek election? And why do they have an asylum when they exterminate anyone, including other Daleks, who show the slightest sign of imperfection by their standards?)

Anyway...

(Also I hate that Amy and Rory have this divorce plot offscreen, and the minisodes don't count. Springing this on us and then resolving it in one single episode was unnecessary. I love getting to watch Amy prove her love for Rory, but we've had plenty of that in s6 and s7a to come.)

Okay now to the good stuff: Oswin.

"Day 363. The terror continues."

Oswin has been on a Dalek planet for nearly a year and is still holding strong. It really speaks to the strength of her character. (Especially when you know...)

I love that Oswin is boarding up her little hiding hole with planks of wood, as if those will keep out Daleks. Bless.

We're first introduced to Oswin with the song "Habanera" from Carmen, the opera. Now I'm no opera connoisseur so I'm pulling from wikipedia here, like a proper English major: "It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. José abandons his childhood sweetheart and deserts from his military duties, yet loses Carmen's love to the glamorous torero Escamillo, after which José kills her in a jealous rage. The depictions of proletarian life, immorality, and lawlessness, and the tragic death of the main character on stage, broke new ground in French opera and were highly controversial."

I don't want to stretch too hard, but I think there are some obvious parallels to Clara's story in there, intentional or not. But I do think there's something to be said about how Oswin is dressed in that bright red and at one point has a red rose in her hair (oh hey the inspiration for my username!) in that classic spanish tango style. Maybe that was intentional. I mean, Eleven does call her Carmen at one point.

If Clara were on GBBO, she'd lose in the first round.

But is it not absolutely precious that she finds a way to spin everything in a positive light? "Made another soufflé... very nearly." That wasn't even close, my dear. "They came again last night. Still always at night. Maybe they're vampires." She finds a way to turn the trauma of her life, barricading herself from the universe's most deadly killing machines, into a little fantasy (a fantasy within a fantasy, you might say). "Happy birthday, mum. I did make you a soufflé, but it was too beautiful to live." Does it need saying?

The connection to her mom is already being established. Is Oswin's mother still alive, and this version of Clara got to have more time with her? Or did she lose her mother young, too, and is celebrating her birthday as one other way to stay connected to her humanity, her home?

Anyway, she sleeps in a hammock like a pirate. Hot. (And Oswin, like Prime Clara, likes to wear rings. Details.)

Carmen. Oswin. Roses.

I think this is the first time we hear the start of Clara's theme.

"I know a Dalek when I hear one, yeah." So Oswin Oswald, junior entertainment officer of the starship Alaska, has encountered Daleks before. She's seen things, she's done things. Even if this is her first trip out on this starship, somehow she's encountered Daleks. That's pretty cool. Why has Big Finish never done a story about Oswin? Get on that, BF. Phone Jenna.

There's a flavour of Everything Everywhere All at Once with this intro to Clara, this idea of what other versions of yourself would have done in different lives, with different choices and opportunities. Prime Clara was an unofficial nanny who always dreamed of travelling, and then became an English teacher while getting to travel the universe with the Doctor. Oswin became an entertainment officer on a starship, in order to travel the universe. Victorian Clara was both a barmaid and a governess, and immediately jumped at the chance to travel with the Doctor. Common threads between our Claras are very obvious: she's a people-pleaser, she likes to take care of others and make them happy, and she wants to see the world, the universe.

(Tangent: Is "Oswin Oswald" her full name from birth? Or was she also a Clara Oswin Oswald who ditched the "Clara" and started going by her middle name?)

-

DOCTOR: How can you hack into everything? It should be impossible. You're in a crashed ship! OSWIN: Long story. Is there a word for total screaming genius that sounds modest and a tiny bit sexy? DOCTOR: Doctor. You can call me the Doctor. OSWIN: I see what you did there.

The shameless Doctor/Clara flirting has officially started.

Side note, I love how Oswin's hacking genius is explained in The Bells of Saint John soon after this. It's not just Oswin being an entertainment officer who also just happens to be a tech genius. There's a specific plot reason for it, and now I wonder if Victorian Clara ever demonstrated any uncanny abilities with early technology...

-

Oswin saving Rory and interacting with the Ponds is very important to me, seeing as they're my three favourite companions of the show. (Plus, the fact that she flirts with Rory shows she has good taste. That said, if she had flirted with Amy I think the fandom would have combusted on the spot. Speaking for myself, at least.)

Now I totally hate the "I was going through a phase" line because come on we're past the point of describing bisexuality as a phase but thankfully they later fixed this, to some extent, by making it hard canon that Clara is bisexual and identifies as such.

-

Unrelated to Clara, but I adore how when Amy is hallucinating the people-Daleks, she hears a jazzy version of "Together or Not at All". Murray Gold strikes again with the genius.

-

OSWIN: Do you know how you make someone into a Dalek? Subtract love, add anger. Doesn't she seem a bit too angry to you? AMY: Well, somebody's never been to Scotland.

Aside from how funny I find this exchange, I just love how the one emotion we definitely haven't seen Oswin express the entire time is anger. She's shown us plenty of other regular emotions (and in fact, love–when talking about her mother) but we haven't seen a shred of anger from her.

Which is really important for what comes next... the big reveal that Oswin has been fully converted–at least physically–into a Dalek.

Part of me wishes she hadn't been converted. Imagine if we'd gotten Oswin escaping with Amy, Rory, and the Doctor? I would've had my three favourite companions (at least, a version of Clara) interacting as a trio. She could've stuck around for a few episodes before dying in time for the exit of the Ponds and the intro of Victorian Clara. I would've loved to see Jenna play off Karen and Arthur face to face.

But I have to come back to the fact that it's so perfectly set up. Right off the bat, Oswin's situation doesn't make sense. The lone survivor of the Daleks, alone for a whole year, baricading herself from them with planks of wood and surviving off soufflés that aren't edible and we never see her eating them, with ingredients she doesn't have. Every time we see her interact with the Doctor, it's through a very Dalek-like lens:

And of course, we can write that off the whole episode as this just being Dalek technology so of course it looks Dalek-like. But after the reveal, you realize that of course, this is her actual POV.

And most importantly, we need the Doctor to never know what Oswin looks like so that Victorian Clara's death, her repeating the iconic line, and the Doctor finding out her middle name all create that big gut punch moment for him. We as the audience know both characters are played by Jenna Coleman, but the Doctor isn't supposed to know. And when I do the next Clara episode I have a whole thing about why this is so important.

This just about breaks my heart. She finally sees the Doctor has arrived and she immediately runs to pack her suitcase. She's so committed to her self-imposed delusion that she still, to this moment, believes she's about to escape.

"Rescue me chin boy and show me the stars."

It's absolutely heartbreaking hearing her say "I'm hu–" and hearing the Dalek voice finish "–man". Genius, though. And then you hear a Dalek cry for the first time ever and it's so incredibly unsettling because they're the embodiment of evil, of hate, and crying is not Dalek. Sadness and heartbreak are not Dalek.

Oswin has been depicted as the exact opposite of Dalek. When she starts crying, it's the one time she says "exterminate", when she lets it in for the first time, and it's because she's angry about what they did to her. She spent a whole year hiding from the truth of the unbelievable trauma she's been put through, partly because it's too much to deal with, but also because if she lets herself face it she will feel that anger, and they'll start to win over her mind. Oswin lives in delusion to protect herself and her humanity.

"Eggs... stir... minate..." isn't just a fun twist. She turned "exterminate" into something as harmless as a soufflé recipe. Oswin took the one word Daleks use the most, the one that, on Doctor Who, is the epitome of evil, and turned it into something human, something positive, something creative (even if she sucked at it) and that she associated with the love for her mother.

Oswin spent a whole year fighting a full Dalek conversion, while the rest of her crew couldn't fight off a partial one, and she refused to let them turn her into a killer. The pure strength of her will is incredible.

I just adore these shots of Oswin crying, finally accepting the truth of what happened to her. Jenna knocked this out of the park.

As I said, crying is not Dalek.

And then she decides that no, she won't let in the anger, she won't let them win, ever. She'll save the Doctor, the biggest enemy of the Daleks, and die as Oswin, a human.

Then she says her iconic line, "Run you clever boy, and remember." She breaks the fourth wall which, correct me if I'm wrong, is the first time it's happened on the show, until Twelve comes in to make that one of his rare quirks.

That's my girl.