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I can buy Amy doing stupid things like breaking up out of guilt, though. If anything, she *wouldn't* be "brushing off" Rory's love for her because then it'd be an issue of "he spent two millennia protecting me, but I can't give him the one thing he's always wanted." And no, River does not count. By the time Amy even 100% knew she was pregnant, she had the baby, then had her taken away. Maybe more importantly, Rory never had the experience of having a daughter, which was Amy's entire point with the breakup.

Sure, it's a little stupidly emotional, but this is Amy we're talking about. It's not as though she really has the best track record in her relationship with Rory. And at least this was motivated by backwards love/guilt, instead of "hey, I think I'll cheat on my fiancé with a spaceman."

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Some of the criticism about Moffat being sexist is a bit unfair. People say the fact that Amy makes a choice to be a model. But Rose takes over torchwood (in Petes world) and Martha joins UNIT. That makes Amy a weaker character. I dont think thats Moffat being sexist, its fans being snobs.

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Just saw it myself.

A typical trope of a Doctor Who episode that I really really like always tends to start off real slow for me in the beginning. For the first 15-20 minutes, I'm very ho-hum, "It's okay but nothing holding my interest", and then before the halfway point it just sucks me in. This was great, and I loved how they played up the terror of the Daleks again, to the point where the 11th Doctor was screaming for his life. I love that, as it's something I don't believe we've seen from him. The Rory/Amy subplot was nice if a bit tacked on. I really did like it, and I like how the characters are coming off as older with each successive season.

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Just finished it. I thought the Dalek elements were great, with some new wrinkles to play with, and the Amy/Rory sub-plot was a cheap attempt at drama.

If this episode is any indication, Jenna Louise-Coleman will be a great companion.

Also, since The Doctor never saw Oswin's human appearance, it's entirely possible that her companion role will be a completely different character.

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Some thoughts on the episode, particularly about the Daleks and their motivations. I mostly sorted this out in my head in a discussion with Hannah last night, but i thought it was worth sharing here.

What's scaring the Daleks?

It's pretty clear from the beginning of the episode that the Daleks are terrified of something in the Asylum. The Doctor presumes it's the prospect of a planet full of insane Daleks rampaging across the universe, but that doesn't seem to be it. They say that they find the hatred that the damaged Daleks have to be beautiful, so their willingness to destroy them seems like an act of desperation. What could terrify them so much that they're willing to destroy something they find so beautiful and also forced them to enlist the help of The Predator who has brought them to the brink of extinction again and again?

Oswyn.

Somehow the Alaska crashed on the planet in spite of the fact that the shield should have kept it out (and that was what the shield was designed to do, to keep strangers out rather than the insane Daleks in). That was fine as they had the back-up system of the nanocloud which converted intruders into Dalek hybrids. When they encountered Oswyn though, they recognised that there was something very special about her, something they could use hence the decision to convert her into a full Dalek. They were right about her being special as her ability to take over the comms system of the asylum showed and as her ability to retain her identity showed. She fought long and hard to maintain the illusion that she was still human even after her own transformation at the hands of some utterly insane Daleks, to retain love, her sanity and her memories in the face of the hatred of an entire race. Not only did she manage to do that, she also found ways to beat them that they weren't expecting. She managed to transmit her voice and her music, both of which they found abhorrent and she was also close to finding something that she could really use against them: their information.

At the end of the episode she manages to remove all trace of the Doctor from the Daleks' collective memory rendering him invisible and unknown to them for the first time since his first incarnation. The ability to alter the Daleks' memories and information is precisely what they were so terrified of Oswyn as it gives her the ability to fundamentally change who the Daleks are. That's what drove them to seek the help of their greatest enemy and also why they kidnapped Amy and Rory. The Daleks don't understand why the Doctor keeps his companions around or how they help him, but they understand that they are critical to his success every time. By sending Amy and Rory along as well, they were giving him the best possible chance of succeeding in dropping the shield so that they could obliterate the planet.

Some people are concerned that, given Jenna-Louise Coleman's been cast as the new companion that either a) she wasn't playing the new companion in this episode or b) we've met her at the end of her time with the Doctor and all of her previous adventures with the Doctor will happen before this episode. I think that Oswyn is the new companion and that this was in reality her first adventure with the Doctor, and I think that because of two words: "Remember me."

While that might seem like it was a subtle nod to the audience or a message to the Doctor, what I think it actually was was a command given to the Dalek pathway. She's alive and exists in the Daleks' memory and we're clearly going to meet her again. I'm excited to see how.

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They only just finished filming the Christmas Special a couple of weeks ago, so the timing suggests that she was already cast as the new companion when this show was being shot.

I will fully concede that we're not going to know if she is the new companion or not until she starts full time, but there's a stark difference between her very central role here and Freema Agyeman and Karen Gillan's bit parts prior to their debuts.

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I never saw it. :(

The scene where Rory first finds the rusted Daleks and it starts trying to say 'Exterminate, look just past him. Then, when he drops the ball and turns to run... you can see it then. Then when all the daleks start to follow him in an overhead shot, look at the bottom to middle left of the screen.

EDIT: A 10th viewing confirmed that, also a much better shot of it is in the middle of that whole sequence. When the Daleks start firing, Rory ducks and rolls. He rolls right past it on his left. You can't miss it. :P

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Well I wanted to share the experience I had watching this thanks to my cable last weekend. I'd had some issues with the cable lately and was worried but it was fine throughout the whole episode... until...

the Doctor is running down the corridor as it's exploding after Oswyn lowers the shield and you cut to Amy and Rory on the teleport and Rory says 'How long do we wait?' and Amy says 'The rest of our lives.'

and then pixelate... pixelate... black. So it works fine the whole episode and chose then to cut out. I don't think they could have scheduled that any better.

Other than that I did see the ending later and it was a very good episode. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

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Dinosaurs on a Spaceship:

My only criticism would be that the guest stars - Rory's Dad, Queen Nerfatiti, Lestrade's hunter - didn't get enough time to fully flesh out their characters. They all had their moments, but said moments were all pretty brief. I reckon this could have been stretched into a serviceable two-parter.

That being said, I did enjoy this episode and the cameo race was a surprise. As was Mitchell & Webb voicing the robots - it was JUST downplayed enough for their banter not to be distracting. Moreover, there were dinosaurs.....on a spaceship!!!

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