"Asylum of the Daleks" is the first episode of the seventh series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, broadcast on BBC One on 1 September 2012.
The episode features the alien time traveller the Doctor (Matt Smith) being captured by the Daleks, along with his companions Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), who are about to divorce.
The Doctor is helped along the way by Oswin (Jenna-Louise Coleman), a woman whose spaceship had crashed on the planet a year ago and has been trapped there since then.
[1][2][3] In the prequel, a hooded messenger informs the Eleventh Doctor that a woman, Darla von Karlsen, requests his help for her daughter.
Oswin, a surviving crew member of the Alaska, agrees to deactivate the force field in return for the Doctor coming to rescue her.
In her opening speech, Darla refers to the Doctor faking his death in the 2011 episodes "The Impossible Astronaut" and "The Wedding of River Song".
[27][28] According to The Daily Telegraph, the production team located the remaining models of the various versions of the Daleks and shipped them to the studios in Cardiff Bay.
[49] It was also the most-viewed episode on BBC's online iPlayer the day that it aired,[48] and ended September in the number one spot, with 2.2 million requests.
[52] "Asylum of the Daleks" also was viewed 75,000 times on ABC's iView in Australia, a record audience, and 620,000 watched the premiere on Space in Canada, Doctor Who's second-best ratings for the channel.
Dan Martin of The Guardian praised Moffat's "script packed with ace curveballs and zappy dialogue" and Nick Hurran's direction.
[9] The Daily Telegraph reviewer Gavin Fuller gave it four out of five stars, describing it as a "confident opener" and highlighting the concept and set design of the asylum.
[55] Michael Hogan, also writing for The Telegraph, gave "Asylum of the Daleks" a slightly higher rating of four and a half stars out of five, also commending Coleman as well as many details of the script.
[56] Neela Debnath of The Independent commented positively on the show's continuing exploration of the Daleks and the more "adult tone", praising the performance of the three leads.
[22] Radio Times writer Patrick Mulkern stated that it "ticks all [his] boxes as a Doctor Who fan of more than 40 years standing", describing it as "clever, fast, funny, eerie, surprising and tearjerking".
[57] Nick Setchfield of SFX gave the episode five out of five stars, calling it a "strong, cinematically-minded series opener" which succeeded in making the Daleks scary.
[8] io9 reviewer Charlie Jane Anders noted that the plot "is mostly just an excuse to explore the Doctor's ongoing relationship with the Daleks, and to show how sad it's gotten".
[58] Both Anders and Mulkern (the latter citing a Doctor Who veteran, Katy Manning) noted that Oswin's fascination with eggs, required for making soufflés, is really just a mental trick to block out the "exterminate" ("eggs-terminate") conditioning; this literary device is woven throughout the episode as a series of subtle hints, as Rory is confused by a dormant Dalek, initially misinterpreting him as saying "eggs".
[57][58] Digital Spy's Morgan Jeffery also awarded it five stars, though he felt Amy and Rory's breakup was "a little difficult to buy" as it was resolved quickly, even if the situation was "sensitively handled" and "deftly performed".
Club graded "Asylum of the Daleks" as a "B+", also writing that he had a "quibble" with the Ponds' marriage issue as it had not been foreshadowed, but ultimately felt that the episode "gets the season off to a great start while creating a sense that anything could happen".