4. Amnesia Of The Daleks
After the Revelation of River Song, "Doctor Whoooooooo?" is my favorite twist of New Who. "Asylum of the Daleks" was a surreal episode in the first place, especially with the Dalek who thought he (she?) was a prima ballerina. It was, however, intense and I worried for a while about how they were going to get out of this one alive. That pretty much sums up any Dalek episode worth its salt, but this had the added bonus of not memory-wiping Donna, stranding Rose in a parallel universe or anything of that kind. We know from the end of the season that Clara is a Deus Ex Machina. I personally think that she has too much power as the Girl Who Saves The Doctor. Maybe it's a way to offset The Woman Who Kills the Doctor from last season, but it's a little contrived. I do, however, like this introduction to Clara Oswin Oswald. I liked her since the series of failed souffles. In terms of her being someone who is inherently there to save the Doctor, her actions at the end of Asylum of the Daleks could not be more perfect. The Daleks are the oldest of the Doctor Who villains and I do admit that they have interesting traits. They've evolved from the toilet plunger terrorizing a screaming Susan Foreman into something with complexity and an actual fear factor. I found them particularly distasteful in this episode for the way that the Asylum smacks of Third Reich. It may be overreaching to remember that the National Socialist Party imprisoned those who were disabled for the crime of not living up to an unattainable standard. They imprisoned and murdered many others, but that is what the Asylum reminds me of. To take the oldest of the villains and hit the reset button was ingenious. They no longer have this extant hatred and vendetta against The Destroyer of Worlds. They no longer have a knee-jerk reaction (eye-stalk-jerk reaction?) to the Doctor's existence. So I want to know what happens when those Daleks run into races who do remember their oldest enemy. I want to know if any race approaches the Daleks about their common enemyin the style of the alliance from The Pandorica Opens, perhapsand the Daleks can't figure out why. Or, conversely, is that memory-lock infallible? What happens when memories slip through? It is more likely that they find a new reason to detest the Doctor. We haven't seen that happen yet. Inquiring minds do want to know.