I saw the latest episode and have been watching it religiously every Saturday with my whole family since the show rebooted in 2005. I've also been rooting my way through the old series bit by bit.
The 'Asylum of the Daleks' had some nice plot points and scenes, I particularly liked the cgi Mordor-esque Skaro and the inclusion of the previous generation of Daleks as opposed to the hideous crayola ones. The terribly emotional Amy/Rory scene was nice as it expanded on their somewhat vague time outside the Tardis and highlighted some heart-wrenching consequences
of previous episodes with fantastic acting. Nice because we rarely get to see the wider implications of the Doctor and his time/space travel.
The ending was also quite (but not entirely unexpected), but I put that down largely to rumour and speculation concerning the actress rather than spectacularly twist story-weaving. (She's been previously confirmed as the new companion.)
It did have some downsides of course. The Zombie/human slave Daleks, while a nice callback to episodes some thirty years back were faintly ridiculous with their unnecessary spontaneously growing eye sockets and hand lasers. Also some of the dialogue suffered from what I can only describe as a 'Douglas Adams' effect, with characters talking a mile a minute with obscure metaphors and references for comic effect.
Sure it was witty, sure it was funny. However it sounded completely unnatural for an 'actual' person to be saying and detracted from the meagre realism the show enjoys.
It is of course excusable if we consider neither participants were human, but they tend to overdo the comedy aspect. Everyday bumbling occurrences with the right comic timing are much more amusing than high speed, self satisfied dialogue.
However it gives me hope for the new series as it combined classic roots and references with new ways of being scary and added something new to the Who mythos.
(Although it was frequently advertised as 'Scarier than ever' I found the original black and white shapeless and camera fuzzy THING that squirmed beneath someones quote in the original Dalek episode to be much more frightening.)
I found the previous series to be a bit lacking in Comparison to previous ones, too fixated with new character styled as more important than the doctor and too prone to shapeshifting its own characters making them entirely unrelatable.
It also had a rather unsubtle plot arc with a dreadful pay-off.
So yeah. Having seen this I'm looking forward to the next episode and the rest of the series without too much worry. Especially since it includes two very excellent British actors in important roles.
