Chemistry Dictionary: Adrenaline (epinephrine)

Adrenaline (epinephrine)

Adrenaline is a hormone, which is a chemical messenger in the body.  When the body is panicked, adrenaline is released into the bloodstream, and it acts on many parts of the body.  It tells the liver to release glucose (sugar) into the bloodstream; it tells the heart to pump faster, and tells the airways to open to get more air into the lungs and more oxygen into the bloodstream.  This is called the ‘fight or flight’ response, as the body prepares to respond to a perceived threat.

The shape of the adrenaline molecule fits into specific ‘receptors’, called adrenergic receptors, found on the cells in the heart, liver and lungs (and many other organs too), and when the adrenaline molecule fits into one of these receptors, it activates the receptor and tells the organs (through further messages) to respond in their own specific way.

Adrenaline was first artificially synthesised in 1904, and since then has become a common treatment for anaphylactic shock. It can be quickly administered to people showing signs of severe allergic reactions, and some people with known severe allergies carry epinephrine auto-injectors in case of an emergency.  Adrenaline is also one of the main drugs used to treat patients who have a low cardiac output — the amount of blood the heart pumps — and cardiac arrest. It can stimulate the muscle and increases the person's heart rate.

It's also a useful starting point for many drugs, because it has a wide range of effects on the body.  For example, its effect on the lungs means that a variation on adrenaline can be used to treat asthma.  One particularly successful drug is salbutamol, and the salbutamol molecule has a lot in common with adrenaline.

Adrenaline

Salbutamol

The differences between salbutamol and adrenaline make salmeterol more "specific" - in other words, salmeterol is designed (or adapted) to make it target just the soft tissue in the lungs and wind-pipe, and affect the heart less strongly.  If you think of adrenaline as a super key that can open many doors, than salbutamol is an adapted key that's only able to open some doors.


You may recall diagrams such as these from from school chemistry classes - chemicals and molecules being illustrated by a series of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms joined together by little lines.  The manufacturers of pharmaceutical compounds pay very close attention to these diagrams.  After all, the difference between a successful drug and a dangerous, toxic or addictive one is often just a hydrogen atom here, a carbon atom there.  Any drug which is released and authorised for sale in the UK has gone through rigorous checking to ensure that it is effective and that any side effects are also known.  Adrenaline is an ideal starting point for drugs, given its widespread effect on the human body; however, it's possible to begin with other starting points, and look to achieve different effects.

Sadly, in the UK, there has recently been an explosion of compounds which mimic the effects of popular illegal drugs such as cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis, but are chemically different enough to avoid being illegal.  Keeping up with the new highs is difficult. Chemical compounds are effectively legal until they are banned, which means the UK Government has no choice but to be reactive once a chemical hits the market, and must move switfly to determine if it is legal.  A recent report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, stated that one new legal high was being “discovered” every week in 2011. Additionally, the number of online shops offering at least one psychoactive substance rose from 314 in 2011 to 690 in 2012.

Chemistry moleculemolecule

Film Review: Wing Commander

I only played Wing Commander on a PC once; maybe twice.  I didn't own the game, and played it on a friend's PC. First-person space shooters have never ever appealed to me, since I never understood the three-dimensional radar readouts, and if I should press Up or Down to catch the enemy.  As a result, I never got into the original game, or any of the subsequent Wing Commander series.

However, Wing Commander was widely recognised as a very good example of its genre, and had a working plot and back story, based around mankind's war against the feline-looking Kilrathi.  So, it was only a matter of time before a Wing Commander film was made.  I'm still waiting for a Command and Conquer film crossover, and I acknowledge my optimism on that score!

Coming from a generation where movies were made into computer games, I was interested to see how a computer game could be made into a movie. The DVD blurb describes the film as Starship Troopers meets Top Gun, and the film is a blend of sci-fi, testosterone and a large fistful of cliches.  And you'd better pay attention during the opening credits, as the voice-overs are going to give you all the back-story in case you've only played the Wing Commander game a few times.

The plot:  Earth's distant Vega outpost is attacked by the Kilrathi, and they break into the outpost and steal a Navcom AI unit.  This will enable them to carry out a series of hyperspace jumps to Earth.  I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's the gist of it.  As far as back-stories go, Wing Commander has one, which was becoming the de facto standard for 90s computer games.

A security 'breech', and more serious than the breach of spelling.  Note Nokia's product placement - this IS the 1990s, after all.

Earth's battle fleet are too far away to prevent the impending attack on Earth, so it falls to one surviving battleship to save the day. The message is passed from Earth central command to the one surviving battleship in the area, the Tiger Claw, by a young hot shot pilot, Lieutenant Christopher Blair.  They relay the message, and one battleship is set to face-off against a vast and overwhelming Kilrathi army.  Who will win?  Is Earth safe?

Of course, Blain's father served with many of the Tiger Claw's senior staff (very Top Gun).  He's on board a carrier ship which is taking him out to active duty, and which is piloted by a crusty old captain who is secretly an expert in space combat, and is one of the "Pilgrims", a sort of human under-class with special space-faring abilities.  Are you counting the cliches yet?  And does Blair have some previously undiscovered special space-faring abilities as well?

To quote a conversation on the Tiger Claw:
"Lieutenant, you wouldn't be related to Arnold Blair, would you?"
"He was my father, sir."
"He married a Pilgrim woman, didn't he?"
"Pilgrims don't think like us."
"You won't have to worry sir, they're both dead."

So let's add 'orphan' to the list of cliches.  And while this scene is playing out, remember to have a go at "What have they been in since (or before)?" - there's David "Poirot" Suchet, and David Warner (Tron, Star Trek VI), and Hugh Quarshie (Holby City) just for starters.

Fortunately, Wing Commander does have a few novelties: the senior flying officer (played with a genuine British accent by Saffron Burrows) is female, and a slightly better-developed character; a few of the other fighter pilots are female too, so the film just manages to dodge much of the testosterone-laden dialogue that completely overwhelmed Top Gun.  This film is a PG, so it's all toned down.  The worst example here:  Blair, to the senior flying officer Lieutenant Commander Deveraux (I mean Wing Commander, of course I do),  "If I'm locked on, there's no such thing as evasive action," delivered with a smile that's wider than the Andromeda galaxy.  She puts him in his place with some witticisms, thankfully.  This forms the basis of the usual mistaken identity moment where "It turns out that the mechanic is actually the commanding officer," and you know as soon as Blair has demonstrated his immaturity and lack of flying experience to Deveraux that they'll be kissing before the final credits.  Predictable?  Absolutely.  

Wing Commander features the pilot hot shot rivalry that is par for the course with any military action film, but thankfully it only occurs in a couple of scenes, as Blair and his colleague have to find their places in the pecking order on the Tiger Claw.  A few cross words and a bit of fist waving, and it's all done and dusted.  That's a relief.

There is also the death of a colleague, which was a little surprising for a computer game crossover, but standard issue in Top Gun etc.  I should have seen it coming, I know.  The death of one of the characters requires more depth in the characters who should adjust to it, but the script and the story just don't have the extra dimension that's needed.  Subsequently, Matthew Lillard's character Todd Marshall comes off looking underwritten (or under-acted - I'll be honest, I can't decide).  The colleague's death is his fault, but by the end of the film he still looks as hot-headed and stupid as he did at the start.

Otherwise, it's a by-the-numbers shoot-em-up...  there are a few variations on the theme:  in Top Gun, it's "If you can't find somebody to fly on your wing, I will," whereas in Wing Commander, it goes like this:

Deveraus: "Let's make them bleed.  Mount up.  Blair, you'll take Hunter's wing."
Hunter: "Ma'am, I'd as soon you assign me another wingman."
Deveraux:  "You have a problem I should be aware of?"
Hunter: "Yes, ma'am, I do. I don't fly with Pilgrims."
Deveraux (to Blair): "You'll fly my wing."
Blair: "Are you sure?"
Deveraux:  "Did I give a suggestion or an order?"
Blair: "I got your wing, ma'am."

The space setting is used to good effect, with a nebula and a black hole (named Scylla and Charybdis) and massive 'distortions in space-time' (i.e. a very massive star) providing some mild jeopardy at the start of the film, and a way to defeat the Kilrathi battleship towards the end.  Although how the Kilrathi failed to see the very bright star just in front of them until it was too late is a mystery to me.  There's a good battle scene in an asteroid field, where the debate that Blair and Deveraux about fighting the enemy is enacted in real life.  Foreshadowing?  Predictability?  Not sure.

For me, the one major disappointment is the Kilrathi.  I know it's a strange disappointment, but I've always read, seen and understood from Wing Commander reviews, magazine articles and conversations that they were feline (or felinoid, to quote the Wing Commander wiki).  However, here, the costuming is way off, and they look like they're reptilian... or at best, bald cats.  They have no fur or hair; their faces look too unrealistic to be believable and they come off looking unintelligent.  They only get a few lines of dialogue too, spoken in Kilrathi and subtitled, so the end result is that they look like men in costumes that are so poorly designed that the actors inside them can't be heard properly.  And these are the villains of this piece:  some characterisation other than "bent on total intergalactic domination" would have been good.

So:  if you've played the game and understand the backstory, Wing Commander might be a good film to watch for the nostalgia value.  If you don't mind story-telling cliches and you enjoyed Top Gun, you'll like this (and it's rated PG too).  It's quite clear that the Wing Commander team were going for Top Gun in space, and they play up any possible connections or similarities.  Alternatively, if you're a little more selective about your sci-fi, and you've not yet seen any of the recent Battlestar Galactica TV series, I'd recommend them instead.

Angle of Elevation of a Geostationary Satellite

In a previous post, many months ago, I calculated the height of a geostationary satellite using the laws of physics which relate to gravity and circular motion.  This time, I'll use that information to deduce the angle of elevation of a given geostationary satellite, but I'll take the simplified model where the satellite is at the same angle of longitude as the observer (i.e.on the same meridian).  The maths enters three dimensions when the observer is in Europe but the satellite is geostationary over Central America, instead of North Africa.

Drawing a simple diagram will help to outline the situation, and show how the key parts of the model fit together.

A = centre of the Earth

B = position of observer on the Earth's surface
C = satellite

Angle alpha is the angle of longitude of the observer (how far north, or south, of the equator they are).  For this example, I will be using a longitude of 50 degrees north (northern France/southern England).
The angle at B is 90 degrees (the angle between the radius from A and the horizon) plus the angle of elevation, beta, which we are looking to solve.

Lenth a is the straight-line distance from the observer to the satellite

Length b is the distance from the centre of the earth to the satellite, re (radius of earth) plus rs (altitude of satellite, measured from earth's surface)

Length c is the radius of the earth

We only know two of the lengths (b and c) and the included angle, alpha, so we must start solving the triangle by using the cosine rule:

In order to find angle B, and hence beta, we will first need to find length a.Substituting the known lengths and angle into the cosine rule, we get:

a² = (r_e+ r_s)² + r_e² - (2 x (r_e+ r_s) x r_e x cos 50)

a²= 42,164,000²+ 6,378,000²- (2 x 42164000 x 6378000 x 0.6428)
a²= 1.473 x 10¹⁵ m²

a = 38,376,585 m

Now that we know all three sides, we can use the sine rule to determine an angle by knowing one other angle and the two opposite sides.  I will calculate angle C and then subtract A + C from 180 degrees to find C.

a / sin A = c / sin C

a = 38,376,585 m (as calculated above)

A = angle of longitude of the observer

c = distance from Earth centre to geostationary satellite, which was calculated previously as 42,164,000 m.

C = angle on diagram; angle at satellite between centre of Earth and observer on the ground.

So, by rearranging, we have

(c sin A) / a = sin C

If A = 50 degrees, then by substitution C = 7.3143 degrees

Therefore, B = 180 - (50 + 7.3143) = 122.6 degrees, and beta = 122.6 - 90 = 32.6 degrees.

There is an alternative route to finding angle beta, and that's by dividing the triangle ABC into two right-angled triangles by dropping a perpendicular from B onto the line AC, see below.  Angle Z = 90 degrees.

Firstly, calculate the distance BZ, which is common to both triangles ABZ and BCZ.  This can be done by simple trigonometry since angle Z is 90 degrees, and angle A is known (or determined by the observer):

sin A = BZ/ r_e  and where A = 50 degrees, BZ = 4,885,831 m.

Next, calculate AZ in the same triangle ABZ:

cos A = AZ/ r_e  and where A = 50 degrees, AZ = 4099699  m.

As we now know AZ, we can calculate CZ, and hence identify two of the sides of triangle BCZ.

CZ = AC (distance from centre of Earth to geostationary satellite) minus AZ
CZ = 42,164,000 - 4,099,699 m = 38,064,300 m

Finally:  angle B in triangle BCZ

tan B = CZ / BZ = 38,064,300 / 4,885,831  = 7.7909
B = 82.685 degrees

Now, we know that angle A = 50 degrees, so angle ABZ = 40 degrees.
Angle ABC = 40 degrees + 82.685 degrees = 122.685 degrees.

We want to know the angle between the observer's horizon and the satellite; since the angle AB and the horizon is 90 degrees ('the angle between a radius and a tangent is 90 degrees') this is simply 122.685 degrees - 90 degrees = 32.685 degrees... which agrees with the result from the first method.

QED :-)

If you find this post helpful, you may also be interested in:

Calculating the packing density of closely-packed spheres
Calculating the packing density of closely-packed circles
Calculating the tetrahedral bond angle

Testing: Iterating or Creating?

"Let's run a test!" comes the instruction from senior management.  Let's improve this page's performance, let's make things better, let's try something completely new, let's make a small change...  let's do it like Amazon or eBay.  Let's run an A/B test.

In a future post, I'll cover where to test, what to test, and what to look for, but in this post, I'd like to cover how to test.  Are you going to test totally new page designs, or just minor changes to copy, text, calls-to-action and pictures?  Which is best?

It depends.  If you're under pressure to show an improvement in performance with your tests, such as fixing a broken sales funnel, then you are probably best testing small, steady changes to a page in a careful, logical and thoughtful way.  Otherwise, you risk seriously damaging your financial performance while the test is running, and not achieving a successful, positive result.  By making smaller changes in your test recipes, you are more likely to get performance that's closer to the original recipe - and if your plan and design were sound, then it should also be an improvement :-)

If you have less pressure on improving performance, and iterating seems irritating, then you have the opportunity to take a larger leap into the unknown - with the increased risk that comes with it.  Depending on your organisation, you may find that there's pressure from senior management to test a completely new design and get positive results (the situation worsens when they expect to get positive results with their own design which features no thought to prior learnings).  "Here, I like this, test it, it should win."  At least they're asking you to test it first, instead of just asking you to implement it.

Here, there's little thought to creating a hypothesis, or even iterating, and it's all about creating a new design - taking a large leap into the unknown, with increased risk.  Yes, you may hit a winner and see a huge uplift from changing all those page elements; painting the site green and including pictures of the products instead of lifestyle images, but you may just find that performance plummets.  It's a real leap into the unknown!

The diagram above represents the idea behind iterative and creative testing.  In iterative testing (the red line), each test builds on the ideas that have been identified and tested previously.  Results are analysed, recommendations are drawn up and then followed, and each test makes small but definite improvements on the previous.  There's slow but steady progress, and performance improves with time.

The blue line represents the climber jumping off his red line and out into the unknown.  There are a number of possible results here, but I've highlighted two.  Firstly the new test, with the completely untested design, performs very badly, and our climber almost falls off the mountain completely.  Financial performance is poor compared to the previous version, and is not suitable for implementation.  It may be possible to gain useful learnings from the results (and this may be more than, "Don't try this again!") but this will take considerable and careful analysis of the results.

Alternatively, your test result may accelerate you to improved performance and the potential for even better results - the second blue climber who has reached new heights.  It's worth pointing out at this stage that you should analyse the test results as carefully as if it had lost.  Otherwise, your win will remain an unknown and your next test may still be a disaster (even if it's similar to the new winner).  Look at where people clicked, what they saw, what they bought, and so on.  Just because your creative and innovative design won doesn't mean you're off the hook - you still need to work out why you won, just as carefully as if you'd lost.

So, are you iterating or creating?  Are you under pressure to test out a new design?  Are you able to make small improvements and show ROI?  What does your testing program look like - and have you even thought about it?

What is Direct Traffic?

It is a pain. It is anonymous and it is often a sizeable proportion of your traffic.  Yet the received wisdom and standard description is that it is traffic which came from users typing in your URL directly in their browser.  What is it? "Direct traffic".

Direct Traffic:  What it Isn't

It isn't search, and it can't be confirmed as traffic clicking a link from another website. It almost counts as a miscellaneous bucket. Here I would like to summarise what it might be, what it isn't and how to improve reporting for it.  Is it as good as Avinash Kaushik says, when he says that direct traffic is a good thing and we should look to improve it?  I have found, in my experience, that it's not.  If direct traffic was traffic without a referring URL and I could be assured that it was people typing in my URL in the browser bar, then I'd be happy.  But my experience shows otherwise - and historically it's been a matter of some consternation as I look to find out what it really is.

If it were the result of the five factors that Avinash suggests, then I'd be very pleased.  Here they are:

1. People who are your existing customers / past purchasers, they'll type url and come to the site or via bookmarks.
2. People familiar with your brand. They need a solution and your name pops up into their head and they type.
3. People driven by word of mouth. Someone recommends your business / solution to someone else and boom they show up at the site. Uninvited, but we love them!
4. People driven by your offline campaigns. Saw an ad on TV, heard one on radio, saw a billboard and were motivated enough to typed the url and show up.
5. Free, non-campaign, traffic.

Direct Traffic:  What It Often Is

However a better definition of direct traffic is 'referrer not known' or 'referrer information lost'.  It can be lost in a number of ways, but the main ones are javascript redirects, or redirects that go via an ad agency's server.  As a website analyst, I was often asked to track online marketing campaigns that went live 'last Monday', and sure, there was a spike in traffic, which came from adagency.com (insert your ad agency here), because the ad agency were also tracking impressions and clicks, and kindly stamped themselves all over the traffic source. 

"Yes we've seen an increase in traffic.  Yes, it matches the timing of your online campaign.  No, I can't tell you where it came from.  No, I don't have the telephone number for your online agency.  Do you?"

Other examples are flash applications, documents (such as Word or Excel documents that have links in them), and some automated traffic, like spiders or bots (and not the 'good' ones, which don't process tags.

The way around it?

If you always ensure that your inbound campaign links are passing campaign or source information, or both, through URL query strings (whether that's ?cid=online, or ?utm= or ?marketing=online) then you will still be able to capture the referring site information, even if the brower isn't passing it.  Google Analytics has a semi-automatic process that will allow you to build your own campaign URLs.

You won't usually find "Direct Traffic" in a promotional or merchandising
screenshot for a tool... it probably means the tool hasn't classed the traffic
as anything else.

Alternatively, you can start to look at the visitor data for the direct traffic.  Previously, I have used Adobe's Discover tool to isolate "direct" traffic and start segmenting it.  Where, geographically, does it come from?  For example, does the traffic increase match an offline campaign in London?  Were people really typing in your URL?

No?  How about drilling down even further?  I have found cases where direct traffic was actually an automated checking tool - an example would be Gomez - which was pinging the site every 15 minutes, without fail, day and night, and always from the same IP addresses. 

It took some detective work (start by Googling the IP address) to track an IP address back to the performance monitoring tool, but once it was done, it was easy enough to block the IP - after making sure that we weren't paying the tool providers.  Alternatively, if you are, and you do see their traffic in your reports, there are ways to screen them out from your analytics (without blocking them from the page).

The results?  Direct traffic went down.   Total traffic went down.  So far, so good for site targets.  However, we did some beneficial results, which supported another piece of work I was doing:  reducing bounce rate.  The automated traffic was bouncing off various pages of the site (in particular, the home page) at a constant, relentless and nagging rate.  Once we blocked the automated traffic that we were sure came from the performance tracking tool, the bounce rate fell.  Dramatically.

So, I reduced the volume of direct traffic - but I improved reporting quality and traffic quality.  If you're looking to improve direct traffic performance (but not quantity ;-) then I suggest the steps I took.  This will help you to improve your conversion figures for the segment, and overall, and that's got to be a good thing.

Other articles I've written on Website Analytics that you may find relevant:

Web Analytics - Gathering Requirements from Stakeholders

Analysis is Easy, Interpretation Less So
Telling a Story with Web Analytics Data
What is "Direct Traffic"?
Reporting, Analysing, Testing and Forecasting
Pages with Zero Traffic

Why I Like Snow

 I'm writing this on a wintry evening, with an almost-certain forecast of heavy snow for tomorrow.  I've mentioned this a few times on Facebook, and posted screenshots of weather forecasts from the Met Office and the BBC Weather site to share my excitement at the prospect of a large fall of snow tomorrow.  Some of my friends share my love of snow.  Some don't.  In fact, some positively dislike it; I expect, given the opportunity, they'd shake their fists at the sky and disapprovingly wave their fingers at the clouds at the first suggestion that there may be a few flakes falling in the near future.

The media often report snow in terms of traffic delays, travel disruption and so on.  Consequently, many people have a negative view of snow (and its apparent 'partner in crime' - ice).  Might I suggest that if you have a negative view of snow for this reason, that you allow extra time for your journey, give up on the idea of driving at normal speeds and pay attention to the change in road conditions?  Leave extra space between you and the car in front, drive carefully, accelerate steadily, brake smoothly and steer a little less dramatically?  If we all did this, then we'd all travel more slowly but we'd all arrive safely, and with fewer accidents.  

So, having addressed the main negative reaction to the snow and the disruption it causes, I would like to turn to the questions, "Why do you like snow?  What's the obsession?  What's so good about snow anyway?"

Here's my reply.

1.  It's photogenic.  Very photogenic.  During the annual time of long, dark nights, with overcast and grey days; lifeless and leafless trees, and general dullness, the arrival of snow heralds a widespread brightening and improvement in the landscape.  Even on a cloudy day, snow can brighten the landscape considerably.

2.  It's fun.  Sledging (which I only discovered a couple of years ago); snowballs, snowmen...  sometimes there's no point trying to take snow seriously.

3.  And this is the most important to me:  it's a great visual reminder of some Biblical truths.  In order from 'resonates with me a bit' through to 'hits home every time I see snow', here are some Scriptural principles and the Bible verses that I see when the snow falls.

a)  Snow is a good description of what angels look like.  Matthew 28 reads:

"After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.  There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow."

On a sunny day, just a glance at snow can be dazzling - that's why skiers wear sunglasses (or ski goggles) even in winter.  What do angels look like?  Answer:  they wear clothes that are as bright and white as snow.

b)  Snow comes down from heaven, and is a reminder that God keeps his promises.  Isaiah 55:10,11

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth:  It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

God set the rainbow in the sky as a reminder that he keeps his promises (in particular, He's not going to flood the whole world again), and sends rain and snow to remind us that His word, which he also sends from heaven.  Snow doesn't just evaporate its way back to the clouds.  It waters the earth, and makes things grow.  So it is with God's word - when He sends it, it fulfils its purpose.

c)  This is my most favoured one; there are plenty more references to snow in the Bible (and none of them, by the way, are negative), but this one is one that resonates most strongly with me - it hits me where I live.  Isaiah 1:18 says:

“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord.  “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool."

I'm not perfect.  In fact, if you were to look at me as a weather forecast, it would be dull and gloomy with black clouds.  However, in this verse, God invites Isaiah to sit down and talk.  God knows that Isaiah isn't perfect - in fact his record is stained with scarlet and crimson, which are deep, dark dyes - but God says he will wash them out and Isaiah's sins - his mistakes and wrongdoings - will be as white as snow.  Pure, clean and white.  God washes whiter than Persil, and puts Isaiah (and me) in a position where he's able to sit down and reason with God.  It's an invitation to talk, where Isaiah is as white as snow... which is as white as the angels.

So, why do I like snow?  Because it reminds me that with my sins forgiven, I'm as white as snow.  And it's fun, bright and cheerful, and makes for great photographs.

Other articles I've written based on Biblical principles

10 things I learned from not quite reading the Bible in a year
Advent and a Trip to London
Advent: Names and Titles
Reading Matthew 1
My reading of Matthew 2
The Parable of the 99 Sheep

Doctor Who Asylum of the Daleks

"Well come on then.  You've got me.  At long last.  It's Christmas!  Here I am!"
The Doctor announces his return.

After the longest gap that we've had to wait since the relaunch of Doctor Who in 2005, the Doctor has returned, for a five-episode run, and then a Christmas special.  I'll try to review each episode in turn, and I will not feature spoilers of future episodes, and I won't even trail the next episode in my reviews.  I will also not refer to any of the other speculation, news and comment about Doctor Who that features in the media.  I won't talk about expected character deaths or new companions - or anything else.  I'll take each episode at face value and comment on the 50 minutes of television.

And so series seven of Doctor Who begins, and it opens with the Daleks.  Cue the sighing and cheering in equal measure - an entire episode devoted almost entirely to the one-eyed exterminators.

However, I have to say that this episode is one of the very best Dalek episodes - in my opinion.

The episode begins on the Dalek's home planet of Skaro, which is probably a more exciting event for long-time viewers of the earlier series than it was for me. Nevertheless, the scene is a derelict and declining planet, and a strange woman who claims that her daughter, Hannah, has been kidnapped by the Daleks.  She's been able to summon the Doctor to ask his assistance.  Does something seem amiss?

"If Hannah's in a Dalek prison camp, tell me: why aren't you?"
"I escaped."
[laughs]  "No.  Nobody escapes the Dalek camps."
As the Doctor points out, few people are able to avoid the Daleks, and even fewer are able to send him a message.  Sure enough, the strange woman grows a Dalek eye stalk from her forehead, and a Dalek weapon from her arm, and zaps the Doctor with a stun ray.

Similarly, the soon-to-be-divorced Ponds are stunned by human-Dalek-pretenders and captured by the Daleks.  I don't know if it was intentional, or it was just the make-up that Amy Pond was wearing, but she looked much older and very tired during the opening scenes.

What did I make of the human-Dalek-pretenders?  I'm really not sure.  A clever way of snaring the Doctor and his companions, for sure, and for giving the Daleks human hands - and, let's be fair, a much better way than the mutant pigs which the Daleks used when they were in Manhattan.  Overall, I think they were a reasonable addition to the Dalek repertoire... up to this point.

The Doctor and his companions are whisked off to a ship orbiting the Daleks' asylum planet, where their maddest and baddest Dalek comrades are sent to die.  The insane, battle-scarred and the uncontrollable are sent there, as it transpires that killing a Dalek contravenes the Daleks' own perception of 'divine hatred' or a concept of beauty... not a pretty thought.  The Doctor and the Ponds are summoned to appear in front of a Dalek parliament, which is populated with the latest Steven Moffat Daleks (red, white, yellow, blue etc), alongside some of the gold/brown "new series Daleks" from the Russell T Davies era.

Now hang on a minute:  when we were introduced to the new Steven Moffat Daleks, they unilaterally decided that the previous incarnation were genetically impure and proceeded to exterminate them on the spot (see Victory of the Daleks).  And yet here they are, side by side?  Hmm, I was none to impressed by this decision.  I thought the red version of the new Daleks would be the drones/troops/cannon fodder...  I was not totally convinced by this decision.  But still, nice to see lots of Daleks all waggling their eye stalks around at anything and everything that looked exterminatable.  My guess is that Mr Moffat is either responding to fans' criticism of his 'Power Ranger Daleks' or 'Crayola Daleks', or the BBC have spotted a merchandising opportunity and asked him to keep the old guard in.  Having said that, the new Daleks do look a lot better with their colour schemes toned down - the red Daleks, for instance, are more maroon than post-box red, and this definitely helps.

The central guest character in this episode is Oswin Oswald, a survivor from a ship that crash-landed on the asylum and who has avoided capture for almost a year.  She's surviving capture despite frequent, almost-nightly attacks by the Daleks, and is staying sane by listening to opera music (featuring a performance by the Doctor on the triangle that 'got buried in the mix') and by making souffles (although the Doctor wonders where she's getting the milk).  She's a genius who has hacked into the Dalek defences and security cameras - helping to keep them out.

There is a protective shield around the planet, but the discovery of Oswin's spacecraft, crashed on the surface, shows the impenetrable shield is not as impenetrable as they Daleks thought.  And, if something can get through it and get in, then it is possible that something can get out... including a tsunami of uncontrollable and crazy Daleks; that's why the Daleks have summoned the Doctor - to help destroy the asylum (before the inmates escape).  The shield can only be lowered from within the asylum, and the Doctor suggests sending a small task force, before realising that he's actually volunteering himself, known to the Daleks as the "Predator of the Daleks", and his companions.  It seems the Daleks are too afraid to go for themselves.  

The mission plan is simple:  the Predator of the Daleks is to be fired down to the planet, he then lowers the impenetrable shields so that the Dalek's spacecraft can destroy it with missiles.  This seems like a good idea to Rory, until he gets included in the plan as well:

Doctor:  "You're going to fire me at a planet.  That's your plan?  I get fired at a planet and expected to fix it?"
Rory:  "To be honest, that is slightly your MO."
Doctor:  "Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet.  "What do you want with them [Amy and Rory]?"
Dalek:  "It is known that the Doctor requires companions."
Rory:  "Ohhh brilliant."

The Doctor and his companions are given a wristband to protect them from 'the nanocloud' - a Dalek invention which enables them to assimilate all life forms -  living or dead - and turn them into the Dalek Pretender life forms.  I'm sorry, but for me this was just a bit too much Vashta Nerada for me, especially when the skeletons of dead astronauts (still wearing their white coats, no less) became Dalek Pretenders.  No, this was a bit of a recycled story idea and I was not too impressed with this new usage of the Dalek humanoid zombies.  However, while Amy and the Doctor escape from the roomful of Vashta Nerada - I mean Dalek drones - Amy loses the wristband which protects her from the nanocloud, and must now work to avoid being slowly converted into a Dalek drone.

Rory becomes separated from Amy and the Doctor as they are fired onto the asylum planet, and has to find his own way around:  in fact, he lands in a room full of Daleks.  And here, the Daleks were particulary good in some suspenseful moments, as they start to re-energise as Rory walked among them.  I couldn't help think that Rory was a bit dim in not working out what the Daleks were trying to say when he started, "Eggs. Eggs..." Hmm... I wonder.  Exx--- ter-- min--- ate!

There are some very good action scenes, one of which involves a Dalek trying to take out the Doctor by self-destructing.  An unusual kamikaze tactic from the Daleks, and perhaps a brief comment on suicide bombers?  Probably not, but a good way of taking out a room filled with Daleks in one go, with a wave of the sonic screwdriver and a good shove!

The rest of the story features lots of running around, looking to deactivate the shields, avoid the Daleks and rescue Oswin.  There's some extremely well written development around the soon-to-be-divorced Ponds: it turns out that Rory wants to have children, and Amy certainly doesn't (River was too traumatic for her).  By clever manipulation, the Doctor is able to maneouvre them both into admitting their true feelings for each other... he walks past a security camera, screen visible to the Ponds, and straightens his bow-tie, "Situation fixed."  Although the main characters still suffer from narrative immunity (they must survive to the end of the episode because the story says they must) and there isn't much suspense around them, there is a very clever twist.  In fact, it is an extremely good twist - and it concerns the character of Oswin Oswald.

The Doctor has had his suspicions about her true nature since the beginning - how does she survive, how is she making all the souffles and how is she able to hack the Dalek network?  In a shocking reveal, it turns out that the Dalek inmates captured her and, recognising her genius, transformed her into one of them.  Oswin is a Dalek.  She doesn't know that, and certainly doesn't acknowledge it, and the revelation is as much a shock to her as it is it to us (well, me, anyway).  In twist upon twist, Oswin is able to wipe the Doctor's file from the Daleks' memory, so that they no longer have any recollection of him (and those which are on the planet cease trying to exterminate him).

To wrap up:  Oswin lowers the shields around the asylum planet, and the Dalek spaceship sends in enough missiles to destroy an entire planetary system.  The Doctor is able to overclock a site-to-site teleporter sufficiently to beam himself and the Ponds back to the Dalek spacecraft, just before the planet blows up.

And, as the Doctor points out, he is very good at teleporters, and he beams the heroic trio back, directly inside the Tardis on the Dalek spaceship.  Poking his head around the door, he greets the Daleks with a broad smile.  But the effect of Oswin's actions is felt across the whole Dalek race:  none of the Daleks know who the Doctor is.  There he is, showboating in front of the Dalek parliament, and they demand to know who he is.

"Titles are not meaningful.  Doctor who?"
"Doc-tor who?  Doc-tor who?"

And with that, the Doctor takes Rory and Amy back to their house, where they will be resuming their marriage (much to Rory's delight), and then departs, smiling to himself about "Doctor who...?"

There are clearly big plans to move the Doctor's arc forward considerably, based on this episode.  The Daleks are no longer a direct threat to the Doctor, and the question... sorry, I mean The Question has now been asked.  I wish I could recall the rest of the blurb at the end of the last series, about The Question, but it was big and meaningful.

This episode gets five stars from me - for intelligent use of the Daleks alone, and for the story twist.  More to follow!

My other Doctor Who Reviews

Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks
Doctor Who: Sea Devils
Doctor Who: Warriors of the Deep
The Space Babies/The Devil's Chord

Other sci-fi TV reviews:

Star Trek Picard - Season 1 and Season 2
The Book of Boba Fett