Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill of BBC's Doctor Who. (WENN.com

"How much trouble are we in?"

That question is asked of the Doctor, played by Matt Smith, in the first episode of the new season of Doctor Who.

"Out of 10?" the Doctor muses. "11."

Any time you can combine Doctor Who with an indirect Spinal Tap reference, it's a good day.

Doctor Who returns Saturday on Space, lifting off the seventh season of the current version of the decades-old British science-fiction series. The new episode is called Asylum of the Daleks, and it's equal parts intriguing and entrancing, charming and alarming.

Kidnapped by his oldest enemies the Daleks -- who look like R2-D2 from Star Wars but are dramatically more shrill -- the Doctor is forced into a mission from which he is not expected to return. He must travel to the place where even Daleks are too afraid to go, namely the Dalek Asylum, a planetary prison where in past years the Daleks sent the most terrifying and insane of their kind.

So it's EXACTLY like present-day Australia.

Accompanied by fellow kidnap victims Amy (Karen Gillan) and Rory (Arthur Darvill), the Doctor must do what the Daleks have tasked him to do, while at the same time engineering an improbable escape for himself and his friends.

This Doctor Who-done-it definitely goes to 11. Hey, maybe the Dalek Asylum is some sort of Sex Farm.