Point a gun at me if it makes you feel more comfortable.
6x07 A Good Man Goes to War
Huh, this was one very thick episode. Thick with action, that is. And it’s a good thing, not only because it was so action-packed and full of side characters worth their own show that it never failed to be entertaining even for a second. But mostly because things happened so fast I hadn’t had a second to think. Have I mentioned it was EPIC?
And did I say 'tomorrow'? I totally meant 'the day after tomorrow'.
And thinking was my enemy in this episode, successfully vanquished by The Moff, because it was all told in the first ten minutes or so.
But let’s start at the beginning.
First, there’s Amy. A whole new side of Amy. A passive Amy. An Amy who is unable to help herself and her child and waits for the others to come and save her, with that quiet, determined dignity. Nice job, Karen.
And there’s Rory the Roman again! Who looked spectacularly stupid. No offence. But seriously. Actually, he looked somewhat Star Wars-ish and coolish on board of the Cyberman ship. But then Confidential came and we got a close-up of his socks-and-sandals and he lost a significant amount of his coolness factor. Sorry, mate.
But I’m not really getting why he needed to dress up as a Space Roman. I know it was supposed to lead to the grand finale where he’s referred to as Centurion and everything, but that doesn’t explain why the Doctor would tell him to parade in a silly costume.
As to the grand finale, though: excusez-vous mon français, but fuck yeah. All this series I was laughing at Rory continuously reminding people he’s a nurse while being a rubbish nurse (I’m a nurse, I could’ve handled it... or not. I’m a nurse, I can do it the wrong way, I saw it on telly! I’m a nurse and I let her die, I’m rubbish! Joy oh joy!) And now he meets another person who’s a nurse pretending to be a warrior, except this other chap is actually GOOD at being a nurse. It was AWESOME.
But I shan’t break the chronology of events and jump straight to the Most Awesome Side-Character Ever, nay, let’s continue with the soldiers.
We’re the thin-fat gay married Anglican marines. Why would we need names as well?
That was one of the best lines in the entire series! They were hilarious. Absolutely memorable characters, even though they scarcely had any role in the episode. This is what I’m talking about when I say it’s character-packed.
And there’s Lorna Bucket, the girl with the stupid name. Another side character who had a complete story, and one that gave the Doctor a push when he was about to fall. Also, the one who serves the solution in what, the fifth minute? ‘Cos of course the Is River Amy’s Daughter theory has been around for a while now, replacing last year’s Is River Amy’s Mum theory. I’ve thought about it, you’ve thought about it, we knew it was a lot more logical than River being the Master or the Rani or the Doctor or whatever, but we just didn’t know for sure. ‘Cos it was Steven Bloody Moffat and he can make you question your own existence.
And if only Moffat had put in a dull minute, if only I had some time to think instead of watching the events unroll with the speed of lightning with eyes wide, trying to keep up, I would’ve realised that River Song = Melody Pond. ‘Cos no, my first thought when she gave Amy the hanky absolutely wasn’t ‘Is it River in your language?’ It was obviously a plot device. But by the time I got to the end of the sentence I had about five more things to think about.
But stuff happened so fast I never thought about it in-depth and was therefore only 99% sure and Moffat was still able to confuse me with the cot at the end. I’m glad for that.
The Episcopalian Victorian Silurian Lesbian Thespian (by Neil Gaiman and some chap called Lee Harris. Too good to not mention.)
Next in our line of glorious side-characters is Madame Vastra, the crime-solving Silurian with an appetite and her ... er, friend Jenny (who calles her ma’am all the time, I’d like to point out.) They were almost as hilarious as the Sontaran nurse. Am I the only one whom Jenny reminded of Susan in the Hogfather film?
Here, I can finally talk about the Sontaran nurse, Commander Strax. He was the greatest. I laughed myself sick during his introduction scene. And he was the one character whose death also made me laugh. Call me tasteless. ‘I’m not a warrior, I’m a nurse!’ Incidentally, was that whole Battle of Zaruthstra thing supposed to be a reference to something?
River, River, as awesome as ever (lately. It seems so unbelievable now that I disliked her in Silence in the Library.) Gotta love her Stormcage scenes, all of them. ‘He’ll rise higher than ever before and fall so much further.’ Oh dear, that line was more epic than the climax itself. Guess what, though? Can this be the first time she meets Rory as River? Just look at her stare.
I’m old! I’m fat! I’m blue!
Dorium, another returning character, he sold River the vortex manipulator in Pandorica Opens. Nice to meet him again.Too bad it's also the last time.
And organising these people and a lot more into an army is a Doctor who’s bloody furious. The Doctor recruiting an army and taking over a space station. Would you have ever thought of that? The Doctor having all those people he can call upon? Debts to be repaid to him? He did rise higher than ever before. And he did fall, fall so deep when he realised all this was for nothing, his allies were defeated, killed for nothing, it was all a trap and the baby was lost. ‘They’re always brave.’ We got all those very rich personalities just to see them die and feel the loss, instead of thinking of them as expendable redshirts.
Not to mention, last series we’ve seen a similar montage of Doctor Who creatures, but then they were all against the Doctor.
On the opposite side, there are some brand new villains, who are still just as mysterious as at the beginning. Who is Kovarian? Why is she so adamant on destroying the Doctor? What has he done against her to make her such a fierce enemy? And what about her soldiers? Who the hell are they after all? ‘Soldiers of God’. But which one? It’s all gods now. The Clerics, these Anglican soldiers or whatever (is Anglicanism a galaxy-wide religion now? We definitely need to know more about these chaps,) and the Headless Monks. I’m guessing the Monks ain’t Anglicans, on account of the Fat One being required to convert.
And the Headless Monks? Blimey, they haven’t got heads, didn’t see that coming... This is Doctor Who, of course they didn’t have heads. But who were they? What did the Doctor do against them? Why would they ally themselves with Kovarian? Also, the museum from The Time of the Angels used to be their monastery or something, huh.
And what about the third party in this crazy coalition? The Silence. What brings these three under the same flag? What is it they want? Why do they want to destroy the Doctor so badly they are capable of blowing up the TARDIS? Compared to that, stealing Amy and her child is mischief.
THESE are the sort of questions I’ve wanted to get an answer to all along. And now I’ve got to wait until the autumn. Bugger and blast.
Gotta mention, though, the Monks look bloody awesome. Though I don’t really understand why they need those fancy swords (I wants, by the way) when they can shoot electricity from their palms. And they’ve got attack prayers! Attack. Prayers. Attack prayers! Petition for them to return? A lot? Possibly accompanied by the Angels? They look like something out of Diablo III.
Gotta love the anti-Doctor speech. And the Doctor’s appearance. Once again, didn’t-see-that-coming-a-mile-away! Not like, oh, look, there’s so many hoods around, one of them must be the Doctor. Yeah, sure, he’s absolutely not a Trickster. Next to the Doctor, Loki’s an amateur.
And things still keep on happening. ‘Cos we know it’s a trap. We’re told, about five times, by both River and Kovarian. Still, we’ve got a moment of peace before the storm. And, you know, I felt sorry for Rory. He’s totally left out of this whole child-business. That whole ‘Williams sounds like a geography teacher, but Melody Pond is a superhero!’ thing was kind of cruel (I sniggered at it both times I’ve watched that scene, still.)
However, ‘Big Milk Thing’. MOFFAT ROCKS.
The ‘war’ was pretty cool. Not nearly as epic as I’d expected, but epic nevertheless. And here’s something I honestly didn’t see coming at all: the baby being a Ganger. That was the real sincerely jaw-dropping ZOMGWTF moment of the episode. I knew it was a trap and I still wouldn’t’ve thought!
Oh, and I'd almost completely forgotten about this (in fact, I'm editing it into the entry), but the cot! That was what confused me at the end. I totally ate the Gallifreyan diversion and thought maybe I was wrong and River will turn out to be the Doctor's mum. But on second watch I noticed the hanky prayer leaf was spread out in the middle of the cot and the inscription was easily readable from the Doctor's position. And here's an interesting thing: the Gallifreyan writing must be the Doctor's name. And River's seen it. And we know she speaks Gallifreyan. That's how she knows his name!
So, there we are. The kid’s stolen. The allies are dead. Mostly. We’ll hopefully see more of Madame Vastra and Jenny. Sadly, it’s not likely we’ll see more of the cute little girl from the opening two-parter, on account of her having regenerated. Unless we finally learn why they kept her in a locked-up orphanage in the USA.
And it’s not the Doctor’s child and neither is Rory/Amy a Time Lord, it was simply the Time Vortex. And apparently some Kovarian/Monk/Silence/something meddling. I think our problem is we’re looking for very complicated explanations and expect to be tricked and double-crossed all the time.
The thing is, though, if I try to think simply, then River kills the Doctor. I’ve always insisted on this. She said she’s in prison because she’s killed ‘a good man, the best she’s ever known.’ And then there’s the continuous calling the Doctor a good man, especially in this episode. And if River is the little girl, and she’s raised to kill the Doctor, then it’s only evident she’ll do so. It’s been highly suspicious all along that River seemed to know too much both about the girl and the confrontation of the Doctor and the Spaceman. She shot the Spaceman, it didn’t work and she said, ‘Of course.’ But it doesn’t really make sense.
Also, may I take this speculation deeper into craziness by going back to The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang? ‘The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall.’ It’s River driving the TARDIS. And the Silence is there, apparently, manipulating the TARDIS to go to 27/6/10. The bodiless voice. The Silence tell Amy she’s to bring the Silence about.
Anyway, I’d like to thank Doctor Who for... ruining the last good summer of my life. This is my last summer before I step into the never-stopping treadmill of jobs I will definitely hate and move hundreds of miles away from my family, and I’m supposed to enjoy the hell out of it, yet I can’t wait for September to see how the story further unfolds. That plus Doctor Faustus. I can’t even properly want my last proper summer to last forever (OK, I wouldn’t want it to last forever, because I hate hot weather, but you know what I mean.) See, that’s what Doctor Who does to one, kids.
Huh, this was one very thick episode. Thick with action, that is. And it’s a good thing, not only because it was so action-packed and full of side characters worth their own show that it never failed to be entertaining even for a second. But mostly because things happened so fast I hadn’t had a second to think. Have I mentioned it was EPIC?
And did I say 'tomorrow'? I totally meant 'the day after tomorrow'.
And thinking was my enemy in this episode, successfully vanquished by The Moff, because it was all told in the first ten minutes or so.
But let’s start at the beginning.
First, there’s Amy. A whole new side of Amy. A passive Amy. An Amy who is unable to help herself and her child and waits for the others to come and save her, with that quiet, determined dignity. Nice job, Karen.
And there’s Rory the Roman again! Who looked spectacularly stupid. No offence. But seriously. Actually, he looked somewhat Star Wars-ish and coolish on board of the Cyberman ship. But then Confidential came and we got a close-up of his socks-and-sandals and he lost a significant amount of his coolness factor. Sorry, mate.
But I’m not really getting why he needed to dress up as a Space Roman. I know it was supposed to lead to the grand finale where he’s referred to as Centurion and everything, but that doesn’t explain why the Doctor would tell him to parade in a silly costume.
As to the grand finale, though: excusez-vous mon français, but fuck yeah. All this series I was laughing at Rory continuously reminding people he’s a nurse while being a rubbish nurse (I’m a nurse, I could’ve handled it... or not. I’m a nurse, I can do it the wrong way, I saw it on telly! I’m a nurse and I let her die, I’m rubbish! Joy oh joy!) And now he meets another person who’s a nurse pretending to be a warrior, except this other chap is actually GOOD at being a nurse. It was AWESOME.
But I shan’t break the chronology of events and jump straight to the Most Awesome Side-Character Ever, nay, let’s continue with the soldiers.
We’re the thin-fat gay married Anglican marines. Why would we need names as well?
That was one of the best lines in the entire series! They were hilarious. Absolutely memorable characters, even though they scarcely had any role in the episode. This is what I’m talking about when I say it’s character-packed.
And there’s Lorna Bucket, the girl with the stupid name. Another side character who had a complete story, and one that gave the Doctor a push when he was about to fall. Also, the one who serves the solution in what, the fifth minute? ‘Cos of course the Is River Amy’s Daughter theory has been around for a while now, replacing last year’s Is River Amy’s Mum theory. I’ve thought about it, you’ve thought about it, we knew it was a lot more logical than River being the Master or the Rani or the Doctor or whatever, but we just didn’t know for sure. ‘Cos it was Steven Bloody Moffat and he can make you question your own existence.
And if only Moffat had put in a dull minute, if only I had some time to think instead of watching the events unroll with the speed of lightning with eyes wide, trying to keep up, I would’ve realised that River Song = Melody Pond. ‘Cos no, my first thought when she gave Amy the hanky absolutely wasn’t ‘Is it River in your language?’ It was obviously a plot device. But by the time I got to the end of the sentence I had about five more things to think about.
But stuff happened so fast I never thought about it in-depth and was therefore only 99% sure and Moffat was still able to confuse me with the cot at the end. I’m glad for that.
The Episcopalian Victorian Silurian Lesbian Thespian (by Neil Gaiman and some chap called Lee Harris. Too good to not mention.)
Next in our line of glorious side-characters is Madame Vastra, the crime-solving Silurian with an appetite and her ... er, friend Jenny (who calles her ma’am all the time, I’d like to point out.) They were almost as hilarious as the Sontaran nurse. Am I the only one whom Jenny reminded of Susan in the Hogfather film?
Here, I can finally talk about the Sontaran nurse, Commander Strax. He was the greatest. I laughed myself sick during his introduction scene. And he was the one character whose death also made me laugh. Call me tasteless. ‘I’m not a warrior, I’m a nurse!’ Incidentally, was that whole Battle of Zaruthstra thing supposed to be a reference to something?
River, River, as awesome as ever (lately. It seems so unbelievable now that I disliked her in Silence in the Library.) Gotta love her Stormcage scenes, all of them. ‘He’ll rise higher than ever before and fall so much further.’ Oh dear, that line was more epic than the climax itself. Guess what, though? Can this be the first time she meets Rory as River? Just look at her stare.
I’m old! I’m fat! I’m blue!
Dorium, another returning character, he sold River the vortex manipulator in Pandorica Opens. Nice to meet him again.Too bad it's also the last time.
And organising these people and a lot more into an army is a Doctor who’s bloody furious. The Doctor recruiting an army and taking over a space station. Would you have ever thought of that? The Doctor having all those people he can call upon? Debts to be repaid to him? He did rise higher than ever before. And he did fall, fall so deep when he realised all this was for nothing, his allies were defeated, killed for nothing, it was all a trap and the baby was lost. ‘They’re always brave.’ We got all those very rich personalities just to see them die and feel the loss, instead of thinking of them as expendable redshirts.
Not to mention, last series we’ve seen a similar montage of Doctor Who creatures, but then they were all against the Doctor.
On the opposite side, there are some brand new villains, who are still just as mysterious as at the beginning. Who is Kovarian? Why is she so adamant on destroying the Doctor? What has he done against her to make her such a fierce enemy? And what about her soldiers? Who the hell are they after all? ‘Soldiers of God’. But which one? It’s all gods now. The Clerics, these Anglican soldiers or whatever (is Anglicanism a galaxy-wide religion now? We definitely need to know more about these chaps,) and the Headless Monks. I’m guessing the Monks ain’t Anglicans, on account of the Fat One being required to convert.
And the Headless Monks? Blimey, they haven’t got heads, didn’t see that coming... This is Doctor Who, of course they didn’t have heads. But who were they? What did the Doctor do against them? Why would they ally themselves with Kovarian? Also, the museum from The Time of the Angels used to be their monastery or something, huh.
And what about the third party in this crazy coalition? The Silence. What brings these three under the same flag? What is it they want? Why do they want to destroy the Doctor so badly they are capable of blowing up the TARDIS? Compared to that, stealing Amy and her child is mischief.
THESE are the sort of questions I’ve wanted to get an answer to all along. And now I’ve got to wait until the autumn. Bugger and blast.
Gotta mention, though, the Monks look bloody awesome. Though I don’t really understand why they need those fancy swords (I wants, by the way) when they can shoot electricity from their palms. And they’ve got attack prayers! Attack. Prayers. Attack prayers! Petition for them to return? A lot? Possibly accompanied by the Angels? They look like something out of Diablo III.
Gotta love the anti-Doctor speech. And the Doctor’s appearance. Once again, didn’t-see-that-coming-a-mile-away! Not like, oh, look, there’s so many hoods around, one of them must be the Doctor. Yeah, sure, he’s absolutely not a Trickster. Next to the Doctor, Loki’s an amateur.
And things still keep on happening. ‘Cos we know it’s a trap. We’re told, about five times, by both River and Kovarian. Still, we’ve got a moment of peace before the storm. And, you know, I felt sorry for Rory. He’s totally left out of this whole child-business. That whole ‘Williams sounds like a geography teacher, but Melody Pond is a superhero!’ thing was kind of cruel (I sniggered at it both times I’ve watched that scene, still.)
However, ‘Big Milk Thing’. MOFFAT ROCKS.
The ‘war’ was pretty cool. Not nearly as epic as I’d expected, but epic nevertheless. And here’s something I honestly didn’t see coming at all: the baby being a Ganger. That was the real sincerely jaw-dropping ZOMGWTF moment of the episode. I knew it was a trap and I still wouldn’t’ve thought!
Oh, and I'd almost completely forgotten about this (in fact, I'm editing it into the entry), but the cot! That was what confused me at the end. I totally ate the Gallifreyan diversion and thought maybe I was wrong and River will turn out to be the Doctor's mum. But on second watch I noticed the
So, there we are. The kid’s stolen. The allies are dead. Mostly. We’ll hopefully see more of Madame Vastra and Jenny. Sadly, it’s not likely we’ll see more of the cute little girl from the opening two-parter, on account of her having regenerated. Unless we finally learn why they kept her in a locked-up orphanage in the USA.
And it’s not the Doctor’s child and neither is Rory/Amy a Time Lord, it was simply the Time Vortex. And apparently some Kovarian/Monk/Silence/something meddling. I think our problem is we’re looking for very complicated explanations and expect to be tricked and double-crossed all the time.
The thing is, though, if I try to think simply, then River kills the Doctor. I’ve always insisted on this. She said she’s in prison because she’s killed ‘a good man, the best she’s ever known.’ And then there’s the continuous calling the Doctor a good man, especially in this episode. And if River is the little girl, and she’s raised to kill the Doctor, then it’s only evident she’ll do so. It’s been highly suspicious all along that River seemed to know too much both about the girl and the confrontation of the Doctor and the Spaceman. She shot the Spaceman, it didn’t work and she said, ‘Of course.’ But it doesn’t really make sense.
Also, may I take this speculation deeper into craziness by going back to The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang? ‘The universe is cracked. The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall.’ It’s River driving the TARDIS. And the Silence is there, apparently, manipulating the TARDIS to go to 27/6/10. The bodiless voice. The Silence tell Amy she’s to bring the Silence about.
Anyway, I’d like to thank Doctor Who for... ruining the last good summer of my life. This is my last summer before I step into the never-stopping treadmill of jobs I will definitely hate and move hundreds of miles away from my family, and I’m supposed to enjoy the hell out of it, yet I can’t wait for September to see how the story further unfolds. That plus Doctor Faustus. I can’t even properly want my last proper summer to last forever (OK, I wouldn’t want it to last forever, because I hate hot weather, but you know what I mean.) See, that’s what Doctor Who does to one, kids.