Doctor Who 6x07 Review

[iaria]

A Good Man Goes to War

It's been a couple days but I can finally do a review for this episode. I really enjoyed it and I still love that final reveal. I can't wait until September.

I wish that this episode had been made the two-parter and the ganger ones a single. This one had much more interesting guest characters, and I really wish we had gotten to see more of the Doctor and Rory working together to find Amy and gathering help.

Liked

• I really loved the final scene. Both the one between the Doctor/River and the following River/Amy/Rory one. They both worked perfectly for me.

• While I have reservations about how things could play out I still really love the truth about who River is for her as a character. I love that she's half time lord. I was very against the idea of Amy's child being a time lord because she was conceived in the time vortex but how it played out worked for me. It fits what we know about her. I love that she was created to be a weapon against the Doctor. I like the idea that she is the daughter of two of the Doctor's Companions.

• The Doctor/Amy/Rory/Melody scene after they were all reunited was adorable. The Doctor being uncomfortable with the kissing and tears and trying to leave, baby talking and hugs!

• I loved the supporting characters. Lorna was great and I wish we could have seen more of her. She seemed like a really sweet person and I loved that her reaction to Amy telling her that the Doctor had come back for her, something it seems clear Lorna most wanted, wasn't to be jealous but was to smile. Commander Strax was also great. He amused me and I love the idea of him as a nurse and his acceptance of that before his death.

I loved Silurian Madame Vastra and Jenny best of all. ♥ I love Vastra hunting (and eating) serial killers and working for Scotland Yard. I love Jenny who's Vastra's maid but who is also so much more: a warrior herself and Vastra’s partner and lover (okay, that was subtext but only barely. How else would you explain them?) I loved Jenny’s little grin when Vastra said they’d need the swords and her expression after Vastra tongued the soldier unconscious. Yeah, it seems we know exactly why Jenny puts up with her! I loved Vastra not being able to tell if humans were female or male. I was so happy that they survived the episode and I really hope we get to see them again because they are fabulous. In fact why can't we have a spin off about them? That I would watch.

• I liked the scene between the Doctor/Vastra/Dorium about Melody and Amy/Rory's sex life. The Doctor's 'lalalala impossible!' reaction amused me. "They don't put up a balloon" hee.

• “Doctor. The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you carry on the way you are what might that word come to mean?” I find this idea very cool. I loved getting to see different ways that people see the Doctor. When Amy denied that the Doctor was a warrior and Lorna responds with a confused "Then why is he called the Doctor" it had an impact. I'm glad that it appears the show is going to explore this more.

• I liked the confirmation that River wanders in and out of Stormcage as she wants.

• “Good men don’t need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many.” I love this line and the expression on his face...

• I loved Rory vs the Cybermen.

• I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of women in this episode. In important supporting roles there were Madame Kovarian, Lorna, Vastra and Jenny. Then there was also the female president in 4037 AD, the mention of the “papal mainframe herself...” as leader of the Headless Monks, and several nameless female soldiers who get a line.

Theory

• I am pretty sure that the 'good man' that River kills is Rory. All the evidence points there, IMO, and it makes me sad because Rory is so wonderful and he can't die!

- The title of this episode feels like it can only be about Rory and it's the exact set of words used to describe the man River kills. The Doctor says straight out that he is not 'a good man' meanwhile Rory who has proven over and over that he is dresses as a Centurion again and goes to war to save Amy and their child. Who else could be the 'good man'?

- River's sadness over who she killed only made sense at the time if it was the Doctor. But with the knowledge that Rory is her father? Him being 'the best man I've ever known' makes sense just as much if not more.

- River choosing to stay jailed in Stormcage even though they can't force her to.

- The fact that Melody was kidnapped to be raised as a weapon.

- The constant fake-outs of Rory dying. It's become an in-joke but at the same time it feels like it's building up to something. How many times has he died now?

- Then there was River’s expression when she saw Rory at Stormcage and the way she said “Hello Rory”. She was so sad.

- Rory bonding with the others reminded me of Octavian and how at the time I had thought he'd known the man River killed. This episode also reintroduces the Clerics that were first introduced in the episode where we first learn about River's crime.

Less Happy/Questions

• I’m really not sure how well River being Amy and Rory’s daughter works with past episodes. There was nothing in their past interactions that indicated that River was their daughter or that she felt anything special for them like she does for the Doctor. Now I know she had to be careful how she behaved around them, though it’s never stopped her with the Doctor, and that she couldn't reveal the truth. Perhaps she really is that great a liar.

But we never saw her having private moments/reactions either. In this episode we get to see her reaction to seeing Rory at Stormcage (though Rory didn't). It was a very revealing expression and showed that there was something more going on with her feelings. We should have gotten moments like that last season but as far as I remember we didn't. Instead in the three occasions thus far that she has interacted with Amy and Rory there has been nothing to indicate that they were more than friends or friends of her lover.

She hasn't seemed torn, or wistful or sad. We've never seen her seen her specifically singling them out to spend time with or paying them specific attention. She's never tried to bond with them or to tried to learn more about them. This bothers me.

• River tells Rory: “The Doctor’s darkest hour. He’ll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further.” But... I kind of don’t see it? I’m pretty sure he’d think that time he killed his entire race off was darker. Ten was having these moments all the time – when he drown the Racnoss babies/almost let himself die, what he did to the family of blood, that whole ‘time lord victorious’ interlude that I’m sure he’d never going to talk about again.

Or am I thinking too limited? Is this still the Doctor rising? And the 'fall' will happen in the latter half of the season - perhaps having something to do with either his 'death' in 6x01 or 'the good man' River kills?

Or:

“Why would a time lord be a weapon?” – Doctor
“Well they’ve seen you.” – Vastra

Is this more what she meant by ‘fall much further’? All this talk about the Doctor being a weapon is very interesting because the season four finale was all about the Doctor turning his Companions into weapons – and this episode indeed shows a number of people fighting including Rory – but here we have all the talk being about the Doctor as the warrior/weapon.

I mentioned above that I liked the show bringing up how the meaning of 'doctor' comes from the Doctor and how he's perceived by people changes what it means. I do like the idea but I'm not pleased about some of the implications here.

River says “The man that can turn an army around at the mention of his name.” but she says it as a warning and as if it’s a bad thing that he could be that sort of man. Yet that doesn’t go with anything we've seen of her and her relationship with his before this episode. In the Library duo when River spoke to Ten about his future self being just that sort of Doctor she spoke as if he was amazing and wonderful. She spoke about that Doctor as the ‘real’ Doctor. She's always seemed very supportive of this type of Doctor so her reversal in this scene was very strange to me. Sure it's a different, younger River but then why the reversal?

• This twist makes the Doctor/River relationship potentially more... disturbing. At the end River tells her parents - “And he will care for her whatever it takes” - which makes it sound like it will be the Doctor raising her once he finds her not the Ponds. I really hope that's not true. It's just too skeevy for me otherwise. Instead perhaps their relationship will start exactly as we've seen it play out only this time it's the Doctor popping randomly into River's timeline? Perhaps Moffat will reuse how the Reinette/Doctor relationship played out (as he does so love to reuse.)

• When Rory first saw Amy again he called her “Mrs. Williams” and I did not really like that. It just felt very... I don't know. Like he was asserting himself as a man. I mean from the very beginning she has been very clear that she was keeping her name and that she considers herself Mrs. Pond. Now we have Rory being all ‘manly’ by defeating the people who took her, saving their daughter and then freeing her... and then she because Mrs. Williams. No thanks.

• “Oh, look I’m angry. That’s new. I’m really not sure what’s going to happen now.” Oh, stop. No, it’s not. The Doctor is angry all the time. He has tons of experience being angry! Even in this regeneration he’s been angry.

Questions/Other

• River tells Amy that she's going to be all right but I'm skeptical. Unless there is some rewriting of time it's doubtful that Amy and Rory will get to raise Melody, certainly they've already missed her childhood. I'm so sure Rory is going to die. But I really want to take River's reassurances to heart and as foreshadowing that Amy and Rory will get a happy ending.

• I keep going back to Ten’s line about how “the only way (River) could know (his) name is...” and how that sentence could have ended. There has been a lot of speculation. Is the answer then that only another time lord would know?

- My biggest hope right now is actually for the Doctor, at some point in a future episode, to return to the library to release River from the library (perhaps with a cloned body). I'm doubtful it will happen but I really want it to.

• Is Madame Kovarian working for or with the Silence then? Is the ‘endless bitter war’ between the Silence and the Doctor? But then she’s not a Silence so is it a group of different beings working together?

• Why would the Doctor leave Amy and Rory behind while he goes to rescue their daughter? Why does knowing that River is Melody suddenly tell him where she is or how to find her?

• How did Melody Pond become River Song? The latter is what Lorna translated Melody's name to mean in her language but there's no way for Melody or Kovarian would know that. The only explanation I can think of is the Doctor or one of the Pond's naming her that at a future point and her keeping that name. In which case they clearly failed the 'spoilers' game. I suppose that also explains how young River knew to go to Demon's Run and why she told them all the truth then.