eve11 | For the record... (Reply)

I liked it. It wasn't quite what I expected but it was fun and entertaining. I liked the guest cast. I liked the Amy and Rory show. I called the River reveal way early. I thought Matt Smith was excellent as always.

I don't think that the episode quite pulled off what it intended, but I did see hints of it. In particular the "rise higher, fall further" bit: ah, even with the poetic voiceover, that didn't really work for me. This is a man who's killed his entire civilization before, and participated in some of the universe's greatest moments as well; so winning one bloodless battle in order to discover it's a trap... well, maybe the full scope of what happened will be revealed later.

Okay, so on to River. I love the little sly look she gives the Doctor at the end, and of course it was not really a surprise but I thought the Melody Pond == River Song bit was done well. It was particularly cool how, the way it was sewn on the leaf, you didn't know which side was which, hence the switch of "Melody Pond" to "Song River" to "River Song". But it makes me wonder a lot of things.

I wonder if the way River kills the Doctor (if it is indeed the Doctor) has more to do with the choices he needs to make in order to rescue her. This story is still being told backwards, and so here we have an army of clerics who are fighting an evil they know as the Doctor, and the Doctor in true timey-wimey fashion, starting down a dark path because he's fighting an army he doesn't understand. River is the crux of this; some kind of weapon made to take him down (and part Time Lord to boot). So the fact of her existence brings about the Doctor's downfall from a good man to a terrible one, and leads to the choices that lead to the beach in Arizona.

Where in River's timeline was she when she showed up at the end of that episode? She was wearing the dress from Day of the Moon, but in Day of the Moon she said their lives were going back to front (which I suppose I should just throw away now). So we know River is Melody (or at least we think we do), but we still don't know who she is, who the Silence are and how they fit in, who she kills or why she is in prison. OR what happened to her as a child that she wouldn't remember the events of the warehouse. Or why she was clutching her stomach when she saw the Silence.

Man, I'm still wondering if the Silence aren't shades of a timeline that should be but isn't. And they need a Time Lord to... well to do something about getting their correct timeline reinstated.

So anyway, seems I was right about River being a weapon, and about the little girl being some kind of Time Lord experiment. Am wondering though... perhaps there is still the possibility that River is not the little girl in the warehouse. If River is that little girl's mom, well then, that might also work. Even possibly without the actual need for Time Lord and Time Lord/Human experimental whatever hanky panky. I don't know.

Also I will be sad if Amy and Rory have to basically give Melody up to the horrible history of her past--living in space suits and creepy orphanages and stuff. :( Also also, I think there is still something the Doctor knows that nobody else does. The way he deflects when the Ponds ask him about Melody; the way he knows it's too late somehow to save baby River (unless that was just the 'don't go back on your timeline' thing), well anyway, I think he is still being tricksy.

When this series is over I'm going to have to watch it all again, but back to front I think, so as to get the story in some semblance of order. :)

Part of me is glad that the cliffhanger wasn't nail-bitingly intense. That way I can put this series behind me and not obsess over it all summer. Oh also, ha, there are few repercussions on the fanfic stories I want to write. :D Part of me is like, "Oh yay! Canon is now over for a while and will not impinge on fic universes!" So. Yes, entertained. Ha.

A few nitpicks:

- Colonel Manton and the weird headless monks. You can't inspire fear or awe in the masses by calling a bunch of creepifying monks "these guys". Possibly they were going for futuristic adaptations of language but boy did it fall flat!

- Did I mention the monks? Are their heads driving their bodies somehow? Honestly, how does that work?

- Stevie Wonder sang for River in 1816 but you must never tell him? Are they taking advantage of blind people now? What?

Much longer list of things I liked:

- The thin fat gay anglican married marines. Wish we could've seen more of them.

- Ditto for the lesbian cross-species crime fighting couple. Props to others who pointed out the gratuitous use of the giant tongue right after the line "I don't know why you put up with me." LOL

- The entire scene between Lady Vastra and the Doctor. LOVED IT TO DEATH, best scene in the episode I think. "That's all humany, private stuff, they don't put up a balloon or anything!" And the way he rambles and rambles and ends up with "So technically, the first time they were together in the TARDIS in this reality was on their w..." Hahahaha! I lol-ed so hard.

- The Pirates are back!

- Melody was a ridiculously cute baby.

- Lorna Bucket. Here is what I want to happen. In a very, very cracky AU, River Song is not in fact Melody Pond. River Song lied. In fact River Song is the Doctor, (or an aspect of him) and she lied. And Melody Pond is Lorna Bucket, who was raised quietly in the Gamma forests by a loving family. And thirty seconds after the Doctor leaves in the TARDIS to go do whatever he needs to do, Lorna regenerates and becomes the new companion for series 7. It could still happen, right?

- And on the subject of "The Doctor Lies", well, I think he's lying about the cot being his. No idea why but just the way he said it, seems fishy.

- Cyberships exploding. Was awesome.

- The Doctor talks baby. The baby disses his bow tie. Oh and ha! That is the reason for the sniffing too; he's talking to the baby. How do I not get this stuff until like the third view?

- The Doctor gets angry; I liked that a lot, actually. The name is important.

- The Sontaran nurse, who was cursed by the Doctor with the worst thing imagineable, to heal the sick and wounded. And who discovers after long enough (he's nearly twelve) that at some point along the way, he became the curse whole-heartedly.

- Madam Kovarian. HBIC. Who the hell is she?

- ETA: On rewatch those last scenes get sadder and sadder. The part where he says, "They're always brave", oh my heart.

So then, next time, it's off to kill Hitler. Well, that certainly would bolster the theory of two branching timelines and two Doctors needing to reconcile everything on the beach.