This is The Battle of Demon's Run...
I’d usually try to go in linear order when discussing something like this but, because it’s what you all probably want to know first, let’s begin with how I, notorious disliker of River Song, felt about finally being informed of her true identity.
To be honest, I find myself feeling utterly indifferent. I went into this episode expecting something game changing. I thought that this reveal would alter the way I watched this show for at least the next few episodes, if not forever. After all, this was a secret they’d been keeping from us for three years. So, I sat here in front of my computer, nervous, excited, and fully expecting myself to yell, scream, throw things, or have some other strong visceral reaction. In actuality…I said “oh” and shrugged a bit. Does it make me a terrible Whovian if I say I was underwhelmed? Well, it’s true. I was expecting to be furious or thrilled. I was expecting this to finally give me a definitive opinion of River Song. Instead, I find that nothing has really changed for me. So she’s Amy and Rory’s child….so what? Yes, we know she possesses some Time Lord genetics…but didn’t we all kind of expect that anyway? We’ve always been aware that part of the reason only Time Lords can fly TARDISes is because of their unique brains. (Although, may I add that the explanation given for her hybrid DNA was, in my opinion, a plot device about on par with the severed hand metacrisis in terms of plausibility…I hope Moff fans think about that next time they go to make fun of RTD for his silly ploys.) I don’t like River any more now than I did Friday night, I don’t feel any better about her relationship with the Doctor (in fact, in kind of squicks me now…but that’s just a personal feeling).
Really, there is only one way in which having River’s identity finally revealed has affected me…I now have very little desire to hear anything else about her. I’ve stopped caring. As you probably know, I’m not very fond of her as a character, but I’ve continued to watch her stories with interest (mingled with some annoyance) because of the mystery surrounding her. Her personality may rub me the wrong way, but I wanted to figure out what the “spoilers” were all about as much as the next person. However, now that such a large piece of that mystique has been stripped away, I’m left with a character that I simply don’t like. I’ll certainly keep watching, but I don’t have any great burning curiosity in finding out how the rest of her story plays out. Yes, there is more to learn; where and how she was raised, how she became an archeologist, how she first met the Doctor, the exact nature of their relationship (though I think it’s becoming increasingly obvious that Doctor/River is Moffat’s romantic endgame)…but without the theorizing and speculating as to who this woman is, River Song has lost a lot of her fun….for me at least. I’m sure there are tons of people who feel exactly the opposite and are reading this saying, “Tori has lost her mind…more than usual”. To each his own?
Despite my lackluster feelings about the last couple of minutes of the episode, I am pleased to say that, overall, I adored A Good Man Goes to War. No, I didn’t think that it quite had that “Doctor Who feeling” that I’ve been whining about for months, but I’ve learned not to expect that from Moffat-written stories. It was what it was, and that was an exciting, emotional, funny, and philosophical piece of science fiction television that I thoroughly enjoyed. I was in tears by the end of the opening scene, even if the momentary “gotcha!” of the identity of the baby’s father frightened them out of my eyes for a moment. Speaking of which, Rory Williams (and in turn the brilliant Arthur Darvill) deserves the most enthusiastic round of applause imaginable. It’s hard to believe that the brave, confident, and desperately loving Last Centurion that we saw in this episode was the same man we first met in The Eleventh Hour. He has come so incredibly far, as has his wife! Amy in this episode, a fiercely loving mother, was a far cry from the headstrong young girl of last season. This is something that we have seen again and again in Doctor Who and something that I adore about the show. The Doctor takes on companions who are not perfect at all, they are “the best” as he has said, but they all have things they struggle with. The Doctor needs companions to help him see the universe through their eyes, they each teach him something…and in turn, his companions grow immeasurably by traveling with him. Thinking of Amy and Rory and how they have changed, I was reminded of a one Rose Tyler, who first met the Doctor as a brave but naïve nineteen-year-old girl who thought her life was going nowhere and grew into the confident, capable woman we see in Journey’s End taking charge of her life and stepping up to do her part in saving two universes.
I was also thoroughly impressed by the cast of secondary characters who aided the Doctor in the battle of Demon’s Run. I was left wanting to know more about the Sonataran nurse, the shady merchant Darius, and especially the Victorian, Silurian detective/assassin, Madame Vastra, and her human partner and lover, Jenny. What brilliant characters they were! They’d actually make a spectacular spin-off show…but I digress. The idea of the Doctor “collecting” on some of his debts was very interesting to me, since a large part of the show is that he never asks for thanks…it’s great to see him finally acknowledged, at least a bit, for what he does. Darius’ speech about the scope and magnitude of the Doctor’s allies was really lovely and spoke to the long, rich history of this show. (Even if there wasn’t a single pre-Moffat Who reference in the whole episode, despite there being several places where he could have done so…but that’s beside the point) The degree to which the “bad guys” were characterized was also very interesting. I really liked that there were several highlighted members of Kavarian’s army who were more fascinated by the Doctor than out to kill him. I fully admit that I sobbed like an infant when the Doctor spoke to Lorna as she died. I suppose I related to her in that I am, in a sense, always hoping to see the Doctor myself.
Speaking of the villains, I’ll just say a few words on the philosophy of this episode, because it was truly beautiful. For me, the themes that ran through this story were what gave me that sense that I was watching Doctor Who, despite the very Moffat-Show structure of the whole thing. That’s because, when it came down to it, this episode highlighted what Doctor Who is all about. Craig Ferguson said it best, Doctor Who is unique among many other sci-fi shows because it is primarily about intellect and romance prevailing over brute force and cynicism. In A Good Man Goes to War we have villains, in the form of the Headless Monks, who very literally reject intellect and free thought. Around them, we see a society that idolizes conformity of beliefs and homogenous thought. They are willing to use a helpless child to kill the Doctor, a man whose life is all about compromise and the use of reason. I’m anxious to see these themes expanded upon as we learn more about exactly what this organization is and why it is waging this war, but for now I’ll spare you a philosophy essay, because I have one more very important thing to discuss…
The Doctor himself in this episode was beyond spectacular. As most of you are probably aware, I had a hard time accepting Eleven as the Doctor when he first regenerated. To this day I’m still extremely attached to Ten and Four holds the title of MY Doctor. However, I have also said time and time again that, no matter what happens, I always love the Doctor. Not any specific incarnation. I simply love what this man always is, no matter what his face happens to be at the moment. A Good Man Goes to War was an absolutely brilliant display of the Doctor in all of his flawed, passionate glory. This wasn’t just Eleven being adorable, this wasn’t just Matt Smith being a fantastic actor…this was the Doctor, all of his facets clearly displayed. I don’t think I have ever loved Eleven more than I did in that moment when he pulled the monk’s hood off of his head…and yet, in my mind, I wasn’t labeling him as “Eleven”. I didn’t see that grinning, confident face and yell, “Oh yay! It’s Matt Smith’ Doctor!”. I saw him in that moment and squealed and clapped and babbled incoherently because the Doctor was there and everything was going to be alright. This isn’t to say that Matt didn’t do a brilliant job of bringing Eleven’s unique characteristics into this episode, because he most certainly did. From his heart-melting interactions with baby Melody, to his thinly veiled bewilderment at the idea of the Ponds having sex on his TARDIS, this was the Doctor in his eleventh incarnation, distant, alien, awkward, through and through. This was Eleven mingling perfectly with all the other facets of the Doctor’s personality. The Oncoming Storm was there, as he furiously defended those he loved in battle, the Last of the Time Lords was there as he struggled to comprehend that there could be another being with genetics like his...and the Daft Old Man Who Stole a Magic Box and Ran Away was there as he realized that, when it came down to it, the terrible situation he found himself in was a consequence of his hundreds of years’ worth of adventures.
I feared that this episode, its twists and turns and everything it revealed, would make me not want to watch Doctor Who in the future…my worries were entirely needless. What this episode proved to me was that I will always, always want to watch this show because I will forever be helplessly in love with my madman…I will forever be listening for the sound of those engines…I will forever stand behind the Doctor and everything he represents.
So where does this leave me, when all is said and done?
I still do not like Steven Moffat.
I’m still not a fan of River Song and am more ready than ever for her story to be finished.
Rory Williams is a fantastic prince of a character.
I’m sorry that I ever claimed to hate Amy Pond.
The Doctor has forever ruined me for real men.
And, I WANT TO KNOW HOW THE DOCTOR IS GOING TO KILL HITLER. O_O
How will I be occupying myself with no new episodes of Doctor Who until September? Well, I intend to marathon the entirety of New!Who starting tonight. Once that is through, I’m planning on livestreaming a different Classic!Who episode every Saturday evening. I’ll also be writing fanfiction, working on cosplays for Connecticon, making videos for Whovianisms…oh, and attempting to have a normal human life somewhere in there too. That last one will be tricky since, clearly, this fandom owns my soul….and I’m not even bovvered by that. :o)