So that was pretty damn good. I’ll admit I wasn’t impressed with the way the first part of this series ended, but I think this is proof that anything can be saved, provided Steven Moffat writes something in the middle of it.
I had the joy of being at work when this was on, so resolved to watch it at half-past one in the morning instead of it’s scheduled time. That didn’t have any impact on the enjoyment, however a slight tiredness may have lead me to be unduly harsh at first with the character of Mels. I felt that she came out of nowhere (which she did) and that just saying that “oh this person exists in Amy and Rory’s lives’ but we’ve never seen her before because she hates weddings” was a bit of a cop out.
But the positives of this episode far outweigh this little quibble and the it’s obvious why she just came out of nowhere in light of who she turns out to be. On that point, it’s kinda neat to have River’s life and upbringing be a circle - she gets her parents together in the guise of Mels, who then serves as the namesake for herself - but I don’t know if it was really necessary. Having her appear like this really opens up a lot of questions, like why the hell they didn’t mention her before. Was she always there or did she only start to exist in their timeline, when the events of this series started?
Moffat takes this opportunity to tie up some loose ends old and new; we get an answer as to why the River Song in the Library didn’t survive, we establish that the Doctor never bothered to fix the temporal grace defence on the TARDIS and that the little girl was indeed River and not some other Timelady.
He also raises a couple more questions about the Silence and the whole religion and the question etc. Another possible question he raises is which Doctor Matt Smith is. When the Doctor’s dying on the TARDIS, he’s told that his regeneration has been disabled - now it could be that the poison that River used disabled his regeneration (which would make sense if was designed to kill him) but it could also mean that he doesn’t have any regenerations left. Is Moffat revisiting the finale of series four, where the tenth Doctor seemingly wasted a regeneration? Did River using up all her regeneration cycles to save him, give him a couple more?
Moffat’s also firing off teasers like crazy - the TARDIS is registered as stolen, but not because the Doctor stole it, because the Justice Department seem to think that River’s the one who’s in possession of it. Did we see the future Doctor from the very first episode fly the TARDIS? Did he even have it anymore?
I really don’t have much to say about this episode. It’s good, Amy’s annoyingness is dialed back, Rory seems to have finally found an effective medication for whipped-windging-little-pussy-itus and there are pretty solid performances all round. And I don’t care what people say, I like Alex Kingstone as River Song. Her flirtatiousness, I’ll admit does get a bit edgy whenever she comes into contact with the Doctor, but in this episode it takes on a kind of malice that gives her a bit of a black widow feel.
Granted, I’d have liked to see a bit more of her previous incarnation - it would have built more parallels between her and the Doctor, if we’d seen a more full personality in Mels and then had it transformed in the same way as the Doctor’s personality is transformed, when he regenerates. Hell, I’d have even liked more than one episode with Mels, to get this done.
Something I really liked about this episode was a little bit of self-awareness that crept in when Rory and Amy got on a motorbike. Now I have in the last few weeks been reviewing the new series of Torchwood and my interpretation of episode six of that series saw me very angry that Gwen, suddenly dropped character and blew up a military complex and road off on a motorbike. Gwen doesn’t ride motorbikes - it’s not something her character would do. Rory is similar and having seen the trailer for this half of the series, I was expecting to have the same reaction.
Accept when Amy asks him if he can even ride a motorbike, he gives an answer that practically says “for the purposes of this scene, I can.” It’s nice to see this kind of self-aware humour in the scripts - you don’t know how many times in Tennant years, I spent wishing someone would just look at the Doctor, walking in slow motion or growling at what could have been the Devil, and say “excuse, you guy’s are aware how stupid this looks aren’t you?”
Before I close out, let’s discuss the elephant in the room; Omega - but wait, first we’ll talk about the Nazi dictator in the room or in the cupboard, as it seems. I unashamedly laughed out loud, at the line, “Rory, take Hitler and put him in the Cupboard.” That was a really nice piece of comedy writing and kinda blindsided me a bit. What didn’t blindside me was he fact that this episode wasn’t all about Hitler - the more I though about it in the build up to this episode, the more I figured it would be impossible. The title was a good red herring though; I really didn’t expect another River Song episode so early on.
Now let’s talk Omega…gonna be honest; I don’t know that much about him – in the words of youtuber SFDebris ‘you gotta reign the fanboy in somewhere, else it isn’t long before you’re speeding away from Comi-con with Peter Davison tied up in the back of your car.”
Basically, Omega was the very first Timelord; he figured out how to travel through time and space, he came up with the TARDIS, he was erased by his awesome plan etc… I only mention him because apparently the mark of Omega has been seen all over various episodes in background Vote-Saxon style. All I’ll say is that anything’s possible, it’s be interesting to see an old character come back like that, but I honestly doubt that he will. Moffat does infuse his incredible plots with common sense and if the villains had the first and greatest Timelord of all on their side, they wouldn’t have gone to o much time and effort to make River Song.
That’s all I’m saying - good episode - evokes thought and is very fun to watch.
I still hate River Song.
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