This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: 2012 Christmas Special
• Airdate: 25th December 2012
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: None
• Other Notable Characters: Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), Jenny (Catrin Steart), Strax (Dan Starkey), Clara Oswin Oswald/Clara Oswald (Jenna Coleman)*, Dr. Simeon (Richard E Grant)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Saul Metzstein
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

* Credited as Jenna Louise-Coleman

Review

Good evening. I'm a lizard woman from the dawn of time. And this is my wife. – Madame Vastra

For two and a half series, one thing remained constant in the 11th Doctor era: Amy Pond. Amy and her fiancé/husband Rory were central to this period of Doctor Who. They were, as I've said before, the Doctor's family. It became hard to imagine the 11th Doctor's TARDIS without Amy and Rory in it.

But, in the lead up to Series 7, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill informed showrunner Steven Moffat that they would be leaving after 2012. And as Moffat was planning on splitting Series 7 into two parts, one in 2012 and one 2013, in order to help with the extra workload he had taken on due to Sherlock, that meant that midway through Series 7, Moffat would have to find a new companion. His first idea was a Victorian governess called Beryl Montague. However, concerns were raised about having a companion from so far back in the past that most technology would have to be explained to her (a bit like the reason Katarina never became a companion). So, a modern character, named Clara Oswald was developed.

As Clara was being developed, Steven Moffat started developing the idea for the "Impossible Girl" storyline. And so the Victorian story he had been developing to introduce Ms. Montague was repurposed into that storyline. And with that, a new version of Clara, Clara Oswin Oswald was introduced in that story, played by Jenna Coleman. With "Asylum of the Daleks" introducing, and then killing off an Oswin Oswald, the shape of the Impossible Girl storyline was set. So "The Snowmen" has three jobs. First is to establish what life looks like for the 11th Doctor after the Ponds. The second is to give the audience a first taste of Jenna Coleman in the companion slot, before giving us the version we'd follow in the next episode, thus acting as set up for the storyline that would follow. And the third job is to be a Christmas episode, with all that that implies.

Anyway the thing I came away from this episode thinking about the most was how much I like the Paternoster gang.

So back in "A Good Man Goes to War", Steven Moffat introduced three new characters: Jenny Flint, Madame Vastra, and Strax. Vastra was a Silurian who had taken up residence in Victorian London, Flint was her maid/wife and Strax was a Sontaran forced to work as a nurse. "Good Man" gave all three a pretty good introduction, but with so much focus on everything else that that episode had going on, they were never going to get the proper focus that would be required to make them into truly memorable characters. Plus Strax died at the end, so nobody would think to associate him with the other two except as the three characters that were introduced as the Doctor's allies in that episode.

Moffat wrote a couple prequels to the episode, both focusing on the trio in question. The first of these was used to explain just how Strax survived (answer: Jenny and Vastra brought him back), while the second was more used to set up Vastra. But in the episode itself…these three are great. Like in "Good Man", Jenny is still getting the least focus, although in this case it's less of an issue. It's just that a Victorian maid who occasionally shifts over to a catsuit and dual wields swords is still the least memorable of the group. Still, she does admirably in her role as support to Vastra and the Doctor. Each of the Paternoster Gang has different ways of trying to get through to the Doctor during his retirement from saving the universe. For Jenny, while she interacts with the Doctor less than the other two, there's an appeal to emotion there. But really, she mostly interacts with her wife. In a way, she reminds of Rory. The most grounded character of her group, who's very likable and probably the most morally solid, but is still an ancillary character to her spouse.

But before we get to said spouse, we have to talk about Strax. While in "Good Man" there were hints that Strax might function well as a more comedic character, it's here that we get a proper look at the humor that Strax brings to the table. The conceit is simple: Strax is a fish out of water. A Sontaran who is used to the Sontaran way of doing things is now tasked with being a Victorian butler. While you get the impression that Vastra and Jenny enjoy flouting the societal expectations of Victorian England while staying just barely on the right side of respectability to keep up appearances, Strax is genuinely trying, God bless him. It's just that he looks weird, and struggles with concepts like multiple genders and not approaching every problem – and indeed things that aren't problems – with extreme violence. This could be played for drama, and if there ever had been a Paternoster Gang spinoff (no, I have not yet listened to the audio dramas, I intend to get there eventually) I would argue that it should have eventually been. But in his short appearances on the television series, the comedy just kind of works. Strax wants to do his best, wants to be helpful, and at times he actually is. His medical training, while ultimately futile in this episode, could be genuinely useful at times. When the action starts to pick up, and our heroes are about to be in a combat situation, his tactical insight is actually on point. But as a Victorian butler…he struggles a bit. And honestly, given what Vastra and Jenny's approach to the Victorian period seems to be, I suspect that they enjoy that about him.

But the star of this trio is absolutely Vastra. Apparently having been the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes (at least, that's what main villain Dr. Simeon seems to believe), you might expect that she'd take on a persona similar to that of Steven Moffat's actual adaptation of those stories or, failing that, be similar in personality to the version seen in Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories. Instead, while we can assume that her methods are similar to those of Mr. Holmes, the only similarity in personality that we see is that it's very easy to read Sherlock Holmes, even in the original stories, as being gay (or at the very least, very interested in Dr. Watson), and, well Madame Vastra has a wife. What stands out about Vastra though, isn't her deductive abilities, which are left more in the realm of implication than anything, but rather her extraordinary insight.

In "A Good Man Goes to War", we learned that the Doctor first met Vastra when she was in the London Underground taking out her revenge for the deaths of her family on innocent people. She used that experience to point out how the Doctor was perhaps making mistakes. And that's what Vastra does throughout this episode. As I mentioned, each of the Paternoster Gang has their own approach to pushing the Doctor into action. Jenny tries empathy. Strax, direct as you might imagine he'd be, just states what he thinks the Doctor should do. But what Vastra does, constantly, is psychoanalyzing the Doctor to an extraordinary degree. And you might think that this would feel a bit forced. The writer using a character to explain another character's state of mind. Telling, rather than showing. The reason it works is twofold. First is that we have that understanding of Vastra as something of a tragic figure, having lost her own family. She can connect to the Doctor on some level, and has as good an insight into people's emotions as anyone, thanks to her own experiences. Being a lesbian lizard woman in a period famous for its social repression implies that she'll have seen a lot of what it means to be human, both good and bad.

But the second reason is that Neve McIntosh is just perfectly cast for this role. What's funny is that she of course this wasn't even the role she was initially cast in. She was cast to play a pair of Silurian sisters in the "Hungry Earth" two parter, which led directly to her getting the role of Madame Vastra. But she is so good in the part. I've talked a lot about Steven Moffat's tendency to write very poetic dialogue, and McIntosh just has a knack for making those lines feel as profound as they're intended. I even think some of her stuff is pretty meaningless on a strict dialogue level, but McIntosh invests them with the kind of sincerity that the lines require. Plus, she's just got a good voice for the part. There's something about it that really suits Moffat's dialogue. Maybe it's that she, like Moffat, is Scottish. Seriously, I think that, while she's using an English accent for this part, there's enough of a Scottish lilt that comes through that makes Vastra's language feel very melodious, in a way that suits the dialogue she's given.

It all comes together to form a character that legitimately feels like she can interact with the Doctor on even footing. Characters that could behave as the Doctor's peer are exceptionally rare throughout the history of Doctor Who, especially when you limit it to recurring characters. The Brigadier was arguably the first. Romana, naturally, was another, though only once her character underwent some progression. River Song and Jack Harkness functioned in this role as well. In that list of characters, Vastra stands out to me as maybe the most successful at genuinely understanding the Doctor. Her psychological analysis of the Doctor is even more on point than Romana (who tended, in her first incarnation at least, more towards psychobabble than anything). I think it helps that she is a character with some distance from him.

And also, it has to be said, this trio are just fun together. Neve McIntosh, Catrin Stewart and Dan Starkey have phenomenal chemistry with each other. McIntosh and Stewart are believable as a legitimate married couple, and I do think the fact that Vastra is a lizard woman helps avoid some of the tendency towards titillation that often happens when Moffat writes non-straight women. More than that there's a genuine sense of three people sticking together because they do care about each other, and no one else will have them. Vastra is millennia out of time, Jenny is a gay woman in a period where that was not accepted, and Strax surely cannot return to his people. So they've formed an odd little family. Found family is one of my favorite tropes, and while we don't get to see as much of it as I'd like with these three, you can still feel it in this episode.

But I should actually turn to the plot at some point. While the first half of Series 7 didn't have a plot arc so much as focusing around a character arc, the second half would have something closer to the standard story arcs of the Revival. And for the the first time since Steven Moffat became showrunner, that plot arc would also center around a Classic era villain that had not appeared in the Revival; in this case, that would be the Great Intelligence. A big reason for this was that one of Moffat's favorite Classic-era stories was The Web of Fear, which was the second, and final, appearance of the Great Intelligence in the classic era. With "The Snowmen", Steven Moffat would explore the origins of the disembodied intelligence that the 2nd Doctor had faced on two separate occasions.

That origin sees some alien not-snow land on Earth in 1842, where a lonely boy is making a snowman. And then the snowman starts talking to said lonely boy, and rather than running away screaming (okay he does initially run away), the boy, Walter Simeon, engages with it. The snowman convinces Simeon to help it grow stronger, and as an adult, the now-Doctor Simeon is fully dedicated to that cause. It seems like Simeon is a servant to the entity made of snow that he has inside a giant snowglobe…but it turns out not to be the case. Thanks to some clever deductions, the Doctor realizes that the snow is in fact simply mimicking Simeon. As a little boy, Simeon had a certain antipathy towards his peers, and the snow fed off of that, trapping Simeon with that same emotion. But the snow is just mirroring Simeon, and so the Doctor uses the memory worm (established earlier in the episode in a fun scene with Strax and Clara) to remove all of Simeon's memories to before he met the snow, thus severing the link. It's a clever solution. Except that this is an origin for the Great Intelligence, and so, of course, rather than dying, the intelligence within the snowglobe is able to retain purpose and take control of Simeon's body. And while by the end of the episode that set of circumstances is ended, the Doctor is well aware that the intelligence will have survived, becoming the Great Intelligence – taking its name from the institute that Simeon set up.

As an origin for the Great Intelligence, I mostly like this. I do feel like it feels a bit too human. In its 2nd Doctor stories, the Great Intelligence always felt like some fundamentally alien intelligence. Now we learn that it is at its core the darkness within a little boy made manifest. It's a very Moffatian take on the idea of course, and I don't entirely hate it. It's just that I did prefer the idea of the more alien intelligence. I do think some of that is preserved in a few ways. First of all, I have to credit the performance of Ian McKellan, who voices the Great Intelligence for this episode. He makes the Great Intelligence, especially after it is separated from Simeon, feel like its evolved into something beyond its origin, which prevents the Intelligence from being too human. To that point, the line that the Intelligence delivers upon being separated from Simeon, "now the dream outlives the dreamer" is yet another example of Moffat's more poetic writing that also helps the idea of the more alien Intelligence manifest. Oh, and while I'm praising performances, I have to give credit to Richard E. Grant for a phenomenal job as Dr. Simeon – just pitch-perfect casting.

Though one thing that does hurt this plot is that the story doesn't get a ton of focus. That's because most of the focus is given to Clara and the Doctor. Both establishing who Clara is, and showing how she ends up pulling the Doctor out of his melancholic detachment. Clara is first introduced as a barmaid, but it turns out she has a secret identity as Ms. Montague, a governess to two children. Obviously this is pulled from Moffat's earliest ideas for the episode that I described up above, though Clara being a cockney barmaid who leads a double life seems like it's original to the later versions of the character. What's frustrating is that we have no sense of how this barmaid became a governess. That's a job that requires a lot of education. Who paid for her education? Where did she get it? Why does she keep it a secret? This are questions that do not get an answer, and I think that it's a shame the episode doesn't have the time or interest to ask them.

Still, Clara's fun…to a point. After a while I grew to find the extent of her flirting with the Doctor a bit tiresome. No individual moment is bad necessarily, but the episode just lays it on a bit too thick. What does work is her governess persona. There's an obvious allusion to Mary Poppins in all of this. She's a governess who relates very well to the children in her charge, and has the attitude of someone who might secretly be magical. Plus there's something in the speaking style that she adopts as Ms. Montague that very much reminds me of the Disney movie. But more than that, you get the sense that Clara does genuinely care deeply for the children in her care, all while pushing for their father Captain Latimer – a widower who finds it hard to relate to his children – to become closer to them. It's perhaps unlikely that an employee of a wealthy man to be quite so willing to challenger her employer, especially someone who presumably is getting more money from this profession than she would otherwise have any chance of seeing in several lifetimes. But it works because it establishes that Clara's number one priority is the children.

There are other issues. For one thing, I wasn't entirely convinced by Jenna Coleman's cockney accent. I do think some of this may be because it's pretty subtle compared to most actors I hear doing cockney accents – and I have no doubt that that gets exaggerated for film, television or theater. Still, Coleman never feels entirely comfortable doing that accent, and considering it's supposed to be Clara's natural accent, which comes out when she's under stress, that does feel off.

And I suppose we need to talk about the "one word test". This whole scene feels off to me. Madame Vastra, apparently, believes that "truth is singular", by which we are to understand that she prefers if her questions are answered in a single word. Of course she and her compatriots are Moffat-created characters, which means they all speechify at the drop of a hat (well except Strax), so that already feels like a disconnect. But really, I don't buy that these single word responses carry much insight. It's something I've mentioned before, Moffat's ability to create beautiful poetic language to express ideas that just do not feel true.

Moreover, Clara is asked to communicate the plot going on in a way that might reinvigorate the Doctor…using only a single word. The word she chooses, "pond", makes sense in context. There's a frozen pond with a dead body in it that, due to some specifics of the plot, the villains can use to create a massive army of snowmen to take over the world (okay, this is still, in fact, a Christmas episode). But of course, when used as a surname "Pond" has a special meaning for the Doctor, a reminder of the family that he lost. It's exactly the word needed to pull him out of his apathetic state…and Clara has no way of knowing that. One could argue that Vastra has manipulated Clara into this…except based on Vastra's subsequent call to the Doctor, this is an established thing that Vastra has tried to use on him before. Was she just hoping that a case involving a pond would come up to get the Doctor's attention? No, it's a contrivance, and a pretty blatant one at that, and it annoys me.

The Doctor's apathy on the other hand…I'm of two minds about. For much of this story, the Doctor has retired, refusing to involve himself in the affairs of others. After the loss of Amy and Rory, he's had enough and just wants to be left alone. So yes, the Doctor spends a lot of the episode sulking. Admittedly, it's some pretty spectacular sulking. The Doctor has parked his TARDIS…on a cloud. A cloud accessible via a ladder to an invisible, taller-on-the-inside, staircase. It's a really cool visual, definitely speaking to Steven Moffat's ability to create memorable imagery for the show. But as for the Doctor's retirement…

So, on one hand, the Doctor's decision here feels somewhat out of line with his character. The early 5th Doctor family was a kind of found family in its own right, albeit a very dysfunctional one, yet when Adric died the 5th Doctor didn't give up adventuring and sulk for several decades. And sure, I'm not happy with the reaction Adric's death does get in Time-Flight (a couple moments mourning then moving on as though nothing ever happened), but I didn't necessarily want him to swing to the other extreme. And when the 10th Doctor lost Rose, who he loved, he didn't give up adventuring either. Sure, the Ponds are special to the Doctor their own way, but so was Adric, a young boy who the Doctor couldn't protect, and Rose, the love of the 10th Doctor's life. The Doctor's always managed to bounce back from losing people. So why not in this case?

Well, on the other hand, maybe that's the point. Maybe after so much time spent losing people, the Doctor's finally suffered one loss too many. Maybe the fact that the Doctor made the hard decision to let the Ponds live their own lives in "The God Complex"…but then just couldn't quit them, as much as they couldn't quit him, is making him feel extra guilty. He got them out of danger…and then dragged them right back into it. And maybe, after centuries of having to say goodbye to friend after friend, some goodbyes happy, some sad, some tragic, the Doctor just can't take another loss. It's an interpretation that, frankly, I'm not sure I entirely buy. It just feels like it's rooted in an amount of the show's history that we just don't see during this period. But it's an interpretation that I still like when I am willing to buy it.

It does mean that it takes a long time for the Doctor to get involved in the action. And once he does, he's still insisting that this is a one-off and that he's going to go back to sulking on his cloud thank you very much. But he does get more and more invested in the plot. When he first goes to confront Simeon, he does so pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. He initially gets literally every deduction wrong…but of course it's a feint. Once he actually starts making deductions about what's going on, he very quickly works out the basics of what the snow is, showing that the 11th Doctor's deductive powers are still very much operating. Admittedly, I'm not too fond of Matt Smith's performance in this scene. I actually tend to like Smith's later-series performances a good deal, but this is just a case of him laying on the goofiness a bit too thick. That being said, if you can look past that, the scene is good, and Smith is still able to put some menace into his performance on a few occasions.

Really, once the Doctor gets back into the game, Smith does seem to be trying to sustain his performance on pure whimsy. A lot of the scenes at the Latimer house take on this overly energetic quality that kind of hurts the episode. For all that he can go into the hyperactive, Smith's Doctor is best when that hyperactivity is regularly being contrasted with a calmer, more poised demeanor. The contrast is part of what makes the 11th Doctor fun, and here we find him going too frequently, and too far into the hyperactive. There are some exceptions, most notably his quiet realization that he'd put on his bowtie without even realizing it, genuinely a great way of showing the Doctor is healing.

The Doctor and Clara eventually retreat to the TARDIS cloud – the Doctor doing so partially to lure the ice lady (that body I mentioned earlier) that's coming after them away from the snowmen and Dr. Simeon who need it to complete their plan. And the Doctor offers Clara a TARDIS key and a place on the TARDIS. She accepts. It's all going a bit too well…and so naturally the ice lady grabs Clara and falls to Earth from the cloud. Clara's dead on the ground, but Strax, presumably using the same technology that revived him and his medical training, is hopeful he can save her. What follows is that really great confrontation between the Doctor and Simeon and then the Great Intelligence taking over Simeon body, which I've already covered. What saves the day…is a bit of a cheat. Clara cannot be saved, and the children are crying, and because of the telepathic nature of the "snow" which has a "critical mass" near the house, it turns the snow into tears, raining down. It's undeniably an affecting visual…but it just feels like a bit of a cheat as a way to end the threat, though Clara's death does give the moment some real weight.

Though her death is soon revealed to be not so permanent as it initially seemed. The Doctor sees her full name, Clara Oswin Oswald, and realizes that "Oswin Oswald" was the name of the Starship Alaska crewmember-turned Dalek from "Asylum of the Daleks"…and also that they shared a voice…and also that Clara had mentioned something about soufflés…and also that Clara and Oswin shared the same last words ("run you clever boy, and remember). And so, giddy again, the Doctor goes off to find Clara. It's an ending that mostly serves to build intrigue for the rest of Series 7, and for that, it works. It does somewhat undermine the somber tone that the episode had built, but this is a Christmas episode, and honestly, Clara, or this version of her anyway, still died, so it only undermines it a little.

One the whole, I do like "The Snowmen", but it's got some pretty big flaws. Some of the storytelling beats feel a bit off. Matt Smith's performance goes a bit over the top at times. And the episode is pretty packed with a lot of different ideas, all competing for space, and none of them feel fully developed. Well, except for the Paternoster gang, who are the big success story from this episode. A genuinely entertaining trio with a surprising amount of depth, they, more than Clara or the Doctor, are the engine that keeps me invested in what otherwise is a fairly mediocre adventure.

Score: 6/10

Stray Observations

• After both "A Christmas Carol" and "The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe" were based on already existing stories, shworunner/writer Steven Moffat wanted to avoid always doing that for the Christmas specials. So the Snowmen was just set in Victorian London, with no prior work directly inspiring it.
• Early ideas were to give Jenny, Vastra and Strax their own spinoff, but with Steven Moffat already busy between Doctor Who and Sherlock he didn't have time for an additional series, so instead he incorporated them more on Doctor Who. I would have loved a Paternoster Gang spinoff, but this probably would have been a bit early. If the spinoff were to happen, it would have been best to establish them a bit more on Doctor Who.
• The idea of the Doctor retiring and going into seclusion was based on a pitch that then-Script Editor Douglas Adams made in 1979, which was ultimately rejected by then-Producer Graham Williams. Adams would instead end up writing Shada, which would instead have another retired Time Lord character.
• This episode was filmed after several later ones due to Steven Moffat's slow progress on the script.
• To avoid spoiling the return of the Great Intelligence, the Radio Times had Ian McKellan credited as the "Voice of the Snowmen".
• There was some difficulty finding the right look for the Snowmen. Early iterations were too "cute" according to director Saul Metasetin, hence the use of CGI faces.
• Francesca and Digby Latimer were played by actual siblings Ellie and Joseph Darcey Alden
• I quite like the "GI" logo for the Great Intelligence Institute. It looks quite elegant and imposing.
• Both Steven Moffat and Matt Smith compared the Doctor's Victorian outfit to the Artful Dodger's outfit from Oliver Twist. Similarly, Clara's barmaid outfit was based on Nancy from the same novel.
• New title sequence time! It's the first starfield title sequence of the 21st Century, though it eventually transitions into a time vortex. The logo remains largely unchanged, but by now the "DW" TARDIS is no longer in the title sequence at all. Probably most memorable is the return of the Doctor's face to the title sequence and the TARDIS doors opening up at the end onto the first post-title sequence scene.
• This episode also retains a practice from Series 7A, where the logo has been textured to suit the episode, in this case looking like it's made of snow.
• As for my thoughts on the title sequence? I recall at the time this title sequence got a fair amount of hate, mostly for the backgrounds being very flat and the TARDIS model looking a bit off. On the first point…fair enough, but the TARDIS model looks fine to me. However, I am on record not really liking the starfield title sequences. They just feel a bit too literal for my tastes, especially on a show where we don't actually get a lot of zooming around amongst the stars. What's odd is that in this case it's kind of hard to tell what you're supposed to be looking at at first. It's the most overdesigned version of "space" I think I've ever seen.
• The Doctor's face bit is quite good. It's a much more subtle take on putting the Doctor's face in the title sequence, and especially feels like a clever update on the "Doctor constellations" of the 80s.
• The time vortex is…fine. Yeah, that's all I got.
• Meanwhile the gimmick of the TARDIS doors opening up…I hate it. It feels cheesy, but not in a fun way. Also, every time I find myself thinking that the TARDIS doors open on the TARDIS interior, but mostly we see them open onto exterior shots. It's the wrong way round.
• Also, new iteration of the theme. I got nothing on this either, it's a slightly worse version of the original 11th Doctor theme. Less mysterious, more bombastic. At least there aren't lightning sound effects crashing in so I can actually hear the theme.
• So "winter is coming" is said a handful of times throughout this episode. Boy that dates this thing a bit. I too remember when Game of Thrones was a cultural phenomenon and not a disappointing television adaptation of a book series that will almost certainly never be completed. But even at the time, the reference felt gratuitous.
• New TARDIS interior. Much more mechanical feeling to this one, with the lack of the glass floor and a console that looks a bit more like something you might actually pilot a spaceship with. There's also additional banks of controls surrounding the central control panel that will get used approximately once then just sort of forgotten about. We're still playing around with levels, thanks to the elevated walkway ringing around the console room. I like it, but it's not the best version of this particular console room.
• The Doctor calls the London Underground a "key strategic weakness in metropolitan living", somewhat facetiously. Of course, the Great Intelligence (in its future from this episode, but the Doctor's past) did in fact try to take over London via the Underground in The Web of Fear. It's made somewhat clear later on that the Doctor didn't actually remember the Great Intelligence at this point (fair enough, it's been a while), so this was entirely accidental on his part.
• There was some debate over whether or not to include the short scene of modern day Clara at the end of the episode. Personally, I think it was the right call, but I wouldn't have had her walk right next to the gravestone of her Victorian equivalent. Just show her near it.
• For some strange reason the original 11th Doctor era version of the theme plays at the end of the episode, rather than the updated version.

Next Time: In search of the next version of Clara, the Doctor finds himself in modern day London. Honestly, given his track record, he probably should have started there.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Novel Information

• Novel: Doctor Who: The New Adventures (VNA) #17
• Published: 19th August 1993
• Companions: Ace, Benny
• Author: Nigel Robinsons

Spoiler-Free Review

I didn't much take to Birthright. I did appreciate how it gave Benny a lot more to do than any novel since Love and War, and the half of the novel that focuses on her was better for it. Sadly, the plot just isn't there. There was just a lack of a solid secondary cast this time, despite a couple intriguing villains. This especially becomes the case once the action moves away from Victorian London for the first time, as that material gets really dull. There was a lot of potential for a "Doctor-lite" style VNA, and I was genuinely looking forward to it. While that potential was in some ways realized, the novel wasn't great overall. That being said, I'm kind of tempted to recommend it anyway. Again, Benny's stuff is good, and I think it was really good to give her in particular more focus.

If you do want to read this one, the usual trio of Love and War, Deceit and Lucifer Rising are recommended first, as they set up this version of the TARDIS team. I'd say that's especially true of this novel, as the relationship between Ace and Benny is pretty important to this one, as well as understanding the changes that Ace has gone through since the television days.

Full Review

'But you can't hope to subjugate the Earth,' countered Benny. 'Earthmen will put up too much resistance. We're barbaric, intolerant, savage. Just look at Ace!'

To this point in the VNAs, Bernice Summerfield has felt a bit ill-defined as a character. She got an excellent introduction in Love and War but what followed was three novels that weren't originally intended to include her. And while, aside from The Pit they did a pretty decent job, Benny wasn't really given a chance to take a major role in those novels. Then Ace came back. I felt at the time it was too early, and at this point I've become even more convinced of that. It felt like most of the VNA's writers were significantly more interested in Ace than Benny. It's hard to blame them, she's the more established character. But it left Benny in a frustrating position. I find her to be the most entertaining of this TARDIS crew…but she's just not been given the time to establish her own distinct personality. Especially in this grittier era of Doctor Who where everyone is a bit morally ambiguous and violent.

I was not terribly fond of Birthright but the one thing I will give it credit for is making up for that. Birthright is essentially a "Doctor-lite" story, an ambitious idea for the VNAs to take on. Since the companions are present in this novel it shouldn't be surprising that Benny gets a lot of focus in this one. But even more than that, this one focuses in hard on Benny over any other character, including fellow companion Ace. The novel is divided into four parts (not include the prologue and the epilogues), titled after their focus. These are "Benny", "Ace", "Benny & Ace", and "The TARDIS". "Benny" is slightly less than half the novel. "The TARDIS", for its part, gives Benny way more to do than anyone else. It also helps that, while the Doctor is a presence in this one, it's a very distant one. And Benny is, as she's been from the beginning, a delightful presence.

But sadly, Birthright itself doesn't really have much to recommend itself beyond our first chance since Love and War to really delve into Benny as a character. It's at this point I should mention that this is not the first time I've experienced this story…kind of. When I made the decision to review the VNAs, I chose not to listen to Big Finish's novel adaptations, which I had been planning on listening to around that time. However long before that I listened to Series 1 of the Bernice Summerfield audio range, which was comprised entirely of adaptations of Virgin Publishing's novels. Most of these were from Benny's solo novel series, but there were a couple that were adaptations of VNAs that removed the Doctor. Including Birthright.

Now it's been a long time since I listened to the audio adaptation of Birthright, and I remember not thinking much of it either. But, to my recollection, it was actually pretty different from the novel. I mean, given that Big Finish weren't allowed to use the TARDIS at the time, it's probably safe to say that the lengthy section where Benny fights main villain Jared Khan in the TARDIS' mindscape didn't occur. Still, I remember the big twist being the same, and I remember the monsters being the same and I remember being as underwhelmed by those elements back then as I was this time.

To explain a bit of what happens in this book, the last novel, Shadowmind, ended on the implication that the Doctor was going to drop Ace and Benny off somewhere while he went on his own separate adventure. That's what this novel, and the next one, Iceberg, represent. This novel is Benny and Ace's half of that, with a note at the beginning of the novel explaining that the two novels are "contemporaneous – if such a word can be used to describe the activities of a Time Lord and his companions".

With that in mind, we start with Benny's section, taking place in Victorian London. It seems that the TARDIS dropped Benny off here on her own, and then seemingly malfunctioned so that only the police box shell was left. And this was the Doctor's plan, as he'd prepared for this by setting Benny up to be given lodgings by Victoria Waterfield's aunt. Yeah, there's all sorts of implications over the course of this novel, that the events here represent a plan that the Doctor has been working on since he was the 2nd Doctor. This means that, for the first time, the VNAs are playing around with an idea that was pretty much the norm in the 7th Doctor's televised era. That the Doctor has always been the master manipulator, and the 7th Doctor is no different in that regard…if anything he's more open about it.

But this leaves Benny on her own to investigate a conspiracy. There's been a series of unexplained murders that some believe to be the return of Jack the Ripper, while others attribute them to mythical figure "Spring-Heeled Jack". The reality, as it turns out, is that the murders are being committed by alien grasshoppers. But of course. Benny's investigations into this, and into the strange conspiracy that's sprung up around the grasshoppers, called the Charrl, are entertaining enough, but if I have a criticism it definitely felt like Benny wasn't actually able to take initiative a lot of the time. She's being bounced between the manipulations of the New Dawn and the manipulations of the Doctor and basically never makes choices on her own.

She does get a couple friends during this period. The first is Popov, the Russian cop who came to England on the advice of the Doctor and is investigating the death of his daughter (which of course turned out to be because of the Charrl). Popov is charming enough, but basically forgettable – I mostly remember him for being played by Colin Baker in the Big Finish adaptation. I did like how, since his first name is Mikahail, Benny refers to him as "Misha", demonstrating a familiarity with the Russian diminutive naming system. Charlie, a poor boy introduced by stealing something off of the body of one of the victims is the other. He's a bit more memorable, mostly because there's something inherently likable in the Oliver Twist archetype. Charlie actually sticks around the novel a little longer, making it into the TARDIS.

More interesting are the villains of this section, the members of the New Dawn. The New Dawn kind of have the problem of not being very clearly defined. They seem to be really obsessed with insects and the idea of them surviving beyond humanity but beyond that we don't really know much of them. The idea seems to be that they're some sort of secret society, but the specifics of how they operate or their hierarchy, beyond the fact that Jared Khan leads them and Randolph Bellingham funds them, remains unclear. They're treated like they have vast reach in the British government, but it all feels very nebulous.

Still, at the very least they're an entertaining group. I'll save discussion of Jared Khan for later, seeing as how he's the main villain of the novel, so instead we'll turn to Bellingham. As the son of an earl, Bellingham is the money behind the New Dawn, and he's otherwise pretty useless, and a bit of a lech towards Benny. Which makes him a pretty good villain, entertaining in his stupidity. He's actually a true believer in the Charrl, sincerely believing in the cause of the New Dawn (which is, as stated, a bit unclear), and so is genuinely upset when the Charrl start killing people.

But the member of the New Dawn that most caught my attention was Margaret Waterfield. The aunt to the former companion of the Doctor's, and landlady for Benny during her stay in Victorian London, Margaret gets a very positive read for most of the novel. The worst thing about her seems to be that she has some association with Bellingham. She's kind and sweet. She made an apartment available for Benny. And she's a member of the New Dawn. We don't learn much about this association unfortunately. Benny doesn't come to this conclusion until after she's killed, and apparently by people in Jared Khan's employ, so the New Dawn did betray her. But it means she does kind of occupy an intriguing space in the narrative. A good person, therefore someone who must truly believe in the cause of the New Dawn, but nonetheless someone who helped horrible things take place.

In Ace's section we move to the planet of Antykhon…which is eventually revealed to be a future Earth. Unfortunately there's very little else to say about this section. It follows the basic plot structure of a "Doctor helps the rebels" story, with the obvious change that it's Ace doing the rebel helping. But the rebels in question are fairly dull. They're rebelling against the Charrl who have taken up residence on Antykhon. This is part of their natural lifecycle but Antykhon, dying due to the pollution that occurred back when it was called Earth, is not a suitable home so they have to find another home. The Charrl are apparently normally quite friendly, and even sophisticated, but forced to take extreme measures to survive things have changed. They're eating humans. A small group of humans (usually referred to as either "Mammals" or "Hairies") has been left behind on Antykhon, and these are the "rebels" that Ace is helping.

So one of my prevailing memories of the "Birthright" audio drama was that I didn't much care for the twist on Antykhon being Earth. I don't exactly remember why I didn't like it at the time. But then again I didn't much care for it here and I'm struggling to put my finger on why. I guess in this context the biggest issue is that not much is done with the idea. Ace finds a panel from the Channel Tunnel and that's kind of all that we hear about it. It's impossible not to think of the similar reveal in The Mysterious Planet and how much more impactful that reveal was. Even in that context, I didn't love how it was handled in Mysterious Planet but at the very least it was treated like a big deal. Here, it's ultimately kind of glossed over. It's necessary for how the plot works, but not much more.

And the rebels that Ace is helping…hoo boy. They're not really rebels, more like a loose collection of survivors outside the Charrl Mammal farms. But these guys are just so bland. The only one that gets meaningful characterization is Seeba, and that's mostly just him being a jerk to Ace. See he was the former leader of the human group before Ace came along, but the moment Ace showed up she took charge, because Ace is an ex-soldier with high-tech equipment and a good understanding of military tactics. And Seeba resents her for it. Not only does this feel like an odd reaction under the circumstances, but Seeba is just dull. He has a brother, Chel, who was captured by the Charrl and he wants to rescue him, but honestly he doesn't seem all that fussed about it. And that's kind of it for Ace's main group of allies in her part of the novel. A group of completely forgettable characters. At least in Benny's section, while not that memorable, we created allies who were a bit more substantial.

Though like with Benny the enemy side of things does a little better. In this case though, only a little. The queen of Charrl, Ch'tizz, is a pretty rote character. She does repeatedly say that she doesn't want to be killing humans that it's not the "Charrl way" but she makes no meaningful efforts to do so. That's kind of all there is to her. She does have a Mammal advisor in the form of Muldwych. Muldwych is interesting. For a long time I thought it was going to turn out that he was and Jared Khan were the same person, even though it wouldn't have really made sense, because they both occupy similar places in the narrative. Both are clearly wiser and older than they look, both are nominally helping the Charrl but have ulterior motives for doing so. Muldwych is, in fact, a Time Lord and is sort of implied to be a future incarnation of the Doctor, though it's not confirmed. In this novel he was actually manipulating events to ensure Jared Khan's defeat, to give you some idea of how far off I was, and appears as a regular character, albeit under a variety of names, in various interludes that show examples of these manipulations.

There is a final character on Antykhon that I want to talk about, though there's not much to say about him. Isk is a Charrl, but one who ends up siding with Ace and the other humans. I wanted to highlight Isk because he's the one example of one of the Charrl actually following through with their supposed goal of peace and love. It does actually help it feel believable that the Charrl aren't just single-mindedly evil that we've got Isk who's actively willing to help Ace and company as long as there's a better way. And the fact that Ace is pretty open to trusting Isk, suggests that she's developing a bit more of that wider perspective that so often characterizes the Doctor.

Actually, a lot of Ace's material in this episode suggests she's becoming more and more like the Doctor. This isn't a new development – it goes back to the end of the television series where in Survival she, thinking the Doctor had died, picked up his hat and umbrella, symbolizing that she was ready to take over for him. But in the VNAs, Ace's relationship with the Doctor has taken on a bit of a different flavor, as she's grown more and more frustrated with his constant manipulations. It is interesting, then, to see her mirror those manipulations in her dealings with pretty much everyone throughout this novel. Ace herself realizes that this is what she's doing and seems a bit detached about the whole thing – though I think you can read in a certain level of discomfort that she has with how comfortable she's become with those kind of manipulations. At the very least it's nice that we have a novel where the focus of Ace's character isn't on her attitude towards violence, as that's felt a bit too common ever since she returned.

That brings us neatly on to part three of the novel entitled "Benny & Ace". Ace has negotiated with Ch'tizz to let the cross through the "Great Divide" (think of it like a time window). The Charrl can cross through but they don't live long, but Ace figures that humans might be able to. Ace has made promises to the Queen, and so we find ourselves back in Victorian London. There's not all that much to say about this part, it seems to mostly be here to bring the various plot threads that were established over the course of the last two parts together. The really notable stuff is the character stuff between Benny and Ace.

I think we've reached the point where Benny and Ace's relationship should have stabilized a little. Pretty much every novel is in some way making the point that Benny and Ace have a contentious relationship but deep down they care about each other. It's just that there's been no progress on this front. Benny and Ace are still inevitably difficult towards each other. What's funny is that this novel does a much better job showing how they're different than previous novels. Ace is the veteran time traveler, she's spent three years at war, and she's more ruthlessly pragmatic. Benny is older, has more emotional intelligence, both towards herself and others but is also a lot more naive. That's all laid out pretty neatly throughout this novel, and especially in their interactions together, and it feels like it could set up a really engaging dynamic between the two. But we're still very much stuck in the first stage of that relationship where they're sort of begrudgingly willing to work together. At the very least, Benny seems to trust Ace more than she has previously, which is something.

The final part of the novel, "The TARDIS" sees our heroes and a handful of allied characters enter, appropriately, the now reconstituted TARDIS. You'll forget that it's anyone besides, Benny, Ace and Jared Khan in there pretty quickly though…so let's finally talk about Jared Khan. The leader of the New Dawn was apparently contacted by Queen Ch'tizz in the 13th Century. She granted him a longer life in exchange for his service to her, where he got around to setting up the New Dawn. But what he really wants is the TARDIS. How he learned about the TARDIS I'm not entirely sure (I may have missed something) but the point is he wants it, and he wants to merge himself with the mind of the TARDIS. Why he wants this…again not entirely sure, and this time I don't even think I missed anything. As an antagonist, Khan is a formidable presence, but a bit of a mystery. We never really get much of a sense of how his mind works, or why he wants the things he wants. It all feels a bit empty as a main villain.

What we do get is more Benny focus, as she's the one who heads into the TARDIS' mind to fight Khan on the mental plane. We get the kind of imagery you'd probably expect in this case, lots of surreal imagery and changing landscapes. There's a wolf that's also a sheep that might be the TARDIS and several depictions of Khan. Benny is way outmatched in this, but it's still good insight into how she thinks. And while she fails, she does get some clues for how to win. Which, admittedly, she misinterprets as needing to blow up the TARDIS.

But Ace works out that the TARDIS itself has other plans. Which, it's worth saying, this is the most personified the TARDIS had ever been to this point, regardless of medium. Here the TARDIS is given a personality to reflect the 7th Doctor, a manipulator of events. In this case, that's setting Khan up for his defeat, but it's implied that the TARDIS has done this sort of thing before. I don't know if I love this idea. The TARDIS having a direct effect on events beyond itself feels off somehow. I also wish that Benny were more directly involved in resolving events. After all, this novel really focuses on her to a significant extent, it would be nice if she actually got to pull off the win.

Frankly, the way this novel resolves things just feels rather abrupt. And then the Doctor shows up to have a conversation with Muldwych and that feels really out of place given how he's not been involved in the action to this point. Sure he was manipulating things behind the scenes, but for a companion-focused novel, the ending sort of abruptly shifts over to the Doctor and I just didn't take to that.

Which is a shame. I love that this novel gave Benny so much to do, and really committed to making her a standout companion in her own right. Birthright did a lot of work towards resolving one of my outstanding issues with the VNAs at this point: that the three members of the TARDIS team have sort of started to feel like they're too similar. And while Ace's sections of the novel weren't great, Ace herself at least had a decent showing. But I found the actual story pretty dull. While Jared Khan was an intriguing villain at first he lost me by the end of the novel, I've got no idea what to do with Muldwych and the Charrl were…fairly generic honestly. A novel with some elements to recommend itself, but not a good one overall, sad to say.

Score: 4/10

Stray Observations

• Good cover this time around. Not entirely sure about the particular shade of yellow that's being used for the sky, but the Charrl is suitably ominous (and it helps that we don't have any human faces on the cover, since that's where these covers always struggle the most). The image of the TARDIS sinking into the beach is both really well-drawn and an intriguing visual. I even really like how the castle in the background seems to be fading away into the mist. Easily the best cover since Witch Mark, maybe the best VNA cover so far.
• The Doctor gives Benny a TARDIS key, but apparently has never given Ace one. Okay, I just straight up don't buy that Ace never got a TARDIS key.
• Benny's landlady Margaret is Victoria Waterfield's aunt, with the Doctor having visited with Victoria at one point. That means it was the 2nd Doctor who visited Margaret, further confirmed thanks to a reference to her studying graphology, which was what Victoria was supposedly doing while the 2nd Doctor and Jamie participated in the events of The Two Doctors.
• Victoria apparently sold off her father's estate during that time so that the Doctor could have a "permanent base of operations" in the Victorian era.
• Apparently Benny was already familiar with Victoria's story.
• The Doctor set Benny up as one of five co-signatories to a bank account that he owns. The other four were, apparently, Victoria (naturally), Susan, Sarah Jane and Mel.
• Benny holds on to all of the stamps on postage she receives, figuring that if she ever gets back to her own time she'd be able to make a lot of money off the stamps at auction.
• One of the interludes features Queen Elizabeth I, who has apparently met the Doctor, and given how she talks, maybe even had a romantic relationship of some kind with him. Given what the Revival era would do in "The Shakespeare Code" and "The Day of the Doctor" it's tempting to say that the one influenced the other, but I'm almost sure it's a coincidence.
• Benny suspects that Jared Khan might be the Master, who, while she's never met him, she's heard of. She says that Khan doesn't look anything like the Master but he "could have disguised himself", using that language to avoid explaining regeneration to Popov. Except, weirdly enough, she's not taking into account that the Master could have legitimately disguised himself, since he's so fond of disguises. Of course, Khan isn't the Master.
• That being said, I think this is the first reference to the Master in the VNAs.
• When Isk, the friendly Charrl, tells Ace about the plan to incubate human beings with Charrl eggs, Ace is reminded of stories the Doctor told her about the Wirrn.
• When considering whether or not she could survive time travel without a capsule, Ace considers that Lady Peinforte and Richard Maynarde did so in Silver Nemesis, and of course that she herself did so to get to Iceworld. Of course, as she realizes, those events were manipulated by Fenric.

Next Time: The Shalka Doctor returns! Well, sort of…

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Character Information

• Actors: Karen Gillan (Amy), Arthur Darvill (Rory)
• Actors (younger versions): Caitlin Blackwood (Amelia), Ezekiel Wigglesworth (Rory)
• Tenure: S05E01-S07E05 (Amy: 33 total episodes, 28 total stories; Rory: 27 total episodes, 23 total stories)
• Doctor: 11th (Matt Smith)
• Other Notable Characters: Winston Churchill (Ian McNiece, S05-06), River Song (Alex Kingston), Craig (James Corden, S05-06), Sophie (Daisy Haggard, S05-06), Dorium Maldovar (Simon Fisher-Becker, S05-06), Madame Kovarian (Frances Barber S06), Dorium Maldovar (Simon Fisher-Beckett, S06), Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh, S06), Jenny (Catrin Stewart, S06), Strax (Dan Starkey, S06), Mels (Maya Glace-Green & Nina Toussaint-White, S06), Madge (Claire Skinner, 2011 Christmas Special)

Retrospective

This is the third time I've chosen to write a companion retrospective on two companions rather than one. It's been a long time, as the last two times I did this were for companions from the black and white era – specifically Barbara and Ian and Ben and Polly. And while there were hints of romantic attachment in both of those pairings my reasoning at the time was a bit more…practical. These were characters whose tenures exactly overlapped (minus a handful of episodes where an actor was away on vacation during filming). The logic is simple: if two characters share all of their episodes together, that naturally means that they're going to be more interconnected than other characters.

Which, even though Amy appears in a handful of episodes without Rory, is sort of the point here. You can't really talk about Rory without spending a lot of time talking about Amy. But it's nearly as much the case that you can't really talk about Amy without spending a lot of time on Rory. The characters are so linked that you have to cover them together. I could have split this apart into two retrospectives…but it ultimately would have been two posts covering all of the same ground from a slightly different perspective.

Granted you'd be forgiven for believing that that wasn't going to be the case at first. In "The Eleventh Hour" what we're presented with feels like it's pretty similar to prior Revival-era companions. Amy is set up as the primary companion. She's the one who meets the Doctor as a child, she's the one who spends the most time with the Doctor in that episode, she's the one who really strongly feels the call to adventure and ultimately she's the one who leaves to go traveling with the Doctor. Rory feels like he's being set up as a member of Amy's extended cast. The obvious comparison is to Rose's boyfriend Mickey. A character with an established romantic relationship with the companion who's liable to lose that relationship to the Doctor.

Except "The Eleventh Hour" does somewhat tip its hand that that's not exactly going to be the scenario going forwards. For one thing, ending the episode on a shot of Amy's wedding dress suggests that this relationship is deeper than what we see for most of the episode; it doesn't hurt that there's a two year time gap between the climax of that episode and the ending, meaning that their relationship has had time to develop. Also, Rory's a much more active participant in events than Mickey was in "Rose", even truly getting into the spirit of things a couple of times in the episode. Still, given that Amy gets most of the focus in "Eleventh Hour", and leaves to go traveling with the Doctor, it's not hard to dismiss all of that.

Amy as first presented to the audience is a damaged character. She met the Doctor when she was seven and that moment had a profound impact on her life. This impossible scenario played out that she just knew was real. The consequence was a life being grown being told she was delusional. On top of that Amy developed serious abandonment issues due to a combination of the Doctor leaving her and the crack in her wall eating up her parents. What's telling is that this left Amy with no avenue to express her abandonment issues. Nobody but her – and, I suppose, Mels – believed that the Doctor was real. And nobody, including Amy, could remember that Amy's parents ever existed.

A lot of Amy's behavior makes sense through that lens. The fact that she has trouble forming a stable relationship, even with Rory who she genuinely loves, comes down to a kind of self-sabotage that is common among those who expect to be let down by those around them. You can also look at Amy's sharp temper as coming from a place of genuine hurt. And at the same time, Amy hasn't really grown up when we first meet her. She's still got the childish sense of wonder…and a childish inability to deal with responsibility. In retrospect Amy saying to the Doctor "I grew up" and the Doctor replying "Don't worry. I'll soon fix that" takes on a bit of a darker edge.

So Amy runs away from her responsibility, and the people she loves. Let's talk for about who she's running away from. Rory in his first handful of episodes is defined by a lack of confidence. I do think there's something to be talked about with him being, specifically, a nurse. While it's tempting to assume that it's there for that "ha, ha, male nurse" jokes, the show never makes that joke, even in an era where that kind of low hanging fruit joke was all too common. I think Rory is a nurse for two reasons. The first is that I kind of suspect he's based on another character who was also a nurse (which I'll get to). But I do think that if Rory were a doctor, or a medical student training to be a doctor like Martha was, it would imply a level of confidence that the character doesn't have. I should say this is not to make any conclusions about any real life nurses here, but in the fictional world, making a character a nurse (and yes, especially a man) creates certain associations in the mind of the viewer.

Oh, what was that about Rory being based on another character? This is a crackpot theory that I have no evidence for and yet I firmly believe because…something is wrong with me I guess? Point is, I'm never going to have another chance to share this so, I might as well do it here. I am convinced, beyond any reason, that the trio of the 11th Doctor, Amy and Rory were at bare minimum inspired by the 7th Doctor's main TARDIS team for much of Big Finish's Main Range. I'm talking about the trio of the 7th Doctor, Ace and Hex, first put together with the introduction of Hex in 2004's June release for that range, The Harvest. The 7th and 11th Doctors are both outwardly goofy figures who are actually quite devious and manipulative. Ace and Amy both had troubled youths and grew up to become people with hot tempers and occasional violent tendencies who nevertheless had good hearts and who trusted their Doctors completely. And Hex and Rory…are both nurses. Okay no, there's actually more. Both are the most clearly moral members of their TARDIS teams, both start out with a certain lack of confidence and both are more likely to challenge their Doctor than the other companion. Hex even had a crush on Ace at the beginning of their time together. Now that crush was always unrequited and eventually went away and was replaced by a brother/sister relationship. However that development still represents a movement from a relationship that initially feels very one-sided to a relationship that was more balanced – like what happened with Amy and Rory. Look, as stated above, I can't prove any of this. As far as I can tell I'm the only person who has ever suggested this. But…well…there you go.

Whether or not the above paragraph means anything, the larger point is that you have a group dynamic that, whether intentionally or not, mirrors one that has succeeded in the past. The big deviation from the Big Finish example here is that Steven Moffat chose to lean more heavily into romance as a storytelling device, both to form a love triangle in the early days and then progressively more and more to create a different form of drama using the emotional attachments in the later days. Otherwise however, you have a trio that just inherently works together very well. When Rory joins the TARDIS for the first time in "The Vampires of Venice" it feels like a missing piece has been fit into place. Rory's willingness to challenge the Doctor and, in a larger sense, to act from a more grounded perspective, helps round out a TARDIS team that otherwise might feel a bit too high energy. It also establishes that Rory is not going to become a forgotten third wheel, that he is going to be important to Amy's story.

Of course that phrase "Amy's story" kind of hints at an imbalance in the storytelling. Amy gets a lot more focus than Rory does throughout their time. She's the pivot point of this TARDIS team. The Doctor was her imaginary friend, then her real friend. Rory is her fiancé, then her husband. There's nothing wrong with this…but then you combine that with the fact that whereas Russell T Davies was always more interested in telling the story of his companions as opposed to his Doctors, for Steven Moffat it's reversed. The end result being that Rory's character does often get left by the wayside. He's the fiancé/husband of the best friend of the main character. And nobody ever seemed all that interested in exploring his character much further than that. While I'd still argue that it's impossible to talk about Amy without talking about Rory, it is still the case that the reverse is even more true. We know precious little about Rory that doesn't have to do with his relationship with Amy.

This only exacerbates the fact that the Amy/Rory dynamic isn't always the healthiest. If you want to make a case that Amy was abusive towards Rory, there's ample evidence for that perspective. Sometimes I do think it gets overstated – a lot of those moments feel more like banter made in good fun between two people who know each other well. But there are a handful of moments that feel more…serious. For whatever reason I really noticed it cropping up in "The God Complex" a lot. There's no real reason for it to be the focus of that episode in particular. It just sort of stands out. Again, mostly it feels more like banter than something to be taken seriously. Mostly.

And I suppose there's no better place than this than to talk about the ending of "Flesh and Stone". I've talked about this endlessly…but that's not going to stop me talking about it again here. Put simply, Amy attempts to sexually assault the Doctor. In fact I'll go a step further: the way the scene is presented, the fact that the Doctor is not only failing to give active consent but actively refusing her advances and Amy's clear intentions in this scene…this is attempted rape. And well…what do you even say beyond that?

Well, first of all I find it frustrating that this moment is typically talked about in terms of Amy wanting to cheat on Rory. Because while, yes, that is technically accurate, it sort of misses the point, doesn't it? Cheating on your partner is very bad, obviously. But it is, ultimately, a forgivable thing, that people work through and salvage relationships from all the time. And as I said up above, Amy is exactly the sort of person who would self-sabotage in this way. Now the process of forgiveness is going to mean different things to different people and is ultimately dependent on the nature of the relationship involved. But forgiveness after rape or sexual assault is a much harder proposition. Which is why framing this as primarily Amy wronging Rory rather than the Doctor bugs me.

But the truth is that this moment receives very little attention. Most people like to pretend that it never happened. And if I'm being honest, so do I. But, if we're going to do an honest analysis of Amy as a character, this is something she did. Something she did to the Doctor and, yes, to a lesser extent, something she did to Rory. And it's something that the show seems entirely unaware of. Even if you want to limit it to just Amy cheating on Rory, which you really shouldn't, "Vampires of Venice" doesn't really grapple with that. The Doctor meanwhile seems entirely unconcerned with Amy ignoring his consent. He'll continue to speak of Amy as a largely good person, hell in "Amy's Choice", just two episodes after the event he'll insist that she (along with Rory) has little to no darkness in her. The gravity of the moment feels entirely unremarked upon. Perhaps that's why it's so easy to ignore it when talking about Amy. There's a tiny bit of conversation about it in "Vampires"…and then nothing after that. Amy, while she remains sexually aggressive throughout her tenure, never does anything like this again. She never even tries to cheat on Rory again, a couple joke notwithstanding.

But this moment just sticks with me. I can't let it go, can't pretend that it didn't happen. What does Amy just kind of ignoring the concept of consent say about her? How do I integrate it with a character that I otherwise like? I don't have good answers to these questions, which is probably why I can't just ignore it and move on. But, I kind of have to. At the end of the day, even with Amy's worst moments taken into account, this is still a moment that feels out of character. Maybe that's just wishful thinking, I don't know. But I'm going to need to move on because devoting a fifth paragraph to this point would just change what this post was even about.

I do think this gets to a larger point though. While I like both of them a fair bit, neither Amy nor Rory are among my absolute favorite companions. The 11th Doctor occupies a similar place for me. And yet, the trio of the 11th Doctor, Amy and Rory represent one of my favorite TARDIS teams. There's a lot to be said here for the chemistry of Matt Smith, Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, three people who are just uniquely suited to each other. I think you could cast these three in just about anything together and they'd find a way to make it work.

But also, the way these relationships progress makes for a genuinely fascinating experience. It's not perfect, it's very rough around the edges. The love triangle idea should have been killed after "Amy's Choice" an episode that seems to affirm unequivocally that Amy is devoted to Rory, and yet it keeps going well into Series 6. At the same time though "Amy's Choice" establishes so many important patterns for the relationship dynamics here. Amy being offered a choice between Rory and the Doctor and choosing Rory becomes a recurring pattern, one that eventually ends her time on the show. The Doctor putting his friends on a pedestal while thinking less of himself is an important pattern as well.

It's also the first of a somewhat informal trilogy of stories that each look at the relationships between these three characters through different lenses. "Amy's Choice" was built around knocking down the idea of the love triangle that had been built up. Next is "The Girl Who Waited". "Girl" does two things for Amy and Rory. The first is that it adds a past and some dimension to their relationship beyond that which we'd seen. Just little details of the pair growing up together and having a life before they went traveling. The other is that it acts as an effective tribute to their relationship. The third story in this trilogy is "The Power of Three". You could also add "The God Complex" to that list mind, and I will say that the Doctor breaking Amy's faith in him is a very important moment, that leads to Amy finally being able to interact with the Doctor as an adult, and the Doctor treating her like an adult, a pattern which continues through the rest of their time on the show. But "The Power of Three" might be my favorite story when it comes to the writing around Amy and Rory. Simply showing what their day to day lives are like, and crucially showing that they like those lives is important. At the same time, showing that the pull of the life in the TARDIS weighs heavily on them makes for an interesting dichotomy.

Of course all of this skips over something pretty crucial…Amy and Rory have a kid together. Melody Pond, Mels Zucker (that is apparently the last name she used while growing up in Leadworth) and finally, River Song. And…I've got to be honest, I've got very little to say about this aspect, because it gets so little examination. Amy and Rory not only have a child, they lose the opportunity to raise that child, and are forced to see that child as an adult, conditioned to kill their friend. And yes, they did sort of raise "Mels" thanks to time travel and it's charming…but that's still a traumatic experience no matter which way you slice it. And there's not really any fallout from that moment. The closest we get to that is the brutal mishandling of their subplot in "Asylum of the Daleks" in which the pair were apparently on the verge of divorce because our leading couple in this grand love story apparently can't do basic communication. And then…it just has no impact on them. Sure it's always fun to watch Amy and Rory talking to River, who is always either the same age (in "Let's Kill Hitler") or significantly older than them (in every other appearance) as a parent to a child, but it doesn't go much deeper than that. As much as River often feels like an important fourth member of this era's TARDIS team, the consequences of the reveal of her true parentage never really hit hard. So while it's an important plot element of this era, as a character note Amy and Rory's lost child doesn't really have an impact.

And there's another big element of this era that's missing from this retrospective so far. Rory dies…a lot. Over the course of writing these reviews I counted eleven times that Rory died or appeared to die. Now that's accounting for two apparent deaths in "The Curse of the Black Spot" and three in "The Angels Take Manhattan". Still, this is absurd. The most notable period is the run from "Amy's Choice" to "The Doctor's Wife" where Rory appeared to die in every episode that he was in except for The Christmas special he barely appears in. Before doing this review series I always thought of this element as something that had sort of been memed about a lot without giving it much more thought. But now having documented the scope of it…this requires some proper analysis.

Why does Rory keep dying so much? Well, it goes back to something I mentioned up above. Rory is, at the end of the day, a character in Amy's story. Sure he's a full-time companion and gets more credit than that…but he's still a character who's placed secondary to Amy. Making it look like Rory might die increases the drama for Amy. And the first couple of times it has weight. His death in "Amy's Choice" is what ultimately causes to Amy to make her titular choice. And then in the "Hungry Earth" two parter his death sets up the new status quo until the finale, as well as creating an interesting dynamic with Amy not remembering him…but not entirely forgetting him either. But after that, things get a bit silly. It starts feeling like Rory appearing to die gets used as a shortcut to creating emotional weight, with the irony being that the emotional weight gets lost the more it happens. Admittedly, after "The Doctor's Wife" it stops being quite so much of a pattern, and instead transforms into a self-aware joke. Still though, it was overused. And the jokes the show makes honestly didn't help in that regard.

Which is a shame, because in that stretch of time where Rory was constantly dying he made his most memorable decision. Returned to life as a Nestene duplicate, Rory's decides to guard over the box he and the Doctor have shoved Amy in for 2000 years. The length of time involved here…is so big it honestly makes the moment hard to connect with. While the show does try to suggest that Rory might be affected by his 2000 year vigil (that only sort of happened due to a timeline reset), it's just too big a length of time to really have meaning. And yet, the moment of decision itself, Rory's vigil and he reappearance as a security guard in "The Big Bang" all have enough weight that I can forgive this. 2000 years is longer than I would have probably had Rory wait, and it does set up an odd pattern of Steven Moffat kind of shoving out absurdly large numbers of years without thinking too much about them. But, this moment has the required weight because it shows Rory taking the initiative in a new way, and his status as the "Lone Centurion" will stick around on the show as a sort of part of himself he can call upon when its needed.

All that being said though, there is a pattern I've noticed. While Steven Moffat has written plenty of good material for Amy and Rory, I tend to think they're consistently written best by other writers. That trilogy of stories I referenced earlier, none of them were written by Moffat. They were instead written by Simon Nye, Tom MacRae and Chris Chibnall respectively. "The God Complex" was written by Toby Whithouse and Whithouse pulled at an interesting thread with Amy's faith in the Doctor, and also took time to point to Rory as a man without any particular faith. This wasn't even the first time Whithouse so successfully wrote this couple, as "Vampires of Venice" also did a really good job examining their relationship and the fragile state it was in at the time, as well as giving Rory a lot of his early good moments. Hell, Chris Chibnall was the one who created the character of Brian Williams (for "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" though he later appeared in "The Power of Three", also by Chibnall), who feels like he adds a lot of context to Rory. Writers who weren't Moffat were more likely to show off Rory's medical training as an important part of his character – on watching for review I noticed a lot of times Rory would in some way call upon his medical knowledge or instincts as a caregiver, but usually in non-Moffat written episodes.

I think the main reason this tends to be the cases is that Moffat, as a writer, tends a lot towards flowery language. Amy and Rory, as characters, actually tend to operate best when they're put in a more grounded context. Sure they can work in a more fantastical setting, Amy especially does really well with Series 5's fairytale stylings. But while Moffat tended to try to approach them as an epic love story, I think that undercut a lot of what made the characters work. Amy has this recurring problem of having trouble with the day to day of a real world relationship, in spite of her always being able to make the grand gestures of love. Rory is a very grounded character that can sometimes feel a bit at odds with the very heightened Moffat writing. I think it's no coincidence that a lot my favorite episode for these characters put them in very stripped down scenarios, or keep them closer to Earth. "Amy's Choice" splits time between a version of their married future and time spent on the TARDIS where our heroes can't really do anything but wait for the inevitable. "The Girl Who Waited" basically gives these characters nothing to do but talk through their relationship. "The Power of Three" is basically a slice of life story.

Part of why this more grounded tendency works so well for them is that Amy and Rory effectively become the Doctor's family. And sure this is eventually literally true: Amy and Rory are married, their daughter is River Song, thus the Doctor marries into the family by marrying River Song. But even before the marriage of the Doctor and River there was a sense of a familial bond with this trio. Maybe it's that, since Amy and Rory are married, there's already a sense of familial connections that the Doctor just natural fits into. Maybe it's that the Doctor becomes so invested in Amy and Rory's relationship that he kind of becomes part of the family they create by proxy. Maybe it's just that it always seems like the Doctor feels like he can't help but come back to them, and that Amy and Rory, in turn, can't help but allow him into their lives. Whatever the reason, these three were family long before it was official.

Of course, a family is more than just four people, and as such we really need to talk about Amy's parents. These are characters defined mostly by their absence throughout Series 5. They make a brief appearance at the end of "The Big Bang", where they come off as charming people who love their daughter, and then are never seen again. A huge part of Amy's abandonment issues, the thing that explains a lot of her behavior through Series 5, is defined by the absence of these characters. Which is what makes it feel wrong that they never appear again. I'm glad we got to meet Rory's dad, as it's one of the few few cases where Rory feels like he gets characterization that isn't directly attached to his wife. I just wish Amy's parents got at least an episode to show us what life is like now that they're back in it.

Now Amy and Rory's final episode, written as it was by Steven Moffat, definitely goes in for the heightened. In fairness, I've never hated how Moffat writes Amy and Rory. And as a conclusion to the grand epic love story version of Amy and Rory, "The Angels Take Manhattan" does an effective job. It helps that, while being a heightened scenario the ending returns to the repeated idea of Amy choosing Rory over the Doctor, and in doing so choosing an ordinary life over the extraordinary for the sake of Rory. It ties a neat bow on the characters. And the handling of Amy and Rory is certainly the best part of that episode, which is nice because it's probably the thing it most desperately had to get right.

On the whole, this is a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Amy can be a problematic character, in multiple senses of the word. Rory never gets enough focus for it to feel like he's really able to stand out on his own. And while this post isn't about them, the 11th Doctor and River Song have their own issues. And yet, these characters, when brought together, work so well for me. The family dynamic between them just works so well, and they all fit together so naturally. Amy and Rory were on Doctor Who for two and a half series, and I never got tired of them. And on a show that rotates through cast members so quickly, that is actually saying a lot.

Five Key Stories

5 key stories for both characters, listed in chronological order.

Amy's Choice: So unlike what I've done for these sorts of posts in the past, I've decided to combine Amy and Rory's lists together, since the two characters are so intertwined it would be impossible to create separate lists. While "The Eleventh Hour" and "Vampires of Venice" both do a lot of legwork in setting up Amy and Rory as characters, "Amy's Choice" is the first episode that really makes a statement as to how they will operate. It's the moment where we realize that Rory is not simply going to be the new Mickey, but that Amy will ultimately always come back to him.

The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang: The story that builds up to our companions getting married, the Pandorica two parter does a lot. Amy remembering Rory only for Rory to be taken over by his Auton self is a great scene, that Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill absolutely act the hell out of. Rory choosing to stay behind and guard the Pandorica shows his dedication, not to mention punching out the Doctor for daring to suggest that Amy isn't more important than the whole of creation. And Amy bringing back the Doctor at her wedding both demonstrates Amy's unique relationship to time and shows the determination of a woman who will absolutely have her way, one way or the other.

The Girl Who Waited: You know I think it says something that we've skipped over both the episode where Amy and Rory lose their child and the episode where they find her again, because sadly, those moments never had the impact that they should have. Arguably, neither does this episode, but it works so well as a tribute to Amy and Rory's relationship that it kind of needs to be included here anyway. Older Amy is Karen Gillan's greatest performance on Doctor Who, and that is a high bar to clear. Amy's monologue about the nature of love is one of the most beautiful things to ever be said on this weird show, and we get all of these nice little details about the early days of these two falling in love. Rory gets some great moments too, most memorably a couple of well-earned blow ups at the Doctor.

The God Complex: And immediately following that emotional rollercoaster we get yet another one. Rory not having a specific faith is an interesting note for his character, which matches up nicely with his more pragmatic tendencies. And of course Amy's faith was in the Doctor and of course he had to break her faith in him to fix the episode, but what's interesting in all of that is the quick renegotiation of Amy and the Doctor's relationship that happens afterwards. There's these odd moments of uncertainty followed by a genuinely great and heartfelt goodbye between the two.

The Power of Three: We get to see what Amy and Rory's married life looks like. And, after a year of it we learn, among other things, it's quite fulfilling. Considering the next episode is going to have them returning to that life permanently, and in the past, that's probably a good thing. There's some great character beats here, Amy being the first to admit that she's enjoying her "real life" says a lot about how much she's grown. And Rory, on his own, admitting that he's going to miss the excitement of his adventures with the Doctor says a lot about how much he's grown. I've said it before but it bears repeating. If the end of this episode had Amy and Rory deciding that they wanted to stop traveling with the Doctor, and it became their final appearance, I would have been more than satisfied. It's a mostly sedate episode, sure, but, at least as far as what it does in showing Amy and Rory's life, it's a great one.

Next Time: The last VNA had psychic squirrels, this one has psychic grasshoppers…I'm guessing the villains of the next one will be psychic geese.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 7, Episode 5
• Airdate: 29th September 2012
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: River Song, Amelia Pond (Caitlin Blackwood)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Nick Hurran
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

(…) so know that we lived well, and were happy. And above all else know that we will love you, always – Amy's afterword, written for the Doctor

I don't tend to worry too much about the rules of time travel in Doctor Who.

This is because Doctor Who isn't really a time travel show, not at its core. In Doctor Who, time travel is generally a plot device, used to justify a diverse range of settings, rather than the subject of the story. Even under Steven Moffat, who seems more interested in using time travel as a plot device than most Who writers, you'll typically get one or two stories per series at most that actually use time travel as a core part of their story. Even when the episodes do, like in "The Angels Take Manhattan", the mechanics are usually pretty loose.

But regardless, I always come away from this episode thinking something along the lines of this: "that was beautiful. I'm just not sure it made any sense".

"The Angels Take Manhattan" is the swan song for Amy and Rory. The entirety of Series 7 has, to this point, been building up to this moment. The only overarching story Series 7A has is the build towards the Ponds saying goodbye. It's about them slowly drifting away from the Doctor, only for that to be reversed in "The Power of Three". But the danger of traveling with the Doctor still remains. And so "Angels" takes one of the Doctor's worst fears, and makes it real. As we know he feared from the end of "The God Complex" he finds himself standing over Amy and Rory's grave.

Now, "Angels" kind of wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants the tragedy for the Doctor…but not for Amy and Rory. This is where our time travel logic comes in. The Angels have to not only send Amy and Rory back in time where they can live a happily married life, but the plot needs to justify in some way that the Doctor can never see them again. And the logic is…fuzzy. There's a lot of talk throughout this episode about how you can't rewrite the past once you've read it. A novel written by River turns out to be a straight retelling of the events of this episode (what the hell does a random reader in the Doctor Who universe even think of this thing) which is used to underline this. And so, when the Doctor reads the chapter title "Amelia's Last Farewell" that's supposed to make it clear that they never see each other again. And of course there's the afterword that Amy writes in said book. Running parallel to all of this is a lot of emphasis placed on the idea that the amount of time travel the Angels are causing in New York makes it impossible to land the TARDIS there. They did so once, but doing so again would have disastrous consequences. Where this kind of gets muddled is that River's vortex manipulator apparently can get through the temporal distortions (the analogy she uses is "a motorbike through traffic") but I suppose that's where the whole thing of the past being written in stone once it's written down comes into play.

And yet, it feels…convenient. The rules feel very ad hoc. The whole thing of the Angels making the TARDIS landing difficult at first and then later impossible doesn't have much precedent in Doctor Who. And the fact that Doctor Who's time travel rules have always been inconsistent isn't much helping here. Most of the time it's fine, but in a story that has so much weight to it, having the rules by which the story operates feel arbitrary just detracts from the whole experience.

So that's the bit that doesn't make sense. What was that about it being beautiful?

Well, there's a lot of aesthetic stuff that's really working for me here. The majority of "The Angels Take Manhattan" is set in 1938 New York, and takes on a film noire aesthetic. River takes on the guise of Melody Malone, a hardboiled detective and it's a look that really works for her. The angels bring with them, as always a whole host of visual and sound elements that really enhance the story. But when I refer to this episode as "beautiful" what I'm really thinking of is the character work.

Built as "Angels" is around the departure of Amy and Rory it also serves as a tribute to their relationship. Now there are better episodes that do this. But "Angels" does a good job at closing the book on this two and a half series love story we've been following. It's not perfect. Steven Moffat's writing can tend towards the overly dramatic or unnecessarily poetic, but otherwise he does write this relationship quite well. Rory spends a lot of time in serious jeopardy and Amy's reactions to these situation really cement how much she cares for her husband. Rory, for his part, often seems more concerned with Amy than with said jeopardy, although by the end that changes. There's a great moment where an older Rory dies in front of his younger self and Amy and just before that, he seemed relieved. As the Doctor realizes, it's because the older Rory hadn't seen Amy for decades. The horror of Rory realizing that that is currently set to be his fate represents really strong acting from Arthur Darvill.

In fact, Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan are phenomenal throughout this episode. The pair obviously knew this would be the grand finale for their characters, and as a result gave this episode their all. The Amy and Rory relationship often has the feel of a grand romance, somewhere between a fairytale and an epic poem. "Angels Take Manhattan" is playing into this feel a lot, and Darvill and Gillan's performances absolutely back this up. When Amy says that the thing that's going to allow our heroes to change Rory's destiny is that she "won't let them [the Angels] take him", you absolutely believe that Amy's determination is probably enough to change destiny. And when the pair stand atop a rooftop, preparing to jump off it in a desperate attempt to secure their futures, well, everything is making this feel like this grand climax. And I do mean everything. The performances, the writing, some truly gorgeous cinematography, it's all there.

The reason that jumping off a building is actually a valid solution to our problems has to do with what that building is. Winter Quay appears to be an ordinary hotel. What it actually is, is closer to the Angels' factory farm. At Winter Quay the angels keep victims trapped, repeatedly zapping them back in time but keeping them trapped, allowing them to feed off of the same individual multiple times. It's an awful thing to contemplate, and definitely feels like a unique idea that you could only do with this particular monster. I quite like it.

The thing is, the Angels were able to build Winter Quay due to all of the energy they gained from its victims (there's a sentence to make your head hurt). According to River and the Doctor, if one of their victims escaped, that paradox would poison their supply, thus not only killing the angels but destroying Winter Quay itself. Which is why Rory jumping off of the building is something he thinks might work out for him. If he dies by jumping off Winter Quay, on the same day he'd died as an old man, well that's a paradox, which should mean the building he jumped off of no longer existed and he'll be fine. Amy didn't have to jump. Except she kind of did. First of all because it's a grand gesture of love to Rory, something that Amy has repeatedly shown is her first instinct. But also Amy knows that Rory's solution is correct. But she refuses to lose him if this doesn't work out. "Together, or not at all", she says.

I should mention what's in the background of the shot where Amy and Rory jump off of Winter Quay. It's the Statue of Liberty which, apparently, the Angels took over. Look, there's a lot of stuff that "Angels Take Manhattan" does with the Angels which I quite like. Winter Quay itself, as mentioned above. This episode leans in a lot to the idea that the Angels can actually take over statues, which was sort of implied by the ending of "Blink". This particularly stands out with the "cherubs", Angels that combine the "creepy child" (or in this case baby) image with the classic cherub look. But The Statue of Liberty is a bridge too far. I don't doubt that the Angels could take over the Statue of Liberty. I just don't buy that that thing would ever move. There is never a moment where nobody is looking at the Statue of Liberty. It's a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the city literally known as "The City that Never Sleeps". Even if it could move…it wouldn't get very far. Don't get me wrong, the image of the Statue of Liberty with the Angel attack face menacing Winter Quay is quite visually striking. It would make for a great painting. But as a plot point within an episode of Doctor Who, it just doesn't make sense.

The point is, Rory's plan works. The angels are defeated and curiously our heroes have been returned to a graveyard in 2012. All seems well…until, Rory sees a grave with his name on it. And an angel, the last survivor of the paradox, touches him, sending him back into the past. What follows is the perfect capstone to Amy's whole character arc. There's been an underlying theme of Amy having to choose between Rory and the Doctor. Sometimes it's presented as a false choice, as in "Amy's Choice", sometimes its less of a choice and more of a decision made by the Doctor as in "The God Complex". But even in those instances there's this idea of Amy choosing that underlies a lot of her material. Which is why it makes perfect sense for Amy to leave her time on the TARDIS by choosing Rory over the Doctor one last time. And it might seem like this is Amy making yet another grand gesture of love. Which would feel inadequate. Because Amy's always been able to make the grand gestures. What she's struggled with is the day to day of a relationship. But we know that Amy's grown past those struggles. We saw her enjoying an ordinary life in "The Power of Three". And here, while this is a grand gesture, it is also choosing to live that ordinary life. And as her name is written on the same gravestone as his, with the phrase "loving wife" attached no less, we know that she lived up to that. For Amy, it's a great ending.

So much so that I kind of wish it had just ended there. Sure, Amy's afterword is emotional in its own sense but not only is it set up by the Doctor's weird practice of ripping out the last page of a book – hate endings all you want Doc, but that's just silly – but it's just kind of less satisfying for me. It might resolve material set up in "The Eleventh Hour" with young Amelia, but it's just not as emotionally effective. I guess I do like that Amy was sure to tell the Doctor he shouldn't be alone. But even then, River did that as well, and her exact words of "don't travel alone" work as a kind of ironic set up for the next episode. I don't dislike the afterword ending, it still works and is still emotionally affecting. But at the same time, I think the episode would be better off without it.

But then there's the other relationship in this episode, and things get a lot more frustrating here. Now I should say that River absolutely needed to be in this episode. As we're saying goodbye to Amy and Rory, we need their daughter to be part of things. Plus, the "full" TARDIS team of this era absolutely is Amy, Rory the Doctor and River, even if River doesn't appear in most episodes. Point being, River being here is the right call.

I'm just not entirely sure what Steven Moffat wanted to do with River in this episode. It feels like he knew she needed to be here, but wasn't sure what place she would actually have in proceedings. There's an idea of comparing and contrasting Rory and Amy's relationship with the Doctor and River's. In that sense, Rory and Amy are the stable, well-adjusted couple while River and the Doctor's relationship is a lot more messy right now. Of course, Rory and Amy have had to work pretty hard to get to that point, and the fact is, the Doctor and River just don't spend much time together, in spite of being married. So maybe the point is that while River and the Doctor love each other, they haven't been able to build a proper relationship.

It's a nice thought but in practice what we see is just a purely dysfunctional relationship. I've never been into this couple less than in "The Angels Take Manhattan". River spends a lot of this episode insisting that she has to present herself and invincible to the Doctor: "never let him see the damage". What's funny is that the Doctor never asks this of her. There's very little evidence that he doesn't want her to be emotionally vulnerable with him. And, you know, writing it like that, I think I've once again made this look way more compelling than it actually is. It just kind of plays out as less of a relationship and more of an infatuation from River's point of view, and the Doctor not being able to communicate with his wife. Honestly, in the process of writing this I think I've come around on the large-scale decisions made by Moffat for this episode, it's just the actual execution feels lacking.

I will at least say the final scene between River and the Doctor in the TARDIS works a lot better for me. River's able to give him good advice – the aforementioned insistence that he not travel alone – which shows that there is something meaningful underpinning this relationship. But she's still unwilling to travel with him full time. While the excuse she gives is "one psychopath per TARDIS" it really does feel like it ties back to the whole "never let him see the damage". River, due to the way she grew up, has difficulty being vulnerable, even with the person who knows her best. The tragedy of this relationship is that River and the Doctor are that person to each other, and yet they both struggle with emotional vulnerability (especially with the secretive 11th Doctor). I think in this quiet scene is a much better setting for this kind of character exploration than the rest of the episode. It helps that it's the most sincere scene between the two we've gotten perhaps ever.

Looking at this episode's handling of River and the Doctor the word I started with was "frustrating" and I think that's probably the best word for it. There's a lot of very compelling stuff underpinning the writing here, but the way it's deployed in most of the episode makes the relationship makes it feel more than a bit toxic.

Though I'll say, Matt Smith is acting his heart out through this episode. As the episode where the Doctor loses the family he's built for himself over the course of this incarnation, Smith has a lot to work with. The Doctor fights to get Rory back almost as hard as Amy at times here. To find the affection that the Doctor feels for Rory specifically you often have to read a bit between the lines, but it's not hard to do so here. Obviously though, the Doctor is still closest to Amy. When Amy chooses to get touched by the angel for her best chance at seeing Rory again, the Doctor pleads with her not to. Yes, as he says, there's no guarantee it will work, but you have to figure he's desperate not to lose his friend. The contrast with River, who realizes that Amy needs to do this, works quite well.

So, on the whole, I've been a bit negative. So let me be clear – I like "The Angels Take Manhattan". It's a mess though, which explains all the complaining. The time travel rules feel like they're being made up to justify the story and River and the Doctor relationship has a lot of issues. However, the emotional core of this episode is Amy and Rory's relationship, and their final adventure in the TARDIS, and in that sense, this episode succeeds brilliantly. The 1930s New York setting and film noir aesthetic only serve to enhance all of this – seriously, River feels right at home as a noir detective. And honestly, even the Doctor and River's relationship has its highlights. So quite a good episode, but a very messy one.

Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill wanted an ending for Amy and Rory that would feel irreversible. They didn't want the characters to return in the way RTD-era companions had tended to.
• Which isn't to say that they weren't sad to leave. Karen Gillan apparently refused to read the script for some time after receiving it, because it would make it feel real. She said she had "the most highly-charged read-through I've ever experienced".
• Originally, writer/showrunner Steven Moffat intended to use the Daleks for Amy and Rory's departure. Eventually he decided the Weeping Angels suited this better, and the Dalek episode became the series opener which was originally intended to feature the Angels.
• Part of the reason that Moffat shifted these two stories around was that the Daleks had already been a part of a story set in New York in the "Daleks in Manhattan" two parter.
• Earlier drafts would have featured more versions of Rory, as well as detective Sam Garner at Winter Quay. This was eventually simplified down to what we saw.
• The script originally featured Amy musing on the Doctor's more and more infrequent visits. However, after Moffat read the script for "The Power of Three", he decided this idea was better conveyed there, plus the ending of "Power of Three" implied that Amy and Rory were back to full-time companions.
• Apparently the idea that the Statue of Liberty could be a Weeping Angel was originally a fan one, suggested as far back as in the immediate aftermath of Blink.
• The cherub angels were inspired by photographs taken by director Nick Hurran while location scouting in New York. He was in Central park and found a statue of an angel surrounded by statues. Moffat found the cherubs particularly disturbing and so used them as inspiration for this new form of angel.
• Originally, Grayle would have been sent back to the Chinese foreman who the Doctor got to make the pot, with it being revealed that Grayle had been the one to make all of the artifacts he had collected earlier in life. Later it would have been revealed via a painting that he became a slave during the Renaissance. Ultimately this was dropped in editing. Shame honestly, there's definitely some interesting ideas there.
• Alex Kingston did not do any of the location filming in New York. All of her scenes were filmed in Cardiff.
• One last time, looking at the Series 7A title sequence. This time the first section is gray while the second section has gone teal-green, fully moving away from the red shades used in all previous iterations of this sequence. The logo is green and given texture details to suggest the Statue of Liberty. This is probably the best the Series 7A title sequences get at using the changes in colors of the time vortex to reflect the individual episode. It certainly feels less random than prior versions. Still, it's kind of visually dull, especially that first segment with its gray vortex.
• Apparently River wrote the narration "I was packing cleavage that could fell an ox at twenty feet". The rest of the line has a similar energy but that final line has the most "men writing women" energy of perhaps the entire Steven Moffat era, which is no mean feat.
• On the other hand, I do enjoy the Doctor accidentally fancying his own wife by reading a book that he doesn't know is about her. That's a fun bit.
• Amy is wearing reading glasses now. Apparently she has noticeable lines on her face too although I can't see them. What's funny is that this isn't even the last time Doctor Who will attempt to make it seem like a character looks older by just shoving glasses on her fact and calling it a day.
• I do think it's funny that, given her past experience with the Angels, the Doctor actually has to explain to Amy that the angels normally take you back in time, rather than the neck-snapping they did back in the "Time of Angels" two parter.
• The first scenes of Amy, Rory and the Doctor are set in 2012. Given that, by the reckoning of past episodes, especially "The Power of Three", Amy and Rory last left home in at least 2014, probably closer to 2019, this is actually some time in Amy and Rory's past, weirdly enough. It was of course 2012 when this episode aired.
• While we know he intended to do so, River makes comments that confirm that the Doctor's been systematically removing information about himself throughout the universe.
• An older version of Rory dies in his bed at Winter Quay. That makes nine times Rory has appeared to die.
• Later, Amy and Rory jump off of the roof of Winter Quay to create a paradox to destroy the angels. While Rory's plan was that, if he jumped off of the building, the building should never have existed, thus they would survive, that still absolutely counts. Which brings us up to ten times Rory has appeared to die.
• Finally, Rory is sent back in time by an angel, eventually dying of old age in the past. This death is permanent so that marks the eleventh and final time that Rory has appeared to die. The guy appeared in 21 stories, and while both this story and "The Curse of the Black Spot" contained multiple instances of Rory appearing to die, a deaths-to-stories ratio of over 1 to 2 is frankly stunning.
• Rory lived to the age of 82 while Amy lived to the age of 87. Given that they've always been implied to be the same age that does mean Amy ultimately lived 5 years past Rory, which must have been hard for her. Weirdly, the gravestone lacks any reference to the years they died.
• For the filming of the scene of the Doctor reading Amy's afterword, Karen Gillan insisted on reading said afterword aloud while Matt Smith was filming his scene reacting to it. Unfortunately it was also filmed on location in Central Park, and, perhaps because of Doctor Who's efforts in Series 6 to reach out to the US audience had proved successful, they attracted quite a crowd. The contents of the afterword were intended to be kept secret until the airing of the episode, so Matt Smith had to hold a page without the actual afterword on it, and Gillan had to whisper the afterword. Gillan also had to improvise about half the afterword due to these circumstances.

Next Time: Amy and Rory's were more than companions. They became the Doctor's family.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 7, Episode 4
• Airdate: 22nd September 2012
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: Brian Williams, Kate Stewart (Jemma Redgrave)
• Writer: Chris Chibnall
• Director: Douglas Mackinnon
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

Yes, I've got officers trained in beheading. Also ravens of death. – Kate Stewart

It fools me. Every. Single. Time.

Admittedly, I know the moment of disappointment is coming well in advance now. But whenever I watch "The Power Three" I find myself shocked by how good it is. Seriously, for about half the episode this story about the Doctor ending up staying with Amy and Rory and looking in on their normal lives is absolutely brilliant. "Power of Three" forms the final part of an accidental trilogy of stories about the relationships between the Doctor, Amy and Rory. And while "Amy's Choice" might be more important and "The Girl Who Waited" might dig a little deeper, I actually think "The Power of Three" does the best job at showing us how these characters work.

See the nature of Doctor Who means that we never really see much of ordinary life. But Amy and Rory are the first companions since the 3rd Doctor era to really have an "ordinary life". And even before "Power of Three", Amy and Rory's normal married life has gotten a lot more focus than anything in the 3rd Doctor era, when Doctor Who became a show about people's jobs, rather than their lives. And yet still, we just don't get to see much of Amy and Rory just being a married couple. There's a bit in this episode where the Doctor is shocked that Amy and Rory have actual jobs and don't just spend all of their time kissing (as always, the biggest Amy/Rory shipper, real or fictional, is the 11th Doctor). And that kind of sums up this marriage on the show to this point.

So to take that and flip it to where the big alien threat is kind of the B-Plot to just getting to see what Amy and Rory's lives are like for a year, especially a year where they (mostly) don't leave London is kind of brilliant. And this episode does an excellent job at following through on that premise. And convincing you that Amy and Rory might choose to give up the adventuring for their ordinary lives. There's of course a running theme under this whole episode that they do have to choose. There's the moment near the beginning of the episode, before the actual plot gets started, where they realize that they do have to choose. Later in the episode, Amy has a sincere conversation with the Doctor where she tells him that their two lives "pull at each other."

And throughout the episode, it feels like ordinary life is winning out over the adventures. The adventures are fun, sure, but Amy and Rory seem to be settling into a pattern they like. With the Doctor no longer pulling them away from ordinary life every few months (or however often he shows up, there's all sorts of timeline questions that Series 7A creates) Amy and Rory are actually able to get a sense of what an ordinary life might be like. Amy agrees to be a bridesmaid, months in advance, knowing that she'll be around for it. Rory takes on more responsibility at his nursing job, knowing he has the time. And then the two of them sit in bed, look at each other. And realize that they like it. It's actually Amy who first says that she likes this ordinary life, which feels very significant. After all, Amy's always been the one in this relationship who's felt the pull of adventure more. If Amelia Pond is saying she's having a good time with a fairly quiet life, that means a lot.

But the pull of adventure is important to this story. I'm going to have a lot of criticisms for this episode's adventure later on, so let me just say, I think it's important that it exists. I've seen it suggested that "Power of Three" would have been better served by there being no danger. That the mysterious cubes that appeared all over the world could have turned out to be a part of some sort of alien marketing campaign or the like. But I think it's important to the way that this episode works that after a year of mostly not getting into adventures, Amy and Rory get a chance to experience what it's like to live in the Doctor's world again. And like how it's significant that Amy was the one who admitted she was enjoying her ordinary life, it's equally significant that, at the climax of the episode, where our heroes have to run to an interdimensional portal hidden in a goods lift before the spaceship they're on explodes, Rory is the one who says "I'm going to miss this".

But as the episode ends, we learn that he won't have to. Rory's dad Brian has been hanging around in the background of this episode, largely not doing much of anything. He's been a gag character more than anything else, much like he was in "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship". And that's fine, Brian's a fun character. But at one point, after the Doctor took Amy and Rory away on a few trips for their wedding anniversary and Brian notices they've returned to their party wearing different clothes we do get a genuinely serious moment. Brian asks what happened to previous companions and gets an answer that is not especially encouraging. And sure, the Doctor insists he'll never let his family die, but how can he guarantee that? It's the sort of thing you'd think would lead Brian to plead with his son and daughter in law to leave the Doctor behind.

Instead, it's the exact opposite. Brian Williams, a sedate quiet man, the sort of person who finds joy in the small things, can still see the romanticism of traveling with the Doctor. This was apparently showrunner Steven Moffat's idea, as writer Chris Chibnall wanted to foreshadow the Ponds' tragic exit by having Brian warn his family against leaving. Moffat felt like said foreshadowing was best kept in more subtle ways, and I think it was the right call here. After so many instances of the show having parental figures warn against traveling with the Doctor, it's kind of nice to see a parent who sees the pull and, while clearly concerned, realizes that Amy and Rory "can't give [the Doctor] up". Plus, it's a really nice speech that Brian gives.

In many ways, it ties a neat bow on Amy and Rory's entire character arc. They could be happy with a quiet life. Hell, they were happy with a quiet life. But given the choice, they'll still choose adventure. Both of them. "Amy's Choice" and "The Girl Who Waited" were episodes about Amy and Rory's relationship to each other, with their relationships with the Doctor being secondary in those episodes. Here though, it's about all three, an episode that truly earns its title. Amy and Rory are presented, not as the ideal couple, but as a happy one. At no point in this episode does it feel like these people shouldn't be together. Amy has a really nice conversation with the Doctor, where she weighs traveling with him, with staying behind for her ordinary life. And while Rory's relationship to the Doctor is, as it has ever been, not explored as much as it could be, we still get moments that show that mutual respect that has existed for some time between the two.

Oh and I mustn't neglect the Doctor in all of this. While Amy and Rory's story is about choosing between their two lives, and making it hard, the Doctor's story is about trying to exist in his companions' lives for a bit. It's played as a joke at first. He struggles to sit still so he does an impossible number of tasks and activities…and still only manages to take up an hour of time. We've seen this dynamic before, back in "The Lodger" where we first learned that the 11th Doctor just could not exist in a quiet world. But there it felt different. Craig might be the Doctor's friend, but he's not family. Amy and Rory, for all intents and purposes, are the Doctor's family. His inability to just exist in their lives starts to take on a less positive quality over the course of the episode. He eventually refuses to stay around waiting for the plot to start, and leaves.

The breaking point feels like it comes at that anniversary party where he takes Amy and Rory out for a few trips as a present. Because things, inevitably, go poorly and while it's still somewhat played for laughs, it's noticeable that the end result of those trips is two quick scenes of our heroes all looking pretty unhappy. The Doctor's inability to deal with the lives of his friends might honestly damage their relationship. And so after the aforementioned heart to heart with Brian, the Doctor agrees to make a serious go of living in his friends' lives. And while you get the impression he's still a lot to live with (he apparently spends a lot of time playing Wii Tennis), the fact that he's finally able to make the effort, says a lot about how he feels about Amy and Rory. And it makes the Ponds' decision to go back to a full time life of adventure feel more meaningful at the end. Sure the Doctor is family, but now he's shown he can exist in their world. They're not choosing between their family and their lives. They're choosing the life of adventure because it's genuinely what they want.

You can see how this episode fools me into thinking it's going to be a standout of this era whenever I watch it. But you'll notice in all of this, I haven't mentioned the plot much. What sort of plot could even justify spending so much time in Amy and Rory's home life? Well, one day, a bunch of black cubes just sort of appear in the world. And they just kind of sit there. Doing nothing. It's a mystery, but one that takes a whole year to eventually unravel. UNIT show up, do a few tests on the cubes including rolling a tank over them and…nothing. So the Doctor, Amy, Rory and Brian just kind of spend a year watching the cubes waiting for them to do something. It's in many ways the perfect set up for telling the stories I've talked about so far.

And before I start criticizing the episode, I do have to mention Kate Stewart. Of the elements of the episode that are tied into the main plot, Kate is probably the most successful. Now Kate is a legacy character, and comes with a lot of the downsides of that. She can tend to feel like a tribute, even in her debut episode. To that end she also represents an idealized memory of the Brigadier. One of the things that made the Doctor and Brigadier's relationship as compelling as it was, was that there was a lot of friction between the two. In the way that the Brig is often talked about through Kate, especially in this episode, this tends to get forgotten. The quote "science leads", attributed to the Brig, doesn't feel very much like him. The Brigadier of course has a respect for science and scientists, but he would never have let scientists lead a military operation. Still, Jemma Redgrave is excellent in the role, and I believe her as this sort of science-forward leader of UNIT.

Which means of course that UNIT is back. In the 10th Doctor era, UNIT was presented as an organization that was very morally gray. Here however we see that UNIT has climbed out of this. It's unfortunately nothing all that compelling. Kate describes dragging UNIT "kicking and screaming" to the more scientific approach but beyond her wry comment that that description "made it sound like more fun than it actually was", we don't really get a sense of that. I kind of wish we'd met Kate earlier, when she was still in the process of doing the dragging, maybe even build an episode around that. But still the point is that while UNIT can still be overly militaristic – they're introduced in this episode by having a large force of soldiers invade Amy and Rory's home – the organization that was teetering in the 10th Doctor era has found its moral center again.

But fine, cubes are all over the place, our heroes have made contact with UNIT, this is all well and good. Unfortunately there's a pretty clear moment where this episode starts falling apart. You can feel it happen once the cubes start activating. The scene of the cubes activating is fun, and it's not like we don't get any good scenes from that point to the climax of the episode. But "Power of Three" loses its charm a bit once the action starts. The episode does try, as the cubes end up each doing different things, some of which are fairly humorous. But it's just not quite working as well.

And then we find out what the cubes are going to do. The Doctor theorizes that they've been gathering information on the human race for the past year, and have determined the best way of taking down the human race. And admittedly, I do think that what happens ends up making sense. After an entirely unnecessary countdown, the cubes each emit an electrical signal. That signal stops the heart. It's that simple. Even the Doctor, who was in the room with one of the cubes when the signal went off, has one of his hearts stopped. All over the world, people fall over from fatal heart incidents. So you can see the problem here right? No resolution to this plot is ever going to feel satisfying. You've just given a quarter of the world a fatal heart attack. And it only gets worse from there.

We learn that the cubes were sent by the Shakri, who the Doctor recognizes as being the villains from a Gallifreyan nursery rhyme. The Shakri act as pest controllers of the universe, preventing species from getting to advanced adhering to something called the "Tally". And…that's all the explanation we get. The Shakri don't actually appear in the episode, just their holographic computer interface. And then the Doctor reverses the heart attacks by using the cubes to trigger "mass defibrillation" because that's totally how that works. It really just comes down to him waving his sonic screwdriver in the vague direction of the Shakri spaceship computer.

According to all verifiable evidence what happened here is that over the course of writing "The Power of Three", Chris Chibnall put more and more focus on the Amy/Rory stuff and less on the plot. Specifically an earlier plan for defeating the Shakri that would have involved one of them actually being present rather than just a holographic interface and have had Amy and Rory actually taking him out by taking syringes off of a pair of fake orderlies working for the Shakri was dropped to include more scenes of Amy, Rory and the Doctor negotiating their lives. I still question how the cube plot would have been resolved in this instance, but it's plausible that with more time it could have made more sense. A simple case of a writer's focus shifting over the course of working on an episode, causing him to neglect the resolution of his plot in favor of the stuff that interested him more. And in fairness, that stuff is more interesting.

That's what my normal sources say happened. That would seem to be the story that's been passed along in interviews. But that's not what the rumors say what happened.

So very early on, a lot of people noticed a certain distain with how Steven Berkoff, who played the Shakri interface, would speak about Doctor Who and his time on the show in interviews. Most notably he didn't seem to like how long he was made to be in makeup for the part. That attitude was mirrored by the episode's director, Douglas Mackinnon, who, in spite of having worked with Berkoff before, in an interview with Starburst magazine (which I cannot link to due to Reddit seemingly having an issue with Starburst's website) seemed to desperately trying to find a diplomatic but honest way of describing Berkoff's time in the episode, saying "The experience of working with him on Doctor Who was something that'll never be repeated; you could ask anyone on the cast or crew and they'll agree that his participation was extraordinary." You can certainly infer a troubled production on the basis of that alone.

What's harder to determine is the exact nature of that troubled production. I've seen a lot of claims that Berkoff was extremely unprofessional. Berkoff, supposedly, "deliberately ruined takes (…) and had several temper tantrums". The problem is that, as far as I can tell, this has only ever been sourced back to IMDB's Trivia page for this episode. Maybe it's true, but I find it really hard to state any of this as fact considering that IMDB doesn't have a reputation for particularly rigorous fact checking of their community-edited trivia page. The only bit of concrete evidence I have is that Mackinnon interview, which would seem to imply some difficulty in working with Berkoff, and it's entirely possible that whoever wrote that bit for the IMDB trivia page has an actual source for their claims (though it seems unlikely that we'll ever know). And, genuinely, if someone does have a better source for these claims, please do let me know.

Regardless, while the production problems may have hurt the resolution to the main plot, I still maintain that any resolution to one third of the population of Earth having a fatal heart attack was going to be…difficult to swallow. Maybe another version of the episode does it better than having the Doctor just wave his screwdriver at a machine (I mean, it could hardly be worse). And I do think, whether or not it's true, the story of Chibnall wanting to focus more on Amy and Rory's domestic life kind of hints at the bigger issue. So much time and thought was clearly put into that aspect of the episode that the plot was kind of left by the wayside.

Which would be a great way to segue into the wrap up for the episode…except I feel the need to talk about various aesthetic elements of the episode. "The Power of Three" really suffers from musical issues that have been kind of percolating since the back half of Series 6, and I first mentioned when I reviewed "The Wedding of River Song". Put simply, this episode uses a lot of reused tracks that are not particularly well-stitched together, creating awkward shifts in the soundscape and making the production feel a bit amateurish. However some of the music created for the episode is actually quite good. And a lot of the visuals are quite strong. There's some very fun camera moves when the cubes first appear, the timestamps for the episode – necessary as it takes place over the course of a full year – are integrated in fun ways and some stunning visuals. It's also worth pointing out how in many ways this episode's presentation is in some ways a throwback to modern-day episodes of the RTD era, particularly in the way television clips are integrated into the storytelling.

On the whole, I do like "The Power of Three". Getting to see Amy and Rory's more domestic life feels like an important addition to making their characters feel more well-rounded, and is honestly done brilliantly. Brian Williams makes a welcome return – although I wish we got something from Amy's family, though they're presumably still up in Leadworth. As a look into that side of Amy's lives, this episode is brilliant. I can't fully discount that the plot is half-baked and ends in a very underwhelming manner. Sure it's just a vehicle for this look into Amy and Rory's lives, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be able to stand on its own at least a little, which it ultimately fails at. Which is a shame. I had the though while watching this for review that if this had been the Ponds' final episode, ending on them deciding to finish their travels with the Doctor completely and stick with their everyday lives, it would have actually worked a good deal better than you might think. Honestly, that's maybe an ending I would have preferred to what we got. But I just can't love this episode like I'd like to.

Score: 6/10

Stray Observations

• Completely unsurprisingly, the working title for this episode was "Cubed". Not only is that fairly obvious, but somehow that also preserves the way the final line of the episode would connect to the title. The title was actually chosen based on that line, though writer Chris Chibnall preferred "Cubed" for a while.
• With this episode, Chris Chibnall became the first writer who wasn't the showrunner to write multiple episodes for the same series of Revival-era Doctor Who, having previously written "Dinosuars on a Spaceship". The original idea was actually that Chibnall would write an episode in the second part of Series 7, but then an additional episode was added to the first part, because Steven Moffat wanted a chance to tell a story showing the Pond's life in more detail. Around that time Chibnall learned that his series Broadchurch was being commissioned by ITV, meaning that he wouldn't have the time to contribute to the 2013 portion of the Series.
• The premise of the story was inspired by the shipwreck of the Napoli off the coast of Devon, near where Chibnall lived. People apparently flocked to the site of the crash to pick up cargo, leading to Chibnall imagining a scenario where seemingly harmless debris would be revealed to be part of an alien plot.
• The introduction of Kate Stewart was also Chibnall's idea, as he loved the 3rd Doctor era and wanted to pay tribute to it with UNIT and the Brigadier's daughter.
• While I have no doubt that Kate Stewart was always intended to be a recurring character on Doctor Who, it can't have hurt that Matt Smith quite liked working with her. While Smith himself would only work with Redgrave one more time in his tenure on Doctor Who, the recommendation of the star of the show is never a bad thing.
• This was the final full episode that Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill filmed for Doctor Who. They would later film the Series 7 prequel shorts, entitled Pond Life and Gillan would also make a brief cameo in the 11th Doctor's final episode.
• The episode starts in July. Given that last episode the Ponds hadn't seen the Doctor in 10 months, and that they at least saw in at Christmas 2013 (assuming the final scene of "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe" took place in 2013, it could have been a later year), that means we must be in July 2014 at the earliest, and that assumes no other large gaps in time.
• This time around the first part of the title sequence is a pretty basic, if dark, blue while the second part is a bright, almost pinkish red which later turns a light purple. The logo itself has been designed to look like the cubes.
• Brian Cox makes a cameo appearance in this one being interviewed about the cubes. Cox is an astrophysicist and the sort of person that did a lot of media appearances, so I think he makes sense in this role.
• Amy apparently writes articles for a travel magazine. I kind of do like the running throughline under this era of the show that Amy has trouble settling on a single job but this one feels off. Amy is of course exceptionally well-traveled, but I do wonder how much of her experience actually translates to the sort of thing the reader of a travel magazine might find interesting or useful. Even her knowledge of Earth is somewhat tainted by the fact that a lot of the places she's visited are, for one, England, and for two, not necessarily in the right time. An article she'd write about, say, New York, is going to be somewhat hampered by the fact that she visited the place in 1969 (and didn't do much sightseeing). This is before we get to the fact that Amy has little experience of the practical needs of travel like finding accommodations, or transport. I do like the idea of Amy as a writer though, something which we'll be revisiting later.
• More timeline questions: Amy says that they've been with the Doctor for 10 years. Not on Earth or traveling, but that the combined time of both since Amy first went traveling with the Doctor. If it's, as I theorized up above, 2014, then that implies they've spent far more time with the Doctor. While that sort of lines up with Series 6 starting off not long after they got married, and then having that whole run of adventures with very little time at home, it still feels like it should be significantly more time on Earth. Something like 2016 at least.
• The TARDIS Wiki, for what it's worth, says that due mostly to the time elapsed in other stories, this has to be at least 2015, probably more like 2019. Of course the technology (phones, reference to a Wii) would suggest otherwise, but that feels forgivable. That also implies that in any stories set in the present day up until Series 11, the Ponds are actually out there, which feels weird.
• Matt Smith delivers a particularly venomous line read of the word "Twitter" at one point in this episode. While it does carry on the running gag of the 11th Doctor particularly having it out for modern-day technology (and Twitter in particular), apparently this line read what Matt Smith's own idea. Smith largely avoided being on Twitter.
• The Doctor takes Amy and Rory on a few trips for their wedding anniversary. The first of these involves taking them to the Savoy Hotel's opening in 1890. Unfortunately it would appear that the entire staff of the Savoy were Zygons. The Zygons were introduced in Terror of the Zygons but, as far as I can recall, haven't been referenced since. They for a very long time remained one of the most popular one-off adversaries of the Doctor, but wouldn't be so for long…
• Next, Amy accidentally marries Henry VIII, on, as Rory points out, their wedding anniversary. This is a purely innocent mistake (she wasn't paying attention at the time). While never stated on screen, the idea was that they had travelled there to pick up Rory's phone charger, which he left there by mistake as mentioned in "A Town Called Mercy". I actually think there's potential for a really good Doctor Who story about someone leaving a seemingly insignificant piece of technology in the past, and having to go back to retrieve it. I'm aware of at least one Big Finish story that touched on this, but that detail in Colditz was somewhat overshadowed by the Nazis.
• This trip apparently totaled 7 weeks.
• The cameos of the Apprentice were Chibnall's idea, having liked when Russell T Davies would use real television shows as part of exposition for modern day stories in his era.
• The Doctor claims to have invented the Yorkshire pudding.
• UNIT can send the Doctor messages on his psychic paper. That's…genuinely impressive.
• They've also set up shop at the Tower of London.
• Kate gives a little smile when the Doctor first references her father. This was Jemma Redgrave's own idea, basing the reaction on her feelings for her own father, Corin Redgrave also an actor. Like with Kate and her father, Jemma had followed her father's career path. Also like Kate, Jemma's father had passed recently, just a couple years prior (although given the timeline weirdness, the Brig may have been dead for as many as 8 years by this point, it's really hard to say).
• Amy restarts the Doctor's non-working heart with a defibrillator. You know, this is the second time that Amy has performed a very Hollywood medicine version of a procedure and has it work out just fine. Laughable? Absolutely, but the scene itself is delightful.

Next Time: The Ponds have gone back to traveling with the Doctor full time. Here's to their long and happy travels and the complete lack of crying over graves in the near future.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 7, Episode 3
• Airdate: 15th September 2012
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Writer: Toby Whithouse
• Director: Saul Metzstein
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

Everyone who isn't an American…drop your gun. – Isaac

Weirdly enough, "A Town Called Mercy" is actually the first episode of Doctor Who I ever watched.

Back in 2012 I was in college, and some friends of mine who were friends convinced me to watch the latest episode of Doctor Who with them. I was curious about the show I really only had the vaguest sense about, and so decided to give it ago. It being this particular episode was pure happenstance, I happened to have some free time when the episode was airing. Point being, this episode actually does hold a special place in my heart.

I didn't like it at the time though. What I remember was that I liked Matt Smith, but was otherwise not connecting with what was going on. But my friends seemed fairly lukewarm on the episode as well which was fairly reassuring and so sometime later (I think it may have been a little less than a year later actually, not sure why I waited as long as I did, probably just had other things on my mind) I started working my way through the Revival era on my own. As such when I first made it back around to "A Town Called Mercy" it was kind of a surreal experience. Oh yeah, I thought, the episode I saw with my friends. That's neat. What I'm getting at is, well first, I thought this was a neat personal story and second, this is a really bad episode to be your first Doctor Who episode. Do not show this episode to your friends if you're trying to get them into the show.

I don't know why my friends were so down on this one though, because, with context, this one is really good.

It's not perfect. Writer Toby Whithouse's last two episodes, "The Vampires of Venice" and "The God Complex" both really nailed the character dynamics involved, including for Amy and Rory. This time around however things feel a bit off. Amy feels a bit too idealized and a moment where Rory is more than willing to go along with the plan of offering up Kaher-Jex as a sacrifice for everyone's safety feels out of character. Still, even this complaint is muted. Whithouse does successfully follow up on his last episode's ending by having Amy approach the Doctor as something closer than a peer than as the idealized version of him she'd been treating him as before. And Rory gets a few moments of bravery that feel very in character, though really this episode doesn't give him much of anything to do.

Still what this episode really gets right, and simultaneously the reason why it's a bad introduction to Doctor Who is his handling of the Doctor and his relationship to Kahler-Jex. It's a relationship that really requires you to have an understanding of the whole Revival, more than even the 11th Doctor era specifically. If you've got that, then at least the confrontations between Jex and the Doctor will make sense. And as those confrontations form the emotional core of the episode, with Jex as a dark mirror of the Doctor, but not quite an evil counterpart, that's what's required to really make this episode work.

The episode starts off with a bit of a mystery: anachronistic electric lights in an Old West town called Mercy (oh hey, that's the title of the episode). After the Doctor nearly gets himself thrown out of town in a torrent of western clichés we meet the "Gunslinger", an alien cyborg who seems to have it out for an alien doctor…though not our alien Doctor. That doctor turns out to be Kahler-Jex. The Kahler, in addition to having the strange practice of making the first part of their names the name of their species are a species known for their ability to jury-rig advanced technology with limited resources. Jex claims to have crash-landed near the town of Mercy, and has been offering his assistance ever since. He saved the town from a bout of cholera, set up the electrics, all sounds like good stuff. We don't know why the Gunslinger wants him, but it doesn't matter. The Doctor offers to take the entire town of Mercy someplace safe in the TARDIS, along with Jex. Easy.

Except, of course, the Doctor gets curious, and checks out the spacecraft, realizes there's no crash damage, and then realizes that Kahler-Jex is less Good Samaritan and more Joseph Mengele. He created cyborg warriors to fight a terrible war. The experiments were brutal. Not all survived. Those that did were scarred for life, both physically and mentally. The cyborgs, under the complete control of the military, crushed the opposition. But one of the cyborgs, Kahler-Tek, broke free of his programming, and began hunting down his creators, becoming the gunslinger we see.

It's a clever way of working in an old west aesthetic into a science fiction story. There are parallels with the western genre you could maybe draw, but I'd argue that the "western" part of this sci-fi western is mostly aesthetic. You get a bunch of classic characters associated with the western: the old undertaker, a good-hearted lawman in the Marshal, and so on. The episode does culminate in a showdown in the town square at noon, although things go very differently from the normal western. But the plot doesn't really mirror westerns to any significant degree. Though the after-effects of war and what place old soldiers have is something that a fair few westerns have touched on.

That's fine though, because as mentioned up above the meat of the episode is centered around the confrontations between Jex and the Doctor. His first true confrontation features the Doctor as scary as he's been in the entire 11th Doctor era. Sure, you can look at some of his behavior in "A Good Man Goes to War", but there's something different about this episode. I think it's just the much more intimate setting. This episode really centers in on the morality of individuals. While there is talk throughout the episode of comparing the morality of peace and war, the larger systems at play, the systems that caused Jex to make the gunslinger and others like him are not really examined here. We know nothing of the governments that authorized the experiments, the economies, the war efforts, none of it. Instead the focus is on the two individuals involved.

A few interesting things happen in this confrontation. First of all we get a real divide in the TARDIS team. As I hinted at above, I'm dubious of Rory being okay with letting the Gunslinger kill Jex. Rory has pretty consistently had a strong belief in the preservation of life – it's a natural extension of him being a medical professional. And sure, he's shown a willingness to fight, even kill. But a cold-blooded murder, even if neither he nor the Doctor are directly doing the killing, even to someone like Jex, still strikes me as out of character. I think this could have been solved with a direct connection to Rory's medical background actually. Kahler-Jex performed unethical medical procedures on people without, one assumes, anything resembling informed consent. If Rory were so disgusted by that that he was willing to set aside his normal ethics, I might buy that. Instead, Rory's argument is simply that he's letting the Doctor save himself and Amy.

But it is still interesting to see Amy and Rory have such a strong moral disagreement, and one where Amy is meant to be right. Typically Rory is generally presented as being in the right in most moral disagreements with pretty much anybody, so it's novel seeing that inverted. And I like the Doctor's part of this a lot. Deciding that he's done with his code and will "honor the victims first" is probably the best way of portraying the Doctor going dark. Moreover, I do think Amy, who does tend towards an idealistic streak, makes sense as the one who's really pushing for the Doctor to protect Jex, and ultimately the one who successfully gets through to the Doctor, albeit with some accidental gun misfires. The big theme for the first three episode of Series 7 was, very intentionally, what happens when the Doctor doesn't have a regular companion. It's not unlike the post-Series 4 specials in that way, except that the regular companions are continually showing up to sort of bring the 11th Doctor back to baseline. Which Amy does here, in part by explicitly calling out said theme: "see, this is what happens when you travel alone for too long".

But the core of this episode is that presentation of Jex as a dark mirror to the Doctor. And what we know about the Doctor is that he has a lot to regret. The 11th Doctor in particular seems to have this core of self-loathing. And even though nobody's pointing a gun at him…Jex doesn't step back into safety. He instead seems to freeze for a second. And that's because Jex isn't as straightforwardly evil as we'd like to believe. And sure, he says as much, pointing to the good he's done for the town of Mercy, telling the Doctor that the fact he's both the man who did amoral medical procedures and good for the town "bewilders" the Doctor. But the Doctor kind of neatly parries this point away, arguing that Jex's "reformation" is his attempted penance. "You don't get to decide how and when your debt is paid".

No, the reason we know Jex isn't a simple villain is because he never seems comfortable in the role. He tries it. He gives a good attempt at a villain rant about how he did what was necessary. But it never feels genuine. There's a bit where the Doctor confronts him and he turns his face away from the Doctor. And we see that he is far from the confident villain he tried to portray himself as. So, when he's confronted by Kahler-Tek that first time, he doesn't step back into the safety of the town line because a part of him wants to die, feels he deserves it. And, to be clear, it's not that he's hoping to end his suffering, end the guilt he feels, stop being tortured by, as he admits later, the screams of his victims. His people believe in an afterlife where you have to carry the souls of everyone you've wronged up a mountain. As Jex puts it, "imagine the weight I will have to lift". And credit to Adrian Scarborough, given a very difficult acting assignment for pulling it off really well.

All of this is complicated and weird but I do think it's worth asking, is it earned? Or, more to the point, should it be? When introducing Kahler-Jex, my first comparison for him was Josef Mengele. Obviously, Jex is a more complicated figure that Menegele, but saying Jex is more moral than one of the most immoral men of the 20th Century isn't just damming him with faint praise, it's practically condemning him. Do I really want to go on record saying that this man is worth all of the effort that Amy, the Doctor, the town of Mercy, even Rory in the end, put into him? Well, consider this. The Doctor too has done some pretty monstrous things. And most obviously, this is the first Doctor Who episode in a very long time to meaningfully deal with the end of the Time War.

It's never said outright. I can't even prove that it was intentional. But that's what this parallel has to be about. Jex ends his attempted villain rant with the line "thank the gods my people weren't relying on you to save them." That's the moment that makes the Doctor lose his composure and force Jex out of town. Because it hits a little too close to home. The Doctor, like Jex, did something terrible to his own people. But unlike Jex, the Doctor didn't do it to save his own people, just the opposite. To end the Time War, to end the suffering that it caused, the Doctor killed everyone on Gallifrey, his own people. Ultimately, to paraphrase Jex a bit, the Doctor's people were relying on him to save them. And he failed. If the Kahler are right about the afterlife, imagine the weight the Doctor will have to lift.

All of this said…it still feels a bit odd to give Jex the kind a sympathy we allow for the Doctor. Some of that is because what Jex did is worse, no matter the number of people it hurt. But some that comes to the issue that we've always been a bit removed from what the Doctor did to end the Time War. We've been told a number of times, but we've never really had much time to talk about the innocent victims of the Doctor destroying Gallifrey. We don't spend much time on Jex's victims either, but when the Doctor is in Jex's ship we do hear their screams. It's not a lot, but it's enough to make what Jex did feel like it's very real, especially as compared to the very abstracted ending of the Time War, the natural comparison that this episode is asking us to make. I do think that the Jex/Doctor relationship does work overall though, even though it's a very complicated thing that Toby Whithouse is trying to do here.

Also, we've not mentioned an important character in the Doctor and Jex's relationship. Isaac, Marshal of Mercy, stands as the mediator of all of this. He sees Jex as the man who saved the town. He also presents this very idealized vision of America, the "land of second chances", which serves to explain why he doesn't care about Jex's past. And, whether you believe in said idealized vision of America doesn't actually matter to this episode because the point is, Isaac believes it and more to the point believes that it an ideal worth striving for. He's also played by Ben Browder who played Farscape lead John Chriton. Why am I mentioning this in the main review rather than consigning it to "Stray Observations" where it belongs? Because I love Farscape and think you should watch it. Go watch Farscape. Anyway, Ben Browder gives a really good performance here. He really feels at home in the Western setting.

Unfortunately Isaac dies midway through the episode, saving Jex in that scene where Jex can't bring himself to cross back into the safety of the town. With his dying words he makes the Doctor the new Marshal. He also does probably the best job in the episode at drawing the parallel between Jex and the Doctor with the line "You're both good men. You just forget it sometimes." It's such an interesting reversal of the way we hear the 11th Doctor talk about himself. The regular claims that he's not a good man (most obviously in "A Good Man Goes to War") become kind of convincing after a while. Isaac's evaluation of the Doctor – a good man who "forget[s] it sometimes" – actually lines up neatly with some of my own character analyses of the 11th Doctor as well as setting up some stuff for the 12th Doctor era…but I'm getting ahead of myself.

And in contrast to the Doctor's earlier desire to let Jex die and be done with him, he then has a confrontation with some of the local townsfolk. It's a scene that works mostly for the Doctor's dialogue, where he makes the best case for not simply throwing Jex to the Gunslinger: "violence doesn't end violence – it extends it". Dockery, who leads the mob in this instance, is also just a solid character in his own right, another member of a thoroughly solid secondary cast. He's young, just 18 years old, so too young to have fought in the war, and scared. You get the sense that he's trying to be strong and adult, trying to play the part of the man protecting his town. But really so much of what he's doing is driven by fear. And the Doctor ultimately saves him from becoming the next murderer in chain of events that created the Gunslinger.

Eventually the Doctor uses the markings on the faces of the Kahler (while never stated, they seem to be as effective at identifying a Kahler as a human fingerprint) to trick the Gunslinger and smuggle Kahler-Jex out of Mercy and back to his spaceship. And then Jex finds his morality. To this point he's been tortured by the memory of what he did, but never willing to take responsibility for it. Even him not returning to the safety of Mercy either feels more like freezing in the moment rather than genuine remorse. But here he finally finds his voice. Using the spaceship to talk to Kahler-Tek and finally ask about him ("now?" asks the Doctor, incredulous, "You're asking him this now?"). And then he blows up his spaceship. It's worth remembering that for Jex, death is not an escape, it inevitably leads to the consequences of his actions, to have to climb that mountain carrying all of those souls. And given the explicit parallels constantly made between Jex and the Doctor it begs the question: when will the Doctor have to face all of those he's wronged? Will he ever be ready?

Speaking of those that Jex wronged though, I've sort of set Kahler-Tek aside in all of this. His need to take revenge on the people ties into the larger point of this episode. When Jex created the Gunslingers, he and his government created people who can only be weapons. Kahler-Tek is seeking his violent revenge because that's the only thing he can see himself doing. He needs some form of justice, but as a creature of war, violence is the only justice he has access to. But his justice is targeted. While he's cutting off Mercy from any form of outside help (the only reason the Doctor and company are allowed in is because they're not giving Mercy an material help) he also doesn't want to hurt any of the townsfolk. Just pressure them into giving up Jex. Kahler-Tek repeatedly refuses to fire when there's a chance of hurting people who aren't Jex. Isaac only dies because he jumps in to prevent Jex's death. And yet what Tek is doing is still violent. He is still terrorizing the town, and ultimately, he gives up on waiting for the townsfolk to give up Jex and starts shooting up the place, putting the lives of the innocent at risk. While nobody dies in the attack, you can still see that idea of the cycle of violence in this. Ultimately, Kahler-Tek was made a creature of violence and seemingly cannot help but use violent means. Violence, extending violence. It's only the Doctor's non-violent plan that saves the town, and only Jex's decision to sacrifice himself that ends the cycle entirely.

But what's interesting is that while Tek intends to let himself die now that his mission is completed, he instead has a different ending. "Keeping the peace" might be a charitable way of describing American law enforcement, but the Marshals we've seen are the more idealistic Isaac and the Doctor himself. Tek being assigned the job of Marshal with the context of those two being the prior men to hold the job actually does complete this idea of ending the cycle of violence. Tek gets a job that, does technically involve violence, but only as a measure of last resort. Is it a perfect ending, thematically speaking? Maybe not, but it's not a bad one either.

Oh, but before we wrap up, you know I've got to talk about Susan the horse. Because…well, this is a weird one. So first things first, the Doctor can speak horse, much like how he can speak baby as seen in "Closing Time". Like with "Closing Time", I'm fairly non-plussed by this ability of the Doctor's. Does it really make sense that, say, a horse could form complex thoughts and sentences? Probably not, but I do have some time for the more fanciful side of this era of Doctor Who. That being said, that's not the main thing worth talking about with Susan. The thing with Susan is, I think, the horse is meant to be transgender. I'm also not sure that Susan is. See, while the horse is identified by the townsfolk as male (given by them the name "Joshua"), the Doctor insists that "he's called Susan. And he wants you to respect his life choices". Note the choice of pronouns.

Okay, and I cannot believe I'm devoting a second paragraph to what is, fundamentally, a brief joke, but seriously what's going on? Let's start here: I think this is all well-intentioned, even if the clear intent of introducing a transgender horse was somewhat botched. For one, it is definitely noticeable that this comes before any trans representation of any human being on the show, and even for something well-intentioned, that feels off. Second, it's entirely possible that Susan is some form of either gender-fluid or gender non-conforming (things I'm finding myself writing about a goddamn horse). Third, while well-intentioned, describing someone's gender identity as their "life choices" isn't ideal. Of course, if Susan just likes expressing a more feminine side of himself through his name while still retaining his masculinity, maybe that does fall under the umbrella of "life choices". Honestly I rather that explanation than the Doctor repeatedly misgendering a horse while telling someone else to respect said horse. Fourth…this is just such a weird thing to write about. Get me out of here.

Anyway, there's no transitional sentence that leads neatly into the wrap up for this episode, but that's all I've got on the very first Doctor Who episode I ever watched. I really like it, though it's far from perfect. It's playing around in some very morally complex territory, and I'm not always convinced that the morality works. That being said, the way it's presented is engaging enough and the character insight on the Doctor is worthwhile enough that I think the whole package works quite well.

Score: 8/10

Stray Observations

• The Western setting was showrunner Steven Moffat's idea, as he thought Matt Smith was one of the last people you'd expect to find in such a setting.
• Writer Toby Whithouse was advised by Moffat not to watch Doctor Who's other televised western, The Gunfighters as Moffat felt the serial wasn't very good, and certainly not worth emulating.
• At first Kahler-Tek would have been a robot, but Whithouse felt that the cyborg allowed for greater emotional depth.
• Early on Kahler-Tek would have had a haunting melody that accompanied his appearances. It would have been music played by Kahler-Jex while he was operating on his victims to drown out the screams, now played by Kahler-Tek.
• Kahlers-Tek and Jex would have originally been recent arrivals on Earth. Steven Moffat suggested that if they had been on Earth longer, it would give the townsfolk of Mercy more reason to defend Jex.
• Early on Rory would have been the one who wanted to turn Jex over to Kahler-Tek. Steven Moffat, still wanting to explore what happened when the Doctor traveled alone for an extended period of time, suggested that it be the Doctor instead.
• At one point the Gunslinger would have died early in the narrative, to focus in more on Jex as the primary villain. Later, Jex instead would have been killed by Isaac's father, and Kahler-Tek would have tried to pay the town back for denying him his revenge. However Steven Moffat felt that the script ran out of steam once Jex died, and instead suggested keeping both Kahlers alive for the climax of the episode. Isaac's father, meanwhile, was cut from the narrative entirely.
• The main inspiration for the look of Kahler-Tek/The Gunslinger was Frankenstein's monster. Toby Whithouse was very pleased with how the final product came out.
• To Kill a Mockingbird was also an inspiration for certain scenes, in particular the scene with a mob at the jailhouse.
• Alméria, in Spain was used for filming, providing the series-requisite out of the UK location filming. Though, as discussed previously, this led to some additional location filming in Spain for "Asylum of the Daleks".
• Ben Browder, who played Isaac, accepted the role because his children were Doctor Who fans and he wanted to do a Western.
• Browder got praise for his performance from both Matt Smith and writer Toby Whithouse. Smith also was very fond of Adrian Scarborough's performance as Kahler-Jex.
• Matt Smith got to try riding the horse, but ultimately most of the scenes of the Doctor on the horse were performed by a stuntman.
• For the first time in the Revival era, the visual effects were not credited to The Mill, the effects studio which had been responsible for most of the visual effects work to that point. While previous episodes did have other studios who worked on visual effects. The Mill had always received primary credit. Series 7 would actually be the last series that they worked on however.
• The first section of the title sequence has gone a very dark and washed out blue while the second part is now a pure red. I can sort of see the the western influence in using the washed out colors…I guess. Notably in the second part of the sequence you can't even really tell the TARDIS is blue against the bright colors.
• The logo is, naturally, given a wooden texture with some bullet holes in it. Because western.
• Apparently Rory once left his phone charger in Henry VIII's en-suite. Whoops.
• The Doctor intended to bring Amy and Rory to Mexico, but Rory got toast crumbs on the console…or possibly the Doctor just finds that a convenient excuse.

Next Time: Investigating a bunch of mysterious cubes, the Doctor ends up living with Amy and Rory for a year. I'm feeling sorry for the Ponds already.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 7, Episode 2
• Airdate: 8th September 2012
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: Brian Williams (Mark Williams)
• Writer: Chris Chibnall
• Director: Saul Metzstein
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

I've spent enough time with the Doctor to know whenever you enter somewhere new, press buttons. – Amy

It's called "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship". It delivers on that title.

What else do you need to know?

After a very serious opener in "Asylum of the Daleks", showrunner Steven Moffat felt that a more lighthearted episode was in order. Why exactly he turned to Chris Chibnall, whose writing career had to that point consisted largely of very serious material, we'll never know, but the point is, that was the brief. Write a lighthearted episode about dinosaurs on a spaceship. Have the spaceship be a Silurian one. That last point might be why Moffat turned to Chibnall, as he had previously written Series 5's Silurian two-parter. Chibnall, who did like the idea of showing the Silurians in a different context even if the episode wouldn't be focused on them, fulfilled his brief. He wrote a light-hearted episode about dinosaurs on a spaceship.

Again, I feel the need to ask, what else do you need to know?

This episode functions as a pretty solid Doctor Who comfort food story. It's not the best example of the "genre". For reasons I'll get into later this one is pretty flawed even for a "comfort food" story. Hell it's got an unusually dark ending for that kind of story. But it's still giving me what I want out of this kind of episode. At its best, "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" is just a fun time, and that's all I really want an episode with that title to deliver on.

At its worst though…let's talk about Nefertiti and Riddell. For this episode, Chris Chibnall decided that the Doctor would put together a gang that, in addition to the Ponds, would include a couple of characters from Earth's past. And eventually these became real Egyptian queen Nefertiti and fictional big game hunter John Riddell. And honestly, at times these two are fun. Riann Steele holds herself very regally as Nefertiti, but in a way that suits the comedic tone of her scenes, while Rupert Graves does quite well with the material he's given. Sure Riddell is a bit of a caricature – Amy at one point calls him a "walking innuendo" – but he's a big game hunter from 1902 in a largely comedic episode, the big attitude, even the overt misogyny, these things feel like they suit the idea of the character presented. The issue I take Riddell, more than anything else, is that he kind of lacks redeeming qualities, which considering he's a friend of the Doctor's definitely feels off. Riddell does come through for our heroes, but he just kind of does it while being a jackass.

But the real problems come when we get to Nefertiti. The episode opens with a scene of Nefertiti trying to…force…herself…on…the Doctor. It's like the only lesson we learned from how bad the ending of "Flesh and Stone" was is that sexual assault is only bad if it's also cheating (granted, "Nefy" is also married, but political marriages are pretty obviously different). Moving very quickly on from that, Nefertiti is just generally at the center of so many sexual jokes. Look, the 11th Doctor era is very often weirdly horny, but for whatever reason it sticks out a lot more to me in this episode in particular. There are probably episodes that are worse about it, but somehow it feels the most out of place here. Anyway, Nefertiti and Riddell end up together at the end of the episode (they'd been flirting for the entire run) which…sure. In spite of everything, I did enjoy these two, but I think it's more for the performances than the writing.

Okay, but what could cause the Doctor to decide to recruit a big game hunter and an Egyptian Pharaoh? Well, Nefertiti was just kind of hanging around from a previous adventure, but the big game hunter…honestly, I'm not sure exactly. The Doctor didn't know what was on the spaceship that was hurtling towards Earth and about to be blown up by an understandably concerned Indian Space Agency. But still it worked out because having a big game hunter feels appropriate when you're dealing with dinosaurs on a spaceship.

For the third time I ask, do you really need to know anything more?

To be fair, what follows is honestly a fairly clever set up. Pulling from the fact that Silurians have always been portrayed as living alongside dinosaurs (please ignore that they're still most commonly referred to as "Silurians"), "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" imagines that some of them upon seeing the same apparent doomsday that sent the majority of the Silurians below ground, built an ark (hey if humans repeatedly do it) and flew off in search of a new home. Unfortunately this lot have been boarded (some 10ish million years later…probably) by a pirate/trader type by the name of Solomon.

Solomon is, as you might expect, pretty loathsome. The character is presented as being obsessed with the value of anything above all else. Things, people, and, relevant for this episode, dinosaurs. Solomon wants to sell the dinosaurs, as they're otherwise extinct and therefore incredibly valuable. To put himself in the position to do so, he actually killed off the entire Silurian crew, one by one, by ejecting each of them into space. However when he realizes that the actual Queen Nefertiti is on board, he decides that she's more valuable, and, crucially, easier to transport. Yeah, there's absolutely nothing redeeming about this guy. Which leaves it so that there's very little to talk about with him.

But aside from that, what stands out most about this set up is its use of the Silurians. As mentioned above that was one of the things that Chibnall liked about the brief that Steven Moffat gave him for this episode, and it really does connect in practice. While there aren't any Silurians here other than a video recording from millions of years ago, it's still nice to have the Silurians presented in a context other than wanting the Earth back. It's the first time that's happened on television after all.

The other half of the set up is that aforementioned Indian Space Agency. The commander, Indira, explains that the spaceship is heading towards Earth, meaning that if it gets close enough, she's going have to have it shot down with missiles. Obviously this mostly exists to put some time pressure on the episode, though the detail of it being the Indian Space Agency felt at least unusual enough on this British show to be noteworthy.

The rest of the plot is…just a lot of running around the ship/away from dinosaurs to be honest. We get a lot of banter between our cast, some good some…less so (see above) but, again "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" isn't really trying to do much more than provide a fun time for most of its runtime. Solomon has a pair of very silly robots voiced by comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb that provide, we'll be generous and call it "threat". They're awful shots, at one point get called "tantrum machines" by the Doctor, and kind of adorable for all that. It's not that nothing is happening, but rather that the plot feels immaterial to the gags and such that are going on.

Now I haven't mentioned a few characters yet. Of course Amy and Rory are back, but this time they've brought along Rory's dad! Accidentally. Because he was helping them with home maintenance at the time. Brian Williams is a really fun character. He brings a bit of the same energy that Wilf did, albeit not nearly as well. But it's still that same idea of the fatherly older man, who is so impossibly British but in the most endearing way possible. He apparently doesn't care much for travel, which means he's naturally way out of his element on a spaceship with a bunch of dinosaurs. That's all fun, but it's also fun watching him gradually find his place in this mess. It's sort of reminiscent of how Rory was in his first few episodes on the show. Initially looking like he might be out of his depth, but showing a surprising aptitude for the life of an adventurer. After the episode he apparently ends up traveling a fair bit, including with the Doctor at least once, according to his postcard from "Siluria" (which I gather is meant to be the planet the Doctor eventually drops off all the dinosaurs at the end of the episode). But honestly the image that sticks with me of Brian is after the episode, him sitting with his legs hanging out of the TARDIS, having a cup of tea, with Amy and Rory smiling on.

Of course the big thing for Brian to do is connect a bit with his son. Actually it doesn't feel like there's a disconnect exactly. You get the sense that Brian and Rory have a pretty good relationship. But because Rory's had to keep his travels with the Doctor secret, there's still this whole side of Rory's life that Brian doesn't know about. Rory spends most of "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" looking after his dad and keeping him safe, even getting a shot at showing off his "awesome nursing skills" when Brian gets injured. The fact that both carry around tools (Brian carries a trowel wherever he goes for some reason, Rory collects nursing supplies) shows that the two are more similar than they might have appeared early. And of course at the climax of the episode the two fly the spaceship together (it requires two pilots of the same "gene chain" because reasons).

Amy meanwhile gets left in charge of Riddell and Nefertiti for most of the episode, even at one point referring to the pair as her "companions". She gets some fun banter playing off the two of them, always trying to impress Nefertiti, while she is annoyed by but does seem to develop a grudging respect for Riddell. Still her meatiest moments probably come with the Doctor. Her asking if Riddell and Nefertiti are her and Rory's replacements is definitely interesting. It shows that in spite of having officially left the life of adventurer behind her, she's still sort of got one foot out the door, an idea that Chibnall will explore again before this pair leave the TARDIS for good. Still at the end of the episode she's the one who tells the Doctor to take her and her husband straight back home, showing that she's committed to the ordinary life, in spite of everything.

And as for the Doctor…well mostly he's just having fun. I've mentioned in a previous review that this episode feels like it exists mostly to get Matt Smith to say the title with as much childish glee as he can muster, and that certainly feels like it's largely true. Again, what more do you really want from this episode? Still his interactions with Solomon do take on a slightly different tone. It's in these moments that Matt Smith plays to his strengths as the Doctor, calm yet forceful. He tends to Solomon's wounds in their first interaction, yet immediately clocks that something is off about this strange old man. And then, well, this episode certainly has a memorable climax. India has launched its missiles at the spaceship, but the Doctor has found the actual energy signature the missiles are targeting. So he takes said device and puts it on Solomon's ship, and then forces the ship to launch in space, Solomon pleading with the Doctor to stop the whole way through.

This ending actually went through a lot of revisions, including a point where Nefertiti would have sacrificed herself to save the Doctor and company – which Steven Moffat rejected for being to similar to other self-sacrifice moments in the series. It was also Moffat who suggested the ending we got, feeling that it was a chance to explore what the Doctor might become like without regular companions to moderate him, since Amy and Rory were no longer permanent companions, thus the somewhat darker ending for Solomon. It does come as a bit of a tonal whiplash in what was otherwise a pretty lighthearted episode. Solomon was, again, pretty clearly irredeemable, which somewhat lessens the blow. It's had to feel too bad for him dying considering all he'd done. But this is still the Doctor just killing someone. Does it feel too dark for the episode in question? Maybe a little. But the contrast between the lighthearted nature of most of this episode with its darker climax kind of works for it in a way.

On the whole, I enjoy a lot about "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship". Admittedly it's not the deepest episode, even if you take into account its ending. There's also some really questionable jokes, particularly to do with a couple of our guest characters. Still, Solomon is a despicable villain, Brian Williams is a fun addition, and most of all it delivers on pretty much what you'd hope for from an episode with its title.

What else do you need to know?

Score: 6/10

Stray Obsevations

• Okay, I've joked a lot about this episode existing purely for its title or words to that effect, but that's obviously an exaggeration. It's not like showrunner Steven Moffat has literally said that putting dinosaurs on a spaceship was "the secret of success" or…oh wait he has? Nevermind then.
• And continuing along the "not beating the allegations" train, this episode's title, and therefore conceit, was inspired by the movie Snakes on a Plane a movie that also quite clearly existed purely to justify its own title.
• It was Chibnall's idea to include Rory's father, as he knew that Rory would be leaving the show soon and he felt like it represented one of the last chances to get to know his family.
• Arthur Darvill was consulted on the casting of Rory's father.
• Ridell would have originally been a real historical figure: Charles "Buffalo" Jones, who helped save the American bison from extinction. However, Steven Moffat felt like the character would have been too similar to the cowboys from the next episode.
• At one point Ridell would have had a more fleshed out backstory, and the Doctor would have revealed he was fated to die the day after his return to the African plains. This was dropped over the course of the editing process.
• Nefertiti, meanwhile, was chosen because she did in fact disappear from the historical record with no specific record of her death.
• Creating the shots for Matt Smith riding the triceratops involved him wearing padded trousers. It was apparently a "painful couple of hours", though Smith still had some fun.
• Both Riddell and Solomon were imagined as being younger than the actors that ended up playing them. Riddell, meant to be in his 30s, was played by the 48 year old Rupert Graves, while Solomon, meant to be in his 50s was played by the 69 year old David Bradley.
• To date, Rory is the only person shown to have traveled in the TARDIS with both his child (River) and his parent (Brian).
• This was, unsurprisingly, a pretty effects-intensive episode, with several scenes having to be cut or reimagined to be sure that the production team had the time and budget for all the dinosaur scenes. It did help that they were able to reuse the raptor models from Primeval.
• The Doctor has his psychic paper set to "temporal newsfeed"…somehow. It makes a noise that sounds like a clown nose honking…again, somehow.
• When Indira is showing the Doctor and Nefertiti information on the spaceship (the things I end up writing for this review series) there's a holographic display with text on it. The text in question appears to be pure gibberish that keeps on being erased and then rewritten. This isn't a criticism of course, it's just kind of funny.
• Apparently Amy and Rory told their friends and family that they took their honeymoon in Thailand. Easier than saying "our friend has a time machine" I suppose.
• It's been 10 months since the last time Amy and Rory saw the Doctor.
• The first section of the opening title sequence has been colored blue, the second part is a more saturated orangish red, and the logo now has dinosaur scales on it. Okay part of the problem with the recolorings is just that they all ultimately look the same. The logo is neat though.
• No Silurian episode (or in this case Silurian-adjacent episode) would be complete without a discussion of Doctor Who mangling geological time scales. In this episode we see ankylosaurs (70-66 millions of years ago), velociraptors (75-71 mya), a triceratops (68-66 mya), and baby Tyrannosauruses (69-66 mya). While this is honestly better than I would have expected, with really only the velociraptors not hitting the 68-66 mya marker, you do still have to take into account that that puts the raptors a good 3 million years out of time to have coexisted with the rest of these creatures, and therefore, presumably, the Silurians, who are of course not from the Silurian era.
• Except, I lied. We've also got Pterodactyls in this thing. That's 150-148 mya, some 70 million years earlier than the rest of the animals seen here. Not only should the Silurians not have been living alongside these guys, they probably would have viewed them in a similar way that we view dinosaurs.
• And as always, a reminder that none of this actually matters.
• When Ridell and Nefertiti's argument quickly devolves into flirting, Amy complains "I will not have flirting companions". I'd say this is a bit hypocritical of her, given the whole "travels through time and space with her husband" of it all, but honestly for the most part Amy and Rory don't tend towards being so coy as to flirt. It's more like heartfelt pronouncements of love with the two.
• The Doctor makes a crack about being a "Sagittarius…probably". Weirdly enough, if you take the Doctor's "birthday" as being the day that Doctor Who debuted, then November 23rd would in fact make him a Sagittarius.
• The Doctor kisses Rory, full on the lips. This was actually improvised for the shot. Arthur Darvill's reaction is genuine.
• The Doctor implies that there are multiple species who live on the moon. Given what we'll find out next series…
• Amy quit her job. And one before it, which is probably the modeling job she's had since at least "Closing Time".
• Great "Next Time" trailer…apart from ending on a pretty odd choice of line.

Next Time: The Doctor takes Amy and Rory to the Old West. Do I even have to say that there's an alien cyborg cowboy running loose or do we just take it as read?

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 7, Episode 1
• Airdate: 1st September 2012
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Character: Oswin Oswald (Jenna Coleman)*
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Nick Hurran
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

* Credited as Jenna-Louise Coleman

Review

Don't be fair to the Daleks when they're firing me at a planet! – The Doctor

Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do with this one?

Series 7 is kind of an odd beast to begin with. What with Showrunner Steven Moffat's attention divided between Doctor Who and his other big popular project at the time, Sherlock, Series 7 was split into two parts. Since each part had different opening title sequences, companions, and airing in different years, there's a definite case that these are, in fact, two different series but officially it's all the same series. The driving creative concept behind the first part was that each episode would have the feel of a short Hollywood blockbuster – "Asylum of the Daleks", for instance, was partially inspired by Die Hard. And that's all well and good. There are critiques to be made of "Asylum of the Daleks'" main plot but it's also in many ways Steven Moffat leaning in to his strengths as a writer. This one has a twist ending that genuinely works so well. And that's all well and good but…

The temptation with "Asylum" is to try to ignore the stuff going on with Amy and Rory. Just leave it over to one side and focus on the plot. But it's just too tied in. Amy and Rory's arc in this episode is integrated into every scene featuring one or the other of them, which is to say, all but a tiny number of scenes. There's even some thematic resonance. What I'm getting at is that Amy and Rory's near-divorce is at the center of "Asylum of the Daleks", as much as the Daleks or the mysterious Oswin Oswald.

So how did we get here? How did we reach the point where a relationship that this show has spent so much time and energy convincing its audience is this grand epic love is on the verge of falling apart? Well, trite as it may sound to say, I kind of feel like the original answer here was, "because we can". To be more specific, from the moment that Amy and Rory got married, Steven Moffat was trying to find ways to tell stories that were unique to having a married couple as companions. And a near-divorce certainly fits that idea.

But, to be fair, I do think there's a valid angle here. Amy and Rory lost a child. Sure, technically, they know what happened to Melody, she became River. But in a practical sense, they lost the chance to become parents to their child. That's something that puts a lot of strain on a relationship. In the real world, that's the sort of thing that often does lead to divorce. We'll get into the specifics of how this is handled in "Asylum" but the point is, there is something about this event that could, theoretically, be used to push this couple apart. And even beyond that, we've never really seen what this couple are when they're not having adventures. The idea that things might be harder for them to navigate under those conditions doesn't feel all that unrealistic to me.

There's a lot of reasons why this doesn't work in practice. I'll start with the most basic. It's something that it feels like the episode itself recognizes. There's a moment where the Doctor asks Amy what happened, and, after a bit of waffling, she responds with "It's life. Just life: that thing that goes on when you're not there." Again, there's something to this idea…but at the same time we don't get to see that part of life that happens when the Doctor's not there either. It's not the last time I'll be making a point like this either by the way. Simply put, a divorce storyline for characters we've gotten to know as well as Amy and Rory requires that we get details on how things fell apart. And Doctor Who, the adventure show, doesn't actually give us enough time away from the adventures to really do that.

This also doesn't work because the actual explanation we do finally get is…bad. And reflects poorly on this marriage that this show desperately wants us to be invested in. Amy chose to leave Rory because she couldn't have kids. And Rory wants kids. And apparently they never talked about this since when Amy explains this to Rory it sure seems like she's conveying new information to him. On some level, this actually does track. There's a running pattern under a lot of episodes that give Amy more focus as a character suggesting that she finds it easier to make a grand gesture of love than to actually deal with the day to day of a real relationship. And what is giving up your relationship with a partner you love because you think it will be best for him if not the epitome of that?

The problem is that the way this is actually framed suggests that Amy is incapable of the most basic of communication. And again, if we'd maybe seen the moment that Amy and Rory discovered that Amy couldn't have kids, seen how the possibility of fatherhood being lost affected Rory, maybe had some explanation why he or Amy didn't want to adopt (at least in that moment) maybe this could have worked. But we don't get any of that, and so it feels oddly abrupt and ends up undermining the idea of this relationship.

Oh and there's other problems that this creates. The other side of this is that it centers Amy's feelings about Rory's feelings about something that happened to Amy. Not only is that convoluted, but it distracts from the fact Amy no longer being able to have children is something that was done to her. A story about how a woman might feel like an inadequate wife if she can no longer have kids is a big complicated thing that needs a lot of very careful storytelling that "Asylum" does not have the time for. It's a framing that is plausible, but a story has to reject, to avoid reducing a woman down to a womb. And now there's that layer of abstraction. It's not that Rory thinks less of Amy, it's that Amy thinks Rory thinks less of her. She has to be thinking less of herself as well in all of this, that she's somehow no longer "worthy" of Rory to give him up because otherwise this doesn't really make sense. But there's no time given to that, and so no time can be given to rejecting that framing. It's just kind of there left implied by Amy's confession. Again, this is an idea that requires time and effort and thoughtfulness, and "Asylum" gives us none of these.

Oh and we shouldn't ignore the actual conversation that happens, because that's bad. It starts with Rory saying "basic fact of our relationship is that I love you [Amy] more than you love me". Now, I don't actually think that's in reality true, or at least not in any appreciable way (Amy's made like seven or eight grand gestures of love by this point), but it sure can feel like it sometimes. There is an imbalance in this relationship that could be addressed here. But it's not really. Instead we get a comparison between Rory's near-2000 year stay outside a box with Amy "giving you [Rory] up". Amy might insist that the latter is the greater sacrifice…but that's just not credible. Some of this is the problems that the sheer length of time that Rory spent outside the Pandorica has been inevitably glossed over ever since, and even in, "The Big Bang". Really, the problem here is twofold. The first is trying to compare grand gestures rather than letting them exist as proofs of genuine, deep love in isolation. The second is that a grand gesture of love that involves making this kind of decision without actual communication is…not great anyway, so the comparison falls apart regardless.

It's not that there's no good moments associated with the divorce. Amy and Rory's first appearance has Rory stop by the studio where Amy is doing her modeling work to drop off divorce papers. Things are obviously rather testy between them, but it's actually Amy has a moment of softness, indicating that things may not be how they seem. I did like how Rory being separated from his wife allowed him to be a bit flirty with Oswin this episode, just because it allowed us to see a side of him we normally don't. There's a fun little moment where he seems to consider whether he wants to let Oswin keep flirting with him and then seems to think, "oh right, I'm more or less single now" which was surprisingly endearing. And speaking of endearing Amy walking back into their house and Rory celebrating with a full double fist pump was undeniably charming. Oh and of course Karen Gillan and Arthur Davill play their material quite well, no matter how bad it was. So yes, good moments, but a bad idea for a subplot badly done.

Okay so that was awful and everything but…wasn't this episode about Daleks?

The episode gets started with the Daleks stunning and capturing our heroes. Probably a bit too easily if we're being honest. The Doctor gets baited into a trap but it just feels like the sort of thing the Daleks would have done, and more lethally, if they could. The episode does offer an explanation for this mind. The Daleks find hatred beautiful, and as such they could never bring themselves to kill the Doctor. But that doesn't really make sense.

Still what follows is one of the most interesting set ups for a Dalek episode in a long time. I feel like past Dalek stories of the Revival – and even arguably going back to the JNT-era Dalek stories in some cases - all seemed to feel a need to be a Big Deal. "Asylum of the Daleks" is the first Dalek story in a long time that doesn't in some way alter the status quo for the Daleks – okay technically the ending does, but the Daleks themselves are unchanged, it's just their relationship to the Doctor that changes. Instead we're presented a new detail to do with the Daleks. It would seem that sometimes Daleks go wrong and fall out of the control of the Dalek hierarchy. In this case, the Daleks send them to an asylum planet (there's your title). The planet is kept shielded and the asylum runs itself. There's no getting in or out. Except it would seem that around a year ago a spaceship crashed on the asylum planet. If someone could get in, it's feasible an insane Dalek could get out. Nobody wants that, including the Daleks. The Daleks would like to just blow up the planet, but the shield controls are on the planet. So instead they're going to shoot the Doctor and two of his friends at the gap in the shields and get him to fix things for him.

And there's yet one more concept that gets thrown at us. There's a nano-cloud on the Asylum planet that converts any organic material "living or dead" into Dalek puppets. The episode actually opens with one of those puppets, the trap that was set for the Doctor (and later Amy and Rory) used one of the Dalek puppets for that purpose. So the instinct here is to say that this feels more like a Cyberman plot than a Dalek plot. That was my first reaction to this episode when I first watched it. But with some thought given – and even taking account the reveal of a human fully converted into a Dalek at the end – this is absolutely a Dalek plot through and through.

So if we imagine a version of this episode that involves the Cybermen, things get weird. The Cybermen wouldn't keep "insane" Cybermen alive in any capacity because that would be a waste of resources. The Daleks though, they absolutely would because an insane Dalek is still a Dalek still, in their minds, an example of the highest order of life. And as for the conversion aspect, again, the way it works in practice feels more Dalek than Cybermen. Aside from the single example of total conversion from the end of the episode, the other "converted" humans (and skeletons) are consistently described as "puppets". This feels very analogous to the Robomen that the Daleks used back in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

And even the full conversion has precedents – most obviously Revelation of the Daleks and "The Parting of the Ways". Daleks being a little hypocritical about their claims of absolute superiority isn't new…it's arguably even sort of the point. The point is, everything about the asylum planet is so quintessentially Dalek the only thing that surprises me is that they don't have these same conversion systems set up on Skaro. It also does allow for the big link between the near-divorce plot and the main plot. The Dalek conversion is primarily an emotional one, they "subtract love, add anger" to quote Oswin. Love being the thing whose elimination signals a transformation into a Dalek is an ideal that actually really appeals to me.

So yes, I actually really like this set up. Even the "parliament of the Daleks" (featuring every Dalek design in Doctor Who history…because why not I guess), while it represents something like the hundredth different governmental system the Daleks operate under, kind of works for me. And it's undeniably an impressive visual, even if it doesn't really figure into the meat of the episode. I do have to roll my eyes a bit at the Daleks giving the Doctor another nickname – he's the "predator of the Daleks" apparently. Still, after the Doctor makes contact with one of the survivors of the crash, a Junior Entertainment Manager called Oswin Oswald, the Daleks fire the Doctor at a planet and the plot gets started in earnest.

Well, okay most of what happens is a lot of running around the planet trying to figure things out while Oswin guides our heroes from what seems like a bunker. But there is a consistent sense of progression throughout. The idea of the Dalek puppets is nicely integrated early when another survivor turns out to be a dead man walking…and several skeletons also grow eyestalks out of their heads. And then it's really kicked into overdrive when Amy loses the gadget that was preventing her from being turned into one of the puppets. Amy's slow conversion is quite well conveyed as well, particularly a scene where it looks like she's found a room full of people, including a young girl who seems to be a dancer repeatedly practicing the same jump and spin…only for it to be revealed they're all Daleks, the "dancer" being a Dalek who is just spinning around. Rory is initially split off from the other two, setting up a surprisingly important pun involving eggs when he thinks a Dalek is saying "eggs". It's just stuck on the first syllable of "Exterminate" naturally.

And through all of this we get Oswin. A genius, apparently, despite her relatively low position on the starship Alaska crew. She's survived, if barely, in her little bunker, holding the Daleks out and hacking their technology. Oh and making soufflés. The Doctor is naturally very impressed, though seems oddly preoccupied with where she's sourcing the milk for her soufflés. The thing that makes Oswin work throughout this episode is that she's just immediately very likable. In retrospect if feels pretty obvious that she's meant to be someone very important, although when I first watched this episode, I actually didn't know that Jenna Coleman was already set to become the Doctor's next companion.

For one thing, Coleman delivers a performance that really stands out from the beginning. She's probably one of the most charismatic people to play a companion on Doctor Who, and as Oswin that really does stand out. For another thing she's got the Steven Moffat Witty Banter™ thing going at 200%. Whether or not that's a good thing at this point when nearly every Moffat character and especially every Moffat-written woman has this going in overdrive already I'll leave as an exercise for a reader. I like it, because it matches up nicely with my own sense of humor. The point is, it feels like Moffat was taking extra care to make sure we liked this character, and the way he does that is to make the character in question snarky as all get out. And through all of that, Oswin does constantly feel believable in her position. There's moments where her fear breaks through her confident façade, and you can believe that this is someone who's been terrorized by the Daleks for some time now.

And then there's that twist. Because Oswin hasn't been surviving against the Daleks. She's the full Dalek-converted human I mentioned earlier, because apparently the Daleks "need genius". Now I do have to wonder who or what made that decision, given that the Asylum runs itself according to the Daleks, but it still makes for one hell of a reveal. Oh, and yeah this is why the "eggs" pun was actually important. Because aside from milk, another things you need for a soufflé is…eggs. And so like the Dalek that Rory ran into before her, Oswin, her world literally shrinking around her, starts saying "eggs…eggs…ex…term…in…ate". Clever. But more than being clever, Jenna Coleman's line read of "Exterminate", probably the single most repeated word in the entirety of Doctor Who, is actually really good. It's probably the most I have ever believed that that line is said out of genuine hatred.

Of course then things turn around, and the Dalek that was Oswin decides to help the Doctor after all. The sound of a Dalek sobbing over the hatred that has been genetically ingrained into the Daleks is one of the most oddly moving things in Doctor Who history. And, tying things back a bit to some of the themes of Series 6, Oswin declared that "we [the Daleks] have grown stronger in fear of you". Like was often done in Series 6, "Asylum" is asking the question of whether the Doctor's notoriety is a good or bad thing. But weirdly enough, Oswin also did something to help with this. She erased information about the Doctor from the "path web" a shared pool of data that all the Daleks have telepathic access to. And initially it seemed like she'd done it just to some of the Daleks in the asylum to fix an immediate issue. But as it turns out she did it to them all. When the Doctor teleports himself and his friends to the TARDIS, right as the Daleks blow up the Asylum, it transpires that they know nothing of him. It is quite something hearing a whole spaceship of Daleks chanting the name of the show and unlike in the ending of "The Wedding of River Song" this one felt a bit more earned, if still awfully self-indulgent.

Beyond his genuine joy at the Daleks having forgotten him, this is really an archetypal episode for the 11th Doctor. He gets to be a little goofy at times, a bit of awkward flirting with Oswin because of course, and underneath it all, he makes some impressive deductions, and of course, the manipulative side comes out. The deduction is narrated by Amy, as he quickly realizes that something is wrong with Amy and Rory. It's nice to see that Amy can actually deduce the Doctor's thought process, feels appropriate for their relationship. And then he manipulates Amy and Rory into having the conversation they should have had some time ago. And sure you can complain about the fact that Amy and Rory should have had this conversation previously, but as a character note for the Doctor this is excellent. The 11th Doctor being so manipulative towards his friends is in character, and simultaneously he's always been very invested in Amy and Rory's relationship. Arguably he has even more reason to be so now that he knows they are his in-laws. On top of everything else, it's such a simple thing, as he puts his nano-cloud stopping device on Amy since, as a Time Lord, he doesn't actually need it. Simple, but it works so well.

Before I wrap up I, sadly, have some miscellaneous complaints to give out. I sort of touched on it earlier but Oswin's more flirty persona did bug me a little. Mostly because of Moffat's tendency to write every woman like this and, especially in an episode that has some questionable writing around women's bodies with regard to Amy, it does feel a little off. To that point, jokes about Amy being violent – especially towards Rory – are really starting to grate around this time. Fortunately they do peter out somewhat after this episode, but it still is a troubling pattern. Oh and we should probably mention a reference to Oswin previously being attracted to another woman as a "phase", though she seems to have been joking to flirt with Rory. I don't have much to add to that, except that unfortunately vague notions of bisexuality mainly being used as a form of titillation will sadly be a recurring thing throughout Jenna Coleman's time on Doctor Who.

But I do think there's more good than bad here. The bad is pretty obvious: it's Amy and Rory's near divorce. Even giving it the best possible read it just doesn't work, and feels somewhat at odds with the versions of these characters presented both before and after this point. Still the actual plot of the episode is quite good, and does mostly make up for that. I've come fully around on the Dalek conversion side of things, and I actually think this episode works really well for the Daleks. And Oswin makes for a really good side character, slight misgivings aside. The twist at the end is a reminder that Steven Moffat's biggest skill as a writer is in building these twist endings that feel like they make perfect sense, at least in the confines of a single episode (or two-parter). "Asylum of the Daleks" is messy, but ultimately a good episode.

Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• Moffat considered writing his first Dalek story for Amy and Rory's departure, but ultimately decided that would be a Weeping Angel story instead.
• Moffat wanted to make the Daleks scarier, by focusing back on their menace and introducing Daleks who were even more insane than the originals. Karen Gillan apparently found the Daleks scary while working on this episode, in a way she hadn't previously.
• Despite the intention of making the Daleks scarier, this is the first Dalek story where the Daleks don't kill anyone – unless of course you count the "converted" humans.
• Of course this episode also features every past Dalek design. There was some intentionality to this. With the New Paradigm Dalek designs having been poorly received in "Victory of the Daleks", Steven Moffat decided to rethink their place in the Dalek Empire, imagining them now as a sort of upper echelon in the hierarchy, also deemphasizing them.
• An early idea for Oswin would have had her be a mad Dalek who had convinced itself (herself?) that it was human. Then Moffat realized that the Doctor would never actually see Oswin as a human.
• One idea the signal the divorce was to have Rory grow out a beard, as Amy had previously indicated she didn't like facial hair. Rory would have shaven off the beard at the end of the episode. However it was decided that the episode would be filmed alongside "The Angels take Manhattan" and so the idea was abandoned. Interestingly he does seem to have some stubble in this episode
• Jenna Coleman was at the time working under the name Jenna-Louise Coleman, and would be for all but one of her appearances in the 11th Doctor era
• Because she'd already been announced as the next companion, Coleman's involvement in this episode was kept a secret.
• Thirteen new Daleks were constructed for this episode. This included five new iterations of the "New Paradigm" Daleks, which took into account complaints from the Dalek operators about the difficult of piloting the original New Paradigm designs.
• Of course several Daleks were also pulled out of storage. This included several bronze Daleks from the RTD era of course, but also several Daleks from the Classic Series. This included a casing from the original Daleks serial, which was sourced from fans.
• Former showrunner Russel T Davies also had his own Dalek prop, which resembled the Daleks used for Genesis of the Daleks. He offered the use of it for this episode and was apparently thrilled that his Dalek prop was "canonised".
• Moffat was pleased with the visual of all the different Dalek designs together, feeling it made them feel more like an actual species, rather than mass-produced robots.
• The location for the outdoor shots used for the Asylum planet was discovered by accident. While filming "A Town Called Mercy", which was filmed in Almeria, Spain, Producer Marcus Wilson realized that the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountain range was ideal for that location. Director Nick Hurran quickly put together the plans to film the footage with a minimal crew.
• The title sequence has been…updated. Actually each episode in the first part of Series 7 has a slightly different title sequence. Dealing with the overall changes first, the time vortex has been recolored for each episode, once for the "default" vortex and a second time for the "fiery" version. Instead of the 3D names in the same font as the logo, we now have 2D names that, rather than swooping past the camera, simply appear before fading into each other with the lightning strikes. Rather than the DW TARDIS being integrated with the logo, the logo first appears, then is replaced by the DW TARDIS which then transforms into the original TARDIS as before. Oh and speaking of the logo, each episode gives it an individual texture.
• These changes are…not great. The textured versions of the logo are the best part, each actually does fit the idea of giving each episode something distinctive. Everything else though feels very artificial. The new colors feel more like the image has been tinted than anything. And, cheesy as it may have been, I definitely preferred the 3D names.
• As for this episode specifically, the first part of the time vortex now appears bluish green, then second part is a more orangish shade of red, and the logo now looks like it's made out of the casing of one of the bronze Daleks. The color choices are alright but it's hard to draw any particular conclusions from them, they don't really feel like they relate to anything. I do like the Dalekified logo.
• As Amy is being converted into a Dalek she starts seeing Daleks as people. A lot of the people were played by Dalek operators.
• Oswin mentions the names of various "wars" that the Daleks in Intensive Care are survivors of, which turn out to mean they're all Daleks that faced the Doctor. She references Spirodon (Planet of the Daleks), Kembel (The Daleks' Master Plan), Aridius (The Chase), Vulcan (The Power of the Daleks), and Exxilon (Death to the Daleks).

Next Time: "The title says it all" has never felt more appropriate

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Novel Information

• Novel: Doctor Who: The New Adventures (VNA) #16
• Published: 15th July 1993
• Companions: Ace, Benny
• Author: Christopher Bulis

Spoiler-Free Review

While this might not be the most helpful recommendation, I personally quite liked Shadowmind. It's got a very imaginative premise and a lot of twists and turns. I honestly don't want to say too much more, just know that this novel gets a bit weird, and, I thought, in quite a fun way. As a teaser, it's revealed early on that small psychic rodents are piloting duplicates of human beings. The reason I say it might not be all that helpful is that Shadowmind seems to get a pretty wide range of reactions, so it feels like it would be pretty unpredictable whether or not any one person likes it. I'd certainly recommend giving it a shot.

If you do, the usual trio of Love and War, Deceit and Lucifer Rising are recommended first, as they set up this current TARDIS team.

Full Review

I wish I was as pure as that. My problem is that I have used entirely too many weapons. – The Doctor

Shadowmind was kind of a weird reading experience. Not necessarily because of its plot, which definitely has some of the entertainingly demented energy that characterized a lot of the 6th and 7th Doctor eras of Doctor Who. But rather because for its first half I thought we were getting a specific type of story that I've always really liked, only for the whole thing to transform into a very different type of story that I've also always really liked.

The early portions of Shadowmind feel like they're setting up for a conspiracy thriller. Seemingly at random, several members of the human populace of 2673 have been replaced by duplicates. They're sleeper agents that mostly behave like their originals until something is required of them. And there doesn't seem to be any way to detect them. The duplicates have the memories, DNA and even fingerprints of their originals. Anyone could be a duplicate. You can see how I thought we were going to be getting a political spy thriller. But that's not the direction things go.

Instead in the second half of the novel goes off in a completely different direction. We'd gotten plenty of indications in the first half that a planet called Arden, meant to be in the earliest phases of human colonization, is somehow key to all of this. So the Doctor, Ace, Benny and some others get on a warship called The Broadsword and head off to Arden. And at first I was disappointed by this shift. The early portions of the stuff on the Broadsword is pretty rote military sci-fi. But then we get to Arden and…psychic squirrels. Okay the squirrel description is only used once for the species that we eventually learn are called the Shenn. But still, they're small rodents that have psychic powers. And also have several hive minds, each of which forms a nest. And find the idea of a species like humans where each body represents a whole individual as a bit weird.

So, yeah, this is entirely up my alley. And it's the right kind of absurd for Doctor Who. But, well, it would seem that a lot of people don't agree with me. Unlike for my television reviews, I actually will read a few reviews before writing my own. I do this because, while I'm very familiar with both the television series and the general reaction to individual stories, the novels are new to me. So I like to get a sense of how people feel about individual novels, as well as making sure I'm not missing anything obvious. Honestly Shadowmind if anything seems to inspire a pretty wide range of reactions. But I did see people arguing that this book was boring (don't see it), had a plot that just wasn't Doctor Who (I really don't see it), had a bland secondary cast (a few such cases, but I don't think it's fair to say that about the whole cast), and didn't get its main cast right (I would say yes…and no). Honestly, given that I don't even really understand where these critiques are coming from for the most part, I don't know if I can fairly respond to them. But I do think that it's worth saying that a large part of why I like this novel so much might be because it's playing with genres that I usually enjoy.

Which isn't to say that I have no critiques of this novel. In contrast to a couple past novel where I felt like the narration tended towards the bland, here I think author Christopher Bulis writes engaging narration, but struggles in his dialogue to give each character a distinct voice. It's why it can feel like the main cast are somewhat out of character, because they don't really have individual voices. Oh and Ace starts calling the Doctor "Doc" rather than "Professor" or "Doctor" which is just weird. Benny is probably the character whose dialogue feels most in line with past novels (and, as always with Benny, I really hear Lisa Bowerman's voice coming through, even though we're still five years out from her actually playing the part), but I've always felt she's the easiest character of this trio to write for. The Doctor is written…fine, but his dialogue doesn't quite seem to have the same depth that he usually does. Honestly, aside from the "Doc" thing, Ace too isn't quite written out of character, probably the most frustrating thing is that we're covering a lot of ground that was touched on, arguably better, in the last novel, White Darkness.

The plot is set into motion because Ace realizes that it's her birthday (she keeps track of what her age should be to offset the weirdness of time travel), and the Doctor tries to take her on a relaxing holiday. Of course, this is Doctor Who so a "relaxing holiday" turns into a whole mess. Though I will give credit to some pretty solid scene setting for 27th Century humanity – specifically the city of New Byzantium on the planet of Taringire in these opening segments before the plot fully gets underway. However, naturally an adventure breaks out, when Ace spots a man being stalked by two mysterious figures. The mysterious figures gun down the man…only for a small rodent to be discovered inside the man. Yup, the "man" in question was actually a duplicate of a real person being piloted by a rodent.

So our heroes are brought to the police station, and eventually end up getting involved with higher levels of government. It is always odd when the Doctor ends up working directly with governmental organizations. Obviously the 3rd Doctor era had him working with UNIT a lot. But even in the UNIT era, the friction between the Doctor and the bureaucracy of UNIT and the militaristic approach of the Brigadier was a key feature of how things were presented. However a lot of stories, this one in particular, sort of bypass this a bit. The Doctor does have some early friction with the military group that is put together to investigate the duplicate, and later on philosophical differences, but he just sort of ends up directing all of their efforts. It's not a bad thing necessarily, but it does always feel odd to see the Doctor just casually working with the military like this.

Though I still liked these early investigations. The Doctor ends up working with a lot of powerful people to try and figure out how many duplicates are in place. There are a few other incidents that prove that it's more than just the one. Ace ends up in a pretty fun action sequence after being sent to grab some stuff from the TARDIS. The whole thing seems to be taking on a bit of a spy thriller tone, which is thoroughly enjoyable. But as the investigations go on, it becomes clear that what's going on really centers around Arden, and that's when the spy thriller thing kind of ends.

Before we shift focus, I do want to give credit to the narration delivered from the perspective of the duplicates. The duplicates do not know they are sleeper agents until they're activated. Even then, they still retain aspects of their personalities. While I said the Shenn "pilot" the duplicates, it seems more accurate to say that the Shenn influence their thinking. Narration from the perspective of the duplicates is written with a sort of casual indifference to the strangeness of their behavior. They seem to know they're doing something wrong, but are certain it's important, even if they can't remember why. Some of the duplicates are acting as slave overseers on Arden, and even they seem certain. After being freed from the control of the Shenn, Trooper Flyn, a very minor character puts it quite succinctly: "I think you can get people to do anything to anybody, as long as they think it’s the right thing to do."

That of course comes when the action shifts to Arden. I guess we should get a few more complaints out of the way, since the military sci-fi aspect of "Shadowmind" is probably its weakest segment. There's just a whole group of characters that the story doesn't really have a place for at this point, but Bulis clearly wants to keep relevant, so they get shoved off to a research project. Some of them are created for this purpose, but Inspector Quilon stands out in this regard. He's the policeman who initially interviews our heroes…and just kind of sticks around. He's likable enough for what he is, but once he boards The Broadsword he increasingly feels out of place. And he's not a terribly deep character frankly, so I don't know why he had to stick around for as long as he did.

Despite this the action on, and in orbit of Arden was very well-done, at least once things get going. It's a bit of a slog getting there, but once our heroes and a handful of soldiers are sent down to the planet's surface things pick up. Admittedly for the Doctor and Benny's group the action on Arden ends up being a bit superfluous – there's a bit more of that feeling that characters are being given time despite the author not really having anything for them to do. However I absolutely loved Ace's section on Arden, and indeed for the rest of the novel. It starts with her nearly dying in her landing, along with one of the soldiers, Kim Talevera – she's the daughter of Marshal Talevera, one of the higher ups that sent our heroes on this mission in the first place. But instead of dying, Ace is rescued…by the Shenn.

It's here that we learn that while there's a Shenn nest (the "mountain Shenn" apparently) who've been infiltrating human governments, they're not the only Shenn hive mind, and the others believe they've been effected by some outside influence. Ace learns this from the Shenn nest who rescued her…which is just as well, because both she and Kim were at serious risk of dying. Even now, Ace and Kim are in no condition to walk around…so their minds have been transferred over to duplicates. Ace and Kim spend the rest of the novel (well, until the final chapter anyway) in the bodies of duplicates, though their duplicates are never controlled by the Shenn. But really, what's great here is the Shenn themselves. A rodent hive mind is already a pretty cool idea, but Bulis has put some real thought into the Shenn identity. Details like the Shenn being confused that each human is an individual, rather than a hive make the concept feel real. This also leads to the Shenn referring to Ace as "nest of one".

And it's not just the hive mind. The Shenn are technologically advanced, but humanity missed that when trying to colonize Arden because their technology is all bio-tech. Even calling it bio-tech feels like it's not quite right. The Shenn are instead masters of accelerated directed evolution. They've got equivalents to vehicles, for instance, but they're weird creatures that pick you up in their tentacles, although the Shenn control them while they're moving. It's genuinely fascinating stuff. That also explains why the duplicates are so advanced – creating accurate duplicates is right up the alley of Shenn science. The combination of the hive mind and the sharp writing around that and the bio-tech angle leaves the Shenn as one of the best parts of this novel.

It's also around this point that Shadowmind starts really focusing in on Ace. While they're in their duplicate bodies, Ace and Kim have a psychic link with both the Shenn and each other, leading to a friendship that develops very quickly but feels believable. It also feels like it starts changing Ace's attitude towards things. In previous novel White Darkness we leaned into Ace as the soldier to a pretty extreme degree. Here that starts unraveling a little bit. While Ace remains as violent as ever, pretty much filling the designated action hero slot, her time with the Shenn sees her start to question this to a degree. It's as though being given access to a hive mind, and her mental link with Kim has given her a kind of empathy that she didn't have before. But that's not all there is to it.

From the moment that we meet the Shenn it becomes clear that the mountain Shenn who are sending out the duplicates to infiltrate human government are being influenced by some other entity. That third entity turns out to be Umbra. Umbra was initially mistaken by the crew of The Broadsword for a spaceship, but it reality it's a lifeform that developed out of an asteroid. Umbra wants, simply, to grow, whoever it might hurt. The whole plot is a manipulation by Umbra to take advantage of human resources and the Shenn's abilities to grow itself. Umbra has psychic powers similar to that of the Shenn, which allows it both to influence the Shenn and also to take advantage of the strange material that the Shenn use to expand their influence beyond Arden. Oh and one more thing about Umbra…it has the mind of a child.

Umbra is fairly young after all. So what results is a petulant child who throws a tantrum if it doesn't get its way…and is in possession of powers to make its tantrums lethal. At the climax of the novel it starts exerting its psychic influence on the crew of The Broadsword, with all aboard except Ace and the Doctor affected. The Doctor is safe because Time Lord stuff, and Ace is safe because she's still in her duplicate body. Which leads to the entire crew of The Broadsword heading off to "make peace" with Umbra – by which we mean, let Umbra blow up The Broadsword. And that takes us back to Ace.

A lot has been made throughout this novel about Ace's aggression. Like most of the novels since she returned to the TARDIS, we spend a lot of time questioning if Ace's three years away have changed her for the better or the worse. Even the old gag about the Doctor telling Ace not to bring her explosives only for Ace to bring her explosives ends up playing a bit more seriously. Of course this is material that White Darkness focused in on a lot too, and that's probably the biggest flaw in Ace's material in this novel. Of course, as with all of the VNAs, Christopher Bulis wouldn't have necessarily known what the previous novel had done, which is quickly becoming an issue with reading these in sequence.

That being said, the angle taken here on Ace's violent tendencies is slightly unique. For starters, Shadowmind does seem a lot more understanding of Ace's love of weapons. Both the Doctor and Benny have a few moments of acknowledging, albeit reluctantly, that some situations do require the use of force. However really how this novel stands out in its handling of Ace is its climax. With the crew of The Broadsword controlled by Umbra, Ace ends up having no choice but to shoot her way through a bunch of innocent people. At first she tries to shoot to wound, but eventually she's forced to shoot to kill a few of them. And after she's pulled the lever that destroys Umbra – the Doctor did most of the work here – this messes up Ace quite badly. She hates that she couldn't think of anything better than killing good people, hates that she didn't bring a stun gun (the Doctor claims that things wouldn't have worked out if she did…I suspect he's just trying to make her feel better) and hates what she's becoming. If there's a difference between where this novel leaves us and where White Darkness left us with Ace, it's that Ace is just kind of wallowing in self-loathing at the end of this one. And what could have felt over the top just kind of left me feeling sorry for Ace here.

Now I do wonder about that climax a bit. If this were on television, and a story ended with a companion shooting her way through innocent people, framed in a way that it was the "only" choice, I definitely think I'd feel a bit worse about this one. And I'd certainly be a lot less inclined to feel sorry for Ace in that scenario. Being in novel form does change the realities of that scene somewhat. Putting us in Ace's head while things are happening does reinforce the hopelessness of the situation. But I never love it when a story contrives to leave that level of violence as the only solution. But somehow this is still working for me, in spite of my misgivings. And maybe a part of that is that this novel is successful in how it presents Ace throughout, which makes me give it a bit of grace for an ending I wouldn't normally have much grace for. In spite of her weird turn in calling the Doctor "Doc", I think this novel actually presents Ace – at least the Ace that has been developed throughout the VNAs – very much in character.

Benny gets less to do in this novel. It's definitely a pattern that writers feel less interested in writing about Benny than Ace. I guess that makes sense on some level. Benny might be a beloved (if obscure) character now but in 1993 she was the new character that writers might not be as interested in as the character who was actually on television. However Benny remains, as always, a delightful presence. She and Ace seem to be developing a bit of a sibling rivalry-style relationship, which definitely improves on what early on felt like it was going to be a very frustrating duo. You get the sense that they get on each other's nerves, but they'll bring down hell upon the person who harms the other. This goes especially for Benny, the older "sibling", and that feels appropriate. Beyond that, not much to say about Benny here.

As for the Doctor, there's arguably even less to say. That's not really a bad thing in this case though. The Doctor feels pretty in line with the character that the VNAs have been building him into over time. I'll admit I still miss aspects of the television persona, but the way the Doctor conducts himself here feels reasonable enough. I guess the biggest thing to talk about is that point I made earlier about the Doctor working with the military. At the very least it's connected back to his past involvements with various Earth conflicts and organizations, most notably the Draconian War and UNIT. He leverages that fact to get himself a degree of trust with people in authority. Beyond that though, I enjoyed the Doctor's presence here, it's just that there's not a ton else to say.

We do get a pretty extensive secondary cast, as per usual with the novels. While I don't think that any of them deserve a full paragraph here, they do form a solid ensemble. A general criticism I will throw out first is that Christopher Bulis seems to lack confidence in his ability to imply characterization, so he'll often just tell the reader the main character trait that they have. Still, it's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. Sure it's a "show don't tell" violation, but the narration and dialogue do enough "showing" that ultimately it doesn't matter too much.

I've already covered Inspector Quillon, the only character that really distinguishes himself in the first half of the novel. The rest of his staff are mostly there as cannon fodder or duplicates being honest. There's a whole committee that the Doctor takes part in, and I liked this group of characters, but they're such a small presence in the novel that they don't really get time to distinguish themselves. The exception is Marshal Talevera. While he doesn't get a ton of time devoted to him – it's mostly his daughter Kim we really get to know – he feels like a steady hand through all of the chaos. And I did enjoy the degree to which he seems to care for Kim while having confidence in her abilities and not wanting to get in the way of her.

Kim is probably the character that gets the most time in the secondary cast other than Quillon or the Shenn. That's mostly because she gets psychically linked to Ace when the two are duplicates and the two quickly develop a relationship that feels fairly close. This might seem a bit rushed, but given the psychic link feels appropriate. Along with Benny and the Doctor, Kim is the one who's helping console Ace at the end of the novel. The captain of The Broadsword meanwhile is Fran Kausama. Weirdly her main obstacle seems to have been that she's considered too attractive to be taken seriously as a captain, however this never really ends up playing out. We do learn that ship captains do a sort of mind merge with their ships to pilot them in combat situations which actually makes for some engaging dogfight scenes. Kausama actually gets some really good narration associated with her, mostly burden of command type stuff that really puts her actions in context. Unfortunately, she gets killed by Ace, although Ace thinks she may have nodded at her before the killing blow. Kausama was probably my favorite of the secondary cast honestly. That's kind of it, other than a random crewman that Ace sleeps with…and then dies in the landing. Apparently he was nice, though we never really learn more about him. Is this pointless sex being shoved into the novel? I guess, although we only really see Ace leaving his bunk.

On the whole, I quite liked Shadowmind. The secondary cast, while none of them are particularly well developed, make for a good ensemble as a whole, and the plot is really quite inventive. It's got issues, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that ending, but still the whole thing is very well put together.

Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• This cover, done by author Christopher Bulis, is honestly one of the better VNA covers. The figures in the foreground still land a bit in the uncanny valley, but otherwise there's some good use of color, and an intriguing scene taking place. Not an amazing cover by any means, but I dig it.
• I've commented on this before, but it's genuinely surprising to me how large Benny's father looms over her character to this point in the VNAs. This is probably because I'm used to her characterization from Big Finish where it doesn't come up very often (I can only think of one instance of him being referenced). I don't dislike it as a character beat, but I have been surprised about it.
• Based on dialogue, this is the first adventure after the events of White Darkness.
• Ace ditches her combat attire for the leather jacket she used during the TV series.
• Apparently if you concentrate while the TARDIS translation circuit is in effect you can hear the actual language being spoken.
• Having landed the TARDIS in a futuristic sculpture garden, the Doctor puts up a little sign next to it: "TARDIS, by A Doctor".
• Ace has once again upgraded her explosive arsenal, replacing her Nitro 9 and Nitro 9a with Neo-Nitro, which she disguises as candy and is saliva activated.
• The Doctor has created identity papers for himself, Ace and Benny. Inspector Quillon cannot pronounce the name on the Doctor's papers, and so, conveniently, just decides to refer to him as "Doctor".
• The Doctor references his experience in ending the Earth/Draconian war, as seen in Frontier in Space. According to Marshal Talvera that was 130 years ago, and apparently the two empires have been at peace ever since.
• The TARDIS has a "clean and repair unit" for damaged and/or soiled clothing.
• Ace has a helmet made out of the dome of a Dalek Supreme.
• Ace and the Doctor seem to think that Benny's favorite pastime with the military is "brass-hat baiting" – that is to say, taking the mickey out of military types. Benny is therefore somewhat disappointed when the crew of the Broadsword are all perfectly reasonable.
• I'm starting to notice that every VNA with any military presence feels the need to compare an ally of the Doctor's from the military to the Brigadier. It was charming the first couple times, but it's starting to grate.
• The Doctor references having triggered a weapon that destroyed an entire planet, presumably referring to the climax of Remembrance of the Daleks.
• The Doctor isn't allowed to take his hat to the surface of Arden, instead being forced to wear a combat suit (though he still manages to keep his umbrella). When he first meets Lyn on the surface he mimes doffing his hat.
• Ace apparently knows that the Doctor has 12 regenerations…though actually she refers to it as "twelve lives" which is incorrect, he's got 13.
• More on names. The Doctor calls Bernice "Benny". Of course that's her preferred nickname, but I have trouble imagining the 7th Doctor calling her that. In the audio dramas he pretty consistently calls her "Bernice", which stands out in particular because pretty much everyone else calls her either "Benny" or "Summerfield". Obviously this wasn't established at the time, so this is pretty much my hangup and nobody else's.

Next Time: Back to the TV series and…Amy and Rory are getting a divorce? The hell?

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Series Information

• Airdates: 23rd April - 25th December 2011 *
• Doctor: 11th (Matt Smith)
• Companions: Amy (Karen Gillan), Rory (Arthur Darvill)
• Other Notable Characters: River Song (S06E01-02, 07-08, 12-13), Madame Kovarian (Frances Barber S06E01-03, 06-08, 12-13), Idris (Suranne Jones, S06E04), Dorium Maldovar (Simon Fisher-Beckett, S06E07, 13), Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh, S06E07), Jenny (Catrin Stewart, S06E07), Strax (Dan Starkey, S06E07), Mels (Maya Glace-Green & Nina Toussaint-White, S06E08), Craig (James Corden, S06E12), Sophie (Daisy Haggard, S06E12), Winston Churchill (Ian McNiece, S06E13), Madge (Claire Skinner, 2011 Christmas Special)
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

* Includes the 2011 Christmas Special

Review

Historically, Doctor Who has always been extremely episodic.

When you say this there's inevitably someone who point out that the Classic era was made up entirely of "serials". But in spite of these multi-part stories being referred to as serials, Classic Who was almost never serialized. Individual serials were highly disconnected one to the next. Even in something like the Key to Time season, there's a lot less connective tissue than you'd imagine. That's not to say that the Classic series didn't do things like character arcs or story arcs, just that these things were pretty loose. And honestly, if you look at Russell T Davies' tenure establishing the foundations of the Revival era of Doctor Who that doesn't change all that much. Yes there's more connected story arcs and character arcs get a lot more well-defined, but there's still a focus on the individual episodes or two-parters over establishing a more coherent arc.

Series 5 did evolve things a bit. The story of the crack in time is a bit more involved than past Series arcs. But it's honestly not that much more complicated, the most notable thing being that it leaves some plot hooks left open for the rest of the 11th Doctor era. But fundamentally the pattern from the RTD era remained. A memetic arc which is resolved in the finale, a story about a companion reaching her apotheosis and a romance. Now if you actually watch Series 5 it feels quite different from the RTD era, but the point is, nothing structural had really changed.

And then we get to Series 6 and everything changes.

Series 6 goes in full force on its arc. Well I guess technically not full force but more than any previous season of Doctor Who, more even than Trial of a Time Lord, the arc in Series 6 really dominates everything here. Even episodes that are theoretically standalone will often have some explicit reference to the ongoing story. The show still retains some vestiges of the "memetic arc" with the front half of Series 6 having Madame Kovarian pop up in Amy's eyesight and close a non-existent hatch in various walls, while the back half has a really out of place nursery rhyme. But that's not the storytelling you think of when you think of Series 6.

Whereas Series 5 tended to have the arc come crashing in to ongoing stories, Series 6 just has episodes throughout fully devoted to the arc. The opening two-parter, "A Good Man Goes to War", "Let's Kill Hitler" and "The Wedding of River Song" almost work on their own without any additional context. The only thing you're missing is the context of the Flesh two-parter, the closest thing to a story which contributes to the arc without being solely focused on it. Doctor Who isn't innovating here, this is a format that is generally credited to The X-Files but it is new to this show.

So a couple things. One, I tend to prefer Doctor Who as a show that lets its individual stories mostly stand on their own. The more interconnected and complex a series arc gets the less I've tended to get invested. Now I don't know if this is just a coincidence or an actual preference of mine. But I do think there is something to be said for having a show that doesn't have Something Big™ going on. Where the adventures just sort of exist to be adventures. Where we don't have to open up a pirate episode with Amy and Rory talking about seeing the Doctor die, and instead you can just have fun with a pirate episode (you know, in theory at least). But there is the possibility that this is a format that Doctor Who just hasn't done quite right yet. Because, after all…

The other thing I wanted to address is that this series makes absolutely no goddamn sense. Seriously none at all. I mostly covered this when I reviewed "The Wedding of River Song", so I won't go into detail here again. But this whole series is built around a plot by the Church of the Silence, a plot that is not explained and doesn't make much sense if you try to explain it. There's some interesting ideas floating around there. Questions about whether the Doctor's notoriety might be a bad thing, or what unintended effects he might have had on the universe are worth some exploration. But while these ideas are at least worthy of exploration, Series 6 does not actually explore them in to a worthwhile degree. Instead…we just get a lot of nonsense.

And the frustrating thing is, when Series 6 does more standalone episodes or episodes that focused more on its characters, it tends to be a lot better. The best episodes of this series are definitely all standalones. Some of that is of course the very fact that Series 6 is built on a nonsense plot. The opening two parter would be a lot better if you didn't have the context of a larger Series that fell apart by its end. But even if you try to evaluate that two parter without the context of what's to come, I'd still say the three best episode of Series 6 are "The Doctor's Wife", "The Girl Who Waited" and "The God Complex". All stories that do interesting things with their characters, all stories that work at least reasonably well on their own but better with context.

Because of course, all of these are stories that are advancing a larger narrative, it's just a character-focused narrative rather than a plot-focused one. "The Doctor's Wife" deals with the Doctor's relationship to the TARDIS, while the other two are about Amy's relationships with the other characters. But the thing about doing this kind of character-focused story is that the plot of the story can work a lot better in isolation.

Also, I think that Series 6 has some of its best character work when it's not balancing that against its mess of a main plot. Amy and Rory have one hell of a journey in this series. The main plot stories in the first half of Series 6 notably contains some of the last vestiges of the love triangle that was hinted at in Series 5. Which is a problem because it really felt like "Amy's Choice" should have ended that storyline. But of course the other thing that dominates the Series for them is Amy's pregnancy and the eventual reveal that River is their daughter. It's such a central part of the series' plot…and yet it can feel like it has minimal impact on their characters. I wouldn't go so far as to say no impact, as enough of Series 6 focuses around their reactions to these developments that it kind of does ingrain itself into a lot of episodes.

But, let's be honest, the series never does quite manage to deal with the issue of Amy and Rory losing their child. "Let's Kill Hitler" does make an attempt to rectify this somewhat by having Amy and Rory growing up beside Mels, who turns out to be River and having them more or less raise her. And while I do enjoy that sequence, it does end up feeling like a bit of a hasty retcon. That's not to mention the lack of meaningful follow up on what would be undoubtedly a traumatic experience for Amy of being kidnapped, experimented on (even if she can't remember the experimenting) and having her baby literally ripped out of her arms…and then later melting in her arms. Rory shares in some of this trauma too I should note, while a lot of it happened less directly to him, he was still there for the baby melting, and losing a child is traumatic regardless of circumstance. And of course we can't forget the weirdness of "Night Terrors", originally meant for, and filmed for, the first half of the Series, getting moved to the back half meaning that a story about parenthood manages to exclude the two people who lost their chance at actual parenthood in its A-plot.

Mind you, parenthood stuff is all over Series 6. And that might feel purposeful. After all, this is the Series where our companions become parents (of a sort). So it shouldn't be surprising that most of the episodes this series deal with parenthood in some way, to the point that it's actually easier to list the episodes in Series 6 that don't have some reference to parenthood. Those are "The Doctor's Wife", "The Girl Who Waited", and "The God Complex"…oh hey it's my favorite episodes of Series 6. Huh. Well, I do think that Series 6 does overdo it with the number of children that are present here. Especially since Series 6 does mute the fairy tale vibes that Series 5 had going for it in favor of a more dark fantasy feel. Matt Smith is, as he was in Series 5, good acting opposite children, but it just gets tiresome after a while.

But the other reason I don't think this works is that, while it might feel purposeful…I don't think it was. Some of that comes from the fact that I know some of the production histories of these episodes, and it does feel like the impulse to bring in more parent/child relationships came from the writers, not Steven Moffat. Steve Thompson seems to have decided to give real-life pirate Henry Avery a fictional son on his own, for instance. But I think the big clue here is that, with the exception of the 2011 Christmas special (after the arc has wrapped up), all of focus in standalone episodes goes to father/son relationships. And there's nothing wrong with this, obviously. But of course the arc is focused around a daughter, and her two parents, with the mother, Amy, getting more focus. If this was intentional, you'd expect a focus on mother/daughter relationships to be more prevalent. Instead mothers tend to get shoved to the side, especially noticeable in "Night Terrors" and "Closing Time". So while parenthood might seem like an important theme for Series 6, it just ends up feeling haphazard.

Though Amy and Rory having a child is part of larger, and much more successful idea. Series 6 represents a first for Doctor Who: this is the first time we've had a married couple as companions. This isn't surprising, since somehow Amy and Rory are our first serious inter-companion romance. But still, we have a married couple aboard the TARDIS. And while Series 5 is undoubtedly the superior series of television, I do think Series 6 has my favorite depiction of this TARDIS team. Amy and Rory do actually feel like a unit for most of Series 6. And even when they're not, it doesn't last long. Those moments of hinting at a return of the love triangle, as dreadful as they are, are ultimately just moments. Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill really get to show off their excellent chemistry, both in comedic and more serious moments. It's just such a unique dynamic that I enjoy so much, and is arguably at its best here.

And like in Series 5, thought is given to the complex dynamics aboard the TARDIS, especially in two episodes in the back half. "The Girl Who Waited" really feels like a dark sequel to "Amy's Choice". It's probably the best written this TARDIS team has been to this point, although an argument can be made that the Doctor is characterized a little too dark here. But as a tribute to Amy and Rory's relationship it works spectacularly. As an exploration of the dangers of traveling with the Doctor, and his darker side, it's a really great effort. And, you know, that episode makes me cry (or come close, depending) every time, so it's got that going for it. Then you get "The God Complex" which examines whether the Doctor should even have companions, and whether the trust they put in him is earned.

What's interesting about that last example in particular is that I'd argue that "The God Complex's" ending does have the lasting impact on Amy and the Doctor's relationship that its implies. It really does feel like at the end of "God Complex" Amy and the Doctor have stopped idealizing each other, or at the very least are doing it a bit less. And future episodes feel like that relationship has shifted, in subtle ways, but still shifted. It's an interesting comparison to an arc that, aside from the Series 7 opener, gets no meaningful followup on the character side of things.

Well, maybe not no followup. While the arc doesn't do what it should to Amy and Rory as characters, I think you can argue that the Doctor does get meaningful development out of Series 6. A lot of Series 6 is questioning the role that the Doctor has in the universe. It's all meant to be build up to the Doctor ending "The Wedding of River Song" by saying "I got too big (…) time to step back into the shadows." And this is where the arc does somewhat succeed, by building up to this ending successfully. The plot by the Church of the Silence may be absolute nonsense, but it's built around trying to take down the Doctor. We've seen villains target the Doctor before, but we now have villains doing this that the Doctor hadn't actually encountered before. It has a different feeling when the villains are actively seeking out the Doctor as an enemy. Amy, Rory and yes, Melody (or River if you like) being collateral damage in all of this has an impact on the Doctor, because of course it does. And this nicely sets up the Doctor actively trying to lower his profile in Series 7.

Of course sometimes the Doctor's companions are collateral damage because the Doctor is more willing to push at his rules in a number of ways. In "A Good Man Goes to War" we saw the Doctor declare "good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many". We know from Series 5 that the 11th Doctor has a core of self-loathing. Series 6 really pushes at this in some interesting ways. I've occasionally pushed the theory that part of the reason the 11th Doctor is willing to be so manipulative of his friends is because of this core. Because he doesn't see himself as being a good man, he sort of imagines breaking his rules as giving in to his true nature. I don't think that's true, because I fundamentally disagree with the "good men don't need rules" argument (because I don't think that anyone is intrinsically good). But the point is, I think the 11th Doctor's self-loathing actually leads to him giving himself permission to be a worse person. To lying to and hurting his friends. To using darker methods. It also sets himself up perfectly to being able to break Amy's faith in him, as I really think he believed all of the things he said about himself in that moment. And ultimately, the Doctor fakes his own death, intending to tell none of his friends that he'd survived.

It's at this point that it feels most appropriate to mention "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe". A mediocre episode, perhaps, but one that offers a solid coda to this character arc. The Doctor determining to help a woman who'd seemingly just lost a key member of her family (in this case her husband) feels like a solid mirror to what he went through with the Ponds in Series 6. And of course, the fact that he gets so easily shamed into going to visit them again shows that the Doctor isn't quite as callous and he might think.

Of course, there's a key character missing from this analysis. Series 6 is in many way River Song's story. All of the arc episodes are really about her to some degree. The opening two parter least, but it does nonetheless introduce the Silence and show her as the young girl who called out for help, setting the plot in motion. The rest is fairly obvious. Unfortunately this means that River's character inherits a lot of the problems of Series 6's arc. The fact is that River's story doesn't really make sense, because Series 6's arc doesn't make sense. Also the out of sequence storytelling done doesn't quite make sense from her perspective, though I'd argue this is ultimately alright, as we're experiencing things from the Doctor and company's perspective, so it matters a lot more that we get the more comprehensible version of the story. The biggest problem is probably that River's character arc gets a bit rushed, siloed off as it is into a bunch of individual episodes. The fact that "Let's Kill Hitler", in particular, is just a single episode that has the job of showing River's transformation of psychopathic assassin to the Doctor's ally really means we don't actually have time to sit with that version of the character, especially in the context of a pretty busy episode.

I also do think River displays a lot of issues endemic to a character designed primarily as a mystery. Put simply, the more we reveal about River, the more that mystery goes away and a lot of the initial appeal of the character inherently gets lost in the process. The key in writing a character like this is that as we learn more about her mystery, we should also expand upon her personality. And I can't say that Series 6 entirely fails in this regard. But it doesn't entirely succeed either. Part of the problem is that so much of what we learn about River is how she feels about the Doctor. That's not a bad thing, but it can often feel like it's the only thing. Though I will say I like how she relates to her parents in this Series, especially with Amy with whom there's a genuine, and surprising tenderness.

And the relationship with the Doctor…when I reviewed the opening two parter I said that I didn't mind this relationship. But honestly, going through Series 6 with a critical lens has somewhat changed my feelings about this. Now, I do still like the 11th Doctor and River, but Series 6 does go to some uncomfortable places. There's stuff like her only getting her archeology degree to research the Doctor, which just reinforces how most of what we learn about this woman is her attitude towards the Doctor. But then there's the bit where she's groomed by Kovarian and the Silence for the explicit purpose of killing the Doctor…and she falls in love with him instead. On its own, these two facts don't bother me. But it's the way that they're connected so directly with each other that can feel more than a little bit uncomfortable. Like the Doctor ends up marrying a woman who was accidentally groomed into falling in love with him. That's…odd. Though I will wrap this up by saying this is an issue that feels oddly contained to Series 6. It never really gets referenced again, and it's probably better that way.

But River marrying the Doctor does officially cement something that the 11th Doctor era has been building for a while: this is the most family-like TARDIS team ever. Obviously by the end of Series 6 we know that this is literally a family, Amy and Rory as mother and father to River, and her husband, their son in law, the Doctor. And even before that, Amy and Rory being married does effectively create a more family-like dynamic aboard the TARDIS. Honestly, this is something that was building in small ways in Series 5, but with two of our leads now officially married (and Rory being present for a full Series this time) it becomes very obvious. Despite Series 6's arc being a mess, and despite issues I have with all four of these characters, the Series 6 version of the TARDIS team is one of my all-time favorites. It really is an odd case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. I can point to any number of issues with these characters, and frankly all four of them being in an episode is not necessarily a great sign of quality, and yet I really enjoy all four of them together. And when it's just Amy, Rory and the Doctor, I love that too.

And I think that's a good note to wrap things up on. Series 6 has problems. Massive, frustrating, often anger inducing problems. But, in spite of missing the mark on a lot of obvious character stuff, it still manages to have a TARDIS team I really enjoy. When the arc isn't going, and when we don't have yet another child on screen, we get some genuinely brilliant television. But the arc ultimately resolves into a nonsense plot, undermining some otherwise good episodes and arguably the entire 11th Doctor era in a lot of ways. And there is that character stuff for Amy and Rory that just gets completely wasted. Series 6 is not bad but it is quite frustrating on the whole.

Awards

Best Story: The Doctor's Wife

As with the review of this episode, I'm going to set aside any conversations about the writer. "The Doctor's Wife" feels like a concept that should have been done earlier, frankly. Personalizing the TARDIS, and allowing her to have an identity, opinions, and ultimately a personality gives way to a really touching episode of television. Plus, a fun villain in House.

Worst Story: The Wedding of River Song

How appropriate that for Series 6's worst episode I should choose the episode where all of the problems with Series 6's arc come crashing in at once. The episode that had the job of explaining this Series' nonsense plot was never going to be good, but this episode truly establishes a pattern of Steven Moffat-written finales being a lot of standing around and explaining what's going on, with very little actually left to happen.

Most Important: A Good Man Goes to War

"A Good Man Goes to War" comes pretty close to being exactly in the middle of the 11th Doctor era, which is appropriate because in many ways it feels like the heart of this whole era. Some really important character stuff for the 11th Doctor is spelled out in this episode, though we've had hints before. But of course the big thing is the reveal of who River Song is, and that the church is at war with the Doctor, crucial reveals for this entire era.

Funniest Story: Let's Kill Hitler

There are three decent options for this award, "Let's Kill Hitler", "Closing Time" and "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe", but none of them really stand out. "Closing Time" is probably the one I'm feeling the least, as while it's probably the episode trying most consistently for comedy, it's not comedy I find funny (in fairness, I don't much care for cringe comedy a lot of the time). The Christmas Special definitely has some funny moments, especially relating to Madge, but humor isn't really its prevailing tone. That leaves "Let's Kill Hitler" which probably shouldn't have had humor as its prevailing tone, but I kind of appreciate the nerve required to do just that. The reason I don't love this choice is that, well, a lot of the jokes in this thing are misogynistic. But when the jokes aren't sexist they're actually quite funny. I don't know, this was a weird one.

Scariest Story: The Impossible Astronaut/The Day of the Moon

In spite of the darkening of the tone in Series 6, it honestly isn't aiming for scary that much more frequently than Series 5. There at least is a second candidate for this award this time around, unlike in Series 5, as "The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People" does have something of a horror tone to it at times, but effects are letting it down. Even without that, this story, which introduces, and makes most effective use of, the Silents was always going to be the best option.

Rankings

1. The Doctor's Wife (10/10)
2. The Girl Who Waited (9/10)
3. The God Complex (8/10)
4. The Impossible Astronaut/The Day of the Moon (7/10)
5. The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People (7/10)
6. Let's Kill Hitler (6/10)
7. The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe (4/10)
8. A Good Man Goes to War (4/10)
9. The Curse of the Black Spot (3/10)
10. Closing Time (3/10)
11. Night Terrors (3/10)
12. The Wedding of River Song (1/10)

Given how much time I spent talking about the failures of Series 6's arc, it probably looks like the arc episodes actually came out alright in this ranking. But if we consider that these stories functionally form a single story, and that "Wedding" is its climax…yeah.

Season Rankings

These are based on weighted averages that take into account the length of each story. Take this ranking with a grain of salt however. No average can properly reflect a full season's quality and nuance, and the scores for each story are, ultimately, highly subjective and a bit arbitrary.

1. Classic Season 7 (8.1/10)
2. Classic Season 25 (7.7/10)
3. Classic Season 10 (7.5/10)
4. Revival Series 1 (7.5/10)
5. Revival Series 5 (7.3/10) ^(b)
6. Classic Season 20 (7.1/10) †
7. Classic Season 26 (7.0/10)
8. Classic Season 4 (7.0/10)
9. Revival Series 4 (6.6/10) ^(a)
10. Classic Season 11 (6.5/10)
11. Classic Season 18 (6.4/10)
12. Classic Season 12 (6.3/10)
13. Classic Season 6 (6.3/10)
14. Classic Season 1 (6.2/10)
15. Classic Season 14 (6.2/10)
16. Classic Season 13 (6.1/10)
17. Classic Season 3 (6.0/10)
18. Classic Season 5 (6.0/10)
19. Classic Season 24 (5.9/10)
20. Classic Season 15 (5.9/10)
21. Classic Season 2 (5.8/10)
22. Classic Season 9 (5.8/10)
23. Classic Season 8 (5.8/10)
24. Classic Season 17 (5.8/10) *
25. Revival Series 6 (5.6/10) ^(b)
26. Classic Season 16 – The Key to Time (5.6/10)
27. Revival Series 3 (5.6/10) ^(a)
28. Classic Season 21 (5.2/10) †
29. Classic Season 19 (5.2/10)
30. Revival Series 2 (5.1/10) ^(a)
31. Revival 2008-10 Specials (4.0/10)
32. Classic Season 23 – The Trial of a Time Lord (3.7/10)
33. Classic Season 22 (3.5/10)

* Includes originally unmade serial Shada
† Includes 20th Anniversary story or a story made up of 45 minute episodes, counted as a four-parter for the purposes of averaging
^(a) Includes preceding Christmas Special
^(b) Includes following Christmas Special

Next Time: We head over to the VNAs and people are getting replaced by duplicates piloted by squirrels. Well no, not actual squirrels, that would be ridiculous. Alien squirrels.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: 2011 Christmas Special
• Airdate: 25th December 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: None
• Other Notable Characters: Amy, Rory, Madge (Claire Skinner)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Farren Blackburn
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

Usually called "The Doctor". Or "The Caretaker". Or "Get off this planet"…though, strictly speaking, that probably isn't a name. – The Doctor

For the 2010 Christmas special, Steven Moffat turned for inspiration to the classic Charles Dickens novel, A Christmas Carol (the novel), resulting in "A Christmas Carol" (the episode). That episode proved very popular, and Moffat really enjoyed writing it. So it's perhaps unsurprising that for the 2011 Christmas special, Moffat would once again turn for inspiration to a beloved novel associated with Christmas. In this case he pulled from the first of CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, creating today's subject for review, "The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe". Like before, Moffat loved the process of writing the Christmas special.

Yeah, this isn't working nearly as well as "Christmas Carol" (the episode).

The most obvious reason for this is that the CS Lewis original doesn't give a framework that can be easily adapted into a new story. Christmas Carol's (the novel's) framework leaves a basic structure that is very easy to translate into a completely different story. The most memorable parts of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe are pretty specific to that novel. Which leaves the bits of this episode that do feel most like they're referring back to their inspiration feeling a bit hollow. For instance, the Doctor delivers the classic line "what do they teach you in schools these days" and it just kind of feels out of place.

But fortunately those moments are few and far between. Hell, we get some good stuff out of the Narnia homage. Like in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe the episode is set during the London Blitz, which gives it a good backdrop. And the image of the small child crawling their way through a magic portal into a snowy world, obviously taken from the Lewis novel, gets some good use here. While I do think it was a mistake to take such direct inspiration from CS Lewis' novel, I don't think it by any means it ruins the episode.

Instead, the episode's biggest issue is that there isn't much of a plot here. Now this is nothing new for Christmas specials, which can sometimes seem to exist solely to give the audience warm fuzzy feelings rather than actually have a meaningful story. But even by the standards of Christmas specials, the plot is barely there. It opens with a fun sequence where the Doctor crashes to Earth after defeating some attempted invasion of Earth or other. In the confusion though, he put his impact suit on backwards (he actually did it out in space). This sequence is absolute nonsense…but it's also really fun so I'll give it a pass. That follows with the Doctor meeting our kind of stand in companion for this episode, Madge Arwell, who sees him crash and helps him get back to the TARDIS, the Doctor offering to repay the favor someday. Again, this is all quite fun.

Cut to the London Blitz, Madge's husband Reg has joined the RAF and she's received a telegram saying that he's just died. Since she doesn't want to ruin Christmas for her children forever, Madge decides not to tell them until after the holiday period. Oh and of course it's the Blitz so they've had to all pack up and move to the countryside, specifically the very large estate of an "Uncle Digby". Upon arrival, the Doctor reveals that he's replaced the normal caretaker…somehow and is acting as caretaker for the estate. Yes, somehow he knew that Madge needed his help (there's a whole thing about wishing if you like that sort of thing) and is going to try to make Christmas a good time for the children.

What he actually does is give a Christmas present that is a time and space portal because it's the Doctor and he can't do things simply. This is where we get our Narnia allusion as younger sibling Cyril Arwell climbs through the present onto an alien world (although weirdly enough the Christmas present isn't the titular wardrobe, but rather the TARDIS is the wardrobe, even though the present serves the function of the wardrobe from Lewis' novel). Realizing he's disappeared the Doctor and elder sibling Lily Arwell follow him in, and then later, looking for her children before noticing the present, Madge also follows. Madge has a brief run in with some "Androzani Rangers" who are here to clear out the planet before acid rain starts falling, Cyril goes to a tower that seems to have grown out of nowhere. The Doctor and Lily also end up at the tower, and this all ends in Madge flying the souls of the local trees in the top of the tower to a friendly planet before returning her family home.

That's pretty thin all things considered. There's not really a threat other than the acid rain being caused by whoever brought in the Androzani rangers. The Christmas connection comes about because the trees grow these orbs that look a bit like Christmas ornaments. "Naturally occurring Christmas trees", as the Doctor puts it. Now this doesn't give credit to the story for its pretty lengthy set up, where the Doctor show off his renovations to the house the Arwells are staying at. It's a fine sequence, but it doesn't do all that much for me. It's just laying on the whimsy a bit too thick for my tastes.

Mind you the other thing this doesn't give the episode credit for is Madge Arwell. By far the best bits of this episode center on Madge. Whether it's in more serious moments or some of the more lighthearted stuff, Madge is always brilliant. Claire Skinner puts in such a good performance in this episode, and makes any scene she's in better just by being in it. She's believable as the mother, the grieving widow and in whatever relationship she's developing with the Doctor. That last point is quite important, as she really does slowly build out something of a meaningful connection to the strange caretaker she has not yet realized is the same "angel" she helped after he fell from the sky. Oh and I simply must praise the scene of the three Androzani rangers attempting, and failing, to interrogate Madge. Just a really funny scene, from their initial appearance of being genuinely sinister to them revealing themselves to be bumbling and not terribly bright.

As I already mentioned, Madge hasn't yet told her children about Reg's apparent death. Unfortunately they find out when, as she's traveling through the vortex with her family and the Doctor she cries out "please don't make me watch him die". But as it turns out, Reg didn't die. He…followed a strange light that turned out to be Madge piloting the forest's time ship back home. So Reg went forwards in time at least a few days (his co-pilot also surviving as a result, though that guy never gets so much as a name) but otherwise is fine. Happy ending for all! Yeah I'll be honest, I don't love that.

I get it. It's Christmas. Ending the festive special on a hearty "sorry your dad's dead kids" probably wouldn't suit what most people want out of an episode like this. But this episode really felt like it needed the tragic ending to tie itself together. The whole emotional arc of the episode was building to telling Cyril and Lily that their father had died. And then it feels like the episode blinks. I don't know that this episode would even be good if it had committed to its tragic ending, but I think it would be more interesting, and maybe that's enough.

I should also mention that Reg's place in this episode is…odd for a few reasons. First, it's kind of an inversion of a pattern from Series 6 where it seemed like it was the mothers who were consistently being left out of information they really deserved to know – I'm speaking of "Night Terrors" and "Closing Time". Here, Reg just seems to regularly accept whatever weirdness is going on around him without curiosity. As far as we know, it's never explained to him just how the hell he ended up with his wife in entirely the wrong part of England or how he time travelled to Christmas Day. Also, the thing with him following Madge home appears to be a pattern with Reg, specifically in that the way they got together was that he followed her home until she agreed to marry him. Now the episode frames this as sweet, and given the scenes we do see of how this played out, I think it justifies this. But I also know some people view this as a bit stalkery and, well, I can't say I don't see it.

But this episode just has some weird gender stuff in it anyway. The reason Madge ends up piloting everyone – forest souls and family alike – home is that she is "strong". Cyril and the Doctor are declared by the tree king thing to be "weak" while Lily and Madge are, apparently "strong". Yeah, it's a gender thing. Or I suppose that should be a sex thing (not like that) seeing as the specific thing that the trees are looking at is the prospective pilot's ability to carry children. What exactly this has to do with carrying the souls of an entire forest in your head…I have no idea. Steven Moffat wanted this episode to function as a celebration of motherhood. But the plot being solved because Madge can carry children really doesn't meaningfully serve that. There's the biological essentialism of it all of course (as a newly minted transfemme I had to get that in somewhere) and also questions like "if Madge were old enough to be infertile would she still be able to pilot the ship" that this sort of plot almost demands asking. Though the main thing is that presenting that the most relevant part of a woman is her womb will always feel icky, even if it's not intended that way as is clearly the case here.

Aw well, at least the episode ends well. First it leverages that genuine connection between Madge and the Doctor as the Doctor prepares to leave Madge and her family. Madge invites the Doctor for Christmas dinner and as such it slips out that the Doctor's friends all think he's dead. And Madge, being wonderful, just will not stand for that and practically orders the Doctor to let his friends know he's all right. You have to figure that her experience of believing her husband to be dead is informing her perspective here. She knows how she felt at the loss of a loved one, as well as the relief in discovering he was okay after all. And so the Doctor, cowed, goes to see Amy and Rory.

There's not a ton to say about the Doctor until this ending in this episode. Him repaying Madge for helping him in this extravagant and goofy manner speaks to the 11th Doctor's lack of restraint I suppose. And, as always, the 11th Doctor is quite good with children. I didn't mind this next set of children so much here as I started doing towards the end of Series 6. Look, even I am occasionally vulnerable to the schmaltziness of Christmas. If there's one moment worth discussing it's him remarking on Lily doing some happy crying over the beauty of the tree souls: "Crying when you're happy. Good for you. That's so human." After a genuinely fun reunion with Amy, and then Rory (where of course it's revealed that River did in fact spill the beans on the Doctor still being alive), the Doctor finds himself doing his own happy crying. And look, I'm not a fond of the neverending gag of "timey-wimey" so the line "humany wumany" does in fact make me cringe. But I appreciate the sentiment at least.

This is a frustrating Christmas special. Madge is great, the ending is great and there's some really impressive visuals. But the plot is very threadbare and the episode seems to be trying to sustain itself on pure whimsy. Sometimes it gets there, but most of the time it just falls a little short. Which, again, is frustrating, but it leads to an episode that just doesn't work for most of its runtime, in spite of a lot to praise about it.

Score: 4/10

Stray Observations

• While it doesn't seem like it was the main reason that Amy and Rory were reduced to cameo roles for this episode, Arthur Darvill was in a production of Doctor Faustus at the time of the filming of this episode, and so probably wouldn't have been able to film much for it regardless.
• Lily Arwell would originally have been named Lucy, but this was felt to be leaning to far into the homage.
• Alexander Armstrong, who played Reg Arwell, had voiced Mr. Smith on The Sarah Jane Adventures, as well as cameoing as such in "The Stolen Earth".
• Holly Early, who played Lily Arwell, was actually 19 at the time.
• When in 2023 the Doctor Who Magazine ran a reader's poll for the 60th anniversary, this episode ranked last among 11th Doctor era stories. That seems harsh, even as someone who's not a particular fan of this episode.
• Reg's aircraft was a real 1945 Lancaster bomber, which was provided by the Linconshire Aviation Heritage Centre, where those scenes were filmed.
• Arabella Weir, who played Androzani Ranger Billis had previously played the Doctor in the genuinely awful Big Finish episode "Exile", for their Doctor Who: Unbound range.
• At a press screening for this episode Steven Moffat announced that Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill would be leaving Doctor Who midway through Series 7, to be replaced by a new companion. This was a decision made mutually with Moffat, Gillan and Darvill, as they all felt it was time to wrap up Amy and Rory's stories.
• We never actually see how the Doctor gets back to his TARDIS in the opening sequence. We just see Madge pick the lock of a police box (always fun when the show goes to a time when those were actually a thing) that turns out not to be the TARDIS.
• Two of the Androzani rangers are named Billis and Ven-Garr. This was meant as a tribute to Steven Moffat's original co-Executive producers Beth Willis and Piers Wenger. Willis had left show at the end of Series 6, while Wenger was leaving after the Christmas Special.
• Oh and speaking of the Androzani rangers, they're from Androzani Major, in the year 5341. Now the majority of the action in The Caves of Androzani actually took place on Androzani Minor, however the Conglomeration (the evil corporation from that story) was based on Androzani Major. That story didn't give a date for when it took place, though Expanded Universe material puts it in the 51st Century, which would be roughly 300 years before this story took place. There's no discontinuity here, but it is still, frankly, bizarre that one of the darkest stories of the Classic era gets referenced in this slightly goofy story with three characters who are among the story's goofiest. That's not a criticism, mind you, just an observation.
• And in less unusual references to the show's past, the Doctor references meeting the Forest of Cheem once and "she fancied me". Obviously a reference to "The End of the World", though it's worth pointing out that that wasn't the entire Forest of Cheem, just Jabe who fancied him.
• The trees on the planet are called "Androzani trees", meaning that either this planet is either in the Androzani system or (and this seems less likely) the trees were transplanted from a planet in the Androzani system. It can't be either Androzani Major or Minor, as the Doctor refers to the planet as "one of the safest planets I know" and there's no way he'd describe either of those planets as "safe". Especially not Androzani Minor given that he and Peri were poisoned there, Peri nearly dying and the Doctor regenerating.
• Okay, but what explanation did Reg give to the RAF to explain him being, you know, alive?
• It's been two years since Amy and Rory last saw the Doctor. That actually puts the end of this episode at Christmas 2013.
• When Amy mentions that she and Rory always put out a place for the Doctor at Christmas, Rory does a little point at Amy. I like that detail, that's definitely something Amy insisted on.
• No "Next Time" trailer here, as the first half of Series 7 wasn't coming out until the tail end of 2012.

Next Time: Series 6 fundamentally changed Doctor Who's format. Which is odd because it was arguably at its best when it wasn't trying to do that.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 13
• Airdate: 1st October 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: River Song, Winston Churchill, Dorium Maldovar, Madame Kovarian
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Jeremy Webb
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

Oh they're flirting, do I really have to watch this? – Madame Kovarian on the Doctor and River

Series 6 represents a pretty big shift for Doctor Who in how it handles its arc. Previous series each had repeated elements that ran throughout them and would eventually be explained in the finale. In series 6 though, showrunner Steven Moffat decided to write a more standard arc. Something closer to The X-Files' or Buffy the Vampire Slayer's half-arc seasons. Where there would be episodes that were more standalone but also several episodes devoted entirely to building up the Series story.

Which is, in and of itself, fine. I personally prefer the memetic arc approach, at least for Doctor Who, a show which I think really benefits from having each story stand on its own. But at the very least I can imagine a more cohesive arc working. But in Series 6, Steven Moffat stumbled in some two crucial ways. First, the arc makes no sense. That's not a great start admittedly, but arguably the second point is arguably an even greater problem, at least for what I've got to talk about here. Simply put, by the time Seres 6 finale "The Wedding of River Song" rolls around…there's not actually much that still needs to happen.

This was something that kind of happened with the final episode of Series 5, "The Big Bang". But Moffat got away with that that by focusing on character stuff and some fairly obvious but still effective smoke and mirrors that made it feel like more was going on than actually was. "Wedding" absolutely tries the smoke and mirrors thing again, but, weirdly, it doesn't have much time for it. That's because, while there's not a lot that needs to actually happen, there's a ton of explanations that need to be conveyed in order for the Series to make anything resembling sense. What this means is that, not for the last time, a Steven Moffat finale ends up being a lot of people talking about why what's going on is important, rather than anything actually going on.

Admittedly though, those smoke and mirrors are a lot of fun. The episode opens up in a world where all of time is happening at once. Children play in the park only to get chased away by pterodactyls. Charles Dickens is interviewed on TV about his upcoming Christmas special. And in a bit that is far funnier than it has any right to be, a roman soldier in a chariot waits for a red light to change. When I say that all of time is happening at once, I do mean all of it. To quote a newsreader, "Crowds lined the mall today, as the Holy Roman Emperor, Winston Churchill, returned to Buckingham Palace on his personal mammoth". She doesn't even mention his Silurian physician. And it's a really fun, visually rich and engaging start to an episode.

Sure, I could poke holes in this. How does the Earth support a population of everyone and everything that has ever lived on it? Why don't we see more Silurians, or, say Neanderthals? A lot of emphasis is put on the idea that time doesn't move, it's always the 22nd of April at 5:02 PM. But that idea doesn't really make sense. In a very real sense, time does in fact move, after all, people are walking around, talking. Apparently there's a day/night cycle. Clocks should actually still function as normal, especially the old grandfather clock that Winston Churchill has in his office which is, after all, just a mechanical device..

But I think that's missing the point. I'm going to be very negative about this episode for the majority of this review, so let me say, logical problems notwithstanding, I love this idea for what it means for time to break. It's certainly a much more interesting presentation than weird time bat things coming into being, as in "Father's Day". It looks cool, it's fanciful in the best way possible, and it creates an intriguing mystery: what happened to time?

Unfortunately, that's where we run into that problem of not much needing to happen. The frame narrative for given for the first set of explanations is that the Doctor is telling Winston Churchill the story of what he did after the events of "Closing Time", with flashbacks showing us these scenes. It's just the Doctor investigating the Church of the Silence, to try to figure out why they want him dead. Are these scenes any good? I don't know, maybe. But none of it grabs me. There's a bit with "live chess" (chess where the more you move each piece the more electricity is running through it…sure) which is…I guess memorable. Honestly, "memorable" feels like too strong a word. Eventually the Doctor tracks down Dorium Maldovar's head (as he was beheaded alive in "A Good Man Goes to War") and he explains what the question is that must never be answered, but we don't get to know yet because we're saving that reveal for the end of the episode.

If there's something of value in all of this it's the Doctor confronting his mortality. Owing to the structure of the show we don't get very many moments like this, and having him start ranting about how he can always put off his death one more day is somewhat compelling. And the moment that pulls him out of it is quite well done, as the Doctor receives a call revealing that the Brigadier had just died. This was done in part because Nicholas Courtney had died earlier in the year, which just gives the moment more weight if you know it. Still, I don't know. This whole sequence has its value, and in the context of a better episode it might have worked a bit better for me, but something does feel off. I think it's just that this moment doesn't quite fit tonally with the rest of the episode. After all, the Doctor is going to cheat death, and as the audience we do in fact know this (because…obviously), so the moment can't land as well as it should.

So the Doctor goes to his appointment with an astronaut by Lake Silencio, as seen at the beginning of the Series. As revealed over the course of the Series the astronaut is River. The two have a tearful conversation about how this is inevitable, but River pulls a fast one by draining her suits power supply preventing the Doctor from getting shot. And because this is a fixed point in time, a paradox is created, creating the world that we see at the beginning of the episode.

So this is complete nonsense. I've seen it theorized that Steven Moffat, in creating the arc for Series 6, started from the image of the astronaut walking out of a lake and shooting the Doctor and worked backwards from there. I don't have any evidence for this theory, but it kind of has to be true. The location part of things is at least somewhat reasonable, Dorium calls the point at which the Doctor gets shot a "still point in time" which apparently makes it easy to create a fixed point. The whys and hows of it all are fairly immaterial, but as far as made up Doctor Who science goes, it sounds reasonably plausible. But then you start asking questions like why an Apollo astronaut suit was used. Why River had to be in the suit if the suit, according to her, was essentially operating itself. Why the Church of the Silence went to all the trouble of making a Time Lord baby since it seems that anyone could have been in the suit. Why River was conditioned to kill the Doctor if, again, the suit she was shoved in was just going to operate itself. Oh and how a stable point in time was actually created beyond the "still point" bit of technobabble.

Alright, so I can theorize here, at least a little bit. From the opening two parter we know the Silents guided humanity to develop certain technologies at certain times, like making the US go to the moon so that they'd get a spacesuit. Now, considering these guys have time travel this doesn't really make sense, but it could be argued that they prefer to use non-anachronistic technology…although River "kills" the Doctor in 2011 so arguably the technology has come back around to being anachronistic considering it's roughly 40 years old at this point. You could make the case that River being Time Lord-esque somehow helps make the fixed point easier to create.

You could say these things, but of course we're told none of them. It's not even hinted at. I just made all that up. And the thing is, this is an episode that really didn't need more standing around and explaining things. But if you need your audience to work to make the connections to make your story make sense, you have fundamentally failed as a storyteller. And that's what happens with the Series 6 arc and as a result a lot of that failure is felt most strongly here, in the finale. Nothing really happens here except the explanations and resolving of the arc, and that stuff is so blatantly nonsensical that any goodwill the episode builds with its creative beginning pretty much instantly gets wiped away.

But I suppose we should mention that Amy and Rory feature in this thing as well. In the alternate world, Amy is a secret agent-type (introducing herself as "Pond, Amelia Pond"…okay that bit's clever) and Rory is "Captain Williams" (his first name…Captain) her loyal second. Amy is a high up in an organization that River started, made up of people who either have memories of the original world or can sense something is wrong. Amy (mostly) remembers because of her history with the Time Crack in her bedroom, River remembers (presumably) because she's sort of a Time Lord variant. They're all wearing eyepatches like Kovarian's – called "eye drives" – explained as being used to create external storage for the brain, so that it can remember the Silents. Which, oh yeah, they've also got a bunch of Silents supposedly imprisoned in tanks. Also, Kovarian's here again to chew what little scenery she hadn't managed to get her teeth on in her previous appearances.

Anyway, after some more explanations that don't really matter (short version, if the Doctor and River touch for long enough the timeline reverts to its original state) we learn that naturally the Silents aren't actually imprisoned and the eye drives actually allow the Silents to kill anyone who wears them and I don't care about any of this.

I think the issue is the alternate timeline of it all. We're introduced to a bunch of characters that we've never met before in the second half of this episode, too late to properly establish any of them. Oh and Churchill's completely vanished from the story by the way, because he wasn't actually at all relevant to the episode he's just here so that the Doctor can tell his story to someone and once that's done he doesn't need to be here anymore. Even Amy and Rory don't really hit the same as they normally do because they're not quite the characters we know. Amy is closer, but Rory is just kind of there for his parts of the episode. He gets a good moment, insisting on wearing his eye drive through the pain so that he can hold off the Silents while remembering what he's fighting. This is turn leads to Amy coming back for him – having finally remembered that "Captain Williams" is in fact her husband – and machine gunning down the arrayed Silents.

Amy of course gets one more memorable moment, by killing, at least in this alternate timeline, Kovarian. After pointing out all of the ways that Kovarian hurt her, she declares "River Song didn't get it all from you…sweetie" and shoving Kovarian's eye drive back on her face so that she'll die too. It's a brutal moment, meant to hint that Amy could have turned out very different without the Doctor's influence. However, this just doesn't quite land for me. Part of it is that this moment will get no follow up, indeed Amy will be at her kindest for most of Series 7, but part of it is just that, for all that Amy can be more than a bit thoughtless, she's never come across as sadistic in that way. At the end of the episode she, apparently able to remember the alternate timeline, reflects on this moment with River. It's a nice quiet moment that does reinforce that yes, in spite of all of the weirdness, River and Amy are family.

But all of this does raise another issue with this episode. Like with "A Good Man Goes to War" this just doesn't feel like Doctor Who. There's a lot of shooting and the Doctor is just kind of there watching it in the background. Honestly if there's an era of Doctor Who that this reminds me of, it's Eric Saward's time as Script Editor. But, and you won't hear this often, Steven Moffat is no Eric Saward. It may have gotten old real quick, but Saward did have a talent for integrating the action stuff that felt in line with Doctor Who (see, for example, Earthshock). Moffat…just doesn't. The end result is an episode that kind of feels like it doesn't belong in its own show.

Nowhere is that felt more strongly than with the titular "wedding". I don't have a problem with romance on Doctor Who. Hell, I even mostly like River and the Doctor's relationship. The problem certainly isn't building up a Doctor Who episode towards a big romantic moment; "The Girl Who Waited" did that just a few episodes ago and I love that episode. No, the problem is once again Steven Moffat's writing, because he can't integrate the romantic moment into the episode. I was never a fan of the Rose/Doctor romance, and I never felt like David Tennant and Billie Piper had much romantic chemistry, but "Doomsday's" ending still felt like a natural conclusion to the build up that story, and Series 2 as a whole, gave it. In "Wedding" it feels like the Doctor and River get married because…what else are they going to do?

A lot of it comes down a lack of substance to this relationship, at least as shown in this episode. Other episodes do actually build it in a meaningful way, but this episode just has River says she loves the Doctor a lot, and that's kind of it. She's willing to sacrifice the entire universe for that love…yeah that's not love, that's something else. You can extract all sort of uncomfortable reads of River's attachment to the Doctor, and this episode basically affirms all of them. River has a line where she tells Kovarian "who else was I going to fall in love with" and the context of that line is that Kovarian groomed her to kill the Doctor. That's…ew. Just…ew. Again, I like this relationship because the performers sell it and most of the time it's easy to forget that aspect of things, hell most of the time it feels like River's fascination with the Doctor has very little to do with her conditioning. But when it comes out…hoo boy.

And from the Doctor's end…the Doctor has never felt like he loves River less than in this episode where, as a reminder, he gets married to River. To be clear, it doesn't quite read like he doesn't love her, just that he doesn't seem as fascinated by her as he has in the past. Which, considering he's effectively "solved" the mystery of River Song…yeah that doesn't have great implications either. I'm not as bothered by this though, because frankly River's willingness to endanger others in this episode makes the Doctor's anger at her understandable. And after they're married he does tell her his secret…but we'll get to that.

But it does leave the Doctor without much agency in this episode. His job is to convince River to pull the trigger…or more accurately let the suit pull the trigger rather than doing it herself. The wedding ceremony itself is…actually no, it's bad. Why are the parents giving River away in this ceremony, where did the Doctor get this thing from (it can't possibly be a Time Lord ceremony…can it?) and why are we asking Rory to consent to something when he doesn't even know what he's consenting to? That's not actually consent, not that the parents' consent should really matter. But anyway we get a nice little speech from the Doctor about how he doesn't want the universe to suffer for his benefit, she lets them kiss, we're back at Lake Silencio and then he's getting shot.

So, okay, how did the Doctor survive? Quite easily as it turns out, because that's not the Doctor, that's a Doctor-shaped Tesselecta, being piloted by the Doctor. Yeah, the Tesselecta (from "Let's Kill Hitler"), shows back up during the first half of the episode, and we later find out that the Doctor, I guess, asked to use their ship. Which got destroyed in the process, incidentally.

So, what do I think of this? It definitely feels like a bit of cheat. But I can't get annoyed. The Doctor was always going to cheat death. There's no getting around that. There was no version of the story that starts with the Doctor getting shot and permanently killed that ends without that being undermined. I guess the point I'm driving at is that, if the only possible endings for your series arc feel like they're a bit underwhelming, maybe the series arc was a bad idea from first principles. But that's not something that can really be laid at the feet of this episode.

Now this episode does do something interesting with the idea of the Doctor faking his own death. Now, obviously, he's doing it so that he can survive without history breaking, but he does give another stated reason. He feels he got "too big", "too noisy". "Time to step back into the shadows," he says. I really like this idea. The Doctor leveraging his reputation has become more and more of a thing since the start of the Revival, and the 11th Doctor era in particular has already done it several times. And it's a plot point that always feels off to me. It's kind of nice to go back to a fairly anonymous Doctor. Does that really improve the episode? Not really, but it does give me something nice to say. Before their wedding, River shows the Doctor that she's sent out an SOS saying the Doctor is in trouble. And the whole universe, which is not yet affected by time breaking incidentally, is responding with calls that they want to help. It's a neat inversion of the anti-Doctor alliance from "The Pandorica Opens". And it ultimately ties in to the Doctor wanting to "step back into the shadows". Sure, it's nice to be loved. But maybe that's part of the problem. And maybe the Doctor doesn't feel he deserves it.

And there's more solid character writing, as River eventually breaks down and reveals to her mother that, in fact, the Doctor survived. The moment is well played, from Amy's jubilation, to Rory's more subdued, but no less glad, reaction. And then Amy's realization that, in fact, she is the Doctor's mother in law is just a wonderfully funny moment. That whole ending feels very warm and wholesome.

But the scene where we actually reveal how the Doctor survived…yeah I'm not too fond of it. Yes, it's got the whole "time to step back into the shadows" moment which I like but it's also got the show's title being yelled over and over by Dorium's head because…sure why not? Yeah "Doctor Who" is that "first question" we've been hearing about since "Let's Kill Hitler". Is this clever? A little, I guess. It also feels incredibly self-indulgent. And it sets up a new mystery, which, all I'll say now is given how disappointing the resolution to Series 6's mystery was, I wouldn't hold out to much hope for the next one.

And we can't finish off without talking about the music. Series 6 has seen an increase in tracks being reused a lot from episode to episode, but it's mostly been tolerably handled. However it's in "Wedding" that something breaks. A lot of the music in this episode just does not suit the moment it's being played under. One of the things with Murray Gold's style of music is that, since it can't help but catch your attention, it really requires a degree of specificity to the moment. Sometimes this works. Character leitmotifs usually work as long as the character is doing something that is central to their personality on screen. But a lot of the music in this episode was just so clearly composed for a moment that isn't quite like the moment we're seeing on screen. And that's annoying to watch.

So…yeah. Not fond of this one at all. It has its moments. For roughly a scene the broken timeline world is fun. Underlying this is some decent character stuff for our little TARDIS family of The Doctor, Amy, Rory and River. Though quite frequently even that falls apart under the pressure of the plot. A nonsense plot that is mostly made up of explanations of the nonsense that's going on. It's an episode where all that really needs to happen is that we explain the arc, and the episode delivers on that to its own detriment and yet it still just doesn't make sense. Every problem with Series 6's arc comes crashing in here. What a mess.

Score: 1/10

Stray Observations

• Originally the "eye drives" were referred to as "data cores". However it was realized after filming that it wasn't clear that "data core" was referring to the eyepatch, so the episode was dubbed to replace the phrase.
• Parts of this episode were filmed in advance of the script being completed, as part of the scene at lake Silencio in "The Impossible Astronaut". This was able to be done because Steven Moffat had worked out the general shape of Series 6 well in advance.
• The cast apparently found working while wearing eyepatches a bit strange. Alex Kingston found they made her feel "slightly dizzy".
• Material for scenes filmed in the Tesselecta were filmed alongside the filming of "Let's Kill Hitler".
• The eyepatches were part of this episode paying tribute to Nicholas Courtney who had passed in February after a fight with cancer. The eyepatches were a reference to a story from the filming of Inferno where Courtney played an evil alternate universe version of the Brigadier, referred to as the Brigade Leader. Apparently when Courtney did a swivel in his chair to reveal his eyepatch, he turned around to see the entire cast and crew wearing their own eyepatches.
• This isn't the only tribute to Courtney. River's base in the episode is in Cairo, which is actually where Nicholas Courtney was born.
• Simon Callow makes a brief cameo on a tv returning as Charles Dickens, a part he originally played (on Doctor Who at least, he's played it a ton) in "The Unquiet Dead".
• Meredith Vieira, the host of American show Today, cameos as a newsreader. It was something of a minor publicity stunt, as part of Doctor Who continuing to court the American audience in Series 6
• Ian McNeice returns as Winston Churchill, while Richard Hope reprises his role as Malokeh from the "Hungry Earth" two parter, this time as Churchill's physician.
• The scene with the Dalek was a late addition. Steven Moffat had claimed publicly that he was "resting" the Daleks for Series 6, and decided to backtrack on that as a sort of prank with the press.
• Notably this seems to have spawned rumors for years that Doctor Who was somehow contractually obligated to include the Daleks in every series, though this was later discovered to be false. No idea how the rumors became so pervasive mind you.
• The Silence mention Rory keeps on dying. This is the third time the show has made a joke about Rory's repeated deaths. That being said, Rory does not appear to die in this episode.
• The final scene of the episode takes place, for River, immediately after the events of "Flesh and Stone". It would seem that River did not go straight back to prison at the end of that episode.

Next Time: The Doctor gives two small children an interplanetary portal as a Christmas present. I'd say things end up going wrong, but honestly, I can't imagine them going right.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 12
• Airdate: 24th September 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: None
• Other Notable Characters: River Song, Amy, Rory, Craig, Sophie, Madame Kovarian
• Writer: Gareth Roberts
• Director: Steve Hughes
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

You know, when I was little like you I dreamt of the stars. I think it's fair to say, in the language of your age, I lived my dream. – The Doctor

One of the odd things that happens when you watch, say, a television series multiple times is that you come to realize that you have different reactions to individual episodes each time. For instance where as in the past "Closing Time" was an episode that I thought of as a sub-par but largely harmless follow up to "The Lodger", in watching it for review I really took against it. "Closing Time" came across to me on this viewing as an incoherent mess of a story that could never decide on a tone.

"Closing Time" vacillates pretty wildly between trying to replicate the humor of "The Lodger" but failing because the jokes aren't nearly as good this time around and trying to capture the melancholy of a Doctor who has decided it's finally time to face his fate at Lake Silencio. When it hits the latter it generally does succeed, but as I said the humor just isn't landing. And in a better episode the humor would have served as an effective contrast against the melancholy, but in this episode the humor feels like it's working against it. It's a bit too broad, too goofy. One minute the Doctor is reflecting on his mortality, the next we're getting a bit about how a shop employee thinks that Craig and the Doctor are actually a couple. It just doesn't work together.

Not helping is the fact that, by this point, the story beats that "Closing Time" goes through have been absolutely rammed into the ground in Series 6. I haven't talked about it much, but Series 6 has a running theme of parenthood. One that was entirely accidental from what I can tell, but it's there nonetheless. This is the fourth story this series to include as a key plot point the love between a father and a son. And in another notable pattern, mothers not named Amelia Pond barely getting referenced. After "Night Terrors", this is the second time this series that we've had a mother introduced at the beginning of the episode only to not feature again until the end. Though at least in this case it's because Daisy Haggard, who played Sophie both here and in "The Lodger" had a play she was rehearsing for when this episode was filming, so wasn't available for most of the episode. Still, it's a weird pattern.

At least this time I do somewhat buy James Corden in his main role. In this episode Craig is trying to cope with being a father. He feels like he doesn't know what to do, and so to try and prove that he can cope, he's had Sophie go off to relax with her friends and he'll take care of the baby all on his own. And then the Doctor shows up, and Craig knows well enough to know this probably means trouble. This in spite of the fact that the Doctor actually just showed up to say goodbye to Craig before going off to die (technically there's a whole thing about some specific cosmic event the Doctor wants to see but that's not really important). Point being, while Corden struggled in the role of romantic lead in "Lodger", here he feels more at home in the role of well-meaning father who feels he's in over his head.

That being said, we also lose a lot of what made "Lodger" work as well as it did. There's no real reason for the Doctor to pretend to be a normal person in "Closing Time". But we still get kind of an equivalent to that with the Doctor taking on a job in a shop selling children's toys to investigate power outages that he's tracked down to that shop. That material feels more than a little bit superfluous. It is funny to see the Doctor, presumably after working for a single day, having seemingly gotten close to everyone from the other salespeople to the security guard, but it just doesn't feel as meaningful as the stuff from "Lodger". Also, all of the characters at the shop feel very one-note.

Which goes back to the issue of the humor in this episode just not landing as well as the humor from "Lodger". The closest we get is when the episode is focused around Craig's baby, Alfie, or as he'd prefer to be known, Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All. Yes, as established in "A Good Man Goes to War", the Doctor speaks baby, so we get a lot of fun sequences where the Doctor translates Alfie's feelings for everyone else. It's not the best material, but it's fairly amusing. A running gag where the Doctor can temporarily get people to be unable to talk by doing a "shush" feels a bit off, like if this is an ability he has (it's introduced as something he can do to get Alfie to stop crying, but he quickly starts using it on adults) it either should be used more…or is really unethical and just shouldn't be used. Still it's a gag probably best not taken seriously, similarly to how I didn't question the head butt of knowledge transfer in "Lodger".

As stated above the best bits of the episode are its quieter more contemplative ones. There's a scene at Craig's house where the Doctor is talking to Alfie, reflecting on his life that is just brilliant. Matt Smith plays this scene so well. It's got a grandiosity, but mixed with the sadness of the Doctor sincerely believing his life is nearly at an end. Later when everything's over and the Doctor and Craig are saying their goodbyes (Craig providing the stetson and blue envelopes from "The Impossible Astronaut"), there's a resignation to the Doctor as he leaves. The Doctor's nametag from his time in the shop is recontextualized ("I'm the Doctor. I was here to help. And you are very, very welcome") turning a pretty unfunny gag into an emotionally resonant moment. I even like the reports from the older children that River Song collects, with the best joke in the episode unquestionably being the last one ("I really liked his hat").

But that's kind of all the episode has going for it. The plot is…nothing. The Cybermen are hiding under the shop (why not) grabbing people out of it as raw material. They've been worn out and are trying to reestablish themselves. There's a worthwhile idea about a group of barely functional Cybermen trying to restart. But, like in "The Next Doctor", this idea just doesn't get much examination amidst everything else going on. The end result is that this episode just kind of happens to have Cybermen in it. Apparently the Cybermen were put in by the writer because Series 6 would have otherwise had no returning monsters, and boy can you feel that they were here so that they could be here.

The climax of the episode tries to repeat the ending of the Lodger, with love once again saving the day (it's made explicit this time), in this case the love of Craig for his son Alfie. Craig has been sealed inside the Cyber Controller suit because the Cybermen think he's smart (sure…) but on the monitor the Cybermen have of the shop, Alfie starts crying, and Craig, hearing this, has an emotional surge that the Cybermen can't erase, instead it backfiring on them, causing their emotion to return. I remember when, in "The Age of Steel" the Cybermen having their emotions forced back on them was treated with gravitas (and, admittedly, heads exploding). Here it's just kind of a thing that happens.

But the real problem is that it doesn't entirely feel earned. In "The Lodger" I never fully bought the relationship between Craig and Sophie, but at the very least the ending works because it feels like it's the natural culmination of the episode. When you introduce the Cybermen into proceedings you're just adding a lot of baggage. On top of that…we've never really seen much of the love Craig has for Alfie. That's not to say it feels like he doesn't care for his son, but more that that's just not been the focus of the episode. The episode has been focused on Craig feeling like he doesn't know how to take care of his son. That's a feeling born out of love, because he wants to do well for his kid but feels inadequate. But we've still not seen much of that love. It leads to an ending that feels contrived.

And I do want to speak about how Sophie is handled in this episode. Now, like I said above, I can't fault the episode for deemphasizing Sophie when Daisy Haggard wasn't available to do much filming. But it does feel off that the plan was to lie to Sophie about what had happened while she was away. The Doctor puts in a bunch of effort to fix up Craig's house after what happened…so that Craig won't be in trouble with Sophie, rather than because he doesn't want to be responsible for wrecking their home. As a reminder, not only does Sophie know the Doctor, she's arguably his friend too. Honestly I wouldn't be remarking on this except that "Night Terrors" kind of pulled the same thing.

After everything is wrapped up we get a scene that…honestly should have gone into the next episode. I mean that episode needs something to happen. But the point is it's a cliffhanger for the next episode that has nothing to do with the plot of this one. It does serve to remind us that River only became an archaeologist to hunt after the Doctor which…yeesh. And also it's got the return of Madame Kovarian who's still doing her out of place scenery chewing thing. Oh and the "tick tock" rhyme from "Night Terrors" makes a return here entirely because Steven Moffat liked the thing even though it doesn't really work outside its original context. So, no it's not a good scene, although the Silents remain intimidating as in this episode two of them are hanging out and doing their usual thing.

On the whole, I'll admit I came out of this review thinking less of "Closing Time" than I have in the past. Never a favorite of mine, I've kind of come to the conclusion that this is just an empty episode. I've made a lot of comparisons to "The Lodger" but that's because "Closing Time" so desperately wants to repeat what made that episode work and really can't pull it off. The humor is just so pervasive in this episode and it's not any good. When the episode takes a moment to reflect on where the Doctor is as a character at this point it gets really good, but those moments are just not integrated well enough into the episode to give it too much credit for them. I don't think much of this one.

Score: 3/10

Stray Observations

• As Steven Moffat intended to abandon the two part format for the Series 6 finale, he decided to commission an episode that would serve as a "calm before the storm". Hence the return of Craig.
• This episode was meant to take place roughly 200 years after "The God Complex" in the Doctor's personal timeline, accounting for the differences in the ages of the two versions of the Doctor seen in "The Impossible Astronaut". My only thought about this is that, even to a Time Lord, 200 years is a lot of time and maybe it's too much for the emotional sides of this, and especially next episode, to fully land.
• As this episode was produced alongside "The Girl Who Waited" it, like that episode, had to limit the amount of time given to certain members of the cast, in this case Amy and Rory.
• This dual production also meant that this episode needed a separate producer from the show's regular producer at the time Marcus Wilson. Line producer Denise Paul was promoted to producer for the episode.
• The Cyberman costume used for the episode was one of the ones that were originally created for Series 2. It was in a dilapidated state, which fortunately suited the needs of the episode anyway, and the suits were in fact further distressed.
• The production team did finally remove the Cybus Industries logo, unlike what was done in "The Pandorica Opens".
• Scenes in the shop were filmed in Howells Department Store in Cardiff. The production team could only film after the store closed at 7 PM, which meant that filming would take place over the course over several nights. This filming was rough, at one point going until 6 AM, and, according to James Corden, left the cast and crew feeling "lightheaded" and "hysterical".
• The house meanwhile was owned by a couple, who agreed to let their new home be used for filming because they thought their two young boys would appreciate it. Apparently this filming also tended to run into the morning.
• On the first day of filming, Matt Smith hit one of the Cybermat props harder than he should, requiring that the thing be repaired.
• The Doctor shows up and upon seeing Craig's new house says "you've redecorated…I don't like it." This is of course a running gag from previous multi-Doctor stories, though it's kind of odd to have it show up at Craig's house.
• It always feels a bit odd to have Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill's names show up in the credits in an episode they barely feature in.
• When he and Sophie first moved in to their new place, Craig checked upstairs and with both of his neighbors to make sure they were human. Understandable, given what happened when we met Craig.
• Amy is working as a model, where she's advertising a scent called "Petrichor" with the tagline, "For the Girl Who's Tired of Waiting". Okay a few thoughts here. One: That is way too many references to the show in a single poster. Two: Is Amy really famous enough to have her own scent? Strikes me as unlikely, especially since she'll later change careers. Three: the Doctor clearly hasn't seen this advertisement even though he works at this shop (admittedly it's his second day, but you'd think a giant poster of his friend would stand out).
• That being said the scene of the little girl asking for an autograph from Amy while the Doctor watches on, clearly not wanting to interrupt Amy and Rory's lives is well-done, though I don't know if I'd have had the Doctor say "Amelia Pond" at the end of it. Just feels weird, and I don't need to be reminded of the character's name. Actually, given how last episode ended, it might have worked better if he'd said "Amy Williams", reflecting that change in relationship, but oh well.
• The Cybermats were redesigned to have a fleshy mouth with teeth. This was Steven Moffat's idea, wanting to give them a bit more menace. I like it, suits the Cybermen's whole cyborg thing.
• The Doctor shoots a laser beam out of the sonic screwdriver to defeat the Cybermat. I don't care if it's technically got some alternate techno-babble explanation (though actually all the Doctor really says is "I've got an app for that"), that's what happens. I'm not usually one to complain about the sonic being overpowered, but this is pushing it, even for me.
• Alfie's first word appears to have been "Doctor".
• The final scene between River Song and Madame Kovarian was written by Steven Moffat

Next Time: We get almost all of the answers to the dangling questions over Series 6. They aren't necessarily good answers, but they are answers

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 11
• Airdate: 17 September 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Writer: Toby Whithouse
• Director: Nick Hurran
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

All hotels should have a well-stocked kitchen. Even alien fake ones. – Rita

As Series 5 was being put together, one of the writers that showrunner Steven Moffat approached was Toby Whithouse, previously the writer of "School Reunion". Moffat suggested a story set in a maze-like hotel, drawing on Moffat's experience of finding hotels unnerving. However, as Series 5 developed, Moffat came to the conclusion that the concept was a bit too reminiscent of the Maze of the Dead sequence in "The Time of Angels", and so Whithouse ended up writing "The Vampires of Venice". However the two held on to the idea, and decided to incorporate it into Series 6.

I bring this up because it's very strange for me to think of this episode as taking place at any point other than specifically episode 11 of Series 6. Hell, originally this would have come before "The Girl Who Waited" and while I can kind of imagine that it still feels strange. Because fundamentally, "The God Complex" feels like it is entirely designed to get the Doctor to decide to leave Amy and Rory behind.

The set up is this: our heroes, along with a cast of three humans and an alien, find themselves trapped in a replica 1980s hotel, where the walls and corridors are always shifting. In the hotel, each of the rooms seems to have something designed to terrify one of the guests. And our group is not the first to arrive here, as the walls near and around reception have pictures of previous guests, with their fears underneath them. Once you enter "your" room, your mind begins changing. It starts by the victim saying "praise him" before eventually openly welcoming the arrival of the monster that going to kill them. And speaking of which, there's a minotaur-like creature roaming the halls who comes for each of those who praise it, one by one, and drains the life out of them.

What follows is…well it's a lot of aimless running around to be honest. But that is saved by two elements. The first is Nick Hurran's direction. Hurran also directed "The Girl Who Waited" and I'd say between that and his other Doctor Who work the guy has an eye for creating disquieting visuals. "God Complex" is probably the busiest of his work, but I think that really serves a story which could have otherwise felt a bit empty. Hurran avoids showing the entire Minotaur until it's dying, making the monster feel like something beyond understanding. The scenes of various characters "praising" the Minotaur are often made of frantic quick cuts that make those moments of "worship" feel like a mania. It creates an environment that feels hostile and distressing, which keeps the pacing of the episode from dragging.

But the other half of this is that Toby Whithouse delivers a really good script this time around. Our secondary cast is well-characterized across the board, and he gives a lot of meaty material for all three members of the leading trio. From oddly disconcerting lines to some surprisingly funny bits, Whithouse keeps the aimless wandering feeling like it's accomplishing something, if only use learning about the characters.

And as these characters are central to our understanding of the episode, let's talk about them. We'll start with Joe. Joe's already under the influence of the Minotaur, praising it, so we don't learn much about him personally in this one. Apparently his fear was ventriloquists dummies, although coming under the power of the Minotaur has removed that fear from him. Other than a quick Sherlock scan by the Doctor showing that Joe is a gambler we honestly don't learn much about him, he's more here to give us our first sense of what's going on.

On the other hand, our lone survivor from the secondary cast is Gibbis. He's the alien of the group, a Tivolian. Tivoli is, apparently, "the most invaded planet in the Galaxy", which is because the Tiviolian culture is entirely built around being conquered by others. And for a while that's kind of all there seems to be to Gibbis, a running gag about how his first idea is always surrender and how Tivolian culture is entirely built around being conquered by others (for instance, the Tivoli anthem is called "Glory to <INSERT NAME HERE>"). However as the episode progresses Gibbis becomes less of a joke. He's actually the problem character in the group, as his cowardice is so ingrained that he assumes any problem can be solved via surrender. But that's because, as the Doctor points out, the Tivolian culture has survived for so long by being so open to conquest. It actually makes Gibbis oddly interesting. Though what's in his room, a Weeping Angel, doesn't really offer much insight into his character.

Then there's Howie. Howie…bugs me. He's a conspiracy theorist who spends most of the episode sincerely believing that the whole thing is a CIA plot. He's working through a stutter in speech therapy and seems to have had a breakthrough. But he's still socially awkward. His room contains a bunch of girls mocking him for his speech impediment. There's nothing necessarily wrong here. But, if you'll forgive me for using a term that wouldn't really enter the lexicon until a few years after this episode came out, he feels very incel-coded. Maybe that's not fair, but I also just have a lot less patience for conspiracy theorists or the view of them as harmless cranks than I used to.

That being said, trying to take Howie as the episode presents him, he's a fairly sympathetic figure. Lonely, obviously, and in his loneliness he's clearly fallen down some unfortunate online rabbit holes, but basically decent in spite of it all. And of course there's the part where he put in all of that work in speech therapy. I think Howie is meant to play as the purest victim of the group. He's not this sniveling coward like Gibbis, not a particularly active character like our heroes or Rita, but nor is he out of the action when the episode starts like Joe. He's just somebody pulled into this nightmarish world and coping the best he can.

And then there's Rita. If Howie is the purest tragedy, Rita is meant to be the greatest. Because, for one thing, the Doctor really wanted to take her on as a companion. But for another thing, Rita seems to have the most sober approach to what's going on. She's an English Nurse, and a Muslim. It's because of that last thing that Rita believes herself to be in Jahannam, the Muslim equivalent to hell. But what really stands out about Rita is her unique ability to size up situations and figure out how best to deal with them. Before the Doctor came along, it seems that she'd sort of made herself the leader of the guests of the hotel.

But it's also worth pointing out the degree to which she challenges the Doctor throughout this episode, since that challenge is crucial to the episode. She actually gets the honor of giving us our title drop when she asks why the Doctor feels the need to save everyone, "that's quite a God complex you've got there". It creates a neat little double meaning for the title since it is also set in a complex for, if not a god, then certainly a being that is worshipped by its victims as one. What's interesting is that Rita does seem to be impressed by the Doctor, but she's not bowled over by him. If she had become a companion, she would have been one of the all-time greats.

But she doesn't, and it's because she goes into her room, where we learn that what she's afraid of is academically disappointing her father who sets impossibly high standards. What's interesting is that outside of the scene where she's confronting the image of her father, Rita never actually seems afraid. Not once. She believes herself to be in hell, and yet so sure is she in her faith that she has no fear for what comes next. Even as she realizes she's being taken over by the worship of the Minotaur, and she's crying over the phone to the Doctor (yeah, the hotel actually has corded phones) she doesn't come off as afraid. It speaks to an immense strength of character.

It's a moment that sends the Doctor into an a storm of anger. And then he realizes the truth of what's going on. He realizes, and this is a very clever twist, "it's not fear, it's faith". By showing its guests their deepest fears, the hotel caused them to turn to their faith. But the point is the faith. Because the Minotaur feeds on faith, converting it into faith in itself, hence the whole "praise him" thing. And so, every time the Doctor tried to reassure someone by pushing them to think of what makes them feel comfortable, he pushed them to their faith. Almost all of our characters have a faith, though not necessarily of the religious variety. Joe was a gambler and believed in the power of luck, Howie's conspiracy theories might as well be religion, Rita, of course was Muslim, and Gibbis had a faith in the authority of invaders over his own life. For our main cast while we don't know what the Doctor's faith was, we know he has one given that he has a room. And Amy's faith is, somewhat predictably, in the Doctor. And as for Rory…

Rory doesn't have a faith. It's at one point posited that Rory might not be afraid of anything anymore, but that simply isn't true. Rory is afraid of a lot of things. Probably less than most, given what traveling with the Doctor does, but last episode alone explored in part his fear of losing Amy. But what Rory doesn't have is an unquestioning belief in something he views as supernatural. Unlike Amy, Rory has always been able to understand the Doctor as a person with flaws. Probably because, unlike Amy, he didn't first meet the Doctor as a magical being who fell out of the sky when he was a child. He met him as an adult. It's a very different relationship.

Which raises the question of how faith is viewed in this episode. Toby Whithouse very much tried to avoid presenting faith as something purely negative, as often happens in science fiction stories. It's why Rita, the one religious character, was given the most positive read out of the guest cast. And yet you can kind of tell this episode was written by someone who isn't especially religious. And no shade on that, I'm an atheist myself. But the overall view of faith, regardless of where it comes from, is that it's the thing that makes you vulnerable to this creature. Rita, for all her strength, dies because of her faith, and before she had her thoughts changed, she erroneously believed she was in hell for that same reason. Howie's conspiracy theories were generally treated as the subject of ridicule, and Gibbis' belief in the power of surrender was what made him the problem character for the episode. Even Amy's faith in the Doctor ends up being viewed in a negative light in this episode. You could also argue that this episode views faith as primarily a response to fear.

Mind you, Amy's faith in the Doctor is perhaps laid on too thick. It's not out of character for her to insist to everyone around her that the Doctor will figure out a way out of any given situation. But she usually isn't seen doing it quite so much. Still, it's perhaps necessary for the episode to function. Regardless that is Amy's main role in this episode – she's here to reassure everyone that the Doctor's going to sort things out. Her room doesn't even contain a fear, rather it contains an image of her waiting when she was seven – the thing that makes her turn to her faith most.

Though the other thing about this episode is that there's a lot of jokes about Amy being violent towards Rory. It's kind of the unfortunate background radiation of these characters' entire time on the show, but usually it's played in a way that doesn't feel quite as real as this episode. You know, I spent my last review talking a lot about why I understood that the Amy/Rory relationship might not work for a lot of people…yeah this is a big part of why.

But about the Doctor. As mentioned above, this episode does a lot of questioning of the Doctor's methods. There's a great bit, after Rita points out the Doctor's "god complex" where he sort of glumly says that it's his fault he's put Amy and Rory in danger. Sure, they agreed to come along of their own free will, but he offered them all of time and space and who would say no to that (me, that's who. I would not make a particularly good adventurer. Sorry Doc). And then immediately after giving this whole big monologue, he turns right around and offers Rita a place on the TARDIS. Even though she's just barely following along with what's going on, Rita still can't miss that the Doctor just did the thing he said was getting his friends hurt and even killed. It goes back to that running thread of self-hatred that the 11th Doctor has going for him. He sees himself as toxic to his friends, but simultaneously can't stop inviting people along. And he can't give up the friends he has. Or at least he couldn't.

So, let's talk about the Doctor breaking Amy's faith in him. This scene gets compared a lot, for obvious reasons, to the 7th Doctor breaking Ace's faith in him back in The Curse of Fenric. And it makes sense they are both scenes that have a very similar point to them. Here's the thing, and this is a very unpopular opinion…I prefer this version of the scene. Some of it comes down to the contrivance of the Fenric scene and the fact that there was an obvious solution to the problem that didn't involve the Doctor repeatedly insulting Ace (seriously, he could have just told her to move). But more than that, I don't think the 7th Doctor believed any of the things he said about Ace. But in this episode, the 11th Doctor doesn't really talk about Amy. He talks about himself. And I absolutely believe the Doctor thinks of himself as "vain", and believes it when he says he really is "just a mad man with a box". I believe this because, again, self-hatred is practically the 11th Doctor's most prominent character trait. Which helps with the biggest objection you could levy at this speech – that Amy should know that he's manipulating her into dropping her faith in him. But the thing is, she should also be able to see the truth, and more to the point the honesty in what he says. Even if she knows what the Doctor is trying to do, I really do think the speech is effective because it is honest.

The point is, it works. Amy losing her faith "sever[s] the food supply" to the Minotaur. Which is just as well because the Minotaur wanted an end to the suffering. It is ultimately revealed to be just a prisoner – though the specific mechanics of that prison feel a bit like Whithouse worked backwards from his premise to come up with the reason for it. Still, one of "The God Complex's" more underrated facets is how effectively it turns its monster into a pitiable figure. It helps that we learn fairly early on that everything it does is pure instinct, suggesting that it doesn't actually have much control over the process. When the food supply is severed, the Minotaur dies, granting it what it wanted. "Death would be a gift" it says (the Doctor translating) though in that moment it was drawing a parallel between itself, and the Doctor.

After the Doctor breaks her faith Amy's interactions with the Doctor feel different. And credit to Karen Gillan, she really plays this well. There's an uncertainty there about how she should treat the Doctor now that her view of him has shifted so dramatically. But it really does feel for the first time since Amy was introduced she's able to interact with the Doctor as an adult. For so long when she's been with him she's been the seven year old child he first met. And the Doctor is as responsible for that as she is. But it really does feel like from that point on she's figured out how to be an adult in his presence. And he, for his part, has figured out how to treat her like one.

Though part of that is that the Doctor decides he can no longer travel with the Ponds. Amy and Rory are more than friends to him, they've become like family. But the Doctor is scared that one day he'll find himself looking at the corpses of this family he's made for himself. And he can't face that. So he lets them go. He gets a tearful goodbye with Amy, after a more comedic goodbye with Rory. And then he leaves them at a flat he got for them and Rory's favorite car. It's a bittersweet ending, though the Doctor does promise to stop by again. We'll see if he keeps his word. Meanwhile, he leaves Amy to what he suggests might be a "bigger, scarier adventure" – living her life with Rory.

Overall, "The God Complex" is a second very strong episode in a row for Series 6. There are a few issues here and there, and you could argue that parts of this episode are more style over substance. But when the substance is there, is it ever there. "God Complex" does a pretty interesting examination of how faith works, and has a really strong secondary cast, especially by the standards of the Revival where secondary casts are typically a lot less well-developed owing to having less time as compared to the Classic Series. It does some particularly interesting things with the Doctor, and its ending feels like such a natural conclusion to the episode it's kind of shocking that this episode wasn't always going to end that way.

Score: 8/10

Stray Observations

• While the idea of being trapped in a maze-like hotel was Steven Moffat's, Toby Whithouse contributed the allusions to Greek mythology, a particular interest of his, and the specific 1980s look of the hotel, as he wanted to avoid the cliché of the eerie Victorian establishment.
• Instead of Gibbis, there originally would have been another human character called Edward, a skewering of a conservative who placed his faith in authority. Gibbis was created to add more variety into the cast, replacing Edward, but retaining an exaggerated version of Edward's faith in authority.
• Perhaps as a result of the above, Gibbis was originally much more unpleasant, but that was deemphasized over the course of the drafts.
• The idea of the rooms with people's fears (or otherwise) was a late addition. Co-Executive Producer Beth Willis noted the story was a bit too abstract and felt the episode needed something to avoid becoming visually repetitive. The idea of rooms with characters' worst nightmares was Steven Moffat's idea.
• Toby Whithouse preferred this episode to his two prior efforts ("School Reunion" and "Vampires of Venice") as the darker tone was something he felt more comfortable writing.
• As late as the read-through, Lucy Haywood, the policewoman who writes the note at the beginning of the episode was named Lucy Miller. That (or rather Lucie Miller) is the name of the 8th Doctor companion for the original run of Big Finish's Eighth Doctor Adventures range, hence it was changed.
• David Walliams, who played Gibbis, spent two hours getting his prosthetics put on. Apparently he felt it was worthwhile, finding the prosthetics expressive rather than limiting his performance.
• The Doctor calls Rory "Beaky". Okay, that's just mean.
• The photographs of people with their fears were taken from a mix of publicity photos of previous monsters and photographs of members of the crew at BBC Wales.
• To that point Royston Luke-Gold's fear was apparently "Plymouth". How the hell was that represented inside a fairly small hotel room?
• So Gibbs' room contains Weeping Angels. Of course, like all of the things the rooms conjure they aren't actually real, but you might think that wouldn't matter. After all, as per "The Time of Angels" "anything that holds the image of an Angel is an Angel". But actually that's not strictly how it was shown to work in that episode. It was closer to the idea that a real Angel could project itself out of the image of an Angel. So as long as no Weeping Angels get anywhere near the hotel/labyrinth, we should be safe.
• The Doctor claims to have a degree in both medicine, and, more impressively, cheese making.
• The Doctor discovers that the Minotaur is "a distant cousin of the Nimon." The Nimon were, of course, introduced in The Horns of Nimon.

Next Time: We meet Supreme Omni-Emperor, Most Exalted One, Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All. Oh and I think there's Cybermen in this one too.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 10
• Airdate: 10 September 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Writer: Tom MacRae
• Director: Nick Hurran
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

I'd forgotten how much you loved me. I'd forgotten how much I loved being her. Amy Pond, in the TARDIS. With Rory Williams. – Amy

The 11th Doctor era has gotten a reputation for being less-character focused than the RTD era before it. And there's definitely a case to be made there. However, it's worth pointing out in that discussion that this era also has some of the most character-centric Doctor Who stories ever. And the two most obvious examples of this are Series 5's "Amy's Choice" and today's offering, "The Girl Who Waited".

You can see it from just looking at the cast list. The listed cast include our three leads, a "check in girl" (which is just a brief recorded hologram of a woman who explains the how and the why of the Two Streams Facility) and the voice of the computer Interface. Additional cast are all people playing the robots for this episode called the handbots, and some doubles for Amy and the Doctor. That's it. This episode can only be about our main cast because there's nobody here except our main cast. In this way it's a lot like "Amy's Choice" (which technically had a secondary cast, but they were all figments).

Except this episode is a lot darker than "Amy's Choice". Where "Amy's Choice" existed to convince us that Amy and Rory were devoted to each other, "Girl Who Waited" takes it as read that you understand that. This episode will not work if you're not at least somewhat invested in Amy and Rory as a couple. We're not testing their relationship here, while there's some friction in how these two interact, the episode exists more as a tribute to their relationship than a test of it. But what this episode does do is put them in a worst case scenario and then force them to deal with that, and confront the worst sides of their friend the Doctor.

Admittedly, to get there we do have to deal with some contrivance. The episode is set up by having the crew land on Apalapucia (that is not how I expected that would be spelled). Amy runs back into the TARDIS to grab her phone so she can get some nice pictures of the popular tourist destination, while the Doctor and Rory explore the white box they've apparently landed in. They reach a door with two buttons, they press the green one up on top. When Amy exits the TARDIS and is told to "push the button", she pushes the red one below. As I said, this is a contrivance. There's no reason why Amy, upon seeing two buttons wouldn't ask which to press. Even if she didn't, I think most people would naturally push the top button.

But this ends up leaving her trapped in a different timestream from the Doctor and Rory. The "Two Streams" facility is so named because it's literally separated into two different timestreams. This has been done due to an outbreak of "Chen-7", a plague deadly to two-hearted species. The people in the "Red Waterfall" timestream that Amy's ended up in (technically they each get their own separate timestream) live out a life in a slower timestream so that instead of dying in a day they can live out a full life. Meanwhile the Green Anchor timestream is used by visitors to say goodbye to their loved ones. For them only a day will pass while their loved ones live out a full life.

Does this make sense? Not really. Amy will visibly age inside Red Waterfall, but she doesn't need to eat or drink. And it doesn't make sense why exactly the Two Streams operates in the highly specific way that is required to create this plot. But, here's the thing, sometimes things don't have to make complete sense. I do think the series of contrivances that lead to Amy (or a version of her anyway) getting stuck in solitary confinement for 36 years is a knock against this episode. A pretty severe one honestly. But, here's the thing, one other minor issue aside, it's the only one I've really got.

Because those contrivances lead to this really well constructed and emotionally heightened plot. Due to a failure in TARDIS piloting, the Doctor and Rory arrive in Amy's Red Waterfall timestream…36 years late. Amy's had to spend her time desperately trying to avoid the medical droids, called handbots, because while they're only trying to help, the medicine that they want to give Amy is meant for Apalapucians, not humans. Which, incidentally, represents another contrivance. The handbots and the Interface refuse to accept any statement where Amy claims, truthfully, that she arrived by mistake.

Before we go on I should briefly mention the other thing in this episode that isn't quite working for me: the handbots. In principle these guys make sense: they're meant to be helpful and only serve as a threat because they're trying to administer medicine to Amy that isn't compatible with her biology. That part is fine. But these guys end up feeling a bit too gimmicky to me. Why is it that they're designed to "see" through their hands, what purpose does that serve? And why are they so sinister? They end up looking less like friendly medical droids and more like the robots you'd design for illegal medical experiments a lot of the time. I think the blank faces, and the fact that those faces can open up to reveal a head full of needles really cement this for me. Plus the whole thing where they're shooting hypodermic needles at patients at high velocity. Strikes me as unsafe, medically speaking.

But the point is, Amy spends 36 years in survival mode. She calls it "solitary confinement", as did I up above, but the truth is most solitary confinement doesn't require you to be constantly running for your life. And she comes out of those 36 years angry. For a while there Amy is just spewing venom at the Doctor through Rory's glasses (the Doctor made Rory glasses that act as a communications device). And at first she seems incapable of engaging with Rory. It feels like all of the joy has been drained out of this woman.

This has led to a very common complaint against this episode. Why is Amy so bitter and angry after 36 years waiting when Rory waited nearly 2 millennia for Amy? This might be the single most disingenuous complaint I've ever heard made about an episode of television.

Look, if you don't like Amy and Rory's relationship at least a little, you're not going to like this episode. And most of the people who don't like that relationship don't like it because of how Amy treats Rory, behavior that does extend in some ways into this episode. And if that's why you have trouble sympathizing with Amy here, that makes a lot of sense. But let's be clear about something. Amy's time in Two Streams is not remotely comparable to Rory's time outside a box and it's frankly absurd to even compare them.

First, let's just get the obvious out of the way. Rory chose to wait for two millennia, knowing his vigil would end. Amy was accidentally abandoned and for all she knew, the Doctor and Rory were never coming back – for which it's very clear she was blaming the Doctor, not Rory incidentally. Second there's that whole "solitary confinement" thing where Amy was alone aside from an emotionless computer for that entire time. That's, literally, torture. And that's before we get to the point about her having to be hyper-vigilant for that entire time just to survive. Rory got to interact with other people. And third…this is the more realistic reaction to the scenario presented. I complained about it a bit when I talked about "The Big Bang", how Rory seems completely unaffected by the passage of 2000 years. But it at least made sense with the tone of that story, and this more realistic response makes sense with the tone that "The Girl Who Waited" is going for. And none of this should diminish what Rory did – it's a defining moment for his character and a sign of great bravery and devotion. But man does this comparison make me, probably irrationally, angry.

Anyway, let's talk about why this episode works for me. First, yes, I'm invested in the relationship between Rory and Amy, which is undoubtedly essential. I do see the complaints about how Amy treats Rory, I really do, but between Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan's excellent chemistry and more serious moments where they really do feel like a genuine married couple I can't help but love these two together. Again, if for you the stumbling block on this episode is that you're not invested in that relationship, that makes complete sense to me. I have problems fulling inventing in the ending of "Doomsday" because I could never get invested in a 10th Doctor/Rose romance. I get it. But for me, this relationship works.

Second, and probably most essentially, our leads just nail every single scene they're in. If Matt Smith gave a performance like this in any other episode, that episode would be talked about as one of his defining performances as the Doctor. But he's confined to the TARDIS for the majority of the runtime, which limits his screentime and, to the episode's benefit, really allows for a focus on Amy and Rory. Arthur Darvill's performance, for his part, is brilliant. Given probably the meatiest material he'll ever have on Doctor Who, Darvill really plays the wide range of emotions necessary for this episode to work brilliantly. I'll talk about it more later, but this episode really sees Rory shine by bringing the older Amy back to herself, and Arthur Darvill plays the charming and very earnest material he's given to absolute perfection.

And yet, this episode belongs to Karen Gillan. Firstly because it asks her to play two versions of Amy, the older Amy who spent 36 years at Two Streams and the younger one, just learning to survive the hell she's been left in before she's brought forward to co-exist with the elder. There are so many little touches Gillan puts in to make these two characters feel distinct nad real. She worked hard to give older Amy a different voice and movement, working with a vocal coach and a movement coach for that purpose. As old Amy she plays the harshness of the character brilliantly, and yet also the yearning for what she's lost in the time she's been stuck in Two Streams. Justifiably, this work overshadows her performance as the younger Amy, which is still very impressive. Younger Amy is kind of deemphasized in the narrative here, but Gillan still plays her very well. In scenes where the two Amys are talking to each other, the younger Amy's optimism, passion and earnestness contrast well against the hard-edged cynical older Amy. Just a phenomenal performance all around.

Wait a second. Why do we have two Amys?

After the Doctor landed too far into Amys timestream, he and Rory decide, essentially, they want to try again. Bring the younger Amy forward so that she doesn't have to spend 36 years in hell. The only problem is, the older Amy refuses to help, and her help is crucial here. Older Amy's become a bit of a genius in the specific operations of Two Streams, which makes sense given that she's got literally nothing else to do but learn how Two Streams works. She's learned some temporal physics, gained an understanding of how the handbots operate, gotten really good with a sword (which, incidentally she must have made herself so add blacksmithing to the talents she's developed over the years) and, perhaps most impressively, built a sonic screwdriver probe. That particular terminology is actually an important distinction – Amy calls it a probe because that's what it is. She's given up on the whimsical name for the tool and insisted on calling it by its actual name, as a sign of how she's lost her spark. Later on in the episode, one of the signs she's finding herself again is that she acquiesces to calling it a screwdriver.

But the point is she understands the temporal physics of it all. Which also means, she understands the consequences of saving the younger Amy. Specifically, she understands that, if they save younger Amy, she stops existing. The majority of her life may have been hell, but it's still her life, and she's not willing to die for another version of Amy, a version of Amy that doesn't have to be separate from her at all. It feels like an insurmountable impasse. Rory and the Doctor are just going to have to take the older Amy for what, honestly, feel like perfectly valid reasons on Amy's part.

It's Rory that gets through to her. Twice actually. Once directly, when he uses the giant time magnifying glass (yeah there's a magnifying glass that lets you look through time) to show Amy her younger self. And then, indirectly, when the younger Amy completely upends their conversation with each other with just three words "what about Rory". This leads to younger Amy delivering a touching treatise on the nature of love, ending on the line (said by both Amys together), "Rory's the most beautiful man I've ever met." That's about inner beauty by the way, but it's expressed in a way that doesn't feel forced. Amy's speech is all about how eventually you learn to see people's inner beauty in their physical attributes, "their face just sort of becomes them, like their personality's written all over it."

Amy then declares she's going to pull time apart for Rory, and kisses him (while her literally dis-armed handbot named Rory looks on in a surprisingly amusing moment). It's a beautiful moment. But she does have a condition: she gets to survive too. And the Doctor, even though as we'll learn later he knows it's impossible, agrees. We'll get back to him later. So they do it. They tear time apart with the power of made up physics and love – the power of love is channelled via the Macarena, which apparently was in the lead up to their first kiss.

That's actually a lot of what this episode does for this relationship: it expands it. Sure we've seen Amy and Rory growing up together and the beginning of them falling in love thanks to a sequence in "Let's Kill Hitler" but we don't really know much about their love story. It makes sense, Doctor Who is an adventure show it would be weird if we did get to see a lot of the perfectly ordinary moments that built up this relationship, but at the same time it is something that is missing. "Girl Who Waited" gives us this odd detail about their first kiss as well as a story about Rory pretending to be in a band. As small as these details are, both elements are very charming, and make the relationship feel less like this idealized thing that the show just expects the audience to take as read, and more of a real relationship that built up and grew over time. So yes, two versions of Amy doing the Macarena in order to break apart time is actually an impressive bit of character building.

Of course there is an other half of this relationship. As mentioned up above, Rory's job in this episode is largely to bring the older Amy back to herself, but in doing so we naturally learn a lot about Rory. Obviously we already knew that Rory is devoted to his wife. But I do think this episode does the best job in these characters' run of showing that. Sure, he spent 2000 years outside a box but the thing about that is that it's kind of hard to connect with that moment. 2000 years is, let's be honest, a length of time that's really hard to actually conceptualize, which makes the whole thing feel a lot more mythical. Meanwhile everything in this episode actually feels quite real. Sure there's a lot of science fiction stuff an time travel, but when Rory says that he doesn't care that Amy got old only that "we didn't grow old together", that's a feeling you can actually connect to.

And to be fair it's not just about Amy in this episode. When they arrive too late, Rory has his own moment of exploding in anger at the Doctor, in this case for not making sure there isn't an outbreak of plague before landing on a planet. This culminates in a rather justified "then I do not want to travel with you!" yelled at the Doctor. Rory has, since he joined the TARDIS back in "The Vampires of Venice", always been a bit suspicious of how the Doctor operates. But he's mostly kept it to himself. Though in my interpretation of the character that suspicion never fully went away, outside of "Amy's Choice" and a brief moment where he punches out the Doctor in "The Big Bang", he's never really let out his frustrations. Here he does, and twice too, as at the end of the episode, forced to choose between the two Amys, he lets out a venomous "that's not fair. You're turning me into you," at the Doctor.

But before we can get to that point, we have to deal with the awkwardness of the two Amys. They argue a little sure, but more than anything they don't seem quite to know how to deal with each other. Separated by time they were able to have a very real, very heartfelt conversation. But now they're in the same room together and the ultimate question becomes, who gets Rory? And it's not like they ever directly fight over him, indeed older Amy claims to be content to just go out traveling and maybe pop back home for the holidays every now and then. But at the same time, older Amy has been revitalized, been brought back to herself by spending time with Rory. She doesn't want to have to give him up, even though when she brought her younger self back she knew that's what she was doing.

And then we get a closing sequence that is, in my opinion, absolutely perfect. Older Amy tosses her younger self a stick and gives her a brief crash course in how to fight the handbots (Amy was apparently a terror at hockey while she was at school…that tracks) and while young Amy and Rory work together, the older Amy does what she's been doing for three and a half decades and fights the handbots on her own. It's all going well – the two Amys even getting a moment where they show genuine care for the other…and then one of the handbots touches Amy. Because it's been established that they've got anesthetic on their hands Amy's fine, but she has been knocked out. After Rory takes out the remaining handbots, he picks up Amy and runs to the TARDIS, kicking in the doors. And there's the older Amy watching this from behind and realizing that she'll never mean that much to Rory again.

Rory brings young Amy into the TARDIS, and the Doctor checks on her quickly to make sure she's okay. And older Amy, suddenly forgetting her anger and hatred for the Doctor throws aside her weapons and comes running towards the TARDIS. Maybe she saw something in the Doctor's eye that concerned her. But there's something in that action of her thrusting aside her weapons that makes me think she was ready to be who she used to be. And then, the Doctor mutters a rushed "I'm sorry" before closing the door on her and locking it. As I said above, he lied. The TARDIS could not support the paradox of two Amys.

The 11th Doctor is definitely one of the more manipulative of the Doctors. And the thing with him is, he'll manipulate friends and enemies alike. Just think back to him switching shoes with his Ganger in "The Almost People" to gauge Amy's reactions to him versus the Ganger. Or the fact that he lied to Amy about why he was bringing her along as a companion in the first place. But still, this is probably his darkest moment on television. In order to get his Amy back, the Amy who likes him and trusts him, he manipulated this other Amy into, essentially, sacrificing herself. He lied to them. Now, you could argue that he was saving Amy from the pain of those 36 years, that the other Amy never even really existed. I'm sure that's what the Doctor would say. But that's just not true is it? Older Amy was alive, she had thoughts and feelings and she was a person. And I'd like to turn back to something I posited back when I reviewed "A Good Man Goes to War". We know that the Doctor does not view himself as a good man. And maybe that's how he gives himself permission to do this kind of thing.

And it all works because it feels like it's in line with how the 11th Doctor has been characterized, especially in Series 6 where he's started to grow colder and more manipulative with each passing story. And, again, Matt Smith has one of his best performances in very limited screen time here. There were all sorts of ways he could have played that "I'm sorry". But whether it was director Nick Hurran, or down to something in Tom MacRae's script or just how Smith decided to play it, the small, shameful yet understated way Smith gives the line makes it hit like a pile of bricks. What's funny is the Doctor starts this episode full of his typical whimsy and excitement. Even after Amy gets stuck in Two Streams he's joking around with Rory about his camera glasses. But at the end of the episode, he calmly, though still full of emotion, turns to Rory and simply says, "I promised you I'd save her, and there she is. Safe."

Before that though we close out with a really touching ending for the older Amy. Rory nearly lets her in the TARDIS, unable to let her die. But Amy tells him not to, all while admitting that if he opens the door she'll run in and fight to survive. But in a way, she proves herself wrong in that moment, because she is sacrificing herself. Maybe she wouldn't be strong enough to resist the possibility of going back to life in the TARDIS with Rory if the door was opened. But she's strong enough to reject it regardless. It's one of the most emotionally affecting moments Doctor Who has ever given me. Rory and Older Amy declaring their love for each other (as per usual, though it feels a bit weightier in this specific instance) before Amy tells Rory to let her younger self know she's "giving her the days. The days with [Rory]". And then she says goodbye to the world and Interface, the only companion she's had for most of her life, looking at the Earth and speaking of Rory.

See, for this episode, effectively, the older Amy is the "real" Amy. She's the one who we spend the most time with, and the episode is really centered around her experience, her life, her hell. When young Amy joins Rory and her older self, the younger one feels like a bit of an intruder. I kind of wish that the final two scenes of this episode had been switched around for this episode honestly. Sure the last scene in the TARDIS with the Doctor, Rory and younger Amy is a good one. I've already mentioned how the Doctor skirts Rory's questioning of him by pointing out that they've now saved Amy. I also really like the scene ending on Amy asking after her older self, and uncomfortable question we never hear the answer to. But, given how the episode works, I wish we'd ended on the older Amy's final moments.

But that's a minor quibble. There are bigger issues with this episode, I didn't love the handbots for one. Even more significantly, there is a lot of contrivance that is required to set up the episode, and I can't help but wonder if there wasn't a better way of of doing the set up material. But once the premise is established the episode becomes excellent. A real emotional rollercoaster with emotional gut punches mixed with genuinely beautiful conversations about what it means to love someone. It does, admittedly, rely on an audience that does like Amy and Rory as a couple, and if you don't, it's just not going to hit right. But for all that I do take serious issue with how these two are written sometimes, they do just kind of work really well together for me, so this episode hits me really hard and really well.

Score: 9/10

Stray Observations

• Writer Tom MacRae took inspiration from showrunner Steven Moffat's tendency to write more complex stories with a time travel element. He would later call his finished script his "most accomplished piece of plotting ever".
• He also wanted to write a story that would focus on Amy and could only be told with Amy, as opposed to any other companion.
• Earlier versions of the script had an actual secondary cast who set up the premise of the episode, but in the writing process MacRae began focusing more and more on Amy, Rory and the Doctor, eliminating the secondary cast entirely. This allowed MacRae to introduce older Amy much earlier in the script.
• In general MacRae was given a lot of leeway with this script as opposed to his first Doctor Who story, the "Rise of the Cybermen" two parter, which he quite appreciated.
• I usually find that I prefer either a working title for a story or (more often for obvious reasons) the final version. In this case while two of the working titles ("The Visitors' Room" or "The Visiting Room") don't really work for the story (not much emphasis is placed on the visiting room, the third working title, "Kindness" is actually quite good and works on a couple different levels…but then so does the actual title.
• The Handbots would originally have been a lot creepier, appearing as cloaked figures whose hands emerged from the folds of their robes. Later, as they became more like robots, MacRae still wanted them to have real human hands, and wear different uniforms. Honestly, I think what we got works better for the premise. Going for a creepier presentation kind of undercuts the idea that the Handbots are designed to do good and with a patient other than Amy, would be doing good.
• The "white box" look of the sets was in the original script however. MacRae knew that the episode was going to be a lower budget affair, and decided to play into that. MacRae was happy with the final product on that score.
• Originally, the Doctor would have been more directly involved. However, while the episode wasn't exactly double banked with "Closing Time" (a companion-lite affair), the filming was close enough together that MacRae had to reduce the Doctor's involvement. As a result he wrote in the idea of Chen-7 only affected two-hearted beings.
• It was considered that an older actor might play the older version of Amy. However Karen Gillan really wanted to play the part herself, and Steven Moffat felt that having Gillan play both versions of Amy would ensure the audience remained sympathetic to the older version.
• Gillan spent "hours in make-up" to work on her face, and wore additional padding that restricted her movement and made old Amy bulkier.
• The opening of the episode continues a minor running gag that started back in "The Eleventh Hour" where the Doctor seems to have a particular hatred for Twitter. At the time I think this was just meant to highlight the 11th Doctor as a grumpy old man, in contrast to his youthful appearance. In retrospect though…maybe he knew what was going to happen to Twitter (although honestly, even by 2011 Twitter seems like it was a cesspool. Then again, so's Reddit and here I am…).
• So at one point the Doctor says "Now, I can't go in there. The Chen-7'll kill me, no regeneration." So obviously this is meant to imply the Chen-7 prevents regeneration but like a similar line in "Let's Kill Hitler" this can retroactively be argued to be because the Doctor is on his final incarnation (as far as he knows anyway). Hell, I'd argue that because of the way the line is phrased it actually makes more sense if it's understood that way.
• There were a lot of cuts made to this episode after filming, due to time constraints. Among them could have been Amy's "Rory's the most beautiful man I ever met" speech. Co-Executive Producer Beth Willis insisted that that speech make it into the final cut.
• The Handbots are pretty easily disabled, with Rory at one point ramming a copy of the Mona Lisa on top of one of them which seems to fry it. This actually tracks, these are medical droids, they wouldn't have been designed with combat in mind.

Next Time: Whew, okay that was a heavy one. Let's get a more light-hearted episode next where the Doctor…realizes he has to let Amy and Rory go. Hmm.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 9
• Airdate: 3rd September 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Writer: Mark Gatiss
• Director: Richard Clark
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

You see these eyes? They're old eyes. And one thing I can tell you, Alex: monsters are real. – The Doctor

"Night Terrors" was originally meant to air in the first half of Series 6, as episode 4 to be precise. But Showrunner Steven Moffat found himself looking at a run of pretty dark episodes, and so decided to push it into the second half…after the episode had already been filmed. This left behind some artifacts, like the Doctor going back to wearing the tweed jacket, or the fact that going by in-episode dialogue this episode actually takes place before "Let's Kill Hitler's" present-day sections (it's nice that time travel can just solve that problem, isn't it?). More substantially, a line at the end of the episode where the Doctor says the main cast are all back together "in the flesh", meant to hint at Amy being her Ganger version, ends up feeling, if anything, a bit insensitive, but that's only if you notice the turn of phrase. Oh, and the big thing: a story centering around a child and fatherhood which follows on from the events of "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler" shoves Amy and Rory off into a corner and focuses on the Doctor's relationship with the father and childhood.

But I always try to evaluate stories first and foremost on their own terms. So with that in mind, what do we make of "Night Terrors" as a standalone adventure?

I think the best parts of "Night Terrors" belong to Amy and Rory. Considering that they spend the majority of the episode just trying to survive and have no actual impact on the plot, this isn't a great sign. It reminds me a bit of Terminus where Tegan and Turlough got an excellent subplot that made up for a main plot that was a bit weak. But Amy and Rory's subplot doesn't really dig into their characters the way that Tegan and Turlough's did in Terminus. Instead what makes their stuff work is just that these characters work well together and have good comedic chemistry.

From the Doctor asking if either of them have found the scared child that they're looking for and Amy responding that she's found "scary children", to the moment at the end that Amy and Rory reappear in the elevator they were taken from looking just…done…with everything, pretty much everything Amy and Rory do this episode is a delight. It's also a minor plot point. The Doctor on the other hand…

"Night Terrors" pretty much always gets compared to Series 2 episode "Fear Her" as like "Fear Her", "Night Terrors" focuses on a child who has the ability to manifest things with their mind. And while the specifics of how this works is very different, the result is a similarly forgettable story. I think "Fear Her" probably has the more interesting idea for a story, but the execution in "Night Terrors" is a bit better. But "Night Terrors" just has so few worthwhile ideas that it kind of doesn't matter.

Frankly, I think this is the point at which the 11th Doctor era's tendency to constantly involve children begin to grow tiresome. It doesn't help that Series 6 in general has been less successful than Series 5 in how it integrates its child characters, with the arguable exception of young Amy, Mels and Rory in "Let's Kill Hitler". But we've reached the point where my ability to be charmed by the child we've shoved on screen this week is starting to fray.

The actual story we're telling doesn't help. The story begins with parents Alex and Claire at their wits ends with their son George. He's scared of everything and they don't know how to help him. They've developed a strategy with him – anything he's afraid of he mentally puts in the cupboard. But it's not helping, in part because the apartment complex they live in is full of strange noises and odd people, including a very intimidating landlord.

I actually really like this apartment complex setting. In theory it's a very boring setting but, partially because it's just something we don't really see on Doctor Who (unless you count Paradise Towers) and partially because there's a lot of effort put in to make the setting feel more distinct, the end result is a location that is brimming with life. The people who live here all feel like they're different flavors of dead inside, but that actually helps set the atmosphere perfectly. It's the kind of place that feels like it's due for some sort of horror movie. And when I say that Amy and Rory's bits of the episode are the best, that includes when they're running around the apartment complex looking for the a distressed child and having to deal with this colorful yet drab cast of characters.

But once we begin the focus around Alex and George the episode kind of loses me. Matt Smith is, as always, good acting opposite a child, but honestly even his material isn't doing much for me. There's hints of previous episodes that put the Doctor in domestic situations, particularly "Fear Her" and "The Lodger" but it doesn't quite land the same. It ends up feeling a bit like quirkiness for quirkiness' sake. There's still some fun bits in here mind, particularly when the Doctor is considering whether or not to open George's cupboard and keeps second guessing himself…and putting that second guessing on Alex.

That's because the Doctor has worked out that Alex and Claire's idea to have George put things that scare him "in the cupboard" has somehow turned said cupboard into a psychic repository of all of George's fears. That's where Amy and Rory are through all of this, being menaced by giant peg dolls that can turn anyone they touch into more peg dolls (sure…why not). Again, I can see the promise in this idea, but I think I prefer "Fear Her's" take on this idea, mostly because drawing things as a way of capturing them feels like a more tangible process. As it is the world inside George's cupboard ends up feeling like a mish-mash of disconnected ideas.

The episode does get one absolutely brilliant moment out of the Alex and George stuff mind you. The Doctor's been spending a lot of time talking about how something in this scenario feels off to him in a way he can't fully describe. And then he realizes what it is. He shows Alex a picture of Claire from a Christmas party about a month before she supposedly gave birth to George…and she's not pregnant. And also drinking alcohol which I thought was a nice touch, just to fully reinforce that this woman is most definitely not about to have a kid. And then Alex exclaims, having finally remembered this crucial detail, "Well, of course not. Claire can't have kids!" And after a brief conversation the Doctor and Alex turn to look at George, just sitting on his bed, and there is something absolutely chilling in that moment.

It's just a moment though. The episode is not remotely set up to pivot to George being something sinister, and even if it was, that would be the wrong move. George as it turns out, is a Tenza, a species whose children can assimilated perfectly into any other, filling the needs of the parents. Alex and Claire, who desperately wanted children but could not have them, were a natural landing spot for the Tenza that became George. George's increased phobia was born out of a fear of rejection. I guess he was always a bit nervous and with Alex unable to work and Claire's nursing job presumably not paying all that much, Alex and Claire had to consider putting him somewhere else, where they thought he could get the care he needed. George, hearing this, and thinking he was being rejected, instinctively…did something psychic. Yeah, not entirely sure what, but the point is all of this is being caused out of a fear of rejection. So the climax naturally revolves around Alex declaring that he'll never send George away, ending the threat and reversing all of the damage.

I have no problem with a "power of love" ending. I have absolutely no problem with an episode ending without any deaths (which we haven't seen since "Fear Her" anyway). And yet…this feels weak. Here's what can make a power of love ending work: you need to establish a strong bond between the characters. And frankly, I don't think the episode ever manages it with Alex and George. The love between father and son, which is essential to this episode working, it just somehow never comes through. Maybe it's just because Alex spends the majority of the episode being exasperated by George. And I don't think this would necessarily be a problem in an episode where Alex being a father were an incidental part of the plot, something that was important to understanding his character but not much more. But in an episode built around this relationship, the relationship never actually feels all that strong.

And when we talk about George, let's talk about how the story of the strange kid who is turns out to be an alien actually works. In my 10th Doctor retrospective (this is relevant, trust me), something I talked about was my lack of interest in the conversation over how "alien" the Doctor was. In response, a couple commenters pointed out that what was likely going on is that how "alien" the Doctor is was really just standing in for how neurodivergent-coded an incarnation is. And, well, that's pretty much explicitly what's going on in this episode. George is extremely neurodivergent-coded, most obviously in the required ritual of the parents turning off and on the lights five times before leaving the room. Also, a lot of George's phobias are sensory stuff that lean in that general direction as well.

And, look, I'm well out of my comfort zone here. But ever since I got those comments on the 10th Doctor retrospective, the whole question of alienness when applied to human-appearing characters has felt a bit uncomfortable to me. And frankly in this particular story it feels worse. I guess just because these traits that I can tangibly relate to actual neurodivergence are being presented as, essentially, symptoms of a child being a literal alien. It's hard to take this any further than to point out an uncomfortable pattern because, again, this is a bit outside my knowledge base, but I did think it was worth pointing out.

Though there is another problem with this episode that I do feel is a bit easier to talk about: Claire feels very absent in all of this. As I said this is an episode focused around a father/son relationship, and that's, in and of itself, fine. If left alone that episode concept doesn't actually need the mother to be present. But this is also an episode about a father coming to understand his son better, and it's an understanding that the mother never gets. As far as we know, she never learns that her son is an alien. And that feels off – actually especially in light of that neurodivergent stuff I talked about above, loathe as I am to open up that can of worms again. And look, I have a bias here. Realizing that I tended to identify with fictional women was a big part (though far from the totality) of how I realized I might be a woman. And as such I tend to be a bit sensitive to women being left out of narratives. But also, Claire's absence from this narrative just seems wrong here. George is her kid too, she deserves to go on this journey just as much as Alex does.

But while that does form part of why this episode doesn't quite work, it's not the main reason. I think that main reason is just that the bond between George and Alex never feels fully established. For the first time, the 11th Doctor starts feeling like a parody of himself at times, not helped by the fact that this is yet another 11th Doctor story with a child in it. It's not all bad: the apartment complex is a surprisingly fun setting and Amy and Rory's bits are fun. Even there though, the way this episode was moved around in the episode order kind of hurts Amy and Rory's story and they are largely kept over to the side. "Night Terrors" has its moments, but on the whole it's a pretty dull story that doesn't do a good job telling its story.

Score: 3/10

Stray Observations

• Mark Gatiss was asked to write a horror story set in an ordinary modern building after having done something similar in creating TV Series Crooked House.
• Mark Gatiss' first idea was to set it in a hotel that manifested the fears of members of a psychiatric conference. However there was a later story already planned for the series that was incredibly similar to that. It was Steven Moffat who suggested working in an apartment complex instead.
• Using the Peg Dolls as monsters was inspired by Mark Gatiss' childhood fears of various dolls.
• The landlord Purcell, meanwhile, was inspired by a PE teacher Gatiss had.
• Early plans were to double bank this story with another one, and as such early drafts of this script had very little of Amy and Rory. Plans changed however, and so Amy and Rory were integrated back in to the plot.
• There was at one point a running gag about door to door God-botherers being suspected of being aliens that was dropped at a late stage.
• This episode was actually filmed before it got moved to the back half of series 6. As such, a scene involving Madame Kovarian was filmed for this episode.
• This was actually the first episode of Series 6 to be filmed.
• The nursery rhyme the Peg Dolls sing came about because the production team was trying to make the Peg Dolls creepier while moving. Steven Moffat was so pleased with Mark Gatiss' rhyme that he decided that the Peg Dolls shouldn't speak much outside of that rhyme. And of course, the rhyme would come back.
• Daniel Mays, who plays Alex, was drawn to the story in part because he himself had a young son.
• Upon arriving inside George's cupboard, Rory briefly comes to the conclusion that he and Amy have died. Eh, it's pretty weak, but I'll count it, that's eight times that Rory seems to have died.
• Though it's actually Amy who gets turned into a Peg Doll later, which feels like the stronger implication of death.
• I don't envy whoever it was in charge of making the "Next Time" trailer for this one. "The Girl Who Waited" is a hard episode to tease without giving too much away. They do a decent job all things considered, though I don't know if it was a good idea to show older Amy

Next Time: The Doctor accidentally leaves Amy behind for nearly 40 years. Absence typically makes the heart grow fonder, so this should be fine, right?

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 8
• Airdate: 27th August 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: Amelia Pond, River Song, Mels (Maya Glace-Green, Nina Toussaint-White)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Richard Senior
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

Well she did kill me. Then she used her remaining lives to bring me back. As first dates go, I'd say that was mixed signals. – The Doctor, on River

So the last episode I reviewed was of an episode that's generally well-liked, and I gave it a fairly negative review. It's not my most negative review ever, but it does go against the grain somewhat. I think that, at the very least, I did a decent job of giving my case for why it didn't quite land for me. And even if I didn't, I certainly think it's a defensible position.

I'm going to have a lot more trouble defending my opinion on this episode.

"Let's Kill Hitler" is a weird-ass story. Maybe that's part of why I enjoy it, every choice that is being made here feels like it's the most counterintuitive one imaginable, and the fact that that works at all is kind of a wonder. But there's two really big flaws, flaws that, frankly, I can't really defend, and wouldn't even want to try.

The first is that, well, Nazi Germany is just kind of a weird backdrop within which to tell this particular story. There's not much in the way of thematic resonance between the actual plot of the episode and the horrors of Nazi Germany or the insidiousness of fascism. Sure you can maybe get tenuous links here and there – fascism as a form of brainwashing linking to the brainwashing of River, the Nazis as war criminals and River being described as such, a third thing that I'm sure someone smarter than me could think of, but the problem is is that none of that is substantive. I don't mind treating the Nazis with ridicule, as this episode ultimately does. But I don't think it's a setting that can be treated as frivolously as this episode does. There's no getting around it. Nazi Germany could be substituted for just about any setting and this episode would largely remain intact. And that's an issue.

And point number two is that, well, this episode is sexist. As with the last point, there's no getting around it. And look, as I always say, I don't want this to reflect on the writer. Steven Moffat seems like a decent person all told, and honestly a lot of his later work suggests to me a maturing on his views of women. But he was a sitcom writer, and, frankly, a lot of the "jokes" in this episode feel like lazy sitcom writing. The first thing that the woman has to do after regenerating is to weigh herself. The Doctor, explaining River's somewhat inconsistent behavior includes a legitimate explanation: she's been brainwashed, and then adds "plus she's a woman". When Amy, rightfully, gives him a look, he says "shut up I'm dying". Again, there's no defending this. It's easily the worst thing about this episode. The above point you can at least argue isn't that much of an issue in the grand scheme of things. This is just unbridled sexism.

So okay, we've mentioned those issues, but if you can look past that –

Okay, but should we?

This obviously isn't the first time I've covered a story with questionable politics. But I give the 1960s stories a pass because, honestly, they're pretty progressive for their time (seriously, compare how women are handled on Doctor Who in the 60s with the original Star Trek). The most obvious example of bigotry on Doctor Who is always going to be The Talons of Weng-Chiang but I just generally enjoyed that story more as it moved away from Li H'sen Chang over to Magnus Greel and stripped away the faux Chinese mysticism for some excellent worldbuilding, which made it easier to talk about. How do you deal with an episode you genuinely enjoyed but has these gigantic issues baked into even the stuff you liked?

Here's what I'll do. I'm going to try to make the case for "Let's Kill Hitler" being a good episode aside from its two big issues and then I'll come back to them at the end when I'm evaluating this episode as a whole. Is that a good approach? God I have no idea. But it's the best way for me to actually talk about the stuff I like in this episode without getting bogged down in its problems.

Which isn't to say we're done talking about problems. But for a while now, the problems are going to be a lot less…heavy. For instance, let's talk about this plot.

I'm not sure this plot makes sense. It's an ongoing problem with Series 6. Thing is, I'm also not sure that that matters. At least not taking this episode in isolation. I guess it's like the "Impossible Astronaut" two parter where the episode gets hurt by being part of a larger story that doesn't ever really come together. For the purposes of this episode though, we get to meet Amy and Rory's childhood friend Mels, who was constantly getting in trouble, with the Doctor's future companions generally coming to her aid, and being the responsible ones. Still, the three of them remained close, with Amy even naming her daughter Melody, after Mels.

So, obvious problem here, we've never met this character before. Honestly, this isn't something that bugs me too much, but Mels absolutely should have been integrated into Amy and Rory's lives from the beginning. Part of this is definitely a consequence of Steven Moffat putting less work into his companions than Russell T Davies used to, as they never had the recurring casts associated with them that past Revival-era companions tended to (see also: Amy's parents and everybody who attended Rory's stag party). However, even if this had been the case, Mels has the feeling of a character that was come up with very last minute.

Still, as I said, this never bugged me all that much. Since Series 5 never showed us that much of Amy and Rory's everyday lives, I can completely believe that they have a close friend we never met. Hell, I wouldn't have guessed that Mels wasn't actually at their wedding if the Doctor hadn't pointed it out, I would have just assumed that she was there and we never saw her on camera (apparently she's "not a wedding person"). And the montage of Mels growing up with Amy and Rory is undeniably charming.

It's especially charming with the context that Mels…is Melody Pond. This was an intentional decision by Moffat to try and diminish the sting of Rory and Amy not getting to raise their daughter. Because, as shown in the flashback they kind of did. And this actually works for me. It does raise some questions mind. Was Mels adopted by anyone? Given that we saw her regenerating at the end of "The Day of the Moon" in 1969, how did she end up growing up with the Millennial pair of Amy and Rory. And did Amy and Rory just end up taking care of Mels out of…I don't know…weird parental instinct towards someone they saw as a peer? You can come up with answers to these questions, but that's not really the audience's job, and it does cause issues. But I don't know, I kind of love this idea all the same. Hell, Mels helps her parents get together in a really cute scene (although I'd hardly describe it as Rory "dropping out of the sky" because that bit in "Impossible Astronaut" is completely nonsensical).

We actually get to Nazi Germany because Mels pulls a gun on the Doctor and decides she's gonna kill Hitler. That's not what ends up happening (can't change the past that much, fixed points in time and all that). Instead Hitler shoots her, which is where, as Mels puts it, the penny drops, as she regenerates into Alex Kingston. And I just love the shellshocked looks on Amy and Rory's faces as they put the pieces together. And try to ignore the sound of Adolf Hitler banging on the cupboard that Rory shoved him in.

Running in parallel to all of this is the story of the Tesselecta, a robot that can mimic people and is being piloted by a miniaturized staff. I love this thing. It's a really inventive idea, and the episode gets some good comedy out of the staff running around and trying to respond to situations without giving the game away. Their whole thing is traveling back in time, finding histories greatest monsters at the point they'll no longer have any effect on history and giving them a tortuous death. Which is why the "anti-body" robots inside the Tesselecta seem to have been programmed to give darkly humorous quips about how their victims "will experience a tingling sensation and then death" and the like. Naturally, Nazi Germany is fertile ground for victims to this group, although how they messed up their targeting of Hitler so badly that they arrived in 1938 is a question for another day. Anyway, when they realize that they've got River Song and she's somehow managed to assassinate the Doctor ahead of schedule, they readjust to targeting her.

Wait, what was that about River/Melody killing the Doctor?

Yup, it would seem that the conditioning that Kovarian's group gave baby Melody hasn't worn off as much as you'd hope, and she's determined to kill the Doctor. What follows is a very fun game of cat and mouse, as River pulls out a truly ridiculous number of guns, only to discover that the Doctor has removed the ammo from each of them. River, apparently having planned it this way all along, instead gets the Doctor with a poisoned kiss, before running off into the streets to find some clothes (okay, this part isn't sexism, it's pretty much what the Doctor does every other time they regenerate, although the Doctor fixates on stealing from hospitals for some reason. But yeah, looking for a new outfit is part and parcel of regenerating it would seem).

And yeah, all of this is very fun. "Fun" is perhaps not the word you'd expect to use to describe the followup to the very serious "A Good Man Goes to War", but it kind of works. Things do gradually get more serious, in spite of the Doctor's best efforts to go out joking, as slowly Melody Pond morphs into River. And it's simultaneously slow…and too quick. On one hand, Alex Kingston does a really good job demonstrating Melody growing more and more impressed by the Doctor and coming around to admire and even like him. But it just feels like the episode wants to have its cake and eat it too. We simultaneously want to understand that Melody's conditioning is so deep that she pretty much immediately tries to kill the Doctor upon meeting him, and yet the conditioning is apparently overwritten rather quickly and easily. But, in terms of episode time it plays out slowly. I think this is where the episode's light-hearted tone does allow it to get away with more than it would otherwise.

Eventually Melody pilots the TARDIS, having the information implanted in her because she's the "child of the TARDIS". You know what, fine. It might seem like a plot contrivance, but between what we know about Melody's birth and what we know about the TARDIS it works well enough. She's piloting the TARDIS to save her parents from the anti-bodies in the Tesselecta who have, inevitably, turned hostile (this one was Amy's fault actually). One final moment to have her realize that the "River" that the Doctor keeps talking about is, in fact, herself, and she uses up her remaining regenerations to save the Doctor from her poison.

So, obviously, River is at the center of this episode, as tends to happen with River Song stories, especially in Series 6. As, effectively, River's origin story, "Let's Kill Hitler" does okay. As mentioned above, it does feel like we rush a bit of her character development, but that's a natural consequence of cramming a lot of this stuff into a single episode. And Alex Kingston, as usual, nails her material. Hell, Nina Toussaint-White, who plays Mels, absolutely nails her material as well. You can completely believe that this is a past incarnation of River in retrospect. She has a similar troublemaking attitude, but is different enough to feel like her own character. It's a real shame that this episode is all we got of her. Imagine if someone had had the foresight to include this character in earlier episodes.

Really, what this episode is showing is the birth of the River Song persona. A character who will resort to more morally questionable actions than the Doctor but is still ultimately going to try and do what is best. Born out of the ashes of Melody Pond, the girl conditioned to kill the Doctor. At the end of the episode she's heading off to get her archaeology degree…so that she can find the Doctor again (yeah, we'll get back to that later). We also get to see River (or Melody) really treat Amy and Rory as her parents, something that in the past she's always kept close to her chest, which is kind of a fun twist on their existing relationship.

Amy and Rory, for their part, are really acting in concert throughout this episode. From the beginning where they're spelling out "Doctor" with a car and some crops, to working together to save their daughter from the Tesselecta crew these two have never presented a more unified front. Scenes of the pair as kids (including Ezekiel Wigglesworth being very cute as young Rory) are just kind of fun to see. They do also spend the entire episode kind of in a perpetual state of shell shock, which Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill portray wonderfully. To fully cement this episode's absurdity there's a bit where Rory first tricks a Nazi official (who turns out to be the Tesselecta in disguise) in to doing a Sieg Heil so Rory can punch him to steal his motorcycle, then when Amy asks if he can actually ride the thing he deadpans "I expect so. It's that sort of day".

But there are more serious moments. Amy is genuinely hurt to hear Melody describe herself as a "psychopath". In fact throughout the episode Rory and Amy are very concerned for their daughter's mental state. It's odd, they've met River enough to know she turns out okay, but it still makes sense that they're going to be worried. After all, "time can be rewritten" means that nothing is guaranteed. And it's distressing to see in the moment. Amy gets most of the shine in this regard, including some clever moments and eventually showing her daughter "River Song" to make the point, and fully complete the transformation. When River wakes up after giving her regenerations away, it's probably the most parental Amy and Rory will ever be towards her, and it's just kind of a sweet moment.

And then there's the Doctor. No character is riding between the serious elements of this episode that will tie into the series arc and the more comedic stuff more than him. And it's something he does intentionally. Once Mels regenerates and then poisons him, the Doctor has an odd moment inside the TARDIS where he tries to summon the strength to continue by talking to the TARDIS' voice interface. So on one hand it kind of undermines the tragedy of "The Doctor's Wife" if the Doctor can just talk to an avatar of the TARDIS like this. Sure it's just a voice interface and not nearly as personable as Idris was, but that still bugged me. But on the other hand this scene does continue us down our path of the 11th Doctor's self-hatred and self-pity. The voice interface initially appears as the 11th Doctor himself, to which the Doctor replies "give me someone I like". It then cycles through the main companions of the RTD era, but those just give the Doctor guilt. And that, to be fair, makes sense, after all, Rose was abandoned to an alternate universe (twice), Martha just generally got treated poorly by the Doctor not to mention her "year that never was" and Donna got her memory erased. It helps explain why the 11th Doctor in particular has this streak of self-hatred.

He eventually settles on someone he hasn't "screwed up yet" – young Amelia. This is interesting for a couple reasons. First of all, the idea that when seeing Amelia he can at least pretend that everything that happened to Amy afterwards never actually happened. And on the second point when he sees Amelia he says that it's her "before I got it all wrong". The Doctor feels like he's screwed things up with Amy. Is it the accidental waiting for 14 years? The near sabotage of her marriage? His failure to save baby Melody? What's weird is that Amy has actually ended up in a pretty decent spot all things considered. But the 11th Doctor always fixates on the negative consequences of his actions.

I suppose I should mention the episode does briefly stop for a whole bunch of arc stuff that won't really make sense down the line. The Doctor asks the Tesslecta database to tell him who wants him dead. What we get is a lot of vague hints that will just lead to more nonsense in the future. It doesn't impact this episode quite as much as it did the opening two parter, but I still can't watch these scenes without being reminded of just how disappointing these answers are going to be.

And okay, good. We've gotten through the easy part. So far what we've described is a fun episode that maybe doesn't quite live up to what it needed to be, but that was the risk in following up "A Good Man Goes to War" with something so lighthearted. Let's get back to the other stuff.

Starting with Nazi Germany again, there's moments where this is working for me. Shoving Hitler in a closet is quite funny. And more seriously, the way the Doctor reacts to seeing Hitler really lands for me. He sort of freezes up for a second and his tone of voice suggests he's trying to keep himself calm. Good stuff. But then, other than a fun line from River (which sadly contains a slur for Romani people, though I'm sure this was a case of ignorance), there's nothing else that really uses the time period to any effect. And I'd argue that any historical that could be set in any time period is inherently flawed. But this especially goes for a setting like Nazi Germany. That's just a moment in time that does mean more than most others.

As for the sexism, there's not much more to say that I didn't say up above. I guess I should address River only becoming an archaeologist to find the Doctor. It's far from the worst thing in the episode, but it does still feel uncomfortable. Like, why not let a woman become an academic for her own reasons, why does it have to be about "a good man"? This is something that is just done with women way more than it's done with men and it's frustrating. Beyond that though, it's kind of shocking just how sexist this episode gets sometimes.

So what do these elements do to our really fun if slightly flawed episode? Well, they don't quite sink it, at least for me. But they do taint it a lot. I wish I could enjoy this episode more, because at its best it seems like a good time. But then the Doctor makes an offhanded sexist remark and I just don't know what to do with that. This episode's biggest flaws are just too big to ignore. I guess you can shove Hitler in a cupboard for a while but he's still going to be Hitler at the end of the day.

Score: 6/10

Yikes, is that really how I'm ending the review? I mean I guess it's a decent analogy but ^(it definitely feels like it's pushing the borders. Which is sort of the point but…)

Stray Observations

• Around the time that this episode aired, the fourth series of Torchwood, subtitled Miracle Day was airing. That series featured a world-wide situation where nobody could die anymore. As far as I, or anyone else, can tell, the Ponds at the very least lived through this situation and it's possible that "Let's Kill Hitler" takes place before it's resolved. In either case, feels like a big thing to just…not get talked about at any point.
• The cast seem to have enjoyed this one. Before it aired (which in fairness, could just be publicity talk), Matt Smith said it was "maybe my favorite episode to date". Arthur Darvill enjoyed that Rory got to be more of an action hero.
• This was the last thing that Caitlin Blackwood shot for Doctor Who, though later episode "The God Complex" was shot earlier, which Blackwood also cameoed in.
• The Anti-Bodies were originally written as humanoid robots. This was changed because it too much resembled the Hand-Bots, from later episode "The Girl Who Waited".
• Steven Moffat intentionally decided that Adolf Hitler should be written as a comical and belittled figure, citing inspiration from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
• Among those who auditioned for the part of Mels was an actor by the name of Jenna Louise-Coleman…who we will of course be hearing more from soon.
• Outfit change! Yeah, the Doctor has now replaced his tweed jacket with a longer pea-green coat. On one hand I do like a long coat and it does suit the darker turn the show started taking in Series 6. On the other hand, there was something special about the tweed. I think the fact that, while standing out, it also made the Doctor feel a bit comical, the kind of person you wouldn't necessarily take seriously, really worked for the 11th Doctor.
• The Doctor lies, claiming that the TARDIS exists in a State of Temporal Grace to prevent Mels from shooting it. The State of Temporal Grace as a concept was introduced in The Hand of Fear and seemed to be working then, though by Arc of Infinity it had stopped working.
• Weirdly, Mels seems to have had a catch phrase of "penny in the air…penny drops". We only see her use it twice, but it's odd to think that use of catchphrases across a single incarnation is something common to regenerating individuals.
• One of the Tesselecta operators mentions that "time can be rewritten", specifically referencing something to do with "Kennedy". Did…these people somehow cause Kennedy's assassination?
• The still images of Rose, Martha, and Donna were sourced from promotional materials from Series 3 and 4.
• The Doctor suggests getting out of his poisoning by regenerating, to which the TARDIS voice interface replies "regeneration disabled". So I'm sure at the time that line was meant to suggest that said poison had done that, but in retrospect, he couldn't regenerate because he was at the end of his regeneration cycle. Although I would assume that the poison in question was chosen because it could prevent regeneration, seems like the sort of thing you'd do when trying to kill a Time Lord, and it's not like River or her masters would have known about the War Doctor at that time.
• River suggests she might lower her apparent age over time, just to "freak people out". Of course this is used to explain why River does seem to be getting older as we get earlier in her timeline. Now the idea that Time Lords (or similar beings like River) can do this has its own set of implications, but it's a funny line regardless.
• This might be just me, but the Doctor's line about River at the end of the episode in response to "she'll be fine", "no she won't, she'll be amazing" reminds me a lot of the 4th Doctor's line about Romana after leaving her in E-Space at the end of Warriors' Gate: "Alright, she'll be superb". It feels appropriate, given that Romana and River are somewhat similar characters.
• While never stated on screen, the name of River's professor at the end of the episode is Professor Candy. That's a character Steven Moffat created for his very first Doctor Who work, a short story for Virgin Publishing's third Decalog anthology series. Appropriately that short story featured Bernice Summerfield, a character with even more similarities to River.

Next Time: Boy the 11th Doctor sure does run into a lot of children

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Novel Information

• Novel: Doctor Who: The New Adventures (VNA) #15
• Published: 17th June 1993
• Companions: Ace, Benny
• Author: David A. McIntee

Spoiler-Free Review

I mostly came away with a positive view of White Darkness, and I rather suspect that if you're a fan of zombie fiction, you may enjoy this one a fair bit more than me. Then again these zombis hew more closely to the Haitian practice than what you may be be used to. This novel succeeds in giving Ace the spotlight, as well as being a pretty interesting period piece. Haiti 1915 is a rather unique choice of time and place, and writer David McIntee does make it feel truly alive. I would recommend giving this one a shot, even if it's not one of my personal favorites.

At this point, the following novels have become more or less standard for me to recommend reading: Love and War for introducing Benny and Deceit for Ace's return and the establishing of the character dynamics aboard the TARDIS with its new crew. Add previous novel Lucifer Rising to that list as it further explores and resets said character dynamics.

Full Review

The legends also say that someday [the Great Old Ones] may return, but that’s a facet of legends about everything from Davros to King Arthur – Benny

While reading White Darkness I found myself thinking a lot about the TARDIS team of the 7th Doctor, Ace and Benny a lot. And this is the 3rd novel in a row where that's kind of been the main takeaway I've had. For the first two it kind of makes sense. Deceit introduced this new TARDIS team and Lucifer Rising was about stabilizing a trio that seemed fairly unstable going in. But White Darkness isn't really about its TARDIS team. If it could be said to focus on a single character, it would probably be Ace, but the reality is is that this is a period piece first and foremost, with a "truth behind the mythology" framing.

But still, I found myself wondering a lot about this trio, and specifically wondering if they're a little bit odd together.

Ace is no longer the troubled teenager archetype that she was introduced as back in Dragonfire or even the version of the character that was slowly growing more and more distrustful of the Doctor over the course of the early VNAs. She is instead a battle hardened soldier who is trying to reclaim her goodness. Benny might at first glance look like a good counterpoint to Ace. She's an academic first and foremost after all. But in reality she too has a military background even if she never actually fought and also tends towards an action hero archetype. She's, and I can't believe this is the first I'm making this comparison, more Lara Croft than Romana. And then you have the Doctor, normally presented as a pacifistic hero. Except, due to the manipulative nature of the 7th Doctor and the VNAs clearly wanting to push Doctor Who in a more adult direction, the 7th Doctor has become a lot less pacifistic than he used to. What we're left with is three characters who, admittedly all in their own ways, spend a lot of time struggling between the desire to do good and the frequent cases where violence seems like the easiest way to achieve their goals.

And to be clear, I'm not even saying that this is a bad thing. But it does leave us with a TARDIS team that feels very aggressive, without anyone to really balance that out. In this novel it's Petion, a Captain who starts the story serving under the brutal regime of Jean Vilbrun Guillame Sam, who arguably provides that counterpoint a lot of the time, which says something. In principle there's nothing wrong with this evolution of Doctor Who, especially with the unconstrained nature of the VNAs, but it does feel off from time to time.

You know what else felt off to me in White Darkness? Zombis.

Okay, a few quick disclaimers. First and foremost, as you may be aware, I'm not a horror person. Don't necessarily hate it, but I always need some other hook to get me invested. Zombie stories might be the height of this. I've found most zombie stories I've tried to watch actively boring. There are exceptions – see for instance my review of "The Waters of Mars" – but this is a much more "pure" zombie story than that one was. And honestly, the portions of this novel that focused on the zombi stuff were probably my least favorite.

Though it's worth saying that writer David A. McIntee made a real effort to try and pull from actual Haitian practice for this one. It's why I've been mostly spelling it "zombi". It's because that's a distinction that is made within the text itself. McIntee spells this out in his Author's Note at the beginning of the novel: he's using that spelling to distinguish between characters like the Doctor who are familiar with Haitian practices regarding the zombi and someone like Ace who knows "zombies" from a more pop culture lens. And McIntee has done at least some research. From what I can tell the primary source he pulled from, anthropologist Wade Davis' book, The Serpent and the Rainbow has its issues, particularly with some of the scientific claims it makes, but is still largely well-regarded. That combined with McIntee working from a few pop-science articles probably makes this most well-researched VNA to date, which is, if nothing else, impressive.

Of course that means this is also a period piece. I'd like to note that historical stories have been something of a rarity in the VNAs, in spite of the first two qualifying. However since then, only Nightshade and small portions of The Pit have followed suit. And this story is definitely a departure from the standard Doctor Who historical setting. Haiti in 1915, with World War I lurking in the background, makes for a unique Doctor Who story. And McIntee's research does shine here, making the island feel very real. While I can't speak to the historical accuracy of the piece, it sure feels like a novel that is making a genuine effort to present a realistic picture of Haiti, while still incorporating some sci-fi elements.

Those of course centers around the zombis, and the mysterious entity that is pulling the strings to create more of them. For a zombie story this novel honestly features very little of the shambling monsters, despite one of them appearing on the cover. That being said there is a lot of talking about them, watching scientists working on creating them and, of course, a log. Every zombie story has a log (or at least that's my impression of the genre). And as I said, I just didn't find a lot of this material particularly interesting. It's at its most engaging when it's focused on Henri and Mait, the two Haitian characters who are most involved with the creations of zombis as they at least have the cultural connection to the rituals being performed.

But this isn't just a zombie story. Because the creation of the zombis is being directed by one of the Great Old Ones. This is our first mention of what I'm vaguely aware becomes a staple plot for the VNAs and the wider stuff in the 7th Doctor's Expanded Universe material. As a start to this arc, White Darkness does a fair job at hinting at the threat that these beings present. The Great Old One is an ancient threat that once controlled the Galaxy, and while it's no longer able to manifest properly in our universe, is able to manipulate human beings to do its bidding and create the conditions to manifest itself. What exactly this has to do with making all of Europe into zombis (which, yes, is the ultimate evil plan in this novel) is unclear. But that level of mystery kind of works in the novel's favor. The Great Old One, who is never named or identified beyond that title, is something largely unknowable. Even Mait, who serves it directly, doesn't really seem to understand what it is he's working for.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this novel also has kind of a magical bent. While it's mostly kept in the cosmic horror area that the Great Old One represents there are other little intrusions of the magical into this one. Most obviously we have Henri, who acts as Mait's second, and carries around a Tarot deck he regularly uses to make accurate assessments of people's roles in the novel. In principle this isn't really all that different from how coin tosses and the I Ching were deployed in Warriors' Gate. In practice though it somehow feels a lot more magical. Maybe it's because Warriors' Gate was already such a surrealist story that the magical elements just kind of slipped by, whereas White Darkness is set in the real world, so anything magical just stands out that much more. Either way, I wasn't a fan of Henri's magical Tarot deck, as minor of a point as it really was.

That being said, Henri and Mait did largely work for me as characters. For the majority of the novel they're just kind of background figures, and it's unclear what kind of role they'll even play in the story. It's only towards the end of the novel that it becomes clear that Mait is going to operate as our main villain, the representative of the Great Old One. So Henri and Mait largely hang around over to the side, commenting on the goings on of the novel. You can tell that they're more than they seem, partially due to Henri's Tarot routine, but mostly due to the way the stuff from their perspective is highlighted. These two always seem to have a point of view on whatever's going on, and a greater purpose beyond what is immediately apparent. And Mait is clearly in charge, with Henri seeming to be some sort of advisor. Still, for the majority of the novel these two kind of function as a package deal. We see more of Henri, but everything he does is in service of Mait.

Mait is also much older than he seems. Most people guess his age as being in his 60s, so he doesn't seem young, but nobody would think to guess that he was born in 1744. While he's presented as being Haitian, he was actually born a member of the Dahomey in West Africa. Taken by European slave traders as a child, he learned of the Great Old Ones from the "Leopard Chief" after they were the sole survivors of a shipwreck. This granted him long life and a profound hatred of Europeans, or blancs as the Haitian characters generally refer to all white people. This hatred is exploited by the Great Old One as his plan for revenge is how you get the "turn all Europeans into zombis" plan. Somehow this will actually lead to the Great Old One consuming the world, but I don't get the sense that Mait knows this.

Though for a while you can almost forget Mait and Henri exist. As mentioned this novel takes place in Haiti in 1915 and if your know your Haitian history (which, to be clear, I don't) you'll know that this was the point at which the Haitians overthrew their dictator Jean Vilbrun Guillame Sam, usually referred in this novel simply as Sam. Sam is presented as an irredeemably evil character with a huge ego, the kind of person that genuinely believes that morality is centered around how events affect them personally. In other words, he's loathsome, but there's not a ton more to him. That doesn't make him a bad villain, and indeed as things spiral out of his control, Sam gets several chilling moments. Honestly, it's just a very impressive portrait of a mad autocrat. In a bit of an ahistorical moment that kind of works nonetheless, instead of being killed by the rebels as happened in real life, he commits suicide. It works because the writing of those final moments is actually fairly well done, and because it allows for a pretty interesting moment where Bobo, the rebel leader, decides to claim that he'd killed Sam, to manufacture a more satisfying end, sort of hinting that Bobo will be no better than Sam – though Bobo would never take control of Haiti. Beyond that, Bobo doesn't have too many memorable moments.

But Haitians are not the only players in the political games being played. There's a whole German contingent that is also being manipulated by Henri and Mait. The backdrop of World War One is necessary for this novel – the Germans having introduced chemical warfare to the Great War is important context as they plan to use the zombi-creating tetrodotoxin in a similar manner. That is how Mait plans to turn all of Europe into zombis. However some of the German contingent kind of drop out of the story for much of its run. We're introduced pretty early on to a pair of scientists, Dr. Ingrid Karnstein and Victor von Stein. The pair are assigned to work on the tetrodotoxin.

A lot of Karnstein's stuff focuses on her as a woman in science, being overlooked by her superiors and colleagues alike. She's ultimately given a fairly sympathetic read, someone who was willing to push back her morals to work on this project, but still holds her reservations. Eventually she finds herself incapable of pushing her morals back any further, and destroys solution. When von Stein questions her, she argues that she's just preventing the Americans from putting the work together. Von Stein points out this is just an excuse…which she admits is true, knees von Stein in the groin and runs off. Von Stein for his part is largely characterized as a bit of a buffoon, and as such this ending feels very in character for him. The thing is, these characters kind of vanish from the narrative for quite a while. After a lot of time is spent establishing them early on, Karnstein and von Stein just stop appearing until the ending when they're suddenly back and Karnstein is kneeing von Stein in the balls.

Security for the Germans is provided by Richmann. The American mercenary is generally presented as reveling in the violence he creates. He's technically working for Mait and Henri, who are helping the Germans because they'll bring their modified tetrodotoxin, but really is defined by his self-interest more than anything else. He'll be on whoever's side pays him, as long as they let him enact his brutality. For a lot of this novel he's honestly a bit dull, but towards the end you do start to see what McIntee was intending to do with him, as he's actually used as a sort of dark reflection of Ace. The idea seems to be that Ace's love of explosives and her growing feeling that violence is all she's good for could turn her into something like Richmann. But I'll talk about that more when I talk about Ace. For now, just know that after Richmann shoots Petion's hand, Ace empties her gun into him.

Speaking of Petion, as I said he kind of takes up the role of the novel's moral center. He starts as a Haitian captain under President Jean Vilbrun Gillaume Sam, but from the beginning it's clear that he has his doubts. Though he starts off by arresting our heroes, he quickly becomes their ally and stays in that role for the rest of the novel. Early on he gets compared to the Brigadier, and I think it's a valid comparison. The big difference is that Petion essentially turns rebel early in the story, but in fairness that is actually something that happened to the Brigadier a couple times. He does seem fairly concerned at Ace's violent streak. He also gets a journey in the TARDIS.

Oh and I should mention the American contingent here. Honestly there's not a ton to say about them. They're a group of Marines who have been stationed on Haiti to protect American interests, and eventually are part of America's occupation of the country. Beyond that there's not much to say about any of them individually. They are, as a collective, very racist, obviously thinking less of the Haitians and repeatedly using the n-word to describe them.

Oh and Benny actually also says the n-word in this one…but in fairness she'd never heard the word before, and was mostly just curious about it from a historical perspective. There's not a ton to say about Benny in this novel. The thing that stood out most to me is that we're clearly seeding the idea that Benny might try to find her father. It's something that was sort of introduced back in her introduction in Love and War but I didn't think of as much more than backstory at the time. Beyond that, her status as an archaeologist is leveraged quite a bit in this novel to good effect. But probably the most memorable thing she has is a lengthy escape sequence from the German's cave base. There's a genuine feeling of desperation throughout this sequence from Benny, you really get the sense of her every action being crucial. She uses brains by disguising herself as a scientist, and brawn when she needs to fight or swim away.

As for the Doctor, as I hinted at above, we're definitely still playing around with the Doctor as a darker figure in this novel. It's not so much directed at his companions for the first time in what seems like a while, but instead at his enemies. I will say, I do miss the time when the 7th Doctor could come across to strangers as a harmless little man, which seems to be less and less of a thing in the VNAs at this point. He's showing a lot of trust in his companions, especially Ace, to take initiative in the ways he wants, even though he's clearly concerned by Ace's increasing violent streak. I do feel like since Ace returned we're seeing a bit less of that innate trust he had in Benny when she was sole companion. Partially this would seem to be here to reinforce some of Benny's insecurities concerning Ace. But also it's just natural for the Doctor to trust Ace more quickly, since he knew her longer. Then again, after the events of Lucifer Rising, you'd think he'd be a bit more cautious with her.

The novel ends climaxes with him blowing up Mait with Ace's explosives. In fairness (I suppose) he does try to warn Mait about his impending death, but that's only after he did everything he could to trick Mait into walking directly into them. Again, it does feel like a bit of a decaying of the Doctor's supposed pacifism. It's not just this moment but a culmination of the Doctor's behavior for, frankly, the last few novels. I'm just not sure that I love how our whole main cast has evolved into "darker" versions of themselves, including Benny despite her being in these novels for a shorter period of time than the other two.

On the other hand…I do really like what was done with Ace in this novel. I mentioned above that she gets the most focus in this novel, and how Richmann essentially serves as a dark mirror to Ace. Indeed, one of Ace's final thoughts in this novel is one of concern that she's turning into Richmann. Earlier, she had explained to Petion that she felt that violence was all she had to offer anymore, so she might as well use it for good. Petion makes, essentially, the "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" counterpoint to this. It's an interesting conversation, a part of a larger friendship between Petion and Ace that really landed for me. And you can see how Ace is constantly going for a more violent solution throughout this novel. But again, she's very conscious of that tendency, and ends the novel worried of where it will take her. All in all, a really good novel for Ace's character.

I do want to end on a slight criticism of this novel: I didn't love the prose style. Now this criticism is fairly mild – this isn't another situation like we had with The Pit. But I did find the prose style of White Darkness to feel a bit empty, often describing events without really bringing them to life. On the other hand, there are some rather memorable scenes, particularly the caverns where the Germans have set up their base. Also, McIntee nails the voices of our three main leads, especially Benny (although she's probably the easiest to write for).

On the whole, I did largely like White Darkness, but came away a bit nonplussed. It's far from a bad novel, but it did feel like it lacked a certain spark. I was particularly struck by how grim our main cast have become, which I do think is to this novel's – and the VNAs as a whole's – detriment. But the politics of Haiti are well-written and Mait was a good antagonist, in whatever else I might have felt about the zombi plot.

Score: 6/10

Stray Observations

• Holy shit what the fuck is this cover? Ace's head looks massive on her body (at least I can recognize Sophie Aldred's features for a change), the facial expressions on all three of our leads look almost comical with Benny in particular looking less like she's scared of the zombi menacing her and more like she left the oven on at home. The Doctor meanwhile looks like he's aged about 40 years or so, and his face is doing the expression you might associate with a mildly confused four year old. I've never cared for most of the VNA covers but this might actually be the worst yet.
• This novel is the first to refer to Bernice Summerfield more frequently as "Benny". To this point it's been a nickname that only occasionally gets used. You may have noticed that I use "Benny" more frequently than "Bernice" and that's largely because the Benny that I'm familiar with barely goes by her actual name, but that wasn't nearly as set in stone in the beginning as I had assumed going in.
• The Doctor considers taking a few different umbrellas before settling on his usual one. Among them is the 6th Doctor's which he describes as "too garish". On one hand, that's fair enough Doctor. On the other hand, you're the one who's decided to emphasize your air of mystery by not only putting a question mark on your umbrella handle but also wearing a sweater of question marks. Maybe you're not the incarnation who should be commenting on the "garishness" of other people's fashion choices. Though he does modify his outfit, getting rid of the sweater, at the beginning of this novel.
• The Doctor starts wearing a brooch with a serpent coiling around an eagle. This is the engagement brooch given to him by Cameca in The Aztecs after he accidentally proposed marriage to her.
• Based on comments by the Doctor this adventure takes place immediately after "Lucifer Rising". He had intended to take them on a vacation. As you'll know from watching any amount of Doctor Who, the Doctor intending to take his companions on a vacation only for an adventure to break out is a pretty standard start to these stories.
• Petion tries to open the TARDIS (he thinks it's just a weird box that might have a phone in it) with the TARDIS key but it won't open for him. There's been a variety of explanations given over the years for why the TARDIS key might not work for a stranger.
• Just once, I would like for a fictional scenario involving tarot cards not to involve the "Death" card. It just feels too obvious is all.
• The Doctor insists that our heroes can't interfere with General Etienne's massacre of political prisoners as it's a matter of established history. Ace refers back to the Beer Hall Putsch, which she and the Doctor couldn't interfere with back in Timewyrm: Exodus.
• In Chapter 8, The Doctor's perspective narration mentions that he got a degree of medicine from Lister, matching up with what the 2nd Doctor claimed in The Moonbase, in which he claimed to have received the degree in Glasgow in 1888. After this it's revealed that the Doctor generally feels awkward claiming a medical degree considering how far in the past 1888 usually is where he travels. But in this instance, what with it being 1915, he figures his training is just about up to date enough to claim the medical degree, though he is sure to mention he's a doctor "of many things."
• He also seems fairly annoyed when he mentions that he's from Gallifrey that Dr. Phillips assumes he's from Ireland, sick of every human he runs into thinking that.
• Ace mentions having seen severe injuries being inflicted by the claws of "big cats". This is almost certainly in reference to Survival.
• While it makes sense for her character, it still weirds me out to see Ace saying "cut that shit out". To be clear, if any Classic Who companion would have been swearing it's Ace, and that was before she spent the better part of three years as a soldier. But it's weird thinking of any companion swearing, because Doctor Who, at least when on television, is a family show. Hell Ace in Big Finish doesn't swear as far as I can remember.
• When the idea of visiting a history museum is first presented to Benny she seems kind of bored by the idea, as she's not expecting anything that would impress her. However by the time she's arrived she seems more interested, not just because of the artifacts, but a chance to see what an early 20th Century History museum looks like. "Double historical interest" she calls it. I don't mind either of these reactions, but it feels like an inconsistency.
• Benny seems excited that if she gets back to the 26th Century the artifacts in the aforementioned museum, which imply alien incursion in Haiti, would earn her a Nobel Prize…or "maybe even" something called a Magnees.
• She also mentions wishing she'd brought a tricorder. That's a word I associate with Star Trek and it sure seems like the "tricorder" she's referring to functions much like Star Trek's tricorder. Odd.
• In Chapter 12, narration is quick to assure us that, when the Doctor backs over someone threatening him with a weapon, it was an accident.
• Benny apparently took ballet lessons at one point, probably as a kid.
• Benny thinks that the caverns might have been constructed by "Earth Reptiles" before dismissing the idea. This presumably refers to the Silurians, or maybe Sea Devils.

Next Time: A return to the television series as the Doctor finally tracks down Melody (by accident). Naturally this episode set in Nazi Germany is a comedy.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episode 7
• Airdate: 4th June 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: River Song, Dorium Maldovar, Madame Kovarian, Madame Vastra (Neve McIntosh), Jenny (Catrin Stewart), Strax (Dan Starkey)
• Writer: Steven Moffat
• Director: Peter Hoar
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

Oh look, I'm angry, that's new. I'm really not sure what's going to happen now. – The Doctor

Towards the end of "A Good Man Goes to War" our heroes and their allies are being menaced by the "Headless Monks" a force of literally headless monks with fire swords. As they chant, one of those aforementioned allies, Dorium Maldovar says the line, "Oh dear God. It's the attack prayer."

Whenever I watch this scene a part of me can't help but think that none of this feels remotely like Doctor Who. The whole thing. The monks with the fire swords. The ominous chanting. Dorium's line. The whole thing just does not feel even a little bit like Doctor Who. Which is weird right? Constantly you'll hear people say that Doctor Who is always changing, that's it's never just one thing. I've made this point too, I titled my review of Season 6 of the Classic Series "Doctor Who is Whatever You Want it to Be", and I ended that review on that same line.

But just because a show is flexible does not mean it doesn't have a tone. There's a lot to like about this episode. It contains some of my favorite 11th Doctor moments, and some of the most important to understanding his character. The twist at the end of the episode is one of the few major plot points from Series 6's arc that lands properly. But at its core, this story centering around a big battle with explosions, and swords (both made of fire and not) and even a lot of the high stakes drama, and overall it's not what I want out of Doctor Who. And frankly, I'm not sure this show is particularly good at it.

I recognize that this is a minority opinion. Hell, I even understand why it's a minority opinion. There's arguably more to like about this episode than not. But evaluating an episode's quality isn't about putting the good and bad bits on opposite ends of a scale and seeing what there's more of. For all of the interesting character work and fun twists, every time I watch this episode there's a nagging sense that I'm watching a different show, one that I probably wouldn't like.

The episode itself picks up in the aftermath of the Doctor melting Amy's Ganger at the end of "The Almost People". And immediately let's talk about this first scene. There's narration from Amy, which I'll get to a bit more later, but the main point is Rory showing up on a Cyber-ship in full Roman dress, threatening the Cybermen and demanding they tell him where his wife is. The Doctor then promptly blows up some Cyber-ships, just to make the point. This scene, popular among the fanbase, has always struck as a bit cringy. For one thing, I've never fully understood why Rory is in his Roman garb for this episode, but as that was apparently the Doctor's idea and it's at least reasonably in character for the Doctor to go for the showy presentation, I won't harp on it too much. A bit more substantially, the whole scene feels like, and trust me when I tell you I'm too old to use this phrase but I can't think of a better one, aura farming. Blowing up the ships, Rory's "badass" presentation, it's entirely unnecessary for the episode, tells us very little about these characters that won't be better expressed later in said episode. At most it shows an angry Rory and a Doctor who's being pushed to extremes. But the Doctor's not actually in this scene, we don't even have a clue how he blew up the Cyber-ships. And Rory's going to have plenty of time to express a whole range of emotions this episode.

But okay, that scene is largely harmless. And what follows next is something genuinely interesting: the Doctor assembling an army. It's mostly characters we've never met before, but the episode does a decent job giving quick characterization to each of them that gives us a sense of who they are. Vastra and Jenny are a Silurian and her maid living in Victorian times and, while it's not made as explicit here, Vastra is very Sherlock Holmes-coded. Oh and by the end of the episode it's pretty clear that their relationship is less detective/maid and more lovers. Next is Strax, a Sontaran who the Doctor somehow forced to become a nurse during a sci-fi war that looks oddly like the American Revolutionary War for some reason. Rory tries to recruit River but she insists she can't come along. And finally, Dorium Maldovar, last seen in the opening sequence of "The Pandorica Opens" is given a larger part and is also recruited by the Doctor.

The idea of the Doctor calling in favors from past adventures is an interesting one, though I do wish we'd gotten at least one character we'd met before aside from Dorium, who was barely in "Pandorica". Sure, Captain Avery and his son Toby have brief cameo later on in the episode, but aside from "The Curse of the Black Spot" not being an especially memorable episode, their cameo in this episode is so short it's barely worth mentioning. Original plans called for Jack Harkness to make his return, but John Barrowman was busy filming for the 4th Series of Torchwood, Miracle Day. Writer/Showrunner Steven Moffat has since stated he feels like it was better not to include Harkness, since an episode featuring him would sort of become about the return of Jack Harkness and pull focus away from the plot. I do see this point, but at the same time, a connection to an RTD-era character in a time where those were rare would have helped the show's universe feel more connected. And it would have been a character that the audience would recognize. And that would just better match the idea of the Doctor bringing together a bunch of allies.

Still, the allies we do get here are fun in their own right. Jenny probably gets the least amount of time in this one, mostly just being there to back up Vastra, but she's got fun chemistry with her reptilian wife, and there is something entertaining about this Victorian maid running around with swords on a space station. Strax is mostly just a comic relief character, but Dan Starkey is so good at playing the obliviously deadpan humor of a Sontaran that it really works. Plus he does get some interesting character notes. Particularly the idea of a Sontaran who had always dreamed of dying in battle getting that wish and discovering he doesn't enjoy it is quite poignant in its own way. As is his final words (as far as we knew at the time) being him acknowledging himself as not a warrior, but a nurse. Dorium Maldovar, for his part, is great in this episode. We only got a hint of the powerful operator that Dorium is in his first appearance, but here he really does get to shine. Openly taunting main villain Kovarian creates a fun scene, and while he doesn't get to do much in the episode proper (until his beheading that is), you do get the impression of a man who is at the center of his own web of power and money.

And then there's Vastra. It's long been speculated that a lot of Vastra's material in this episode was originally meant for Jack Harkness when he was going to be in the episode. I can't find any concrete evidence of this but I do see why one might think that. Vastra is positioned in this episode as a character who has known the Doctor for a long time. Apparently she was planning on taking revenge for the deaths of her family on innocents in the London Underground before the Doctor managed to talk her down. There's plenty of evidence, even in this first appearance, that Vastra actually knows the Doctor quite well and, I like to think, has known her in multiple incarnations. Regardless, Vastra acts as the voice of reason throughout this episode, a role she generally does well in, because the Doctor's kind of blinded by everything else that's going on.

To this point the relationship between the 11th Doctor and his companions has been that of close friends. That's going to change in a pretty substantial way by the end of this episode, but from the beginning we get the sense that Amy, and yes, Rory as well, mean more to the Doctor than that would indicate. Again, he's calling in a bunch of favors, a move I can't think of the Doctor ever pulling on television before this, to rescue Amy. The closest comparison I can think of is the Doctor's friends all uniting in "The Stolen Earth" but that was something they did on their own accord.

And at first, it seems to really work. The Doctor's plan to save Amy involves a ton of misdirection and not a single shot actually getting fired because, in spite of everything, this is still the Doctor we're talking about. Misdirection is his favorite tactic and avoiding bloodshed is his preference. It also, however, reveals a lot about him in the process. Colonel Manton is the leader of the enemy forces, this army that has been raised on the asteroid Demon's Run. He mostly comes off as pretty competent, notably preventing things from getting out of control between his forces and the Headless Monks. Maybe a bit of a caricature, and definitely not a good person, but good enough at his job. And the Doctor absolutely destroys this man.

The Colonel Runaway speech, and its followup represent crucial points to understand the 11th Doctor. The Colonel Runaway speech…honestly more than anything else it's just bluster, but it's kind of a look of what the Doctor could be if he chose to be cruel. There was no reason for the Doctor to insist that Manton order a surrender using the phrase "run away" in order to "make [him] famous for those words". But as he says, Manton and his army tried to get at the Doctor through the people he loves. That's enough to make anyone vindictive. And a vindictive Doctor is scary because the Doctor puts a lot of thought into everything, meaning that he'll have put a lot of thought into the precise nature of his revenge. And that's what the Colonel Runaway speech is. But it's the follow up, after Kovarian insists that the Doctor's not to be feared because as a good man he has "too many rules", that's really worth keeping in mind. The Doctor says, simply "good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many".

Again, it's a bit blustery. Kovarian has no idea what the Doctor's threatening, Manton has no idea what the Doctor is threatening, hell the Doctor has no idea what the Doctor's threatening. But it still works. And more to the point, it reinforces something that we've been hinting at since "Amy's Choice": the 11th Doctor does not see himself in a positive light. Ironically, I do think that the 11th Doctor is a good man, at least he is most of the time. Everything I've just quoted, all these important lines…again on some level they're all just bluster. And there will be more to consider on this point in the future. But for now, I just think it's worth considering one idea. What if the fact that the Doctor doesn't consider himself to be a good man is how he gives himself permission to do cruel things when he's in his worst moments? What if it's how he allows himself to be cruel to a man like Manton and turn him into Colonel Runaway?

Regardless, things are going well. Rory's even got his and Amy's baby, who Amy's named Melody, and brought her back to Amy. The reunion between Amy and Rory is genuinely quite touching, especially as it includes baby Melody and, eventually, the Doctor. Amy's been convinced that the Doctor and, especially, Rory would be coming to save her but there's still this overwhelming sense of relief you can feel coming off of her. But this scene absolutely belongs to Rory. For one thing his entrance with the baby is great. He's, by his own admission, trying to be cool but the sheer emotion of seeing his wife again and holding his daughter for the first time has overcome him. And then, when the Doctor makes himself known in the middle of this reunion, Rory calls him over so they can share in the joy of the moment. It's the moment that I think firmly establishes this TARDIS team as having a family dynamic. It's not just Amy, Amy's husband, and Amy's best friend. It's not even Amy, Rory and their friend. The Doctor is very much a part of this family and it really cements the uniqueness of this era of Doctor Who. And I think for it to do that, it really had to come from Rory.

We then get a break from the action as our leading trio just kind of get to hang out for a bit. This material is solid, if a bit unremarkable. The most interesting thing is that we get to see the Doctor's cot. And then, the penny drops. Let's talk about Melody.

In that narration by Amy I mentioned earlier, this episode decides to do something really annoying: pretend that the Doctor might be the father of Amy's child. There's another case of that really bad deceptive writing that was present in "Day of the Moon" where Amy, speaking to Melody, describes her father. She says a lot of things that sound like they apply to the Doctor but also apply to Rory, thanks to his time as The Last Centurion. In there she says that Rory is "the last of his kind" which could technically be referring to the Centurions but is a really weird thing to say about Rory that doesn't quite line up. I can't imagine this fooling anyone.

Except it comes back. Later in the episode, Melody's DNA is scanned and they discover that she's "human plus Time Lord". Now the explanation is eventually given that due to Melody being conceived in the TARDIS (possibly during the closing credits of "The Big Bang" because, yes, that's what the title actually meant) she was born with a unique relationship to time, like the Time Lords were created in part via exposure to the Untempered Schism (hey, there's your RTD era link, as that idea was introduced in "The Sound of Drums"). Now this wasn't enough to "cook yourself a Time Lord" as the Doctor puts it, but the people who took her have had time to work on her and create, possibly a new kind of Time Lord. However, there's a pretty long gap of time between the reveal that Melody is "human plus Time Lord" and this explanation. Enough time that it really feels like the episode wants you to believe that the Doctor might actually be Melody's father.

Now I wasn't fooled. You probably weren't fooled. It's not a very convincing lie, since the show has repeatedly drummed it into our heads that, in spite of some outward appearances to the contrary, Amy really is devoted to Rory. Hell even when she was coming on to (and trying to sexually assault) the Doctor at the end of "Flesh and Stone" (I wish I didn't have to keep mentioning that scene) it was pretty clear that Amy wasn't all that interested in him so much as she was a vulnerable person landing on the nearest warm body. It's still an awful scene mind, and yes, I'm going to point that out every time it comes up. But the point is "Amy's Choice" did such a good job convincing me that Amy and Rory were the couple of this era, and these repeated implications to the contrary just annoy me. Especially in this episode where they're little more than, for lack of a better word, trolling. It's fortunately a small part of the episode, but man is it awful.

But going back to Melody herself, why would the people who took Amy want to cook a Time Lord? Well, this is where we have to talk about our villains for this story. I've already covered Colonel Manton, leader of the army, but we've neglected a crucial point. These guys sure appear to be the same religious army we saw back in Series 5's Angel two-parter. And now they're preparing to go to war with the Doctor himself.

How an army might go to war with the Doctor is kind of interesting. We see soldiers training to recognize psychic paper for what it is, a sign explaining the sonic screwdriver (it reads "1. It's not sonic/2. It's Not a screwdriver"). But on the whole it's hard to know what to make of these guys, now confirmed to be Anglicans because why not. Oddly enough, in spite of being given more focus than last time, the religious aspect is arguably de-emphasized as compared to their introduction. There's a bit with the headless monks that implies they're open to having their members forcibly converted, even if it means getting their heads chopped off, and a vague reference to something called the "Papal Mainframe" but by the time the Doctor arrives on Demon's Run they may as well be any military force.

And what characterization any of them do get is very mixed. You've got Colonel Manton, a competent if fairly unremarkable character. But then there's a pair called the Thin One and the Fat One. No they don't have names because, to quote the Thin One "We're the thin fat gay married Anglican marines. Why would we need names as well?" This might be the worst attempt at representation that was still meant to be positive that I've ever seen. Seriously, what the actual hell? Anyway the Fat One gets his head chopped off upon joining the Headless Monks. When it's revealed that all the Headless Monks are, in fact, literally headless, the Thin One looks a bit dismayed…I guess.

On the more positive side, we do have Lorna Bucket. She's joined the church/army because she met the Doctor once and hopes to meet him again. She joined a military force to do this because, "how else do you meet a great warrior"? This ties into some stuff we'll get to later. Regardless, Lorna remains successful as part of the larger project to humanize the enemy forces. Sure the Fat and Thin Ones (miserable, absolutely miserable) also try to fulfill this role, as well as some smaller scenes, but Lorna is where it is most successful. Of course Lorna also changes sides by the end. It foreshadowed thanks to her connecting to Amy, who, after initial hostility, does recognize Lorna's compassion and tells her to be on the right side when the Doctor arrives. Lorna, realizing that Kovarian has lain a trap for the Doctor, warns our heroes, and while it doesn't come to much other than her death, it completes a decently presented character arc.

And her death scene does represent another good moment for the Doctor. As she dies, the Doctor reassures Lorna that he does remember meeting her, saying "Hey, we ran, you and me". But this is a lie, if a lie born out of kindness. When she dies, the Doctor reveals he doesn't know who just died, and presumably just took a wild stab in the dark that someone who he met did some running (the odds were pretty good). When Vastra says that Lorna was brave his reply, "they're always brave" is a bitter reminder that the Doctor has lost people he liked before. This tenderness is also an interesting contrast to the cruelty he displayed towards Manton earlier.

It all ties into the larger point that this episode is trying to do: the Doctor's reputation is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it allows him to put together this army he gathered to rescue Amy. But on the other hand, his reputation is the reason he had to rescue Amy in the first place. As we eventually learn, Madame Kovarian has done all of this to fight a war…against the Doctor. When River does finally show up, once everything has ended she drives this point home, emphasizing that this was all done "in fear of you", and asking the Doctor if when he started traveling he ever though he'd be the sort of person who could scare off an army. It's a pointed remark when the Doctor is in a vulnerable place, because, while he's rescued Amy, it turns out he didn't rescue Melody. In a heart-rending scene, Melody melts in Amy's arms, revealing the baby to be a Melody Ganger.

All of this should make Kovarian feel like a truly stand-out Doctor Who villain, who tricked the Doctor twice, and in the same way by replacing someone with a Ganger. After all this whole episode represents a plan by Kovarian to get her hands on Amy's child, a plan that ultimately succeeds against the Doctor. And yet something feels off with this character. Frances Barber is chewing the scenery through all of her scenes, and it definitely gives Kovarian menace, but at the cost of her feeling like a coherent character. For the second story in a row it feels like a main villain shouldn't have been quite so much of a sadistic monster. Kovarian should probably feel like a character who sincerely believes everything she's doing is necessary, damn the moral implications. But she just kind of comes off as a standard villain. A villain who's going to such extreme lengths "in fear of" the Doctor should not come off quite so one-dimensional. And should, you know, seem a bit afraid of the Doctor, and not be taunting him so constantly.

And this goes back to a lot of this episode just feeling off. The Headless Monks are especial offenders as, frankly, I'm not entirely sure what they're doing in this episode, their only appearance. They've allied with the Anglican Church, but what the Monks are getting out of any of this is never made even remotely clear. Hell what they provide to the Anglicans feels equally murky. They've got an unexplained mysticism, the ability to decapitate people and having the victims survive, hell even anything more than their very basic theology, it's never explained. They seem to only be in this to provide some fun visuals and so that the Doctor can briefly trick the Anglicans into thinking he's disguised himself as a Monk.

The episode seems to be heading for a downer ending, with Amy traumatized and Rory completely devastated at the loss of their baby. The Doctor's feeling pretty awful about the whole thing himself. And then River shows up and after pointing out all those things to the Doctor I mentioned earlier, she shows him something and he cheers right up. To a frankly inappropriate degree, although at the very least he promises to Amy and Rory that he'll find baby Melody before running off in the TARDIS. And it all feels off. Amy certainly feels so as she pulls a gun on River.

Which is when we get the big reveal: River is Melody. It seems to have happened thanks to some odd trickery with a mistranslated name and switching around the first and last names ("Melody" becomes "Song", "Pond" becomes "River". And this reveal absolutely works for me. Remember what I said about this TARDIS team feeling like a proper family in this episode? Well that final reveal clinches it. River is Amy and Rory's daughter, the Doctor, at this point, is effectively her boyfriend. They're all family. It helps tie together the whole story, and while it does somewhat guarantee that Amy and Rory will never get the chance to raise their child, it also permanently alters the dynamics between all these characters in a way I think ultimately served this era quite well. And it was foreshadowed. The most obvious is the ending of "Day of the Moon" where River is clearly just having fun when she says, in full view of her actual father Rory, "my old man didn't see that did he?" But even in "Flesh and Stone" there were moments where you could tell that River was more invested in Amy's survival than you'd expect.

But I'm still not entirely sold on this ending. The Doctor is just a bit too gleeful upon learning all of this. And he just kind of leaves Amy and Rory standing there in shock. Amy pulling a gun on River feels wrong somehow as well. Don't get me wrong, I get she's upset and as far as she knows River refused to show up for no good reason. But it still feels like an extreme reaction, and a bit out of character. The reveal itself is good, but a bit too drawn out, especially on rewatch. River's really milking this moment and there's even a misdirect with the Doctor's cot. These might seem like nitpicky things but they do kind of hurt that ending.

And this episode is full of those little moments. River says that due to what happens in this episode the Doctor will "rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further", a line that can only be hyperbole, and kind of detracts from the genuine sense of a rise and fall that happens because the episode can never live up to that quote. And that's kind of this episode in a nutshell. For every clever writing decision (who's the "good man" from the title, the Doctor…or Rory?) there's something goofy or a bit too over the top. Kovarian doesn't work for me. The Headless Monks feel like they come from an entirely different show. The Fat One and the Thin One were characters that were created. Some things get a little too drawn out. It's not all bad, and the character work for our leading trio is some of the best and most important of this era. But something about this episode just feels off.

Score: 4/10

Stray Observations

• You know, in preparing the "Story Information" section for this post, I noticed that Vastra and Kovarian both go by "Madame", and as I've listed them back to back it kind of looks like they're associated or something. Weird.
• The original impetus for this script was Steven Moffat wondering what could prompt the normally pacifistic Doctor to assemble an army.
• This served as Doctor Who's first mid-series finale (of two). Series 6 was intentionally structured to have both a long term storyline that would be resolved in the Series 6 finale (the Doctor's apparent death in "The Impossible Astronaut") and a shorter term storyline that could be resolved in the mid-series finale (Amy's pregnancy and the "eye patch lady").
• Showrunner/Writer Steven Moffat had given Amy the last name "Pond" with the idea that she'd turn out to be River's mother.
• Amy and Rory becoming parents was also meant as a way to explore how having a married couple traveling on the TARDIS would be different. At the same time, Moffat realized that he couldn't have Amy traveling with the Doctor while heavily pregnant. Initially the plan was just to skip over the pregnancy entirely, before Moffat instead came up with the idea of a doppelgänger Amy being on the TARDIS.
• It's long been speculated, though as far as I know it's unconfirmed, that Jack would have had his head chopped off by the Headless Monks, which would have lead to explaining how he became the Face of Boe.
• Also originally meant to cameo in this story was Paul Kasey as Ood Sigma, and this was even filmed, but ultimately edited out. For whatever reason, Russel T Davies still got credited for creating the Ood in this episode's credits.
• The idea that the word "doctor" came from "The Doctor" was an idea Steven Moffat had had for a very long time, and had posted to a usenet board in 1995.
• To preserve the reveal of River's true identity from leaking, several false endings to the story were devised, including one that was actually used at the read-thru, with only Matt Smith and Alex Kingston knowing the truth beforehand. Meanwhile Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill, who were somewhat suspicious, were told the truth immediately after the read-thru.
• This was the first episode that Frances Barber filmed as Madame Kovarian, with her previous appearances in Series 6 having been filmed during the production of this one.
• Neve McIntosh, who plays Vastra, previously played Silurians Alaya and Restac in the "Hungry Earth" two-parter. The script specified that Vastra was related to those two, presumably the family she was avenging in the London Underground.
• Jenny and Vastra's backstory was hashed out between actors Catrin Stewart and Neve McIntosh. It's not great honestly, as the idea that Vastra adopted Jenny before they became romantic partners is…yeah that's just grooming. Fortunately, that part of their backstory hasn't ever been made cannon, and from what I can tell, between spinoff material and shorts, Jenny's always been said to have met Vastra as an adult, though I've not yet listened to any of the Paternoster Gang audio stuff.
• A lot of the work on the actual Battle of Demons Run was directed by Julian Simpson. The episode's proper director, Peter Hoar, was unhappy with not being brought in to work on this.
• The Cybermen in the opening sequence mostly have the Cybusmen look, but in place of the Cybus Industries logo, it's now just two concentric circles.
• For some reason the opening titles have been modified to include TARDIS noises upon the logo reveal and as the TARIDS spins out of the logo that completely drown out the theme song. As if it wasn't hard enough to hear the music during the lightning strike sound effects. What a weird, pointless decision that actively makes the titles worse in my opinion.
• We're introduced to Vastra by learning that she is a detective…and that she apparently ate Jack the Ripper.
• Henry Avery and Toby's cameo was filmed during "The Curse of the Black Spot". In the time since it would seem that Toby is no longer dependent on the breathing tube he was wearing at the end of that episode.
• So in the past I've said that moments where Rory's background as a nurse comes up are frustratingly rare. But actually, if you're looking for them, there are plenty of references, they're just never prominent. For instance in this episode when Rory brings baby Melody back to Amy he mentions that he's "checked" that she's okay and reading between the lines, this can only mean that he's actually given her a proper, if basic, medical examination. Now, do I wish that side of his character were more pronounced? Absolutely, but these references are more common than you probably think it is.
• It is in this episode, when talking to baby Melody, that it's revealed that the Doctor speaks "baby".
• And in the next scene it's revealed that Strax (and presumably any Sontaran who might choose to "gene splice" himself in a similar manner) can lactate.
• No "Next Time" trailer again this time, instead an MCU-style "The Doctor will Return in LET'S KILL HITLER".

Next Time: Back to the VNAs, and The Doctor takes Benny and Ace for a tropical vacation. Naturally a zombi plague breaks out. Don't even pretend to be surprised.

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.

Historical information found on Shannon Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here) and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant pages here and here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Story Information

• Episode: Series 6, Episodes 5-6
• Airdate: 21st - 28th May 2011
• Doctor: 11th
• Companions: Amy, Rory
• Other Notable Characters: Madame Kovarian
• Writer: Matthew Graham
• Director: Julian Simpson
• Showrunner: Steven Moffat

Review

I have to get to that cockerel before all hell breaks loose!…I never thought I'd get to say that again. – The Doctor

On paper, the "Rebel Flesh" two parter might actually be the perfect Doctor Who story. It's a "base under siege" story in an era where the show wasn't overloaded with that particular story type (meaning, not in specifically Season 5 of the Classic Series). Its idea of human beings growing what they believe are mindless clones that they can control, only to discover that the clones, called the Flesh or Gangers (sort for doppelgängers), have an intelligence when an accident causes them to split from their operators is so rich with potential for a deep exploration of what it means to be human. And the specific setting of a dangerous factory where Gangers are regularly "decommissioned" due to workplace accidents (or as we see in the opening, the operators just horsing around because as far as they know there's no danger to anyone) leads to all kinds of ideas about worker exploitation and dehumanization. And if you were to lay out the two-parter plot point by plot point in a series of bullet points you'd have a hard time identifying any flaws with the execution here.

This is not the perfect Doctor Who story.

I do think that this two-parter is pretty badly underrated. While it doesn't live up to it's potential "The Rebel Flesh" and "The Almost People" form a solid story that does translate a lot of that potential on to the screen. But there's also a lot of missteps in this story that cause it to fall well short of what it probably should have been.

The most obvious of these are probably the special effects. The general look of the Gangers is very well done, with their literally white, slightly too smooth yet cracked skin (though I will say it kind of only works as well as it does because we have an all-white cast). They can look more human, but only with practice. But when they get more monstrous things do tend to fall apart. One character, Jennifer, has a particular tendency to just turn into the most monstrous forms. This could have worked but the end result tends more towards the comical than the horrifying. There's also a moment when the Ganger of Miranda Cleaves turns her head around 180 degrees and not only is the effects work iffy but I genuinely have no idea why she did this.

Thing is, I'm not convinced that this is as big a problem as you might assume. Sure, wonky effects have become less a part of Doctor Who's identity in the Revival but I will always maintain that, regardless of era, a good story can more than make up for bad effects. And like I said, the actual look of the Gangers is great. Plus there's a really great scene where Jennifer is trying to convince Rory that, in spite of being a Ganger she's also a real person, and she's repeating the word "me" over and over while hitting her chest and each time she hits her chest she shifts to her more human skin tone. And honestly, for me at least, that scene's brilliantly conceived and very well realized effects work kind of makes up for all of the rest of the poor visuals.

And this episode has all of these ideas swimming around about dehumanization, about workers' relationships to their bosses and the artificial divides that that first ideas creates with the second. But it's energy that can sometimes feel wasted. The divide between the Gangers and humans feels a bit contrived. While the episode does a good job of making sure you're aware of who the Gangers and who the originals are (with one notable exception), the two factions' conflict feels like it kind of comes out of nowhere. And the story gives a lot of time and importance to its worst character, Jennifer Lucas.

Once again, Jennifer works pretty well in concept. And like the two-parter itself, Jen isn't a bad character necessarily. But she does feel like a character who needed more time and care put into her actual writing. The idea is that Jennifer starts off as the quietest and kindest member of the factory crew. But gradually as the story goes her Ganger (who, like all the Gangers, starts off with the same personality as the person she was copied from) becomes more and more violent and angry towards the humans. By the end of the story she's going all genocidal and is the one who has most of those dodgy effects associated with her as she turns monstrous. A big reason why she undergoes this shift is that she's the only one who can remember the deaths her past Gangers suffered. We don't know why this is the case – originally it was mean to be because she had perfect recall but that was cut for time.

But Jennifer kind of doesn't work for me. For one thing, I think it was a bad move to make her quite so sadistic. It just feels like a character shift that comes out of nowhere, to signal that she's the baddie. There is some sense of progression here, but in practice it ends up feeling very abrupt. Also, the sadism just feels like the wrong move. What's supposed to be happening here is that Jen is so overwhelmed by the memories of the pain of being repeatedly killed and discarded that she can't help but lash out. But Jen actually comes off very calculating and cruel. There's a mismatch.

The idea here should be that Jennifer is lashing out at the wrong people. The Gangers' originals aren't to blame for a company that uses a technology it doesn't fully understand or a government which keeps it under wraps, probably to avoid scrutiny. The originals have been told that the Flesh is just a tool and they believed it. And how could they possibly know any better, they're factory workers, not scientists. And the idea of fighting the bigger fight does come into play at the end when the Doctor sends the two of the surviving members of our cast (one Human one Ganger) to testify to their experiences. That's honestly as much as the story needs to show on that end. But nobody makes that point to Jen. Instead the reasons that the other Gangers give for abandoning her revolution, while reasonable, don't offer her an alternative path to getting the emancipation that she wants (though it feels like she was beyond any kind of reason at that point).

But I don't want to complain too much because, as I said, I enjoyed this story. While abrupt, the Gangers vs. Humans fight did set up some very tense moments. The fact that the entire cast (save Amy and Rory) have duplicates running around creates some interesting character moments, as we actually get a lot of time to know most of these characters. Sure the story can tend towards the melodramatic. One moment in particular stands out as the Ganger version of Cleaves runs out of a room screaming in a moment that I'm sure was supposed to convey pure horror on the part of Cleaves but ends up being more comedic than anything. On the other hand the moment before that at Cleaves realizes she is a Ganger is really well done.

And honestly, I thought Cleaves was mostly really well-handled as a character. She's the classic obstructionist base commander that so many base under siege stories have. But she reminds me a lot of the earliest iterations of that character archetype. Still a problem a lot of the time, but doing the best she can under difficult circumstances. On one hand, she – or more precisely her human self – does in fact start the war when she kills the Ganger version of Buzzer with a cattle prod. On the other hand, her Ganger is just standing over in the corner providing very helpful psychoanalysis of her original: "We always have to take charge, don't we, Miranda. Even when we don't really know what the hell is going on."

It sort of helps explain Cleaves in a way that makes her feel sympathetic. She's the foreman, she's supposed to be in charge, but she's ended up in a position that's entirely beyond her. The human Cleaves did still kill the Ganger version of Buzzer, a fact which probably doesn't get the attention it deserves. But a lot of this story is this bizarre chess match between the two versions of Cleaves, each of which knows each other well enough that they can predict their moves. It's also worth pointing out that Ganger Cleaves is often a counterpoint to Jen. Both versions of Cleaves feel very cynical in their approach, but while the human Cleaves refuses to acknowledge the personhood of her duplicate, Ganger Cleaves seems the most comfortable of the Gangers identifying with her original. For this reason, she only joins Jen's revolution because it seems like the best way for her to survive, and leaves it the second a way out is provided. Also, Raquel Cassidy gives an excellent performance here, showing both strength and vulnerability very effectively in appropriate moments.

Mind you, Ganger Cleaves' ending is a bit disappointing, but I'll get to that when discussing the Doctor. As for human Cleaves, she eventually comes around on the personhood of the Gangers, though what exactly does it for her is hard to say. At a guess, just more time interacting with the Gangers. Though pretty late into the story she's still very much acting in an aggressive manner. But even when she's being aggressive there's a humanizing tendency underneath it. After the solar storm that initially causes this incident, Cleaves, who'd been fairly hostile to the Doctor's warnings puts it aside to work with the Doctor and check on her people (though this does turn out to be the Ganger, she doesn't know it yet). And she's also got this blood clot in her brain that's apparently going to be fatal. The Doctor offers her a cure at the end of the episode, but it gives her headaches…that Ganger Cleaves gets as well, another reminder that the Gangers are fundamentally more alike to their originals than different.

The member of the secondary cast that gets the next-most focus is Jimmy. Jimmy is probably the most sympathetic to the Gangers of the human cast…and the most sympathetic to the Humans of the Gangers. This mostly comes through references to his son, Adam. Ganger Jimmy talks about his memories of seeing Adam born, and this does seem to convince human Jimmy that this alternate Jimmy is as much Jimmy as he is. The two do still join their respective human and Ganger camps, but seemingly mostly because they're the only camps that will have them. Human Jimmy dies to acid (shockingly the only character who dies to acid in the story set in a deadly acid factory), leaving Ganger Jimmy to be Adam's father in a touching scene. There's not a ton more to Jimmy but I enjoyed his presence.

The other two factory workers, Buzzer and Dicken get a lot less attention. As mentioned, Ganger Buzzer is the first casualty of the human/Ganger conflict. As for human Buzzer he generally seems the most hostile to the Gangers of the humans, refusing to view them as anything more than tools for most of the story although he, like the rest of the cast (save Jen) does eventually come around. I liked Buzzer…but there wasn't much to him. As for Dicken…I got nothing on this one. The human Dicken sacrifices himself to slow down Jen (who at this point has gone full CGI monstrosity), but he's very much the least developed member of the cast, in both versions.

You'll notice at this point that by the end of the story there's only one version of each of these characters left (besides Jen who killed her original before being melted herself). That's the human versions of Cleaves and Buzzer, and the Gangers of Jimmy and Dicken. I think that's a shame. At the end of the story Cleaves and Dicken are going in to tell their story to the world, presumably to get reforms made around the Flesh technology. We hear throughout the story rumors of Gangers throughout the world, with the Ganger version of Dicken referencing 10 million in India alone. But why not have both versions of Cleaves and Dicken going into that room? After all, neither character's death felt particularly necessary, even in the context of the plot. That, I think would have been a much more interesting ending. Plus a reconciliation between the two Cleaves in particularly feels like it would have enhanced the episode, instead of the Ganger's pointless self-sacrifice.

But at this point it's time to address the elephant in the room – the Doctor's got a Ganger as well. The Doctor comes into this story having very intentionally arrived at this factory to learn about the Flesh, for reasons that don't become clear until the end of the story. He had actually intended to leave Rory and Amy behind, as he wanted to keep his investigations somewhat secret. Regardless, having arrived at the factory, naturally the first thing he does is scan the Flesh. Except the Flesh scans him back and the first episode ends on the reveal that it's created a Ganger Doctor. Episode 2 then is this whole long plan by the Doctor where he's trying to gauge if Amy notices any differences between the Flesh Doctor and the original…while also trying to create a peaceful resolution between Gangers and Humans. He does this by switching shoes with his Ganger.

No really, that's a crucial part of the plan.

See in the first episode, the Doctor's shoes were melted by some acid, so he borrowed someone else's. So, everyone thinks that the Ganger version of the Doctor is wearing his original shoes while the original is wearing the borrowed shoes. So by switching shoes, the original Doctor can pretend to be the Ganger and vice versa. It's kind of an interesting idea, slightly hampered by the fact that the 11th Doctor's shoes are not really a particularly focused-on part of his costume design. If this were the 10th Doctor whose tennis shoes were always being focused on, that would be one thing, but even now, having recently watched this two-parter, I couldn't actually tell you what the 11th Doctor normally wears on his feet.

It does end up recontextualizing what is already a pretty intense scene. Amy goes to talk to who she thinks the Ganger Doctor is. First of all she tells him that she saw the Doctor's death, meaning that, while he doesn't know the specifics, the Doctor does know about his death, and that he invited his friends to see it. But then the Doctor ends up being overwhelmed by the Flesh's desire to know why it's being made to suffer. The other Doctor feels it, but not as strongly. Which seems to make sense…until you learn that this is after the Doctors recently had switched their shoes, meaning that the Doctor who broke down and was fairly threatening towards Amy…that was the original. Then again, the Doctor did seem to form some sort of a psychic link with the Flesh when he scanned it, while the Ganger would fundamentally be not that different from the other Gangers, so maybe it does make sense.

But pretty much from the moment that the second Doctor is introduced, Amy starts favoring the original – or later who she thinks is the original. This, unfortunately, gets laid on a bit too thick. Amy's behavior towards who she thinks is the Ganger Doctor just feels off. And sure, that's kind of the idea, but it goes to the point of feeling a bit cruel, at least before the "Ganger" Doctor does have that threatening moment towards her. That's kind of the main thing for Amy in this story. She doesn't get a ton to do in the first episode, and in the second episode she's kind of cruel to the Ganger Doctor…until she realizes that they swapped and she finally comes to accept the duplicate (who she'd thought was the original). Of course there is one other thing to talk about with Amy, but I'll get to the ending later.

But to briefly return to the Doctor, the original (pretending to be the Ganger) eventually ends up joining the Gangers. At one point it genuinely feels like he's joined Jennifer's revolution, as he even rejects the name "Doctor" in favor of "John Smith". However, of course, it's a trick (though I should point out it's sometime after this that we learn that the Doctors switched shoes). Still, Matt Smith acts the hell out of these scenes, given the chance to play an evil Doctor, or at least what seems to be an evil Doctor. He's honestly quite chilling in those scenes. Though ironically probably his most chilling line, which is him shoving Rory while saying "Ring ring" turns out to be him referencing the phone being about to ring. This turns out to be Adam calling for his father, which ends up dissolving Jen's revolution entirely. This was actually set up much earlier with the Doctor putting in the phone call to set up his plan.

Which raises the point that I'm not sure the Doctor's plan entirely makes sense. Or more to the point, I'm not sure it's possible for him to have planned out everything to the extent that the story seems to want us to think he did. This plan requires the "Ganger" Doctor to be double-crossed by Cleaves ordering Buzzer and Dicken to knock him out but not lock him up, and for the Ganger revolutionaries to find him and recruit him. That's a lot of moving parts is all I'm saying. On the other hand, that the Doctor wins this one in part by reminding the Gangers of their ties to humanity, when proving their humanity is all the Gangers really want, is quite appropriate.

Ultimately, because Jen is intractable, the Ganger Doctor stays behind to use his sonic (yeah, that seems to have duplicated along with the clothes…somehow) to melt Jen. Unfortunately he can't direct this, it melts both the Ganger Doctor and Cleaves who stayed behind because…I have no idea. I'm honestly not too sure why the Ganger Doctor did this bit when the original could have done it and not melted, but I suppose you could argue that he didn't know for sure that it would work, and there's good reasons not to leave a Time Lord corpse just lying around an acid factory that's been taken over by a psychotic Ganger. It still feels thin, but we definitely couldn't have two Doctors permanently.

Which leaves us with Rory. Rory ends up separated from most of the cast for a lot of this two parter. See pretty early on he connects with Jen (specifically the Ganger version, he barely meets the human one) and tries to help her. This sets up Rory spending most of the story trying to help Jen in one way or another, whether he thinks it's the human or the Ganger (it's always the Ganger). There's hints of a bit of chemistry between the two, though Rory, being married, isn't willing to get further than hints, Jennifer even saying "Amy's a lucky woman". It was nice to see Rory getting to do his own thing for a change. I think the story did effectively ride the line between building this chemistry between the two but not forcing some sort of unconvincing relationship drama (no, that's reserved for Amy for some reason, even though it never worked after "Amy's Choice"). Of course, as Jen gets increasingly hostile and manipulative, she ends up betraying Rory, and sadly there's not much follow up beyond that.

Though, in fairness, Rory has other concerns at the end of this one. Specifically Amy melting. Because Amy's Flesh and has been since the end of "The Impossible Astronaut".

This is why the Doctor wanted to investigate the Flesh and gauge Amy's reactions to his Flesh duplicate since she ended up coming with him, despite him not wanting her to. He'd worked out that Amy was probably Flesh and needed to figure out how to make the deactivation signal to melt her. Now why he needed to know how Amy reacted to the Ganger Doctor I'm not entirely clear, given that Amy's Flesh body was still fully being controlled by the original Amy. It's not like the Gangers in this story, who were given independence by a freak accident. Still I suppose you could argue that the Doctor was looking to see if there were any tell-tale signs of a Ganger that are just endemic to the Flesh. It feels thin is all.

Though this does finally explain why there's been a woman with an eyepatch opening hatches in walls that don't have hatches and staring at Amy all Series. Yeah, I haven't been mentioning it, but that's been a thing that's been happening. Amy actually tells the Doctor about it in this episode. Meanwhile the Doctor – both of him actually – is making real sure that Amy is breathing properly, because the reason the TARDIS scanner can't work out if Amy's pregnant is because she is…just not in her Flesh body. The woman looking through hatches is, presumably, some bleed-through from her real surroundings.

And then the Doctor…just melts Amy's Ganger. Yeah, this feels a bit off. After all, we've just spent a full two episodes doing a pretty good job reinforcing the point that the Gangers are, effectively, fully human, and now the Doctor just kind of kills one. Yes, it's not independent, but the Gangers prior to the solar storm incident were also not independent but we know through Jen's memories that they still felt the pain of death. Sure the Doctor says he's trying to be "humane" but is there really a humane way to murder a sapient being? The best explanation we can get is the Doctor saying that this story took place in the "early days" of the Flesh and maybe later that pesky sapience was engineered out of the Flesh, possibly due to the work of Cleaves and Dicken. That feels like a stretch, and frankly, I never want to be making excuses for poor storytelling.

And that's frustrating because otherwise that final scene is really good. It's another instance of the ongoing story arc sort of barging in on a two parter, but at least in this case it's confined to the end of the story, after the plot as been resolved. And again, it's a really good scene. The interplay between our three leads is genuinely chilling as Amy goes into labor despite not even knowing she's pregnant, Rory trying to help her but not knowing what to do, and then the Doctor telling him he needs to get away from his wife. It says something about the trust that Rory has developed in the Doctor that he does in fact do as he's told, in spite of Amy clearly being in distress.

Musically, this story is largely unremarkable, but I will say I've always quite enjoyed one of the main themes used in this story "Which One is the Flesh". Just an appropriately mysterious and paranoia inducing theme, though ironically I don't think it's ever used at a time when we don't know which version of a character is the original and which is Flesh.

On the whole, while it's kind of flawed, and arguably doesn't go far enough with its themes, I still quite enjoy this story. I do wish some of the effects work were better and that Jennifer had more care put into her character, but a strong concept, and otherwise solid guest cast do ultimately make up for it. While the ending easily stands out more than anything else – it's one hell of a cliffhanger to end on – this story deserves to be appreciated for more than just that.

Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• Showrunner Steven Moffat's original brief for writer Matthew Graham was to set the episode in a more traditional factory. Graham suggested making the setting more unique by using a monastery, inspired by The Name of the Rose.
• Graham initially expected to write a standalone episode, but Steven Moffat, who apparently loves cliffhangers, pushed him to write a two-parter.
• Perhaps this is obvious, but it was Moffat who told Graham that the Doctor should arrive at the factory intentionally to investigate the Flesh, rather than the normal accidental arrival.
• That being said, Graham was the one who created a lot of the specific ideas about the Flesh. Moffat's original pitch was about "avatars that rebel", but he was concerned that this would be too similar to the movie Avatar.
• Inspirations for the Flesh included John Carpenter's The Thing and Frankenstein.
• At first there would have been a larger crew working at the factory. This was discarded partially for budgetary reasons, partially to better focus on a smaller crew and partially because Graham's early drafts were getting confusing with too many humans and Gangers running around.
• Location filming at Cardiff Castle (one of three castles used for filming) was cold and the costumes were not designed for those conditions. The crew were worried for the cast's health but fortunately they suffered nothing worse than discomfort.
• Karen Gillan enjoyed how Rory's friendship with Jennifer put Amy on the back foot in their relationship for a change.
• So the titles for this one bug me. Specifically, I feel like they're reversed. "The Almost People" is taken from a line of the Doctor's in the first episode, yet it's the title of the second, even though by the end of the first episode we've well and truly established that the Gangers have become fully-fledged independent people. Meanwhile "The Rebel Flesh" would work better as the title of the second episode, where the majority of that "rebellion" actually happens.
• After the opening credits, "Rebel Flesh" starts off with a scene of Amy and Rory playing darts. While this exists mostly to show the Doctor still scanning Amy as her pregnancy continues to flit between present and absent, I liked this scene. It's rare that we see the TARDIS crew just hanging out on the TARDIS.
• Rory never appears to die in this episode, however this episode does feature the first instance of a meta-commentary about how often it seems like he might die. When Jennifer says she thought she was going to die, Rory replies with a rueful "welcome to my world".
• It tracks that the next story after "The Doctor's Wife" is the one that sees the Doctor start really talking to the TARDIS like a person. Yes the Doctor's always spoken to the TARDIS, but often much in the same way that you could imagine talking to a car. But when the Doctor sees that the ground beneath the TARDIS has begun to decay under the Acid and the TARDIS has fallen through he says "what are you doing down there?" in much the same tone of voice that you might speak to a cat whose found its way into a difficult position. Later the Doctors (original and Ganger) refer to the TARDIS as "Sexy" referring back to the nickname given to the TARDIS in her Idris form in that episode.
• Weirdly, the "Previously" segment starts by making it sound like the TARDIS crew arrived at the monastery in the 13th Century. No idea why, and we quickly get obvious signs that the story is futuristic, including the Doctor saying it's in the 22nd Century.
• The Flesh Doctor channels the Doctor's previous incarnations, and for the 4th and 10th Doctor, specifically their voices. Audio was pulled from The Robots of Death and "The Girl in the Fireplace". It's definitely odd to have a whole other person's voice come out of Matt Smith's mouth.
• The Doctor, angry with Rory calls him "Rory Pond", already not his name. Then he Latinzes it to…Roranicus Pondicus.
• No "Next Time" trailer this time just the unnecessarily dramatic "To Be Continued" with each word coming up individual and the boom sound effect. Makes sense honestly. Any "Next Time" trailer would undermine the sense of "What the fuck" that this story ends on.

Next Time: With Amy missing, Rory does the only thing to do in these sort of situations: dress up like a Roman.