Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes to War...

[fajrdrako]

"A Good Man Goes to War" was a terrific piece of entertainment, and it had many of the elements that made me love Doctor Who in the first place. A sense of time and space as mobile, shifting forces. A sense of character. A sense of heroism.

1. Rory as The Centurion was terrific. Facing the Cybermen! Crying over the baby! Great moments. I'm not sure why the centurion costume and persona was necessary, but it was fun.
   
   
2. So was Amy's speech leading up to his appearance, when you didn't know whether she was talking about the Doctor or Rory.
   
   
3. The idea that River Song was Amy's daughter has been one of my favourite theories since the beginning of the season, and I like it that it was confirmed. That of course made it impossible (by the standards of the show) for her to be also the Doctor's daughter.
   
   
4. And where is Jenny, anyway?
   
   
5. I liked the Doctor's cot, and the hints of 'other babies'.
   
   
6. I liked the rationale by which the Time Vortex made a sort of Time Lord out of River Song, too.
   
   
7. With this progression, I think and hope the River Song story will end with (or at least include) the Doctor rescuing her from her imprisonment in her imaginary world. (I hate that even more than Donna's amnesia.)
   
   
8. I liked the idea of a "war" where not a shot was fired. A nice Doctor Who conceptual game.
   
   
9. I liked the revisitation to the Anglican marines. But they didn't have as much character as the first time round.
   
   
10. Loved Madame Kovarian, though she is - in the traditional sense of the word - a very comic book villain: big on style, low on personality.
    
    
11. Lorna Bucket was great.
    
    
12. So was Dorium. (I kept thinking of Varys, in Game of Thrones. It's a type.)
    
    
13. And the Sontaran nurse! Commander Strax! He had the best lines.
    
    
14. Madame Vastra and Jenny: they made my day. Hotshot smart-mouthed Victorian Lesbian superheroes. My kind of people. I want them to have their own show. I want the action figures. I want to see the full-length feature movie in 3D.
    
    
15. It's the first time with the Eleventh Doctor that I've had the sense of the power of the Doctor, who nowadays mostly seems like a madman with a box, and a rather erratic one at that. This episode gave him (at least for a while) strength of purpose.
    
    
16. Some aspects were rather belaboured. I still think Moffat loves the cheap trick too much. Withholding information just for the sake of withholding it, like the long tease were about who River Song is. I think it would have been more dramatic if they'd made it snappier, if she didn't make them guess. There's no purpose to that other than to drag out the suspense, to play a game with the viewer that I don't much like.
    
    
17. I very much liked Lorna Bucket, but I also felt there was something there I didn't get. Had we seen her before? In "Flesh and Stone"? It's as if we saw the culmination of a story we didn't get to hear. She was mighty attractive, though.
    
    
18. I'm not sure what River Song's getting at in her manipulation of the Doctor here. She's the Queen of Gunplay, and she thinks the Doctor shouldn't be a warrior? I couldn't figure out her attitude, and wasn't sure whether I was supposed to. Another example, perhaps, of her knowing more than the other characters and more than the viewers - a trait I find annoying. Along with her tendency to play "I know more than you do and I'm not telling" guessing games, and occasional smugness. No, I really don't like River Song, though I wish I did.
    
    
19. Besides, I don't like awkward-Doctor, and we often get awkward-Doctor when he's with her. And though from the viewer's point of view it's a neat game to have River be Amy's daughter, from the Doctor's point of view it doesn't seem so significant to me. It's like a hypothetical meeting with Luke Smith - "Oh, yes, you're Sarah Jane's son, fancy meeting you here." I'm sure many of the Doctor's companions have had offspring, and being a Time Lord, he could meet them at any chronological age they might be, with or without their parents. So I'm not sure why he's so surprised or happy that River is Amy's daughter... Because she's an adventurer? Because both her parents were on the TARDIS? Or because she's affected by the Time Vortex?
    
    Or is it that a lot of his Companions don't live long enough to have living offspring? No, it isn't that... I don't know how many have died, but of the half-dozen I've seen, most can potentially have offspring, and two of them canonically did. So far.
    
    
20. Is River, then, potentially Susan's mother? Or is that another story?
    
    
21. I particularly liked it that the Time Vortex made River into a Time Lord. Affected by the Time Vortex and with a connection to the TARDIS, rather like Rose or Donna, only better.
    
    
22. The storyline was all over the place, but easier to follow and more interesting than some have been. There was a coherent goal: save the baby!
    
    
    How long do we have to wait now till the next episode?