*Some series 6 arc spoilers.*
As with many Moffat-penned “event episodes,” this one doesn’t quite work for me (although it’s a trap not just Moffat has fallen prey to—as I’ve said, RTD’s season finales got increasingly bombastic over time.) It’s no “The Time of the Doctor” or “The Angels Take Manhattan,” but it’s not a favorite.
Okay, so it turns the Eleventh Doctor and Rory have been traveling with a flesh avatar of Amy for months, while the actual Amy has been kidnapped and serving as an incubator for the baby the Doctor’s out-of-nowhere arch enemies want to steal and brainwash into becoming a weapon and killing the Doctor. Yeah. And because this era is often That Kind of Show, it’s all about the Doctor and Rory swooping in to rescue Amy and the newborn. There’s a bunch of twists, a centurion uniform, some interesting side characters, and a last-minute reveal that’s very, “Wait—what??”
We’ll start with what I like. This episode sees the first appearance by the Paternoster gang, and it’s a good one—in particular, Strax is at his absolute best here. I also really like the character of Lorna as a sort of foil to Amy, a woman who met the Doctor as a little girl but never had him come back to travel with her. The scene between River and Rory at Stormcage is lovely, although I kind of hate River’s remarks about the Battle of Demons Run. (I mean, “He’ll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further”? That is an enormous claim, and I don’t think it delivers on either, even considering the personal stakes involved in the latter. After all, at this point, it’s our understanding that the Doctor destroyed his own planet/people to end the Time War. That wasn’t a worse day for him? Come on, Moffat.)
But I’m getting off-track. I also think everyone acts like bosses, by which I mean the performances of the actors themselves. Matt Smith is a powerhouse, Arthur Darvill knocks it out of the park, and Karen Gillan has some great moments—I love the scene where she prepares to attack someone with an electric toothbrush, severely warning her unseen assailant that she’s cross. Alex Kingston is also terrific. I’m not altogether satisfied with the episode’s final scene, but she’s excellent in it.
That leaves everything else. There are seriously convoluted plans being plotted by both sides in this fight, and in retrospect, I don’t like that Madame Kovarian’s hatred of the Doctor sounds so personal when all the Silence and First Question stuff that comes later suggests that isn’t the case at all. I’ve already described why I have a problem with the Thin One and the Fat One (seriously, who thought that was funny?) As you may have gathered from the review so far, I also hate that Amy is basically here to be the damsel. It’s a role I think she, regrettably, had to play too often during her time on the show, but it feels especially egregious here. (Side note: the “permission to hug” thing is also terrible. Amy came into consciousness that she’d been kidnapped, gave birth to a baby she hadn’t even known she was having, and then went through the enormous emotional upheaval of having that baby stolen and recovered, and her husband gets to police how long her best friend can hug her? That is so gross.)
Lastly, there’s this really weird/irritating running theme of people saying vaguely worded things that sound as if they’re implying the Doctor, not Rory, might be the father of Amy’s baby. There’s Amy’s opening speech about Melody’s father, who’s “lived for hundreds and hundreds of years” and is “the last of his kind,” there’s the silly “human + Time Lord” DNA thing and the questions about how Melody “began,” and the Doctor announcing, “It’s mine,” without saying upfront that he’s talking about the cradle. I don’t even know what this was in service of, but it’s really annoying. It feels forced, the idea of the Doctor and Amy having sex is so messed up to me, and there doesn’t seem to be a point to any of it. Why???
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