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| This isn't what it looks like..no, really... |
1) Okay, I know we're only four minutes in--but upon seeing Nina Toussaint-White literally bursting in on the episode proclaiming herself Mels, my first two thoughts were, 'it's teenage-to-young-adult Melody somehow insinuating herself into her parents' life without them knowing,' and 'God, please don't let this version of River Song become a companion next year.' Yes, there's a whole Leela/Ace/that cat burglar from the McCoy-Season-That-Wasn't vibe to her, but I can see her and her attempts to imitate Alex Kingston wearing on me quickly.
2) Young Amy Pond? Still seriously charming. Young Mels? Not so much. Even if I sort of liked how Moffat uses this to fill in some of the history of Amy and Rory, and shows us how Rory wasn't a fallback guy at any point, that there was an attraction there all along that wasn't acted on due to a misunderstanding.
3) And once again, I love how Rory may wield a weapon of death, but he never actually uses it. Confronted with Hitler (oh, comon'...it says it right on the tin), his tendencies to be a caregiver and not a destroyer take precedence. He may have been weaponized, but it doesn't matter if he never actually draws his weapon...and that's why he's so freakin' cool.
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| "Let's wrap this up quick--we're due to inhabit Eddie Murphy in ten minutes." |
4) I know Moffat is taking this spacecraft-in-human form in a different direction, but I just can't get visions of the Eddie Murphy flop-o-rama Meet Dave out of my head.
5) On one hand--and I've said this before--I really don't like how Regeneration always happens in this same 'look-there's-sparklies-now-my-extremities-are-explodey' sort of way in the new series. On the other, I took some delight in watching Matt Smith reacting to seeing another person regenerate...he seems shocked and ill-at-ease, as if he's wondering, 'Is this how other people see me?'
6) I should mention I've changed the opening quote for this entry several times so far. This really is one of the most quotable episodes of Moffat's rein, all chock full of fun lines that are as entertaining to hear as they are to say.
7) It's interesting how Moffat is utilizing some of the threads of Davies' era--using the whole 'hour-or-so-grace-period-after-a-regeneration' as a way out of a jam worked very well, and the shout backs to the Davies companions without letting them overpower the narrative also worked...although I wonder why he didn't go for a pre-reboot companion; surely there's a couple of people he didn't fuck with in those years, right? Right?
(and yeah, I can see the reason why he has guilt over Martha. He used her for an entire year without being sensitive to what she wanted or needed--or at least what Russell T. Davies forced her to want or need after episode three--which is a pretty good reason for being guilty, right?...)
(Oh, and since I haven't said it in a while...fuck y'all Russell T. Davies.)
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| Shut up, she's...no, on second thought this is nightmare fuel.... |
8) What interesting to me about the revelations about The Silence in this episode is how there's now an implied relationship with those Headless Monk dudes from last episode...I'm thinking they're an order within the religion that is The Silence...because how can you speak without heads, right?.
9) So am I correct in assuming that by saving the Doctor that way, Moffat has set up a more logical way to sidestep the twelve regeneration limit for a Time Lord than Davies' simply declaring him immortal? 'Cause by my count, River still had nine regenerations (lives?) left.
Because if that's true, I like it.
10) Maybe it's me, but the ending seemed a little....well, off. Granted, I guess it's Moffat setting up the 'we're in for a ride this final half,' and I realize that this episode was more about River than anything else...but I expected a little more from Moffat.
In short....Well, it's more about River than anything else, innit? And while it answers some questions, I do have this slightly empty feeling that there are a whole bunch of loose ends left dangling in the aether. Of course, my impression might change as we move forward, but right now it's lots of fun bits surrounded by a pool of meh.
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