I did watch this episode after all. It was a strange one. Robots with people inside. I noticed early that Mel acted just like River, but was fooled because she’s black. Regeneration never occurred to me until it happened.
My big issue with this episode is the Doctor’s reaction to the alien time police or whatever they were. Usually the Doctor is very protective of time and consequences of altering it. Especially fixed points in time. I’d think Hitler would be a fixed point. So much history revolves around the aftermath of WWII. Doctor had almost no reaction at all to the time police and their plans to kill infamous bad people. Sure he was poisoned and busy dying, but he could have said something later.
They played inside the ‘rules’, for the most part - ‘taking people from the end of their established timelines, and giving them hell’. No real alteration of history.
They played awful fast and loose with River, for some unknown reason. (And I’m not sure one murder, which she apparently went to jail for, is really worth time-travelling vengeance, even if that one murder is of the Doctor.)
Did they say he was a war criminal? They saw the Tardis and said that meant the biggest war criminal was there - but then they called her she, making it clear later that they were talking about Melody Pond/River.
I’ll have to rewatch and see if they seperately call Doctor a criminal…
I didn’t record the episode, so reading reviews and Synopses it seems I may have been wrong and it was River that the crew of the Teselecta regarded as a war criminal.
There’s an episode where we saw that wheat field before. It was from very high up and all you could see was the wheat moving in odd patterns. I think it was last season. I recall it was in the opening minutes of the episode. They never explained it then.
So, now we’re seeing what caused that wheat field to move. A important connection between that episode and this one.
I’m pretty sure it was the episode where River jumps out of that space ship and lands in the Tardis. I’ll have to check later.
Pay attention before complaining, because it was all actually answered.
The kids DID raise the baby, or at least as close to, but at that point she wasn’t actually a baby. She was a programmed assassin who had been placed in the one place that The Doctor could be certain to show up - and that was with Amy and Rory. She sort of was raised by her parents, or at least raised alongside them while waiting for The Doctor to appear. It was even flat out stated in the previous episode that The Bad Guys would take their little assassin-to-be and “raise her among her own kind”, which we all thought meant Earth, but was in fact some pretty obvious foreshadowing (in hindsight, which foreshadowing always is) that should have screamed out at us the instant we saw a childhood friend of Amy and Rory who was obsessed with The Doctor.
And why did she go decades without saying anything? Because she was a fucking assassin who was waiting for her opportunity to kill her target. Not every undercover secret agent brags about their job so they can get laid in the coat closet.
Agreed on the Lilliputian Justice Corps. Anyway, I think River killing the Doctor is going to be about more than her killing him. After all, these guys (very specifically) punish war criminals. Even if the Silence is “at war” with The Doctor…I don’t see her killing him being a ‘war criminal’ kind of thing. It’s got to go past that.
They objected to the Tardis because it’s a known vehicle of River Song. They saw it and said “war criminal” and so we (the audience) thought “They’re saying the Doctor is a war criminal?” and then they referred to “her”, so obviously River, not The Doctor.
This was one of the few episodes of the Doctor where I finished watching and was not sure how I felt. I always thought we would have a chance to see a younger River traveling with the Doctor and that it would shape her character and relationship with the Doctor.
By showing her regeneration into the River we know it just seems like a lot of potential story telling was missed. I also do not buy the lack of emotion of Rory and Amy. I don['t care that Mel grew up with them. As parents, they should be mad as hell, and demanding that they get to raise Melody, timelines be damned!
Since going forward in the Doctor’s history is backwards in River Song’s, I wonder if this means that we’ll run into more of Mel (black River).
Edit: There also seems to be a lot that happened between River no longer wanting to kill the doctor and the adventures where she’s on his side. I wonder if that means he goes backwards in time, from time to time, to spend time with her, or…
I don’t think it would fit – it sure seemed like this was the first time Mels met The Doctor in person. I could imagine other childhood flashbacks from Mr. and Mrs. Pond, but I doubt we’ll seen any other timeline crossovers. Except maybe in the series finale, because rationality is off.
I understand the complaints of Who getting too convoluted and “Lost”-y, but…I totally disagree. Half the reason I love this show is because I don’t feel the need for everything to fit together too cleanly. The very premise of Doctor Who already pegs the ol’ Suspension-o-Disbelief gauge, so I’ll accept pretty much anything after that.
That whole “His forwards is her backwards” isn’t necessarily exact. I think it’s more of a generalization. Like when she met future Doctor in Utah, they had a lot of memories together. And the Doctor said right after her regeneration about how they’re meeting her at the wrong point in her timeline.