I did but it’s been speculated on a lot by others.
So can anyone remind me where we would have seen the female soldier that met The Doctor when she was a girl in the Gamma Forests? Is it an episode from a previous Doctor or am I just totally blanking on a recent episode?
Thank God. I am really tired of those mofos.
I’m gonna need to watch this episode again. I had a hard time focusing on it because I was sure that
Rory would die. For real this time. The whole episode seemed to be building toward it.
Very intense episode.
Thinking of River Song and The Doctor together is kind of icky. Especially that big juicy kiss she laid on him a few episodes ago. She was conceived in the Tardis. I’m confused how River can help without a big timeline issue? She can’t rescue herself, can she?
[spoiler]I’m not a fan of Doctor Who’s approach to war. The Doctor was responding to an extraordinary situation. He couldn’t just walk into Demons Run without a lot of help. They executed a basically bloodless take over of the station. He even let eyepatch lady leave after taking back the baby. Yet he still gets chewed out for being a warmonger? Is he supposed to be a pacifist that shakes his head at evil acts and does nothing to try and help?
I wonder if the Headless Monks wiped out all the Doctor’s forces on the station? I really hate to think the pirates died. Also, why did the Monks stop? They could have easily killed Amy,Rory, and The Doctor. [/spoiler]
I don’t think the Monks stopped. I think they lost.
Well, even though the reveal at the end was something I (and many others) had guessed at, it was still fun watching the Doctor figuring it out and giggling about it.
The Headless Monks have to be the most bizarre invention on Doctor Who.
Their brain is gone. No eyesight. No hearing. They can’t even curse out anyone that steps on their robe.
Yet they are deadly fighters? <shrug> Ok, if Stephen Moffat says so, then they must be. 
I went through Google to see who else guessed it early on. There are a lot that are close but not quite right, and a few that were guessing along the right lines but not coming to the right conclusion, and a few who just guessed something unlikely and turned out to be right.
And look at this video what Steven Moffat says about River Song and Amy Pond?
I have a few minor questions, but since they are from the latest episode:
[spoiler]1. The Cybermen seen in NuWho were not a space-faring race. They hailed from an alternate reality Earth that had more advanced technology, but not to the point of travelling to other worlds (unless piggybacking on a Dalek Void Ship.) Were these then the Cybermen from Mondas? If not, when did they become an interstellar war fleet with spies in all sectors of the galaxy?
The first two appearances of the Cybermen in the RTD era were created in the alternative universe by Cybus Industries, and thus had a “C” on their chest. The rest of their appearances should not have had the “C” and this time they have finally corrected that oversight. So you can definitely say, especially with the Cyber Controller heading the team, that these are the traditional Cybermen again.
My mind is blown.
[spoiler]Not by the reveal at the end, actually. That didn’t surprise me at all. It’s not that I had guessed the truth (I hadn’t until the forest girl gave Amy the patch) as much as I didn’t care all that much about the identity of River Song. Two things blew my mind: just how cool the whole episode was and that they finally, finally, finally are addressing how messed up it is that the Doctor nowadays blows up fleets to give messages, commits genocide on a regular basis and is a very scary dude with cool tech that makes threats run away just on the strength and violence of his resume. Hell, you can have a darker, edgier, more conventional Doctor if you absolutely must, though I’d much rather that wasn’t the direction the show ended up taking. But if you’re going to have scary, angry, all powerful Doctor, then at least have him, the show and the rest of the cast acknowledge what he is.
I’m still a bit annoyed by how melodramatic some of the stuff was. “The Doctor’s darkest hour. He’ll rise higher than ever before and then fall so much further…” Oh really? And what the hell was that bit with the fat and the thin married Anglican marines all about? Did we really need to have the death scene for forest girl? Even so, the episode was just too cool to care too much about this. I thought the pacing was excellent, the Sontaran nurse was fun and I’d probably watch a show about the Victorian couple.
“Let’s Kill Hitler” is one of the best episode names I can imagine and I can’t wait for it. [/spoiler]
[spoiler]I got the impression that we’ll be seeing the forest girl again in a future episode. The doctor lied about recognising her, so there’s a chance their meeting may still be in his future. The part about them running would have been just a good guess.
I wonder if they’ll have a real reason for the eyepatch lady considering the Doctor such a great enemy, or if it’ll be a timey-wimey paradox. For example, they could have the Doctor become their enemy because of the things he’ll do to get River back, and have her kidnap River because of the things the Doctor did.
I burst out laughing when I saw the next episode title too.
[/spoiler]
I had the same impression during the scene. In fact, I was expecting some sort of dialogue like: “Do you really remember her, Doctor?” “I’ve never even been to [forest planet].” It just never occurred to me we’d ever see her again and I don’t believe we will. There’s nothing interesting that can be done with the girl’s character in the past, as it’s already been established she only met the Doctor once and very briefly. All IMO, of course.
We’re still hiding reactions to this episode? OK.
[spoiler]I loved that opening. Badass Rory is good. Amy’s description of him was great, too. And I enjoy watching the doctor unleashed, doing what he really can do. Hell, they stole her AND her baby! They deserved every bit of that, and more.
As for the big reveal, I didn’t think it was too shocking. Here’s my thinking about River/Melody’s timeline: She somehow becomes the girl in the spacesuit, obviously. She kills the Doctor - however that all works out - and gets shot by Amy. When we see her “regenerating”, she’s not really, because she doesn’t have enough Time Lordiness to do that, but she does have enough to heal herself, and that’s what we saw. Later she goes to prison for killing the Doctor, perhaps? And becomes River. Eventually, after the point in the timeline where River meets the Doctor for the first time (from her point of view) and the last time (from his), the Doctor figures out how to rescue her from her electronic home in the library.[/spoiler]
ButHer being the girl in the spacesuit is in her own past. And her actions during the first episode are not consistent with knowing that she was that girl. I don’t get how they make this fit unless they cover it all over with “It gets timey wimey.”
I’m not gonna unbox first!
enalziVoiceover:“They won the battle but lost the baby.” The eyepatch lady for some reason, wanted to have her troops run away, the monks killed, etc., all to just be able to go “Nyah nyah” to him.
Again I’m not so sure how this holds up on thinking about it at all. Fun in the moment though.
In the first episode
River unloads her gun into the back of the astronaut, to no effect. She then mutters “Of course…” - I think she realised then that that was her as a child, and that she can’t kill herself as a child because that would create a paradox.
On that I think you are wrong or else it has been poor writing.
If that was River in the spacesuit at that time, then she’s doing a very fine job pretending to not remember that it was she who killed The Doctor of the future in her past while in the spacesuit during the rest of the episode.
Thing is that when the storyline is all said and done this should all fit together. We should be able to watch from River’s first appearance and see that in retrospect everything makes sense and nothing is contradictory to the story or the rules of the universe as defined by past episodes (internal consistency). So far that is very far from the case. Maybe it will get pulled together in the season’s second half but I don’t think so. A storyline arc this complex set in an established fantasy world that goes over more than one season can’t be improvised; it has to be fleshed out in the writer’s heads pretty fully from when the new characters are first introduced. I’m getting a sense that such is not the case.
The point was the army assembled at Demon’s Run to oppose the Doctor was expendable. The truly important point, for Eye Patch Lady, was that she retain custody of the baby. Everything else was a feint to allow her to get away with the child.
In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that during this whole episode not only was the baby a flesh avatar, but Eye Patch was as well. It solves the problem of Captain Avery and his crew having control of her escape ship - she didn’t need it, she was already gone. Hence, when contacting the Doctor she could say “I’m far, far away”. She left before the episode began, and what we saw of her was also a flesh avatar that she was controlling.
My biggest question about River now is
If she’s born to 21st Century parents, why is she living in the 51st Century? Did she just decide to Time Travel there, or is she really 3000 years old?
But Broomstick[spoiler] the baby (and yes probably her) had already gotten away, yet clearly this was set as “a trap”. Maybe she thought the Monks (whose light sabers and hoods seemed too Star Wars for my taste) would be able to kill him?
And The Silence end up with the child - assuming that the child in the spacesuit is River, which are clearly supposed to think. But how? And then they set it up that she could escape?[/spoiler]
enalziMaybe that is where the child ends up being hidden to keep her safe while she grows up?