Month: September 2011

I meant to offer some thoughts on the Doctor Who episode "A Good Man Goes to War" back when it aired a few months ago, but it got away from me. So now I'll offer some thoughts on it and Part 2 of the story: "Let's Kill Hitler."

I think that both episodes were basically enjoyable, but flawed. They were not Steven Moffatt's best work. (Certainly nowhere near as powerful as "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead.")

To keep this post from getting (even more) overly long, I'll leave the good things to your memory (we probably enjoyed a lot of the same stuff) and focus on what I consider the flaws.

First, the cheeky religious elements didn't work for me (the fat/thin gay married Anglican marines, the headless monks, the papal mainframe herself). Last season's treatment of the 51st century priestly marine corp was much better.

These were minor annoyances, though. The main flaws were larger.

For a start, there was the problem of motivation. Here the Doctor is supposed to be pitted against a massive dangerous enemy that has it in for him in a superdramatic way, and yet we've never seen them before.

Worse, they don't seem to have a motivation for their actions; we don't know why they hate the Doctor so much. Who are these people and why should we–or they–care?

You can't have a superdramatic battle with enemies the audience doesn't know or understand. In fact, it turns out that even the Doctor doesn't know or understand this enemy. He doesn't know, for example, that they are working for the Silence (who themselves are little-understood Johnny come latelies).

All of this sucks emotional punch out of the episode, making all the hyperventilating, over-the-top drama hyping ring hollow. It would been far more effective to reveal that the plot against Amy's baby was being run by a villain we know and understand, like the Master . . . or Davros. Either would have been far more chilling than the Eyepatch Lady.

Then there's the big reveal. If you didn't see that coming, it would have been really cool. My enjoyment of it was marred, though, but the fact I did see it coming. A long way off. Multiple episodes earlier.

Last season, when Amy Pond was introduced, people started speculating about a connection between them and their water-based names. Then this season Amy turns up pregnant, and the TARDIS tells Rory that "The only water in the forest is the river." Oh, and there's been all this talk about the Doctor discovering who River "really is." After that, it's not hard to guess the big reveal.

Then there's what happens when the Doctor find out who River is. He becomes elated and runs off with the TARDIS, saying that he knows where Amy's baby is and everything will be fine. Why doesn't he take everybody with him? Why don't they all go get Amy's baby together?

Dramatically, this makes no sense. The only thing I can suppose is that Moffatt wanted the Doctor off the screen to simplify the revelation to Amy and Rory–and the audience. Having him in the shot would change the dynamic. Either that or–more likely–he needed to do it to set up the introduction of Mels in the next episode.

Previously Moffatt had promised that we would have a "game changing" twist for the midseason cliffhanger, but this revelation–while interesting and clever–was not "game changing." Especially not when it stands in the shadow of the Doctor's apparent death, which was very effectively portrayed in the first episode of the season. Paying that off as the midseason cliffhanger would have been dramatic and game changing, but finding out River's identity? Not so much.

There's also the implication from the phrase "good man" in the episode title that suggests, based on past episodes, it will pay off the Doctor's apparent death in some way.

Finally, we cut to the title card saying Doctor Who will be back in the fall in "Let's Kill Hitler"–an arrestingly dramatic title.

It suggests that Amy's baby may be back in Hitler's time, and that this is where the Doctor is going (though how would he know that?). It also promises an episode in which we get a serious treatment of the eternal time travel question of why the Doctor shouldn't just kill Hitler and save millions of lives. This is the kind of thing time travel stories regularly involve, and the such a dramatic title promises the audience a serious payoff on the question.

But this is not the episode we get.

It turns out that the Doctor doesn't know where Amy's baby is–so why did he ditch the rest of the crew at the previous episode's end? And why was he so elated at the time? This makes no sense.

Worse, while Melody's line when she commandeers the TARDIS and the Doctor asks her if there is any place in particular she wants to go ("You've got a time machine. I've got a gun. Let's kill Hitler!") is really good, the whole Hitler subplot turns out to be a tiny part of the episode that is basically played for comic relief ("Rory, put Hiter in the cupboard." "Right. Putting Hitler in the cupboard.")

This totally welshes on the promise implied by the title card we were shown at the end of the previous episode. You must deliver on that kind of promise, and Moffatt didn't.

Then there's the character of Mels herself. As soon as she drove up and turned out to be Amy and Rory's best friend–who the Doctor AND THE AUDIENCE–have mysteriously never met, I thought, "Oh, no! Another sudden introduction of somebody Really Important who we Don't Know."

You can't generate audience investment in a character on the spot. This is the same flaw that plagued the previous episode with the allegedly impressive villains who we don't know and don't understand. Suddenly introducing someone and telling us they're important and then expecting us to care about them (for good or ill) is Bad Writing.

If you want emotional payoff, you have to let the audience get to know the characters and form strong emotional impressions of them before you use those emotional ties to the characters to create moments of powerful drama. If you don't let the audience do that then the attempt at drama falls flat.

Steven Moffatt's like of sudden introductions of major characters as plot twists, though, conflicts with this.

After the opening credits, we got a montage showing Mels' early life with Amy and Rory, and I have to admit that this was effective. It let us do the kind of bonding with her as a character that we needed to do in order to care about her. Moffatt thus redeemed the mistake he was in the process of making before the opening credits.

But redeeming a mistake is not as good as not making it in the first place. Think of the greater impact this episode would have had if Mels had been introduced long ago, and we'd seen her interacting with Amy and Rory as their best friend for a long time.

Maybe she would have been an additional TARDIS companion along with them! Think of how much mind-bending emotional punch THAT would have given to what happens to her in this episode!

Another flaw in this episode, though I think a lesser one, is the quirky, psychotic way River acts. Partly this is explained by the programming she's been given, but that's not a really good explanation. Crazy people do not make good agents to perform the kind of task she's been given.

A better, more logical explanation is that the way she makes her entrance in this episode has a temporarily unsettling effect on her mind as well as her body–something that has repetated precedents in this show.

Those are the major flaws in the episodes, to my mind. They occur on the structural/plot/emotional dynamics level, though there are some on the detail level as well.

I did think the episodes were, overall, enjoyable, though. And they had some really nice things, again on the larger and the smaller level. 

I thought Rory got some of the best lines in this episode (along with Mels). His panicked silence (a non-line) as a teenager when Amy asks him if there is even one girl he's ever showed any interest in is priceless. 

Then we have gems such as, "I'm trapped inside a giant robotic replica of my wife. . . . I'm really trying not to see this as a metaphor." And, when Amy challenges him on how he knew they were struck by a miniaturization ray, he says, "Well, there was a ray, and we . . . miniaturized." Or when the killbot tells them to remain calm for their executions, a panicked Rory piquedly retorts, "When has that ever worked!"

The killbots get some good lines, too: "You will experience a tingling sensation . . . then death."

Soon I'll try to have some thoughts on the next episode, Night Terrors.