Some years ago, back when Babylon 5 was on the air, I began to notice a pattern in how episodes in television programs are aired. Some episodes are naturally more powerful than others. For those shows that have ongoing storylines (where the "reset button" isn't hit at the end of each episode), the more powerful eps are sequenced in a particular way.
There's a rhythm to them. And it's a deliberate rhythm. The show producers schedule them so that they come in bursts, with the less powerful episodes between them. Joe Straczynski talked about this openly at the time, referring to the way you want "breather" episodes sequenced between the "wham!" episodes to let the audience catch their breath before you hit them with something big.
(Otherwise the whole show becomes emotionally overwrought and loses some of its potential; cf. the reimagined Battlestar Galactica, which I said at the time was well done but would not age well, as it's got the emotion meter cranked up to 11 all the time–or at least for long stretches.)
The result is if you're watching the "shape" of a season as it unfolds, you can predict in advance which episodes are more likely to be the more memorable ones.
In this season of Dr. Who, I noticed that–after the arc-driving, two-part opener (The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon)–we got The Curse of the Black Spot, which was one of the weakest episodes in some time. The next week, though, we got The Doctor's Wife, which was an extremely strong episode. Penned by Neil Gaiman, the episode reinterprets a major piece of Doctor Who mythology. After that episode, the audience can never look at the Doctor's relationship with the TARDIS the same way again.
That fits with the way you'd want to schedule episodes: After the big "arc" episodes, you'd want a down episode, then an up episode to sustain the audience's attention. (Multiple down episodes in a row = lose your audience).
As I said in my review of A Good Man Goes to War/Let's Kill Hitler, I thought this two-part, arc-driving story stumbled. While it had much to be admired, Moffatt didn't do his best work on it, though he was trying to make these both up episodes.
So I thought, "I bet the next episode–Night Terrors–will be a down episode, but the one after that–The Girl Who Waited–may be an up."
I was right.
Night Terrors was an episode that, like Curse of the Black Spot, had some strong points (the creepy wooden dolls were particularly effective), but it also had significant flaws.
As before, the key flaw dealt with the emotional core of the episode, the way the characters relate to each other; in particular: the way the dad in the episode relates to the little boy.
The ostensibly heartrending, emotional climax–where the father embraces the boy as his son–does not work the way it should. The father has just discovered that his son is only slightly less sinister than the Midwich Cuckoos (or the kids in "Village of the Damned," to use the move version's name).
He's discovered that his and his wife's memories, perceptions, and most intimate, personal, and painful feelings have been profoundly violated in the service of an alien biological agenda.
Despite the years he's spent with the boy, that has to create an emotional separation between him and the child, the kind of separation that will force him to reevaluate his relationship with the boy. Imagine finding out that your son was not actually your son but another man's, and your had been the victim of an elaborate emotional betrayal by his true parents.
While that kind of situation can be overcome and a full filial relationship restored, it would take time (cf. seasons 1-3 of FRINGE and the ups and downs of Walter and Peter's relationship). It will not happen in mere moments.
And thus the ostensibly heartfelt reconciliation moment in Night Terrors rings false emotionally.
Bad climax. Flawed episode. However much good stuff it also had in it.
(BTW, I'd like to mention in passing something that I've noticed happing in multiple episodes of Doctor Who recently: Very important information is often blurted out in rapidfire dialogue during a crisis. It may just be because I have an American accent and my ear is not fully attuned to rapidfire British speech, but I find it difficult to process some of these lines as they whiz past. The Doctor's explanation of what the boy is, for example, just goes by way too quickly. If I didn't happen to catch the word "cuckoo," and know that they are brood parasites, I might not have caught what the Doctor was saying without rewinding and watching the line again. I wish they'd stop doing that!)
So if Night Terrors was okay but flawed–a down episode–was it followed by an up episode?
WOW!!!
The Girl Who Waited was one of the best episodes in I don't know how long! This may be the best episode of the whole season.
It's the inverse of Night Terrors. While the former episode has nice window dressing (e.g., the wooden dolls) but a flawed emotional core, The Girl Who Waited's flaws are all on the tinsel level (e.g., scientific implausibilities/non sequiturs, which are par for the course on this show) but it's emotional core is rock solid.
Notice that one of the things that makes it so powerful is that it's about the relationships of the main characters–people we've known and bonded with, not just one-episode walk-ons or suddenly introduced people. This episode focuses on the emotional triangle that the Doctor, Amy, and Rory form, and it puts their relationships to the test in big ways.
It's also a fully activated relationship, with each leg of the triangle under stress: there is drama between the Doctor and Amy, between Amy and Rory, and between Rory and the Doctor.
As in the previous episodes, Rory gets some of the best lines ("I don't want to travel with you!" "It's not fair! You're turning me into you!"), and I think there's a reason for that.
Rory is, perhaps, the most misunderestimated of companions. He seems to be a really mild, unimpressive guy. Not exotic companion material. It's almost like he's just along for the ride (dramatically speaking; literally he–like Amy–is just along for the ride).
But what's really happened is that he has supplanted Amy as the main viewpoint character–the one the audience can identify with and experience the world of the program. He's the everyman character, and as much as I like Amy, I find I identify with Rory and his non-exotic, ordinary responses to the extraordinary situations he finds himself in.
That, in a way, makes Rory a much more important character than he appears to be. Though he's Mr. Ordinary (as far as any time-travelling nurse can be Mr. Ordinary), he finds himself in close proximity to the core of the story and thus in position to get some of the best lines.
This episode also does something that is the flipside of Night Terrors, with its artificial "I accept you as my son and that resolves the plot" moment: It doesn't take the easy way out.
Occasionally on programs there are situations where friends get into life-or-death duels. Almost invariably the writers of the show take the easy way out, and a means of not killing one of the friends is found. How many times have we seen that happen on Star Trek and other shows?
And then Babylon 5 came along and put Londo in a to-the-death duel with a friend of his, and JMS did not take the easy way out, and Londo ended up having to kill his friend. Definite writing points for that.
Well, that's what we have in this episode.
Only here it works even better because the friend, unlike the one-episode walk-on friend in Babylon 5, is one of the core elements of the show; someone we've spent time with and bonded with.
Once the central plot problem of the episode had become clear, I could see several ways out that would effectively be "the easy way," and I was really hoping they wouldn't go down one of those paths. And they didn't! The episode thus had a really powerful emotional WHAM! in the last act. It was agonizing, and it was wonderful.
Amy's unanswered question in the last moments of the show is also an awesome stinger to go out on.
Notice also that this episode plays on long-established themes on the show. Amy has been The Girl Who Waited since she very first met the Doctor, just as Rory was the Last Centurion, the Boy Who Waited. This is the second time Amy has had to deal with abandonment issues by the Doctor. And the episode explores one of the staples of time travel stories; it's own version of Einstein's twin paradox. These all help give the show added weight.
There are, certainly, things about the episode that could be improved, but overall this was an outstandingly successful episode, and I am so glad they told this story.
I'll be interested to see if they can top it in what's left of the season.
P.S. One other thing the episode did that was permanently take some of the stupid off of the Doctor's soning "screwdriver." Amy finally said the obvious: It is a sonic probe. He just calls it a screwdriver as a bit of whimsy. (Okay, and can't do everything it does sonically, but that's something that can be resolved in another episode.) Come to think of it, they also partially rehabilitated the sonic screwdriver in Let's Kill Hitler, when Rory explained that it has a point-and-think psychic interface, which definitely explains its observed behavior. (Of course, it's really just a magic wand, and we've had those in stories for a long time.)
