You know my reviews. They are ssssppoileriffic, because they're really more commentary for people who've seen it, than advice to people who haven't.



Okay so let me start by saying, shockingly I actually...really loved this one. That was seriously unexpected, considering the writer, the premise, and the lead up episode. Let's start with what I didn't love, because that'll be the smaller list.

Doctor/River - Don't get me wrong, I get where River's coming from (mostly. The gist is pretty bloody clear how she feels about him)...I just am not on board with the Doctor jumping from something like cautious acceptance in season 5 to this full-on flirty banter. I get the feeling we missed adventures that established that banter...and if we did, this goes back to my problem with skipping a year. Just like the trio dynamic feels odd to me (The subjective viewer), the banter with River feels forced--especially since he has never before had this level of banter with anyone, and our primary vision of Eleven is an especially awkward and asexual incarnation of an already awkward and mostly-asexual alien. Jumping to "Oooh I like bad girls~" (Especially since we've never seen him snuggling up to the Rani or any other bad girl he's met) doesn't fit to me.

Mind, I know that he already expects somehow he's going to fall for this woman--perhaps even fully intends to, to preserve that time loop--and he's not the hardest guy to win over as far as "you could travel with us" goes. The aspect that he'll warm up faster than normal to her, or that he'd be willing to travel with her is pretty much fine with me. It's the full on flirting that just doesn't work for me. He doesn't know enough about her yet. He doesn't know her well enough yet. And even if he does, the audience doesn't, and my primary problem with River from the get-go is that everything we know about her is informed. Until I see her as that wide-eyed, inexperienced twit who can't get past the fact that the aliens are blue, I can't appreciate the TARDIS-driving, sonic wielding Child of Time.

Moving on.

The Amy/Doctor ship teasing.

No. Seriously. STOP IT. Rory/Amy is amazing, and teasing another Doctor/Companion romance is not just tedious, is flat out offensive as a character move by Amy. Rory sat in a world without stars, doing nothing but guarding a giant box with his plastic life nonstop for longer than the Doctor's been alive (as far as Amy or nuWho knows). Give Rory some freaking credit already.

The Amy child.

I don't like it. I see they're basically saying she's fluxing in and out of time, like there's some event in her past that will cause the pregnancy which is in flux, or that her baby is somehow affected by traveling in the TARDIS, but I'm sooo not interested. And if they're implying somehow it's the Doctor's child? See above.

Get off of my TV, stupid love triangles.

The Silence.

Just...in general. They're really boring monsters. I don't care for them at all. One of my favorite moments is when Canton just shoots one. Irritating tall little things.

Three months!

We jumped three more months of time! We somehow skipped from being unable to remember having an encounter to basically knowing everything but what they look like (because apparently a sketch, composite, thumbnail, wire frame, telepathic message, or bits and pieces at a time still won't work.) and skip the forming of a whole entire plan so they can reveal it bit by bit to the viewers. (There's always a reveal, yes, but it just got annoying in parts of this episode)

You know, the only reason I can figure Moffat skipped past that tricky, annoying little part where they transferred from knowing nothing to figuring it mostly out is because, by the rules he set down, IT WASN'T POSSIBLE! At the very least, he couldn't be bothered with coming up with a how, anyway. (Much as he writes any and all romantic storylines, so I shouldn't be surprised) Regardless, we are now officially twelve months after Big Bang with three whole episodes (TWO of which were the Doctor alone) covering that time. I know that there's always time skips in Doctor Who, because you can't possibly fit a whole year of adventuring into thirteen episodes...but never that much.

And the worst part of it is that we will still get that compression. We're just ALSO getting a year skipped.

Good job, Moffat. Make it even more difficult for me to be sufficiently emotionally invested in the characters by watching them develop at a natural pace and feeling as if I'm riding along with them. I'm not flipping River Song. Part time visiting the companions and their lives isn't good enough. Especially when they've got no home base. (No, a flat they live alone in doesn't count. They still have zero connection to their lives on Earth, all their emotional connections are to each other. Which the Amy/Doctor ship teasing disrupts.)


Dream...thing....

WTF was that weird...not-dream sequence? Just. What. The. Eff? Not a good wtf.

--

On to the things I did enjoy!

I actually noticed Canton's American accent this time! YIPPEE. I want more of him. Too bad that's highly unlikely. I did highly enjoy his character, though. He amused me greatly.

WELCOME TO AMERICA. BOOYAH. I know it was played for laughs, and it was hilarious, but it's still refreshing to see someone on the show who's not petrified of guns. There've been so few. Sometimes, when the bad guy is monologing, the best thing to do is just shoot him in the face. /ThingsIlearnedfromJackO'Neill

The Doctor was incredibly, incredibly clever in this episode and I loved it. So often he's played up as an idiot or oblivious or silly--especially Eleven--and I ssooo much prefer when he drags out the cleverness and the brainmeats to fix things. It wasn't just tinkering with something magica-technlogical, or...harnessing the power of love, or abusing time lines or something, he honestly out-clevered a bunch of arrogant aliens and he did it epically. It feels like he hasn't done that since regenerating. (And it all boiled down to shooting everyone. That was a plus, too.)

Rory, oh Rory. How amazing is Rory? So amazing. Whether breaking the model and giving the American scientists a British salute, or his speech about how Amy "always hears me, and she always knows I'm coming for her." Amy might irritate me, but Rory makes me love Amy/Rory so much. He's such a little sweet heart. Also, I am glad that he's still got his Roman memories. That's just cool.

Nixon, heh, I really enjoyed him in the ep. He was just shuffling around awkwardly going with the Doctor's weird plans. And playing Hail to the Chief whenever he showed up XD Just to top off the silliness. Without getting into real world politics, I wish we could see more of DW!Nixon.

River. While I can't say there was anything about her I really liked or loved, I did enjoy the parts she was in. She didn't trip anything up, and I generally...don't dislike her as much. It's very tentative here, because I flip flop on her, and I still do not like her in SitL/FotD or Big Bang...but the younger River gets, the more reasonable she becomes and thus the more tolerable. I have an appreciation for anyone willing to shoot the bad guys, obviously (Hello, Rose and Jack!), and in the scene where she's shooting down the last of the Silence on her own, I did in fact thing "Don't you dare die." but that was at least, not because I'm overly fond of her, but because it was much too predictable at that point (especially since I don't think the rumors I heard last year about a possible 'death' are quite finished with just because of the Doctor's little thing), and yes...I really did feel for her (it tugged at my heart just a smidge) when she realized what the kiss meant.

...Of course, I still refuse to believe 'back to forward', because that's stupid and contradictory, and while I was watching I did get kicked out of it mid-scene and had to back it up, so. Not the full intended effect, I suppose.


The kiss....sort of. Now...the kiss itself was predictable because of the trailer, and a bit of an /eyeroll, though Alex pulled it off well enough. The whole thing I liked was that the Doctor looked thoughtful, and River said something that was again, familiar to me. Don't remember what it is specifically--and I didn't know what it reminded me of anymore--but the expression and reaction he had before he started backpedaling was something that...kind of implied he might have recognized it from before. Obviously, one of my River theories hold that she's someone from the past, in which case she'd be easier to deal with.


PEW PEW PEW!

Seriously. There was a lot of violence in this episode. I enjoyed that. The Silence were asking for it.

The whole scheme to get everyone together, and catching River with the pool thing was cute, and I enjoyed it. I remember a few times where I was grinning at the Doctor intervening or being clever, though directly off hand they're not coming to me.

"You've been in there for DAYS!" "Ah well. Here's the President." It was like Nix-in-the-box.

I know it's not a lot, but comparatively, it's most of the episode.

Random thoughts/speculation/misc bits:

Aha, the Doctor setting up the whole...Watergate affair. Well, that's what my mind leaped to, anyway, but it might have been influenced by all the reviews of 6x01 suggesting it.

For a moment there, I thought the kid was supposed to be Amy. It's been done already, basically, but it was still more interesting than the Amy's kid storyline.

Billions of years of humans taking down the Silence 8D Although...wow. That was really brutal of the Doctor. Even for the 'you fashion them into weapons' thing, post-hypnotically ordering every single person who ever watches the moon landing to kill any Silence they ever see, regardless of what they're doing or why? Freaking harsh. No, it doesn't matter that the Silence said it, he manipulated it into doing it--and probably would have had someone else say it if it hadn't.

Which is how I like him. But still.

EDIT: Apparently some people didn't like this at all? Okay. That's fine. Bear in mind I FULLY SUPPORTED the Time Lord Victorious and was so confused when Adelaide slapped him down and I was supposed to support her. My Doctor is probably not Your Doctor?

So. Lodger!TARDIS! Does this mean Craig bludgeoned the Silence living over his head to death with his creepy painting? Yeah...I had more speculation on that...but that image pretty much just killed it.

Whatever, hash marks. I have no positive or particularly negative opinion on them. They were pretty much just there to be sensational.