Doctor Who is a wonderful thing, a glorious televisual creation which gleefully straddles the cavernous divide between adults’ and childrens’ programming and which has somehow survived and prospered in spite of and because of a peculiarly British mix of adventure, peril and techno-babble. And by 7.45pm on Saturday 4th June, I will be absolutely furious with it.
As a self-confessed geek, mid-season breaks in serialised television shows are maddening, because they tend to end on a massive cliffhanger which leaves the viewer in dramatic limbo for as many months as the production team decide is necessary for them to finish work on the second half of the season, or maybe for as long as it takes them to finish coming up with another dark and twisted way to toy with the audience like macabre marrionettes. For one reason or another, Doctor Who, with its already-limited (compared to American dramas, at any rate) series length, has opted to snip itself in twain and render us champing at the bit, probably laughing and pointing the entire time.
As creatures, something in us is inherently attracted to narrative. We love telling stories. We get aggravated when the stories are cut off, but our anger is tempered by knowing that more of the story is coming. Doctor Who has offered a compelling and (relatively) complex tale, a step beyond the monster-of-the-week offerings the show ran with for some time prior to its resurrection, and a cut above the relatively low key overarching plot points Russel T. Davies utilised during his time as Whovian overseer (the Bad Wolf hints for Eccleston, the Harold Saxon clues for Tennant), and it’s because of this that we tolerate the maddening desire to know things and hungrily look forward to the next Saturday in the rota.
Some specifics: the Doctor’s companion, Amy Pond, has been revealed as a ‘ganger’- a creature of a synthetic substance called The Flesh- and dissolved by a clearly distressed Doctor. The real Amy is pregnant and somewhere in a stark white prison, tended to and guarded by a mysterious madam in an eyepatch. Here’s the trailer for the mid-season finale (A Good Man Goes To War- aha! See where the blog title came from), in which Rory tools up Roman-style to go find his wife, and the Sith rock up out of nowhere to infect the Doctor Who franchise with midichlorians and other assorted bullshit:
And here’s a delicious preview of the episode:
To summarise: a blue guy (he’s called Dorium) sells brain, warns creepy Sith guys (human hands, note) that making the Doctor angry is an idea that ranks alongside telling Bruce Banner that you’re shagging his mum. “God help us if you’ve made him angry!“
The really interesting point there is the almost flat-out statement that the child is the Doctor’s. This could be a misunderstanding on the part of Blue Meanie, or it could be that Amy has somehow been artifically impregnated with the Doctor’s DNA… or a number of other points. I don’t know how many people would be too pleased with the notion of the Doctor having had a sexual relationship with one of his companions (though based on her attempt at seduction way back in S05E01, Amy wouldn’t be too appalled), but there’d certainly be some backlash.
Let’s recap (again).
Amy was a ganger (since when? There’s a whole debate going on about that, but it’s best to leave it alone here I think). The real Amy is pregnant with a baby which has something to with the Doctor, and which has plausibly been conceived on the TARDIS.
Amy is being held hostage by Ring Wraiths with lightsabers who don’t seem to care much for the Doctor’s anger.
Cybermen, Sontarans and Silurians are involved. So too are the Clerics (remember them in the episodes with the Weeping Angels last series? Spot them in the trailer above).
The Silence have to be in on the action somehow. There’s the unexplained link between their device the Doctor found in The Impossible Astronaut and the one at the top of the stairs in The Lodger. Plus we still don’t know how the TARDIS exploded in The Pandorica Opens, and Amy’s pregnancy (“what he must know”) and the Doctor’s death (“what he must never know”) are both directly tied into them.
That Time Child who rocked up in a 1960s space suit and then regenerated at the end of Day of the Moon has yet to be mentioned, but is clearly something to do with Amy’s baby.
We’ll find out what River Song got banged up in Stormcage for.
My namesake (yes, that’s Rory) will actually get to be bad-ass for a change.
Come A Good Man Goes To War, I’m going to be outside the M25, and as such quite plausibly far away from a working television or electrical socket. I will be studiously avoiding the internet until I’ve had a chance to soak up this story. Hopefully, it’ll be good enough to warrant the interruption.
A Bad Man Writes A Blog
Doctor Who is a wonderful thing, a glorious televisual creation which gleefully straddles the cavernous divide between adults’ and childrens’ programming and which has somehow survived and prospered in spite of and because of a peculiarly British mix of adventure, peril and techno-babble. And by 7.45pm on Saturday 4th June, I will be absolutely furious with it.
As a self-confessed geek, mid-season breaks in serialised television shows are maddening, because they tend to end on a massive cliffhanger which leaves the viewer in dramatic limbo for as many months as the production team decide is necessary for them to finish work on the second half of the season, or maybe for as long as it takes them to finish coming up with another dark and twisted way to toy with the audience like macabre marrionettes. For one reason or another, Doctor Who, with its already-limited (compared to American dramas, at any rate) series length, has opted to snip itself in twain and render us champing at the bit, probably laughing and pointing the entire time.
As creatures, something in us is inherently attracted to narrative. We love telling stories. We get aggravated when the stories are cut off, but our anger is tempered by knowing that more of the story is coming. Doctor Who has offered a compelling and (relatively) complex tale, a step beyond the monster-of-the-week offerings the show ran with for some time prior to its resurrection, and a cut above the relatively low key overarching plot points Russel T. Davies utilised during his time as Whovian overseer (the Bad Wolf hints for Eccleston, the Harold Saxon clues for Tennant), and it’s because of this that we tolerate the maddening desire to know things and hungrily look forward to the next Saturday in the rota.
Some specifics: the Doctor’s companion, Amy Pond, has been revealed as a ‘ganger’- a creature of a synthetic substance called The Flesh- and dissolved by a clearly distressed Doctor. The real Amy is pregnant and somewhere in a stark white prison, tended to and guarded by a mysterious madam in an eyepatch. Here’s the trailer for the mid-season finale (A Good Man Goes To War- aha! See where the blog title came from), in which Rory tools up Roman-style to go find his wife, and the Sith rock up out of nowhere to infect the Doctor Who franchise with midichlorians and other assorted bullshit:
And here’s a delicious preview of the episode:
To summarise: a blue guy (he’s called Dorium) sells brain, warns creepy Sith guys (human hands, note) that making the Doctor angry is an idea that ranks alongside telling Bruce Banner that you’re shagging his mum. “God help us if you’ve made him angry!“
The really interesting point there is the almost flat-out statement that the child is the Doctor’s. This could be a misunderstanding on the part of Blue Meanie, or it could be that Amy has somehow been artifically impregnated with the Doctor’s DNA… or a number of other points. I don’t know how many people would be too pleased with the notion of the Doctor having had a sexual relationship with one of his companions (though based on her attempt at seduction way back in S05E01, Amy wouldn’t be too appalled), but there’d certainly be some backlash.
Let’s recap (again).
Come A Good Man Goes To War, I’m going to be outside the M25, and as such quite plausibly far away from a working television or electrical socket. I will be studiously avoiding the internet until I’ve had a chance to soak up this story. Hopefully, it’ll be good enough to warrant the interruption.