Doctor Who s06: Pre-Mid-Season Finale Review (Spoilers)

We’re hours away now from the mid-season finale of Doctor Who series 6, and unlike the disappointingly paced series 5, we have a great deal to talk about ahead of the alleged massive cliffhanger later on. Seeing as I’m boosting this blog post into my Facebook and Twitter though, it’ll need

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It’s River Song. We know that River Song is Amy’s daughter. The truth is incontrovertibly here, but what does that actually tell us about what we’ve already seen? Here goes:

The universe has successfully rebooted after all but nothing is as it seems. The apparently 1103 year old Doctor leads his friends (and himself) to his execution and wake, but why? Amy sees a Silent, who promptly kidnaps her, leaving all players with no memory of her abduction. Well, almost none – River knows what’s happening to her mother, stops Amy (presumably Ganger Amy) from rescuing the Doctor, makes her think he’s dead (she never admits it) and conveniently fails to kill Eleven’s apparent assassin. I suspect because she remembers not getting shot by her future self (and River is all about not upsetting the timeline).

Kidnapped Amy’s personality continues to feed through to her Ganger body, which the Doctor is fully aware of; the snippits of Madame Kovarian are flashes to what her real body is experiencing. This explains Kovarian’s cryptic comment when Amy ‘sees’ her in the orphanage – the real Amy isn’t even there, nor is she rescued by the Doctor and companions. But what of the Silence’s timeship, and who is the Time Lord child wandering around New York?

River Song (initial name to be revealed as Melody Pond) is the tool in a conspiracy to kill the Doctor – Kovarian herself admits she’s been taken to use a weapon, presumably against the Doctor. Except Amy kills her, as she rescues her daughter, which somehow this kills off the timeline, which the Doctor has also been murdered in, but also results in a new, utterly mad timeline. How does this affect the existence of Pond twins? Is River’s Time Lord sibling (how exactly?) wiped out, with Melody/River going on on her own? We know River and the Doctor are married in her past/his future, and it’s not unreasonable to think that the regenerating child is their offspring. But how does the word about twins feed into that?

The questions I have remaining are this:

• Who is it masterminding the kidnapping of Amy and manipulation of Melody/River?  Madame Kovarian seems to be working for the Silence – who has something to gain from this grand plan? Another incarnation of the Doctor (a la Dream Lord)? Or is another coalition of his enemies gathered against him because of something he’s done – it’s referred to in one of these videos, and could well be what makes him accept he’s deserving of execution.
• Who is the Time Lord child? If she’s River (which I doubt), why can’t River regenerate (or has she even lied about that, to her grave)? My suspicion is she’s River’s and the Doctor’s child – we have been assuming the child and the pregnancy are connected – what if the reason Eleven is so protective over her at the end of Episode 1 is because he knows who she is? What if the alliance against him is because of something he’s done to her?
• The Doctor tells River something at the end of the series which will undo his death (which Ganger Amy unwittingly revealed to him this week) – what is it?
• Who is Amy Pond? How can she (and just she) reimagine the Doctor into existence after Big Bang II? What’s so special about her that it should be she who’s kidnapped for her child?

I’ve seen recent complaints that this series isn’t as accessible as Russell T Davies’, and whilst I’d agree, I’m also delighted with what we’ve got. RTD played to the gallery well, and was careful not to make his extended storylines too long or too complicated – I can understand the criticism of Moffat in this, but I love it. It may not play anywhere near as well to children as some believe it should but a) that’s pretty dismissive of children’s ability to track complex storylines (I’ve only heard adults complain they don’t know what’s going on) and b) the post RTD era had to be different. Having said that I hope these storylines are completely wrapped up this series (with maybe some intrigue left about River Song), and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last we saw of Amy and Rory as companions.

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