(777) A Good Man Goes to War

Back in 2011 the series was split into two halves with the first half airing between 23 April and June 4 with the second half airing between August 27 and October 1. I never quite understood what the point of this was but here we are with the mid-season finale. A Good Man Goes to War is a great name for an episode and with us all knowing that this would be the last episode until the end of August we knew that it would be a biggie and that is definelty what we got.

The Cybermen make a cameo appearance in the pre-title scene with the Doctor and Rory. It’s fun seeing Rory stand up to the Cybermen and I like the ship that we see the Cybermen on. Judoon also make a cameo later on for some strange reason. No sooner hve they appeared than they leave making sure the headless monks (who really are headless) away from the asteroid.

The Doctor is going around meeting people collecting debts. Neve McIntosh returns to the show but as Vastra. She is the master and her servant is called Jenny. What’s quite fun about this bit is that it implies that Vastra has killed Jack the Ripper. The next familiar race is Strax. He makes a return and starts off as a nurse which is a punishment. The devaluement of the Sontarans and Silurian’s hasn’t reached rock bottom yet but its starting to slide.

The Doctor doesn’t appear until the 19^th minute which is quite a brave thing to do bearing in mind he is so important to the story. To be honest things were happening so quickly that I didn’t clock that he hadn’t appeared until the moment that he appeared. Matt Smith gives a very good performance in this episode and there was a wide range of emotions and he deals with them well. Karen Gillan also does well and gives one of her best performances which bearing in mind how good she has been since her first episode it shows how good I think she was.

The thing about this episode is that its implied that things are going to go spectacularly wrong and then things start to be going too well. Towards the end things the inevitable happens and things go downhill. Melody (the new baby) turns out to be a flesh avatar and this is the point that Amy’s strong connection with the Doctor starts to break down a little.

The baby is being used as a weapon and its until the end that River joins the action and we learn that the baby is Melody and is Amy and Rory’s daughter. It’s a this stage that I wondered whether Steven Moffat had gone off at the deep end and totally lost his mind. However watching it now I just found myself thinking that it all works rather well.

The Doctor will be back in LETS KILL HITLER is one of the last things to appear on screen. It’s an interesting title for a Doctor Who but more about that tomorrow. As for todays episode it was a lot more fun than I remember watching. I think back to 2011 and was so desperate for answers not more questions that I think that I was disappointed with how very little got addressed but more got answered than I thought and the cliffhanger is good enough. This half of the series has been very mixed with only The Doctor’s Wife being better than this. The Curse of the Black Spot and the Rebel Flesh two parter have been notable disappointments but I think that the stronger stories of the series are yet to come. There may be something to salvage this series.