6x07 A Good Man Goes To War (Grade/Discuss) SPOILERS!

[Bacl]

Steven Moffat even said that this episode was going to take The Doctor down a peg or two.

Anyone else feel that instead of seeing the Doctor taken down a peg or two that they'd prefer the show returns to the premise that the Doctor is truly that "wise man, sage and healer"? The Doctor as a wise man, sage, and healer is the show I want to see.

The show where the main character tries to be good, and people think he's good, but then when you really examine it you find he's a bad person who does very wrong things isn't Doctor Who. Pretty sure that's Breaking Bad.

I don't like this trend of the shows own writers and producers saying, "You know what, if you think about it, the Doctor is a bad person." You know what, maybe you need a vacation. If you are writing the Doctor as shooting laser beams out of his sonic screwdriver to kill dead Silence after ordering their genocide, you're doing it wrong.

I also noticed in the last few episodes that the sonic screwdriver is failing to open doors. The Doctor got locked in the hold by the gangers, and locked out from the final battle with the monks, and both times he tried to use his sonic screwdriver to open the doors and both times it failed 100%. I don't mind a few creative uses of the sonic, but when it does everything except open doors...you may have lost sight of things.

I remember someone on this board mentioning how he has been basically coasting on his reputation for a long time and that reputation was going to bite him in the ass some day. Well in this episode, it really did and in a big way.

Yeah, in the last five minutes, and it lasted five minutes, and then he giggled and smiled and ran off quite "high" again.

Maybe all this animosity is a result of Timelord Victorious. Everyone heard about it and got scared.

How? How could EVERYONE have heard this? This is my big problem, the show is acting like everyone in the show knows more or less what we the viewers at home know. Baloney.

 

[Newspaper Taxi]

The Eleventh's Doctors first story ended with him scaring away the Atraxi with his reputation, if you'll recall. This is character development -- while having a reputatinon of being feared can be a helpful asset to the Doctor he's now forced to consider if that's who he really wants to be.

 

[Photoman15]

What was with the skeleton hand/sonic at the very end?

 

[Tom]

What was with the skeleton hand/sonic at the very end?

Moffets way to tease us about the last 6 episodes..LOL

 

[Starkers]

Steven Moffat even said that this episode was going to take The Doctor down a peg or two.

Anyone else feel that instead of seeing the Doctor taken down a peg or two that they'd prefer the show returns to the premise that the Doctor is truly that "wise man, sage and healer"? The Doctor as a wise man, sage, and healer is the show I want to see.

Has that show ever really consistently existed though? The First Doctor contemplated murder, the fourth Doctor was taken to task by Sarah Jane for his lack of compassion at the death of a few humans, the Seventh Doctor was a manipulative git...

After 15 pages here and 12 on the Guardian's blog, I have to ask: am I really the only person who was utterly convinced when Lorna died she was going to regenerate into River?

It might be just you

I did find her awfully familiar though.

Had a thought, how does Melody Pond end up River Song when the prayer leaf was left behind...?

 

[Photoman15]

Left behind? Amy & Rory are still at Demons Run at the end of the episode. Amy may have it on her person or they may pick it up before River/Melody takes them home.

 

[Starkers]

What I meant was, it's no longer with the baby.

 

[JoeZhang]

What I meant was, it's no longer with the baby.

But the parents have it, so they know that she is also called River Song.


More generally - after reading this thread and the last one, I have to wonder about this forum sometimes, last week, some people here saw a rape that never occurred and this week, they think the Doctor is fucking his own mother - very odd.

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

How do we know River wasn't lying?

 

[Psion]

If you are writing the Doctor as shooting laser beams out of his sonic screwdriver to kill dead Silence after ordering their genocide, you're doing it wrong.

He wasn't shooting laser beams, and none of his shots killed a Silence. He was just distracting them while River did the shooting.

Nor, technically, did he order the genocide of the Silence, although that would be the result if they stayed on Earth. He gave them a reason to flee. Ultimately, though, I wonder if this is the reason the Anglicans were at war with the Doctor. Perhaps humanity and the Silence actually had a symbiotic relationship and the Doctor disrupted that.

AFTER EDIT:
Hmm, let me correct that, one of the green circlish discharges did seem to knock one of the Silence down. This doesn't work given the dialog where River exclaims, "You've got a screwdriver ... go put up a cabinet!"

 

[JoeZhang]

How do we know River wasn't lying?

Because there is a bond that the show-runner makes with the audience when he says "tune in and you'll get your answer" - if it turns out that this is a fakeout, it makes SM look like an asshole - especially since he was saying on twitter that he was so pleased that kids worked it out because they weren't trying to work out if she was the Rani.

 

[YellowSubmarine]

And if there was a child, would that child have there own child, and maybe ..I don't now..call her Susan! The first Doctor could have then be traveling with his future granddaughter!! Timey Wimy!

No, the child of the Doctor and Melody is the Time Vortex itself. Time Lord + River Song = Time Vortex. You know, the only current in time is the vortex.

After 15 pages here and 12 on the Guardian's blog, I have to ask: am I really the only person who was utterly convinced when Lorna died she was going to regenerate into River?

That's an interesting idea, unfortunately I don't think it is a possible one, because there weren't any hints that she could be River, we know for certain that River is going to look the way she does for a while (and the tendency is for the Doctor to meat her earlier versions each time), and the version of River Lorna supposedly regenerated into was older and more mature (looks, opinionatedness, knowledge, character, everything), and she didn't do funky regeneration dances.

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

How do we know River wasn't lying?

Because there is a bond that the show-runner makes with the audience when he says "tune in and you'll get your answer" - if it turns out that this is a fakeout, it makes SM look like an asshole - especially since he was saying on twitter that he was so pleased that kids worked it out because they weren't trying to work out if she was the Rani.

OK.

How dark do you think it's going to get? Amy was telling Melody something along the lines of the greatest man in the universe would come and rescue her and she ment Rory.
River apparently killed the best man she knew, so possibly that's Rory?

 

[PorthosShadow]

How do we know River wasn't lying?

Because there is a bond that the show-runner makes with the audience when he says "tune in and you'll get your answer" - if it turns out that this is a fakeout, it makes SM look like an asshole - especially since he was saying on twitter that he was so pleased that kids worked it out because they weren't trying to work out if she was the Rani.

OK.

How dark do you think it's going to get? Amy was telling Melody something along the lines of the greatest man in the universe would come and rescue her and she ment Rory.
River apparently killed the best man she knew, so possibly that's Rory?

From Amy and River's stand point that makes sense but didn't Father Octavian say he was beloved by many people? If it is Rory I wonder how he gets that kind of street cred.

 

[intrinsical]

Agreed. And why do they think of themselves as at war with the Doctor? This is a theme Moffat started exploring last year with the alliance in "The Pandorica Opens" uniting to stuff the Doctor in a box. Everyone is afraid of him. Why? Did he do something really bad or are they just afraid of what he might do with all the power he wields?

Based on his behavior since 1963, it seems to me that most people should like the Doctor.

RTD changed The Doctor into The Oncoming Storm, the Timelord who killed his own people to end the last great time war, The Timelord Victorious, the one who would not give second chances. If anyone started this theme, its RTD not Moffat. What Moffat is doing in this episode is undoing the damage RTD has done by showing The Doctor the consequences of his actions. The Doctor finally realizes what an ass he has been and decides to make a change, back into a likeable person again.

With this episode, Moffat's returned Doctor Who to its classic root. That's the game changer Moffat is talking about.

 

[Skywalker]

How dark do you think it's going to get? Amy was telling Melody something along the lines of the greatest man in the universe would come and rescue her and she ment Rory.
River apparently killed the best man she knew, so possibly that's Rory?

From Amy and River's stand point that makes sense but didn't Father Octavian say he was beloved by many people? If it is Rory I wonder how he gets that kind of street cred.

He's already kind of building a reputation for himself. The Last Centurion, and all that.

 

[Cutter John]

Well to be fair, considering she married him, and after that whole 2000 year thing, Amy might be exaggerating his importance just a bit.

 

[Psion]

Agreed. And why do they think of themselves as at war with the Doctor? This is a theme Moffat started exploring last year with the alliance in "The Pandorica Opens" uniting to stuff the Doctor in a box. Everyone is afraid of him. Why? Did he do something really bad or are they just afraid of what he might do with all the power he wields?

Based on his behavior since 1963, it seems to me that most people should like the Doctor.

RTD changed The Doctor into The Oncoming Storm, the Timelord who killed his own people to end the last great time war, The Timelord Victorious, the one who would not give second chances. If anyone started this theme, its RTD not Moffat. What Moffat is doing in this episode is undoing the damage RTD has done by showing The Doctor the consequences of his actions. The Doctor finally realizes what an ass he has been and decides to make a change, back into a likeable person again.

With this episode, Moffat's returned Doctor Who to its classic root. That's the game changer Moffat is talking about.

Sorry, but Horse Hockey!

All the times he's kicked butt, it's been Bad Guy Butt. Every single time. When you become a legend that way, you become something called a "hero". And from where I'm sitting, that's a good thing and not likely to get the universe to band together against you. The first time good guys (the Judoon) allied themselves with the bad guys against the Doctor was in "The Pandorica Opens". And they did that because they thought he was going to destroy the universe somehow.

Well, he didn't.

So why are they giving him a hard time now?!

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Agreed. And why do they think of themselves as at war with the Doctor? This is a theme Moffat started exploring last year with the alliance in "The Pandorica Opens" uniting to stuff the Doctor in a box. Everyone is afraid of him. Why? Did he do something really bad or are they just afraid of what he might do with all the power he wields?

Based on his behavior since 1963, it seems to me that most people should like the Doctor.

RTD changed The Doctor into The Oncoming Storm, the Timelord who killed his own people to end the last great time war, The Timelord Victorious, the one who would not give second chances. If anyone started this theme, its RTD not Moffat. What Moffat is doing in this episode is undoing the damage RTD has done by showing The Doctor the consequences of his actions. The Doctor finally realizes what an ass he has been and decides to make a change, back into a likeable person again.

With this episode, Moffat's returned Doctor Who to its classic root. That's the game changer Moffat is talking about.

Sorry, but Horse Hockey!

All the times he's kicked butt, it's been Bad Guy Butt. Every single time. When you become a legend that way, you become something called a "hero". And from where I'm sitting, that's a good thing and not likely to get the universe to band together against you. The first time good guys (the Judoon) allied themselves with the bad guys against the Doctor was in "The Pandorica Opens". And they did that because they thought he was going to destroy the universe somehow.

Well, he didn't.

So why are they giving him a hard time now?!

Personally I thinks it's becuase these guys are evil. I mean think about it kidnapping people and replacing them with flesh clones, stealing babys to turn into weapons BABYs for God's sake, teaming up with meat puppet/zombie people things that cut off peoples heands to turn them into meat puppet/zombie people things, giving the people who work for you to the meat puppet/zombie people things without even telling the poor guy what their going to do to him. mind f@#king Amy that way with the flesh clone of the baby. Not to mention that their Eye Patch Lady leader even refered to the Doctor as a good man. You don't raise an army against a good man and do the crap they did unless you're evil.

 

[PorthosShadow]

RTD changed The Doctor into The Oncoming Storm, the Timelord who killed his own people to end the last great time war, The Timelord Victorious, the one who would not give second chances. If anyone started this theme, its RTD not Moffat. What Moffat is doing in this episode is undoing the damage RTD has done by showing The Doctor the consequences of his actions. The Doctor finally realizes what an ass he has been and decides to make a change, back into a likeable person again.

With this episode, Moffat's returned Doctor Who to its classic root. That's the game changer Moffat is talking about.

Sorry, but Horse Hockey!

All the times he's kicked butt, it's been Bad Guy Butt. Every single time. When you become a legend that way, you become something called a "hero". And from where I'm sitting, that's a good thing and not likely to get the universe to band together against you. The first time good guys (the Judoon) allied themselves with the bad guys against the Doctor was in "The Pandorica Opens". And they did that because they thought he was going to destroy the universe somehow.

Well, he didn't.

So why are they giving him a hard time now?!

Personally I thinks it's becuase these guys are evil. I mean think about it kidnapping people and replacing them with flesh clones, stealing babys to turn into weapons BABYs for God's sake, teaming up with meat puppet/zombie people things that cut off peoples heands to turn them into meat puppet/zombie people things, giving the people who work for you to the meat puppet/zombie people things without even telling the poor guy what their going to do to him. mind f@#king Amy that way with the flesh clone of the baby. Not to mention that their Eye Patch Lady leader even refered to the Doctor as a good man. You don't raise an army against a good man and do the crap they did unless you're evil.

I think it's very simple, the bad guys are tired of the do-gooder foiling their plans over and over again. I'm thinking along the lines of a Batman animated series episode where all the villains Batman caught and stuck in Arkham Asylum took over the Asylum and lured Batman in. Then they ended up putting him on trial and essentially blaming Batman for their present situation.