Doctor Who:
A Good Man Goes To War
By Steven Moffat
"This was exactly you.
All this. All of it. You make them so afraid. When you began, all those
years ago, sailing off to see the universe,
did you ever think you'd become this? The man who can turn an army
around at the mention of his name. Doctor. The word for healer and wise
man
throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know. But if you
carry on the way you are, what might that word come to mean?
To the people of the Gamma Forests, the word Doctor means mighty
warrior. How far you've come. And now they've taken a child,
the child of your best friends, and they're going to turn her into a
weapon just to bring you down. And all this, my love, in fear of you."
The series six mid-way point was
A Good Man Goes To War and the big revelation was revealed here and judging by the response on the
Internet in 2011 this story will go down as one of the big ones. But should it? Was A Good Man Goes To War a great episode or
will it be mainly viewed in the eyes of the fans as one of the greatest stories
ever due to the fact that we find out who River Song really is. The clues are all there in this episode as River
Song is in fact Amy and Rory's baby. You
got that. Good. So does this story live up to the hype? I believe so as I was mainly watching to see
who River Song is. After getting the
answer I realized this story was more filler than substance and was just a
publicity to get fans talking about the show.
Was this the greatest story ever? Well no, not really. But it wasn't that bad either. I mean there was a lot of stuff going on in
it and we had the reappearance of fighter planes from Victory of the Daleks and
the pirates from The Curse of the Black Spot. Did we really need to have all
these characters in it? I don't think so
as it just seemed to be a cluster fracker.
I think this story would have survived without bringing back all those
characters. That is one of Steven
Moffats downfalls as he likes to bring back characters that would not make
sense in the overall story like Danny Boy. So yes I wasn't that crazy to see
the pirates and fighter planes. I didn't
mind seeing the Cybermen but wouldn't they just gun down Rory when he appeared
on the control deck? I like the Cybermen
and was disappointed that they appeared wimpy and didn't play a bigger part in
this story. I mean they just stood there and were bullied by Rory. They
listened to his questioned and stood there like toy soldiers. That was pretty pathetic.
I did like the Sontaran nurse
Strax. It was pretty funny to see what
happens when a Sontaran falls out of favor.
The look on Amy's face was priceless when he said that he was augmented
in the different ways of nursing. I
thought the Silurian samurai was pretty cool also and it was good to see Jenny
and Vastra’s first appearance again after seeing them as semi regulars in
Series 7. This gathering of friends kind
of reminded me of a 6th Doctor comic strip from the 80's. I don't remember the title of the strip but
the premise was sort of familiar.
I didn't think the story was all
that strong. I mean if you have to rely
on so many characters to get the fans in a frenzy then you lose some of the
storytelling. But anyway I thought they
set things up for the second half of the series pretty well with the Doctor
determined get baby Melody/River Song back to Amy and Rory and find out who
wants the baby as a weapon against him.
I liked the headless monks and
thought they were a decent character.
You know that we haven't seen the last of them as I believe that Steven
Moffat will use them again as he likes to recycle things but then again maybe
we won’t. Hell he used the Pirates and
fighter planes again. I did enjoy this
story as there were some good points about the Doctor and where they want to go
with his character going forth. In fact
it does in the future have a bearing on what River is to The Doctor and what
she is to Amy and Rory and makes future stories with River more interesting. Or
again maybe it won’t as we did not really see much of what went down in Series
6 in Series 7 but there is the Christmas Special and Capaldi’s era to go yet.
I didn't think this was a good
story as it tried to accomplish so much by shoving so much at us but it did
have some good moments in it despite being complicated and full of plot holes
of unexplained sequences. Besides the
fact that we find out about River Song and who she is in relation to Amy and
Rory we are left with the mystery of when does the Doctor meet back up with Amy
and Rory. I did like how Madame Kovarian eventually tricked The Doctor and actually
defeated him again. So in all an average
episode that is helped by the last 5 minutes or so to get the fans in a wild tizzy
thinking this mediocre story is the greatest thing ever.
Grade C
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