Ok so I think I’ve got this straight….
Amy and Rory are first together in this timeline post Big Bang 2 in the TARDIS on their wedding night where they conceive Melody, who does not have a time head, but it is close enough. Sometime before the adventure in America though, preggers Amy is kidnapped by The Silence (who are a religious order and not a species) and handed off to eyepatch lady, Madam Kovarian.
Somehow the Doctor figures out, probably via the scanner he is always looking at but always hiding from everyone else’s view, that the Amy he has been traveling with was actually a flesh avatar. He travels back to the beginning of The Flesh so he can trace real Amy’s whereabouts. He figures this all out just in time for Amy to be giving birth, but he doesn’t figure enough out to not be tricked again and Kovarian escapes kidnapping Melody once again.
Melody is then raised by The Silence in an Apollo spacesuit in that creepy ass orphanage by the odd Renfrew type guy. Melody eventually escapes the spacesuit and The Silence and ends up regenerating in New York where apparently, or at least according to this episode, she regenerated into a toddler who then went and found Amy and Rory in Leadworth (resourceful toddler, how the hell sis she live so long?) and grew up with them as their BFF Mels. In typical Moffat timey whimey fashion she is the impetus for Amy and Rory getting together and of course her own eventual birth. Moffat loves his paradoxes doesn’t he? He also loves cribbing from other sources because like Lorraine and George McFly named their son Marty after the strange boy who got them together, who was actually their son, Amy names her daughter Melody after her best friend Melody who got her and Rory together who just happens to be her daughter.
Still with me? Good, because that puts us squarely at the time of “Let’s Kill Hitler.” Where Adolf Hitler is apparently a bad shot and we see the birth of River Song. And it is a glorious birth.
Mels, who we don’t yet know is actually Melody, forces the Doctor at gunpoint into the TARDIS and suggests they go back in time and kill Hitler. Cut to post credits and she has apparently shot the console forcing the Doctor to reveal that the TARDIS’ state of temporal grace was just a big lie which anyone should have been able to recognize.
In case you weren’t sure what Hitler looked like
Meanwhile in Berlin a robot/spaceship/homage to “Meet Dave” and “The Numbskulls” filled with tiny space people and called the Tesselecta has taken on the form of a Nazi officer and is preparing to punish Hitler for his crimes against humanity. Because that’s what they do, they go back in time and take criminals close to the end of their timestreams and “give them hell.” Just as they are about to take care of Hitler the TARDIS comes crashing through the window into Hitler’s office knocking down the robot and saving Hitler’s life as the Doctor said “purely by accident.”
Hitler of course starts asking questions about the big blue box and the Doctor has a fantastic moment when he tells him that it is London police box and the British are coming. But before we can revel in that line Hitler sees his assailant getting up, pulls a pistol and fires. Roranicus springs into action and lays the Fuhrer out with one punch. Take that Mickey. Rory than proceeds to put Hitler in the cupboard and in the cupboard Hitler isn’t seen or heard from for the rest of the episode.
Unfortunately, the robot wasn’t the only thing hit by the gunshot and Mels is down, but not out. The Doctor pleads with her to stay alive even proposing marriage to her. She insists he ask her mum and dad first and points out that that it’ll be easy since they’re standing right next to him. There are looks of uh-oh on all faces as she begins to glow and it appears that it’s not until the Doctor informs Amy that she named her daughter after her daughter that everyone catches on. Just in time for Mels to regenerate into Alex Kingston!
I think the looks on their faces say it all
I love regeneration craziness. I mean I love crazy Doctor and Time Lords to begin with but regeneration craziness is awesome. Seriously, if you woke up and your whole body was changed, every single atom, every single inch you’d run around like crazy too checking yourself out. Anyway, that’s exactly what newly regenerated Melody does.
After a brief, “Hello Benjamin,” (what the hell does that mean?) Melody sets out on the task that she has been raised her whole life to accomplish, kill the Doctor. The exchange that takes place is pretty fantastic with the Doctor always being one step ahead of Melody, removing bullets from guns or simply switching them with bananas, but when she finally kisses him, you just know something is up. Whoever/whatever the Silence are/is they definitely have got the 11th Doctor’s number. He’s a brilliant tactician, but when it comes to women he is pretty clueless (like most of us). Of course the lipstick is laced with the poison of the Judas Tree (natch) and the Doctor starts convulsing as Melody jumps out a window and heads into Berlin for some “shopping.”
“Only River Song gets to call me sweetie”
As I was typing that last paragraph I first typed River instead of Melody which just proves again how effective this episode was because even the Doctor keeps calling her that. She of course keeps asking who River is prompting the Doctor and one point to reply with, “spoilers.”
Inside the Tesselecta we learn who River really is though when it is revealed that she is one of the greatest war criminals of all time. She is the woman who kills the Doctor at Lake Silencio in 2011 which is apparently a fixed point in time. But if it’s a fixed point in time how can the Doctor be dying right in front of their eyes. We hear the phrase “time can be re-written” once again, so the crew of the Tesselecta decide they’re going to do their job and take out River.
Amy and Rory chase after their daughter, but not before Rory gets to punch out another Nazi and the Doctor heads into the TARDIS, and the Tesselecta chases after Amy and Rory. Then the viewers get a motion comic during the commercial that shows what director Richard Senior would have done in the episode as far as a motorcycle chase goes had he had the budget. I’m glad it was cut…
The Ponds in action!
Meanwhile in the TARDIS the Doctor is asking for a holographic visual interface because he is in too much pain to reach the console. The first choice the TARDIS gives him is a hologram of himself and he asks for someone he actually likes. We are then put through the torture with him of having to look at holographic cardboard standees of Rose, Martha and Donna. The torture for us is they look ridiculous since they’re clip art. The torture for him is that he feels extreme guilt for having screwed them all up so badly. Personally, I don’t think he really screwed them up much they all ended up pretty happy. Well except for Donna who may or may not burn up if she thinks of him.
The TARDIS finally settles on young Amelia Pond from before she started traveling with the Doctor and before he screwed up her life. He is informed that he has 32 minutes to live with no chance of regeneration. And then she mentions something about fish fingers and custard which I guess gives the Doctor enough motivation to change into his tuxedo and head out to fix the one person he has a chance to not screw up, Melody.
Melody has found a Nazi restaurant to raid for clothes, but before her parents can get to her, the Tesselecta has taken Amy’s shape and captured Rory and Amy with a miniaturization ray as Rory so deftly points out. The scene that follows is basically all exposition about who the Tesselecta are and what their purpose is, things we the viewers have already figured out. There’s a cute throwaway line in there from Melody about aging backwards slowly just to explain why the River in “Silence in the Library” looks younger. Then the Tesselecta give the Doctor access to his own records and we learn who or what wants to see him dead this time.
We know that it’s the Silence but what we learn is that it may not actually be the species of alien that we saw in the “The Impossible Astronaut” and “Day of the Moon,” but is actually a religious order that believes that “silence will fall” when the oldest question in the universe is asked. And the sound heard round the world when that line was spoken was the collective of Whovians having a “Douglas Adams-gasm.” The question is of course unknown, but hopefully to be revealed in the next few weeks.
As the Doctor’s 32 minutes run out the captain of the Tesselecta gives the order to give Melody hell, but the Doctor pleads with Amy to stop them. And Amy does something so incredibly stupid…
Tesselecta Amy gives Melody Pond hell
The Tesselecta has a security system called Anti-Bodies that eliminates any non authorized personnel on the ship. Authorized people are identified by a wristband with a green glowing thing on it. Amy and Rory are issued these when they are taken on board and instead of switching off one of the crew members first as a threat, she uses the sonic screwdriver to switch off her own so the Anti-Bodies come after her. She then threatens that she’ll shut off everyone in the ship’s if they don’t let Melody go. The captain calls her bluff and she calls his and the Anti-Bodies start killing.
I just don’t understand why she switched her and Rory’s off at all other than to now give the Doctor something to plead with Melody about, which of course is saving her parent’s lives. The whole exchange doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why wouldn’t Melody be trying to save her parents? And why does watching the Doctor suffer and plead for help finally convince her to hop in the TARDIS and go after them? It all happens rather quickly and I‘m not quite sure that it works for me.
Regardless, Amy and Rory do get saved and the Doctor dies, again, but not before giving asking Melody to find River Song and give her a message that he whispers in her ear. Something about the message that we never hear finally pushes Melody and Amy over the edge and Amy asks that the Tesselecta show Melody who River Song is. Faced to face with herself, Melody decides that maybe killing the Doctor wasn’t such a great idea after all. Her hands start to glow with renegeration energy and, despite some protestation, she plants a big fat kiss on the Doctor bringing him back to life.
From an overhead shot of the Doctor and Melody snogging encircled by renegeration energy, we cut to Melody waking up in what appears to be a hospital bed. We learn that she used up the rest of her regenerations bringing the Doctor back to life and she learns rule 1, the Doctor lies. The Doctor leaves her a gift of the blue diary and the 3 head off leaving her in the 52nd century.
Before the episode ends we see River at the Luna University taking her first steps towards becoming an archeologist, because how else do you track down the Doctor than by looking through history. And now we know most of River’s story, or do we? I’m still not convinced she is in the spacesuit at Lake Silencio.
It is really a great coat
Next week: Mark Gatiss introduces us to creepy as hell people sized dolls that are apparently scaring the crap out of the son of Daniel Mays from “Ashes to Ashes.”