Formosa Metal Pig

7th June 2011

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Doctor Who Season 6A Thoughts & Ideas

Feel free to skip if you really don’t care about my thoughts regarding a revived British sci-fi TV show. The rest of you can read on, as there are some good bits, though sadly, Marvin will not appear later on…or at all. As River Song would say, “Shhhh. Spoilers!” Therefore, take that as your only warning in case you decide to read onward.

Perhaps it’s due to the temporary lull in the production of Torchwood, or perhaps it’s due to decisions made by Steven Moffat to put even further distance between his production and that of his predecessor, but I must say that this first half-season of DW has felt more “adult” in tone than any of its predecessors. Okay, maybe Season 1 can give 6A a run for its money, but that’s it. From the first few minutes of the season-opening “The Impossible Astronaut,” the key themes of secrets and deceit were established, with subsequent episodes offering up continual reinforcement. Want me to spell it out? Sure!

1. First and foremost, there’s the delicate subject of Eleven’s on-screen death as witnessed by Amy, Rory, and River. Sure, Eleven is still alive, but there’s no getting around the fact that a version of Eleven that’s 200 years older was killed right in front of their eyes. Up until the encounter with The Flesh, all three kept knowledge of what they saw from Eleven, even though doing so ate them up inside.

2. During the end of “The Impossible Astronaut,” Amy blurted out to Eleven that she was pregnant, but later on denied this fact in the follow-up “Day Of The Moon.” She did not tell her husband at first, though he found out by eavesdropping on a conversation she was having with Eleven at the conclusion of “Day Of The Moon.” Amy chided her husband for spying, and reassured him that she’s OK (and, apparently, not pregnant). In spite of that statement, Eleven scanned Amy in nearly every subsequent episode to determine whether or not she was pregnant, with the TARDIS providing inconclusive results.

3. The entire M.O. of the Silence is to be that secret that’s hiding out in plain sight, yet can’t be seen or recalled by anyone who happens to come upon it.

4. House, the living planetoid from “The Doctor’s Wife,” tricked Eleven and other Time Lords with fake distress calls in order to lure their TARDIS to his extra-universal location, whereupon House would consume both machine and occupants.

5. Much like the Silence, the existence of the Flesh allows for the deceit of using “almost people” to do work too dangerous for real humans. This deceit falls apart when the Flesh truly becomes sentient.

6. Finally, there’s the Young Girl from the opening two-parter, otherwise known as Melody Pond…otherwise known as River Song. Yes, this entire time, River has concealed her identity as Amy and Rory’s daughter from her parents as well as Eleven. For reasons that will undoubtedly come up in Season 6B, River was fearful of Eleven’s reaction when he finds out who she truly is. In spite of the fact that Eleven was actually quite happy to learn this knowledge, that may change when the second half-season is upon us.

What’s hidden just out of reach—maybe under the surface, or maybe even hidden in plain view—may be worse than what’s seen. Knowing this, Eleven appears to be reverting back to the ways of Seven, manipulating people and events in order to bring the truth (or, the truth as he’d like to know it) out from its shadows. At various times, Amy, Rory, and River are aware that Eleven is keeping information from them, but unlike the one-way manipulations of Seven upon Ace, the companions likewise have their own secrets and stories that they’re not fully divulging to Eleven or to one another. FIRST PREDICTION, COURTESY OF CAPTAIN OBVIOUS: All of these secrets and hidings and deceit will wear upon everyone to the point that I can’t see Amy and Rory spending more time with Eleven than the remainder of Season 6. River’s “departure” will actually be her arrival, so that particular plot point has already been foretold. By the time Season 6B ends, Amy and Rory will be eager to leave Eleven, possibly not on good terms.

Since secrets have been such a big deal in Season 6A, let’s work backwards here and start off with River Song’s real identity as Melody Pond, the grown daughter of Amy and Rory. During the last few seasons, we have witnessed River’s death, her birth, and a potential encounter with a young Melody as a prisoner (or, perhaps, a weapon) of the Silence to be used against Eleven. We’re still not sure by whom, or if the Silence are simply going up against humanity and the Doctor. Melody’s proto-Time Lord DNA apparently allows her to regenerate, as seen at the end of “Day Of The Moon,” though it’s unknown how many regenerations she’ll be allowed to have. Likewise, the ending of “Forest Of The Dead,” in which River dies yet has her memory “uploaded” into CAL could possibly lead to a far-fetched scenario in which River’s memory is “downloaded” into a recipient host. However, finding someone with River’s genetic make-up may be hard to do…unless, of course, the recipient were Flesh, which would honestly be a cheap cop-out for Moffat to pull off (see “far-fetched scenario” for more information).

A more realistic, and possibly troubling aspect, of River’s proto-Time Lord nature concerns parentage. If Melody was affected by the TARDIS in the womb, and if, as we saw in “The Doctor’s Wife,” the TARDIS could be personified, then it’s really easy to think that Melody has two mothers: Amy and Idris (aka the TARDIS). I don’t see this venue being pursued too much, because then you’d have to think about the symbiotic relationship between the TARDIS and the Doctor, which then leads to Rory and Eleven being Melody’s fathers, which then leads to a Luke/Leia revision of their googly-eyes and kissy-faces toward each other…so, um, yeah, I don’t expect “Doctor Who” to be hurtling toward the Incest Nebula anytime soon. Still, the influence of the TARDIS upon River can’t be disputed. After all, as she demonstrates in “The Time of Angels,” she knows how to fly the TARDIS and “learned from the best,” but not from the Doctor himself. If you have some of the TARDIS in you, controlling the blue box would be relatively easy, yes?

Until September rolls along, other questions will still linger, mixed in with PREDICTIONS, such as:

1. Who really took Melody? Was it the Silence? How does the Silence work with allies if their very nature makes them unworkable?

2. What kind of “war” was being referred to by the Eye Patch Lady?

3. Since River seems to know a lot about the Gamma Forest, could she have lived there during some point in her life? Remember, we’re seeing an earlier version of River, so she’s not yet a professor or archaeologist; unless she spent time there, this may not be knowledge she would otherwise have. Could her prison in Stormcage be on the same planet as the Gamma Forest?

4. Since Eleven went back to see the origin of the Flesh, it must mean that the Flesh is a living entity that has evolved since. I’d be very surprised if the older version of Eleven weren’t anything but a well-developed Flesh copy controlled by the younger, “real” Eleven.

5. Also, if the older Flesh Eleven were created to start the process of placing Melody/River in jail for killing the “best man she ever knew,” it’s also possible that the older River was in on it, and knew how to dispose of the older Flesh body. The killer? A younger Melody, though not the Young Girl as seen in the beginning two-parter. River takes care not to kill her younger self when she fires her gun…or the gun is loaded with blanks.
OK, Steven Moffat has beaten me to the punch here, as he claims Eleven truly dies—no Flesh copies. Drat.

There’s more to report and/or speculate upon, but this should be enough for now. Oh, wait, one last thing: the power of Eleven to get humans and non-humans to do his bidding for him certainly has its limits, which was seen at Demon’s Run. Is it worse, for example, to have Eight kill his own people while fighting against the Daleks in the Time War, or is it worse for Eleven to know he bears responsibility for the lives lost without reason at Demon’s Run? Amy definitely would say that the latter would be worse, hence her recoiling from Eleven once she found out her baby was a Flesh copy. I expect that this event will be one of many, if not the main, elements that lead to an unhappy departure when Amy and Rory leave—they’re young kids, relatively speaking, and they’d be mentally and physically exhausted from what they’ve dealt with. They’re only human.