Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes To War Review (5/5)

Not unlike last year's The Big Bang, Steven Moffat sent us in a totally different direction to what we had expected from the premise of the mid-season finale, A Good Man Goes To War, but again that did not affect my enjoyment of the episode at all. As the 'Previously...' segment that opened the episode proved, there have certainly been a lot of unanswered questions in this half of the season, and for once the Moff didn't shy away from providing answers (or at least foundations for answers) to some of these. First and foremost of the revelations on hand here, of course, was River Song turning out to be Amy's daughter Melody Pond, and there was actually some satisfaction to be had for this viewer as I began to realise this might be the case when the lovable Lorna Buckett spoke of a Forest name for Amy's child, yet that foreknowledge of sorts didn't make the closing scene of Episode Seven any less enjoyable, quite the opposite. But let's move back for a moment. We opened with a great pre-title montage of Amy asking Melody to be brave as the Eye-Patch Lady, Madame Kovarian, moved to take her across the galaxy, while Rory's question for the Cybermen ("Where. Is. My. Wife?") was being made immediately more effective as the Doctor destroyed an entire legion of his old foe's battleships, setting us up brilliantly for an epic battle at Demon's Run. One of my only gripes with A Good Man Goes To War, though, was that the aforementioned conflict never really got time to shine, only really amounting to the pretty cool team-up of the Silurians and Sontarans (oh, and the Last Centurion) to face off against the Headless Monks, but as with many other of his episodes this brevity was due to the barreling pace Moffat's story had to move at. We then moved into several twists and turns, one of the most surprising being a Flesh duplicate of Melody having been created to distract our favourite Time Lord long enough for Kovarian and her army to take the real child back to Earth and train her as a weapon. At this point, the Doctor started to show hints of a burning anger- something which I hope will be expanded upon in the second half of the season as Matt Smith showed genuine promise in portraying the rage of a 908-year old eternal- and it was up to Miss River Song to bring him back down to earth, remarking that his name had become known as one of fear and battle across the galaxy, so was it any wonder that people were starting to move against him? Indeed, it was that fear that drove his enemies to trap him in The Pandorica Opens, and that same fear which had caused Melody to be kidnapped. To save his soul (for now...), River showed him a Gallifreyan sentence on his cot (and as hinted in Confidential, he may have not been the only baby to sleep in it before Melody!), revealing as we'd hoped her secret to the Doctor. Yep, that's what you asked for really, the Doctor to find out River's secret- it just meant we don't know the full extent of it whereas he does. What we do now know is that she is Amy's daughter, and has presumably lived through the events of being captured and saved by her possible husband so can guide him along the way to save her past self and perhaps to save himself too (considering the show is named after the Doctor, it would be nice if he made it out alive). Moffat and co pitched this as a "game-changing cliffhanger", and they were right in the sense that even though it perhaps isn't as 'edge of your seat' as the supposed regeneration of the Tenth Doctor in The Stolen Earth or the end of the universe in last year's finale, the climax certainly sends this season (and perhaps Series Seven too) in an unexpected new direction that is bound to bring plenty of surprises (one of which may have something to do with killing Hitler, judging by that hilarious reveal of Episode 8's title). Some may argue that A Good Man Goes To War wasn't the perfect dark, battle-focused piece of television we had expected, but really I think that the culmination and developments of the season arcs made it a hugely worthwhile viewing and made the three-month wait we have until Let's Kill Hitler (can't get over that title) feel that much longer!