Doctor Who: A Good Man Goes to War

[Hoagy]

Cheers Goaty. I sent that image swipe to my daughter on facebook. We've been discussing the episode, earlier. A nice little e-card, you might say.

[DrJomster]

I was going to write "Much more for the 30 & 40 somethings I suspect frequent these boards than for the kids"... But then again looking at some of the stuff on cbbc these days, maybe times have moved on?

Anywaaaay, great entertainment and roll on part 2 of the season!

[golledge100]

If a 40 year old cant second guess a lot of it he must be even more retarded than he appears complaing about it on the internet!*

Damn it you've made me feel stupid again Had everyone twigged that anyway? And there was me thinking i was so clever! Smug yes. complaining? Absolutely not!

[worldshown]

I want a madame vastra/ Jenny spin off now!

Thirded.

Whilst it was never going to live up to the hype (there's no way you'll get a full-on battle at 7 O'clock on a Saturday evening) it was a strong episode, and the revelation asks more questions than it answers as River apparently comes from the 51st Century and yet was on Earth in the 1960s.

[Professor Bear]

I notice the Doctor buggered off for when it became apparent to Amy that her daughter was someone he'd probably shagged - hey, Gary Glitter fled the country, too...

Great stuff, but the reveal felt really dragged out.  Yeah, okay, it maybe had to be spelled out for the kids, but it could have been done in about a third of the time actually dedicated to it here.  What was that old sci-fi cartoon where it turned out the old guy on the crew of a starship turned out to be the kid they'd been racing across the galaxy to find?  It did that reveal in three minutes and that was for kids.
Still, great episode.  Especially liked "we ran, didn't we?"


edit to add: "The Time Masters" was the movie.  Which I have now spoiled for you.

[Kowalsky (formerly JudgeGumpty)]

I want a madame vastra/ Jenny spin off now!

Thirded.

Whilst it was never going to live up to the hype (there's no way you'll get a full-on battle at 7 O'clock on a Saturday evening) it was a strong episode, and the revelation asks more questions than it answers as River apparently comes from the 51st Century and yet was on Earth in the 1960s.

Would make for a pretty sweet series, swashbuckling detective alien lesbo and loyal maidservant, after the watershed methinks (if it still exists).

[House of Usher]

Silurians aren't aliens. [/nerd] 

[Emperor]

Great episode full of lots of big sci-fi flash bang and superb character moments, what all Dr Who episodes should be.

I want a madame vastra/ Jenny spin off now!

This is what spin-off comics were made for.

[Mardroid]

I rather enjoyed that. I don't remember all the army recruits, but my brain can be a bit of a sieve sometimes. Have we met them before or did those particular adventures happen off screen? I know the episode with that particular breed of Silurians was set in the future...

I seem to remember the blue man appearing in a past episode with River Song (didn't he give her a time-displacement device?) and the Sontaran Colonel's name rang a bell. Also... since when did the space-spitfires get turned into time machines? Mind you I suppose it's possible they were transported by some of the Doctor's allies time travelling allies.

As for the twist, I've seen that theory (out of many) but it was satisfying.

One thing that bugged me a bit. [spoiler]Rory had the eye-patch lady at sword point. Then later she turns up on screen delivering that last rather wonderful twist. So Rory just let her get away when he got the 'baby'? I think they could have come up with something better than that. Her actually managing to escape for example.[/spoiler]

I'm also not all that sure why those guys actually want to defeat the doctor, but maybe that will become more clear later. Sure, River made her big 'you're responsible for all this speech' but I didn't think the majority of people saw him as a threat. Apart from the usual adversaries, and some of those actually turned up as allies in this episode! The villains of the piece here seem to be future humans. Or possibly humanoid. (I'm not too clear if the pretty girl who gave Amy the gift was a human colonial or an alien. Sure she looks human but then again, so does the doctor and a whole bunch of other Whovian aliens.)

It was a great episode all-in-all though. I wish more of the army should had been characters we've met before... but maybe I just forgot them, as I said. They were great characters though; the Lady Silurian character and the Sonttaran in particular. His comments provided some great comedy.

OH, and the headless  monks were a great idea. I'd like to know how they function though? Some kind of mystical energy neural cortex thing? CPU implants?

[Mardroid]

I'm not too clear if the pretty girl who gave Amy the gift was a human colonial or an alien.

Of course the fact that her name is 'Lorna Bucket' might just be a clue...


As I said. Mind like a sieve. (It was the language script thing that threw me a bit, but then I think this is quite ahead in the future where new languages have developed...)

[Dark Jimbo]

Generally really enjoyed the episode, but was I the only one who found the silurian/sontaran/spitfires all a bit... wanky? As in fanwanky, and not in a good way. Like the sort of stuff that makes most spin-off fiction seem so cringeworthy to me, where the continuity all becomes a bit smug and self-congratulatory - more like, I dunno, Buffy or any random american sci-fi show you'd care to mention than the more quirky, low-key British stuff. Hmm, I don't think I'm articulating this well.

Otherwise it was brilliant stuff though, and it was really more a personal taste thing.

[Grant Goggans]

Dark Jimbo, it actually reminded me of one of the classic comic strips that David Lloyd drew, where Abslom Daak teamed up with an Ice Warrior and a Draconian to fight Daleks.  But I do like the way that modern Doctor Who just treats all these alien races as part of the same toybox.  In the old show, it was more deliberate.  "This season, we're going to have the Cybermen in story one, the Master in story three, the Sontarans and an old Doctor in story four, and the Daleks in story six."  I think it was easier for the nerds who wrote in to Matrix Data Bank requesting a list of all the Cybermen stories to remember them if the Cybermen only appeared in the stories where they were the main enemy.

Hell, in 1983, we had a Dalek, a Yeti, the Master and the Cybermen in one story and thought we were spoiled.

But I have to agree with Mardroid, these baddies seriously lacked motivation.

Okay, so they think that the Doctor was a great warrior.  That's what I hear about Alexander the Great, but I'm not going to go to any lengths to track him down and spring some huge trap on him.  What's the Doctor ever done to them specifically?

[auxlen]

The only problem I had was that [spoiler]if river was amy's daughter she should have been acting very OMG your my mum and dad before i was born to them throughout the series. However, River has been all I love the doctor and hardly given her parents a look. [/spoiler]I must rewatch but I think I'm right.

[chris_askham]

The only problem I had was that [spoiler]if river was amy's daughter she should have been acting very OMG your my mum and dad before i was born to them throughout the series. However, River has been all I love the doctor and hardly given her parents a look. [/spoiler]I must rewatch but I think I'm right.

[spoiler]Well if River is travelling through time in the opposite direction to the Doctor, then she's probably already met Amy and Rory lots of times already and the OMG stuff would happen in Rory and Amy's future. Unless I've got all this time travel malarkey wrapped round my head.[/spoiler]

Have I got that right?

[Steve Green]

I thought it a bit similar to the RTD one where it's one big superteam, but I'm sure if I was 10 I'd have loved all that.

The Sontaran and the Lesbian Detective Duo were good value though - I wonder if something was cut out of the bit with [spoiler]The fat blue guy, getting decapitated - I thought there was going to be something else there after you saw him wandering around[/spoiler]

I did laugh at the Next Time title.