Demon’s Run, where a good man goes to war.
Night will fall and drown the sun,
When a good man goes to war.
Friendship dies and true love lies,
Night will fall and the dark will rise.
When a good man goes to war.
Demon’s Run, but count the cost.
The battle is won but the child is lost,
When a good man goes to war.
Night will fall and drown the sun,
When a good man goes to war.
Friendship dies and true love lies,
Night will fall and the dark will rise.
When a good man goes to war.
Demon’s Run, but count the cost.
The battle is won but the child is lost,
When a good man goes to war.
Grade: A
On an isolated asteroid base in the far reaches of space, Amy Pond talks softly to her newborn daughter. Surrounded by soldiers, Any assures the baby that she will never be alone so long as she remembers that there is a man who will always risk his life to protect her: her father, known as the Last Centurion. The child is taken from her by the woman with the eyepatch, who has apparently masterminded the operation to hold Amy hostage and take possession of the baby; as Amy begs to keep her child, a young soldier looks on in quiet pity.
Millions of miles and light-years away, in scattered points throughout time and space, the Doctor and Rory begin assembling an army of seemingly unrelated people; among those visited are Madame Vastra, an isolated Silurian investigator in 19th century London, Commander Strax, a Sontaran medical attendant, and River Song in her Stormcage cell. Speaking to the latter, Rory is shocked and confused when she outright refuses to join the Doctor's endeavor, explaining that the upcoming battle is destined to be the Doctor's greatest hour, followed by his falling lower than ever before. She knows that she is unable to be with him until the end of the famous day, at which point she claims that he will finally discover her true identity. At Demon's Run, the asteroid base, several soldiers confer with Lorna Bucket, the young soldier who witnessed the removal of Amy's baby; the entire station is on alert in expectation of the Doctor's attack, and Lorna is one of the few people present who claims to have met him before. She explains that it was only a brief encounter early in her life, and that he could currently be anywhere in the universe. The soldiers express distrust of the Headless Monks, a sinister order with whom they have been allied for the upcoming battle with the Doctor. Meanwhile, Madame Kovarian, the woman behind the plot to kidnap Amy's child, confers with Dorium, a petty black-market trader who is convinced that she has taken an unnecessary risk in holding a companion of the Doctor in captivity, citing an old fable referring to a good man going to war on Demon's Run, and telling her that he is certain that the Doctor is even now raising in force a group of people who owe him various debts. As Kovarian leaves, Dorium is horrified to witness the TARDIS appearing in his own home.
Back at the base, a mass rally is held as the colonel of the resident army holds a ceremony encouraging his soldiers to think of the Doctor as a man to be defeated, and revealing to them that the Headless Monks, typically swathed, are literally headless and therefore invulnerable to emotion. Meanwhile, Lorna Bucket pays a hesitant visit to a hostile Amy, offering her a small gift in the form of an embroidered cloth bearing the name of her daughter, Melody Pond, in the language of Lorna's people. Slowly, Amy relaxes enough to accept the gift and exchange a few words with Lorna about their experiences with the Doctor. As Lorna hurries to the rally, it is revealed that the Doctor has already infiltrated the base in the guise of a Monk; the lights are taken out by Madame Vastra while, in a panic, the Monks and the soldiers turn against one another. The Doctor makes his escape while chaos reigns; however, the Colonel begins slowly regaining order, leading Madame Vastra to bring in a cohort of armed Silurians to contain the enemy forces. Kovarian is headed off in her attempt to escape with Melody, and the entire situation is resolved within minutes.
Confronting Kovarian and the Colonel, the Doctor impresses upon them the uselessness of attempting to control or defeat him through mistreatment of his loved ones, and forces the Colonel to evacuate the base of all its armed forces. Rory, retrieving the baby from Kovarian, brings her to Amy; reunited, they share a happy moment with the Doctor, amplified when Madame Vastra reports the entire cohort of enemy forces to have withdrawn, rendering the base theirs without a life lost. However, Rory is unsettled upon recalling River's words on the subject of the Doctor's ultimate fall, and becomes distrustful of the situation. The Doctor retrieves an old crib, revealed to be his own, from the TARDIS, and offers it to Amy and Rory for Melody's use; finally given a moment to consider her terrifying experiences, Amy begins to grasp the realities of the fact that her physical body has been imprisoned on Demon's Run for months.
Madame Vastra requests to speak with the Doctor privately, expressing doubts about Melody's full humanity. The Doctor insists that the baby is entirely human, but Vastra reveals that investigation of the Demon's Run files have suggested that Melody possesses a trace of Time Lord DNA. Inquiring whether the Doctor can pinpoint the date of the baby's conception, Vastra expresses a fear that Melody may have been imbued with vortex energy in the womb, giving her certain Time Lord qualities which could theoretically be enhanced in order to bring a full-fledged Time Lord into being. The Doctor resists the idea that anyone would be willing to take such steps to procure another of his race, but Vastra insists that knowledge of the Doctor himself would be enough to inspire their enemies to create another Time Lord as a weapon against him. Disturbed by this insight into his opponents' design, the Doctor remains alone in the control room as Vastra, her suspicions aroused by the recent revelations, rejoins the others by the TARDIS. As a holographic projection of Madame Kovarian appears, taunting the Doctor with her safe escape from him, and inquiring whether he has yet understood her plans, a force field springs into being around the TARDIS, blocking all access to it. Outposts of Silurian guards are silently taken out by returning cohorts of Headless Monks, and Lorna arrives too late to warn the small group by the TARDIS of the danger they're in. Madame Kovarian informs the Doctor that Melody will be raised as a weapon despite all of his efforts to protect her, while Rory attempts to find Amy and Melody a safe place to wait out the upcoming battle against the encroaching Monks.
Reaching a crucial revelation, the Doctor rushes from the control room towards the central chamber where the fight is raging; Lorna, Dorium, and Strax are injured or killed, while the Doctor desperately attempts to access the room. Before he is able to do so, however, Melody dissolves into Flesh in Amy's arms, throwing her into hysteria. The last of the Monks are destroyed as the Doctor finally makes his way onto the scene. In the aftermath of the battle, Strax dies while the Doctor looks over the room helplessly; he attempts to apologize to Rory and Amy for his failure to realize that Melody was a clone, but they both react to him with anger and resentment. Vashta asks him to speak with Lorna, who is dying from a wound inflicted by one of the Monks; he attempts to comfort her as she slips into unconsciousness, telling her that he remembers their adventure together in the Gamma Forest long ago. Leaving her body, he returns to Amy and Rory, unsure of what to say to them in the aftermath of the revelation of Melody's true nature. As the survivors of the battle sit in silence, River appears abruptly, incurring the Doctor's wrath for failing to make an appearance earlier. However, she throws him into a guilty silence by pointing out that the entire situation stems from his own increasing tenancy to exploit his reputation in order to inspire terror in his enemies, giving rise to the near-universal belief that the Doctor, and therefore by extension any Time Lord, can be viewed as a invincible warrior rather than as the wise man his name suggests. She tells him that Melody has been stolen solely in fear of the Doctor, throwing the blame for the elaborate kidnapping at his own door. Troubled by River's accusations, the Doctor demands to be told once and for all who she is; knowing that she has no way out of the situation, River quietly and cryptically tells him her identity, inspiring awe in the Doctor but leaving Amy and Rory in the dark. Apparently resorted to equanimity, the Doctor departs in the TARDIS with a promise to find and protect Melody at any price. Nerves strung to breaking point, Amy retrieves a discarded weapon and demands at gunpoint that River tell her what she told the Doctor; quietly, River tells Amy and Rory to focus on the embroidered fabric given to Amy by Lorna and allow the TARDIS matrix to translate it for them. Amy insists that she already knows her daughter's name, but River informs them that Melody's name could only be roughly approximated in the language of the Gamma Forest, which, due to environmental causes, lacks a word for "pond". Uncomprehending, Amy tries again to read the embroidered words, and is astounded to see that her daughter's name has been translated as "River Song". As she and Rory are thrown into a shocked silence, River confirms that she is indeed Melody Pond, their daughter.
First of all, let's mention what any Who fan could probably tell you; Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat employ two entirely different brands of "epic". Using season finales as an example, Davies tends to go in for enormous scale and spectacle, featuring as many places, characters, and gargantuan special effects as possible; meanwhile, Moffat's finales lean toward the complex, delicate, and mind-bending. Considering this, and belying Moffat's name in the opening credits, "A Good Man Goes to War" is very reminiscent of Davies' style, bearing in mind both the positive and negative implications of that statement. Multiple enormous sets, legions of foes, far-flung travels, an enormous influx of returning characters from previous episodes, and a fast-paced, relatively straightforward plot all go against Moffat's established routine and strongly recall Davies' era as showrunner. On the plus side, this episode delivers everything it promised; an epic battle culminating in shocking revelations and a major cliffhanger. Conversely, however, the entire thing rings slightly hollow, as the sheer determined scale of the installment threatens to swamp its emotional impact.
As Rory and the Doctor abandon their typical methods and reputations to regain Amy through sheer intimidation, we get to see a side of both which has only been hinted at in the past; Rory, however, goes through the most astonishing transformation. An interesting element to consider is Rory's increasingly changing role in the series; to date, new-Who companions have a habit of being ordinary-but-nevertheless-powerful individuals who ultimately save the universe in one way or another, and Amy had her era of that near-reverential treatment in Season Five. The point is that regular companions have been regularly presented in that light, but very few male/recurring members of the TARDIS team, with the possible exception of Jack Harkness, have been portrayed similarly. However, this episode solidifies the increasing trend of Rory slowly edging Amy out of her place in the spotlight, featuring Amy as an ordinary girl caught up in huge events, while Rory is the unstoppable force striding across galaxies and bending starfleets to his will. His scene at the beginning of the episode as he confronts the legion of Cybermen and stands framed against the fiery explosion of hundreds of space ships is worthy of Rose "I can see every atom of your existence" Tyler. The context is most certainly different, but the overall vibe is similar, and it is something of an interesting deviation from established tradition for a male, once-recurring companion to finally be cast in this light. Centurion-Rory at the top of his form is almost twice the Doctor's age, and has seen and experienced things that the nurse from Leadworth could never have imagined. Circumstances may never allow such a development, but it would be incredibly interesting to see the Doctor and Rory traveling on their own for a while. Considering the person Rory is fast becoming, casting him as a sole companion would create a fascinating dynamic.
As Amy struggles to preserve both her child and her own wellbeing while in captivity on Demon's Run, we are introduced to a set of new characters, including Madame Kovarian, thus-far ambiguous villain of Amy's plotline, as well as the young soldier Lorna, no doubt one of the many people scattered throughout the universe who spend their lives in a vague state of constant waiting after having experienced a solitary encounter with the Doctor. As the battle rages and comes to a close, Lorna is able to spend her final moments with the Doctor, who, it is strongly implied, has not yet experienced the visit to Gamma Forest which shaped Lorna's life; this plot thread is left open, possibly to be explored at a later time. Simultaneously, the episode packs its first big punch: the revelation of Melody as a Ganger duplicate, the real child having been taken by Madame Kovarian to be raised as a powerful antagonist to the Doctor. As the characters are still reeling from the unexpected nature of this blow, River appears to deal one even more powerful: Melody will grow up to be her, she is the stolen child... the cryptic woman mysteriously seeping into the Doctor's life for years now has an explanation. A tendril of his future reaching into his past, the grown-up child of his current companions, he met her long before he knew either of their names, and her influence on his life is still only partially explained. Will she become the girl in the spacesuit? Was it the girl in the spacesuit who killed the Doctor, and, if so, how much influence had Amy and Rory had on her life, and why was she located so far in the past of planet Earth? The episode ends on this searing note, a revelation only incompletely explained, and we will be forced to wait in order to see all of its ramifications dealt with.
Complaints:
- As mentioned above, the overall tone of the episode leans toward the grandiose, rather eclipsing the impact of the enormous character revelations we're given. It's a particular style of storytelling and a matter of personal preference, but in a way, it would have been nice to have ended the half-season on a quieter, more character-based note.
- Harking back to the events of the Season Five finale, Rory reassuming his identity as the Lone Centurion is crucial to his character in this installment; however, considering the fact that the universe was rebooted at the end of his two-thousand year vigil and the history in which he guarded the Pandorica never took place, isn't it erroneous to assume that his reputation as the lonely guardian of the box would still be standing? His taking on the role again is understandable as a matter of personal inspiration, but the idea that his name and history would have spread beyond the TARDIS is rather odd.
Thoughts:
- Regardless of Melody's future identity, scenes featuring the Doctor, Amy, and Rory interacting with the baby are the highlights of the episode; the Doctor producing his own Gallifreyan crib for her use is possibly the stylistic and emotional high-point of the installment, albeit in a quiet way.
- Presumably, the events referenced by River as the Doctor's farthest fall have not yet occurred, as nothing in the episode could be construed as such... either way, the repercussions of Demon's Run are very far from over.
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