Amy: So there are other Time Lords, yeah?
Doctor: No. There were, but there aren’t… Just me now. Long story. It was a bad day. Bad stuff happened. And you know what, I’d love to forget it all, every last bit of it. But I don’t. Not ever.
We got a strong introduction to both the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond last week, and this week we got to see more of the Doctor from Amy’s point of view. By now, the audience basically knows the Doctor’s history, and we see bits of Eleven’s personality taking over where Ten left off. Amy, however, knows nothing about the Doctor outside of the brief but intense encounters she’s had with him since childhood. How odd it must be to feel you know someone and then realize you’re missing huge pieces of the puzzle; Amy knows nothing about the Time Lords or their war, that he’s had many traveling companions before her, that they’ve all broken his heart. Eleven seems much more reluctant at this point to reveal much about his past to Amy (notice how he avoids answering when she asks if he’s a father). Is this because their relationship is so new or because the Doctor knows he always, inevitably, loses his companion?
I rarely watch episodes of Doctor Who with commercials, relying mostly on Netflix Watch Instantly or DVDs, so it was incredibly frustrating to watch this live last night. It felt like there were a ridiculous amount of breaks, and they were all badly timed (so take note, BBC America).
Anyway, this episode takes place 1300 years in the future. The people of Britain are living on Starship UK, a sort of floating city of survivors who had to flee from Earth when it became uninhabitable. Citizens are kept in line by the Smilers, who watch over everything in glass booths, dressed in judges’ robes. Their wooden doll faces have three expressions: content, angry, and demon that is about to murder you.
When you’ve done something wrong, the Smilers make this face and the floor beneath you opens up, dropping you toward the mysterious beast below. When the Doctor and Amy arrive, a little girl named Mandy is visible on the TARDIS screen. She’s crying, having just lost one of her friends to the beast. The Doctor lectures Amy about time travel, telling her that they cannot interfere with the affairs of others, no matter how difficult that may be. Amy stares at Mandy, wondering aloud how the Doctor can remain so cool and detached. Before she can turn back to him, the Doctor appears on the screen, comforting the little girl. It’s a great, funny moment and one that perfectly captures the essence of the Doctor; he has to help, even when he really, really shouldn’t.
Amy and the Doctor split up to do some investigating, and Amy immediately proves herself to be a fearless companion. She strolls past a “KEEP OUT” sign and picks a lock, managing to get a glimpse of the beast before being captured and drugged. She wakes in a voting booth, with a video screen and three buttons before her: Protest, Record, and Forget. She must watch a video and learn the truth behind Starship UK, and then she must decide whether to protest, possibly killing everyone onboard, or have her memory wiped of the last few minutes. Every citizen of Starship UK must make this choice at the age of sixteen, and then again every five years after that. In a quick sequence, we see bits and pieces of the video before Amy, upset and shaken, presses the Forget button. A video of herself appears on screen, which she must have recorded before her memory wipe, urging her to get the Doctor off this ship. This was very reminiscent of the Doctor’s cryptic warnings to Sally Sparrow in “Blink,” and it’s just as effective here.
The Doctor meets back up with Amy, and after a disgusting jaunt through the beast’s mouth, they team up with Liz 10, who, as it turns out, is the Queen. She is familiar with the Doctor, having heard stories of his existence from her family. In a nice nod to previous episodes, she knows that Victoria knighted and exiled him on the same day (“Tooth and Claw”) and that he had an affair with Elizabeth I (“The Shakespeare Code” & “The End of Time”). Liz 10 has been ruling for 10 years, and she’s determined that secrets are being kept from her. The group is sent to the Tower of London, which is actually in the bottom of the ship, and they discover exactly how Starship UK gets its power.
When the Earth was being destroyed, people were dying and children were screaming in the streets. Suddenly, a Star Whale appeared “like a miracle.” They captured it, built their ship around it, and have been torturing it into steering their vessel through the sky. Liz 10 has been ruling for much longer than 10 years; her body clock has been stopped and she’s actually around 300 years old. Every so often, she figures out what’s going on and must make the choice between giving up the throne and stopping the ship, or forgetting everything and carrying on as usual.
Though the middle of this episode had been dragging, this scene takes the action up a few notches. The Doctor has three options (three again, which seems to be a theme here): release the whale and allow the humans to die, allow them to keep torturing the whale in order to survive, or send a massive electric shock to the whale’s brain, essentially making it a vegetable that will continue to steer the ship, but no longer be in pain. He chooses the third option, and as he says, “and then, I find a new name, because I won’t be the Doctor anymore.” He realizes what Amy did when she chose to forget; she knew that he would be faced with an impossible decision, and she kept the information from him. The Doctor is furious, and tells Amy that he’s taking her home when this is all over. Matt Smith has done extremely well with the comedic elements so far, and here we see a great example of his skill with the Doctor’s rage. It’s also interesting to see a Doctor that refuses to give his companion a second chance. When Rose messed with her father’s timeline and caused all sorts of chaos, Nine was intimidating and angry, but all Rose had to do was apologize and he accepted it. Not so in this case.
As the Doctor works to set up the electric charge, Amy realizes the connection between the Star Whale and the Doctor. The whale was the last of its kind, and offered itself up as humanity’s salvation because it couldn’t bear to hear the children crying. It had to help. Amy forces Liz 10 to hit the Abdicate button, and the whale is released, but it keeps steering the ship, just as before. The Doctor can’t see the solution to the problem because he’s too close to it, and it’s again made clear just how much he needs a companion.
All is forgiven as the Doctor and Amy head to the TARDIS, in search of another adventure. She’s about to tell him that she’s supposed to be getting married when they get interrupted by a call from Winston Churchill, who needs the Doctor’s help. We get one last glimpse of Starship UK, which bears a now-familiar crack along its side.
MAY 1: Winston Churchill and the return of the Daleks in “Victory of the Daleks.” Also, hopefully, poor Amy can wear something other than her nightgown.
Screencaps from Sonic Biro and BBC America.
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