ANDREW'S
DOCTOR WHO REVIEWS 
This is a weird sort of story, it’s all so much nonsense
really, all building up to the big reveal at the end, but it introduces us to
so many things that would become beloved over the next few years of the show.
So looking back on it, it is more significant than realised at the time..
Having revealed that the Amy that has been travelling with
them is a Flesh avatar, the Doctor and Rory recruit a group of allies (most of
whom we’ve never seen before) to track her down to the asteroid known as
Demon’s Run. Amongst those gathered are a Silurian, Lady Vastra (Neve McIntosh)
and her human wife Jenny (Catrin Stewart), a Sontaran nurse called Strax (Dan
Starkey) and Dorium Maldovar (Simon Fisher-Becker).
River Song cannot be persuaded to come along, she tells Rory
this is where the Doctor finds out who she really is.
Amy and her new baby, Melody Pond, are being held captive by
Madame Kovarian (Frances Barber) and her army of Headless Monks. Melody has
Time Lord DNA having been conceived onboard the TARDIS.
The Monks defend the asteroid, Dorium is beheaded and Strax
is mortally wounded. The attack, though, is successful and Amy and Melody are
rescued. Then Madame Kovarian contacts the Doctor and tells him she has fooled
him twice and will turn Melody into a weapon against him, then the baby that
Amy is cradling is revealed as being made of the Flesh.
River Song arrives and she is berated for not being there to
help, however, River reveals that her name is a corruption of Melody Pond
(River – Pond, Melody – Song) and that she is Amy and Rory’s daughter.
There’s a lot going on here, and it definitely advances the
whole River/Amy/Doctor/Rory complicated plotline. However, take that away and
there is a lot of posturing, speechifying and fighting to no real purpose. It’s
all about those last 10 minutes or so, which are breathtakingly surprising and
stops this whole story being a time waster, it just takes an awfully long time
to get to.
It actually formed a mid-season stop with a few months
before the next story started, so it was quite a cliffhanger.
The introduction of Vastra, Jenny and Strax in this story is
a masterstroke, although they haven’t formed the Paternoster Gang yet, the
characters are there and were definitely too good to leave in this one story –
they would become a much-loved part of the later Matt Smith and earlier Peter
Capaldi stories.
Karen Gillan gives one of her better performances here, her
reaction when her baby turns to gloop in her arms is one of her greatest
moments on the series and as ever both Matt Smith and Alex Kingston are great.
In the end this is a piece of a massive jigsaw and not a
story in its own right, taking in isolation it isn’t much, but it is pivotal in
the ongoing complex storyline of Steven Moffat’s labyrinthine imagination.
NEXT UP: LET'S KILL HITLER
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