They're baaaaack!

In one week's time the second half of the 2011 season of Doctor Who gets underway, and will hopefully answer some very important questions (and stop us feeling quite so guilty about giving up on the current series of Torchwood). How does the whole River thing work? Why is the lady with the eyepatch such a total bitch? How many times will Rory die? Will Amy continue to be a whiny twerp? Head under the cut for some first half discussion, the trailer for the upcoming episodes, and a wee bit of gloating by yours truly.

Firstly, the gloating. The last episode before the mid season break aired on the 5th of June, and at the end of that episode we discover that River is Amy and Rory's baby from the fuuuutuuuure. I tweeted the following on the 30th of May:

I did actually start to get an inkling two or three episodes into the season, but it seemed like such a ridiculous theory that I pretty much dismissed it. There's a lesson here people. If you think it, tweet it. Eventually you'll get something right.

So, when we left our intrepid time-travellers in 'A Good Man Goes To War', Rory and the Doctor had found Amy on board the asteroid base 'Demon's Run', the baby was there, and everyone thought everything was hunky dory. Turns out the baby was actually a 'Flesh' avatar, and when Madame Kovarian (eyepatch lady) reappeared and told the baby to wake up it dissolved into liquid in Amy's arms. Amy was not very happy with this turn of events. River (who had been absent for most of the episode) turned up and everyone was all 'WTF, River? Where the hell were you all this time??' Meaningful looks were exchanged, the Doctor had his lightbulb moment, and rushed off in the TARDIS to rescue the real version of the kid. Amy and Rory, still completely in the dark, are then informed by River that, SURPRISE! She's their kid. From the future. So she can't actually really help rescue herself, cause that would be weird.


The opening episode of Season 6 Part 2 is titled 'Let's Kill Hitler', and while some of the word on the street has made it sound a bit horrible, the BBC synopsis obviously makes it sound a little more enticing:

'In the desperate search for Melody Pond, the TARDIS crash lands in 1930s Berlin, bringing the Doctor face to face with the greatest war criminal in the Universe. And Hitler. The Doctor must teach his adversaries that time travel has responsibilities – and in so doing, learns a harsh lesson in the cruellest warfare of all.'

It will be interesting to see how they handle the subject matter in this episode. You can hardly have an episode with Hitler in it and then have the Doctor running around with his goofy slapstick humour. I'm hoping for quite a lot from the second half of this season, mainly due to the fact I've been quite disappointed thus far. I really love Matt Smith as the Doctor (far more than I thought I would), and there's been some great MOMENTS over the last season and a half, but it's really failed to click for me. It very much feels like the weekly storytelling has been sacrificed to give time to overly convoluted story arcs. Does 'the crack' match up to 'Bad Wolf'? Is 'Melody Pond' as good as 'Vote Saxon?' My vote is for no. So I'm crossing my fingers that the end of this season brings back some of the love that has been slowly fading.

Let me love you again, Doctor! I want to love you!

(Amy, feel free to leave any time you want).