Previously on Doctor Who: the most important baby girl in the universe was kidnapped and taken to a secret base via a plot involving an identical copy of her mother. In this episode, our heroes try to rescue her and, in the process, "kill" another copy of her mother. (At least River Song's blood can't frakking cure cancer.)
Okay, now that I've got the obvious Who-Galactica comparison out of the way, let's get down to business.
It's been approximately three months since last we saw our heroes (and unlike BSG's Season 2, there's no cancer, pregnancy, or election timeline to screw up during the hiatus - stop it, Jim, stop it now!)
So they meet the Doctor in a field, and he's wearing a different coat for no discernable reason other than this one is frankly cooler. His costume is now a cross between Patrick Troughton's and Tom Baker's (minus the scarf). Of course, he switches back to the old one at the end of the episode. They also meet Amy's never-before-mentioned friend, Mels, who hijacks the TARDIS at gunpoint and suggests they all go off to, well, kill Hitler.
Adolf gets about two minutes of screen time. The Doctor inadvertently foils an assassination attempt by crash-landing the TARDIS on the assassin, and then Rory shoves him in a closet. And that is it. No onscreen sermonizing from the Doctor about how killing him would screw up history, no last-ditch attempt to end his miserable existence and save millions of lives...
Ah well. Hitler manages to wound Mels before being locked in the closet, and at first I thought "well, now you've gotten rid of that nonsensical and out-of-nowhere plot device designed to get you to 1938 Berlin, now get on with Genesis of the Daleks II." And boy, was I wrong. Mels is of course short for Melody, and Mels regenerates into River. Two important firsts here: First interracial regeneration, and first time the new version is significantly older than the previous one.
River and the Doctor do their usual dance, except this time River's kind of clueless and also programmed to kill the Doctor. Madness ensues on an only slightly more sane level than that of Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death, and then River finally manages to poison him. Then she goes on a rampage around Berlin, only to decide to ultimately save the Doctor.
Oh, remember the assassination attempt I mentioned earlier? They're time-travelers from the future who crew one human-sized ship that can shapeshift and turn into, among other things, a Nazi officer and Amy Pond. Their mission is to take criminals out of time near the end of their timestreams and give them hell. Because these guys are apparently so evil and sadistic that they a) respect the timeline, and b) don't care about the millions of people that Hitler killed. That said, they seem to count the Doctor as one of the good guys, so they're naturally all too eager to give River hell for killing him. So, even though they agree with his philosophy of not interfering in the timeline, they don't care about his philosophy of routinely showering his most dangerous enemies with mercy.
Anyway, their security system consists of floating metal jellyfish who electrocute any unauthorized personnel, so Amy disables their detectors so the jellyfish think everyone's unauthorized. Then they run around like crazy because she can't think to re-enable her and Rory's detectors. Then River saves the Doctor and uses up all her regenerations to do so, because status quo is god and Moffat wrote himself into a corner regarding the way "Forest of the Dead" ended, and then they stick her in a hospital at the end of the Universe and let her find her way back to them.
Comments on the arc: It's becoming increasingly clear that the Doctor knows that he's going to die on the beach, and if the Question that preceeds the Silence is "Doctor Who?" then I'm done watching until Moffat leaves.
As with the previous two-parter, this one has a much better conclusion than a setup, even if it's all still a tad insane. Also, how did Rory and Amy get from Demon's Run to Leadworth at the beginning of the episode? Just once this season, I would like Moffat to pick up his cliffhangers exactly where he left off (unless he has a good reason for doing so, as in, he's going to have an "Unfinished Business"-style episode where he reveals everything that went on in between episodes).
No rating yet. Waiting to see how the rest of the season's arc plays out.
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