A Fan-Faith Shaken

Doctor Who is one of my favorite shows of all time.

Though I've only been a fan for a short time, it's hard not to love the quirky mad man with a box.

Specifically this one.

The current season (series 6) is the first one I've had to watch live, instead of on Netflix or DVD, so I'm still getting used to the week-long waits and BBCA's schedule. The "summer break" is taking the most getting used to. I mean, who stops mid-summer? What's up with that? (get it?)

Which brings me to my point:
The summer finale disappointed me.

Granted, I've been disappointed by Doctor Who episodes before, but not Stephen Moffat. Stephen Moffat is the brain above all brains in television writing. The man is a personal hero of mine and I'm constantly amazed by what he does for this show. Good Man Goes to War changed that.

After the build up with the Rebel Flesh and Almost People, coupled with the teaser trailer and previews leaked on the internet, I was pretty excited for this episode. It looked promising, what with Cybermen, Amy's baby, River's true identity and some epic Rory lines, I was pumped.

Then, it aired.

It started off strong, with an encouraging Amy speech and the Doctor gathering an army. River freaked me out with her promises of not being able to be at the battle until the end. The time for epicness was upon us!

It continued strong, with the Doctor making as grand of an entrance as ever. It started to drop off, however after I realized that the Cybermen were wasted, only being featured for literally a minute, seemingly shoehorned in so as to excite the fans in the trailers.

Without going into detail about every minute of the episode, let's just jump to the specifics in my disappointment.

First off, the whole "plot twist" of River being Amy's daughter doesn't feel right at all. I mean, the Doctor loving and getting with Amy's (his best friend) daughter is just really odd. Plus, with him being there during her conception and whatnot just seems really weird. The unveiling of it all also seemed to just take away from the dramatic build-up of the first half of the episode, making the whole thing feel really awkward and choppy.

Second, what happened to he'll "climb higher" and "fall farther" that River talked about? There was nothing super dramatic that would have be evident. The characters had too actually point out, in the exact same words, when it had happened. Granted, I guess it could be seen as an emotional and soul crushing journey, but I wasn't really expecting "emotional", so it was a little harder to believe.

Third, where the heck are the Silence? The season premiere proved that they were a formidable and probably frequent enemy and then they disappeared so that we could have a pirate episode...

Ok, I guess it's slightly alright.

It was also implied that the Silence had an interest in the baby girl, yet this was ignored in the summer finale. Instead, we had the weird lady with an eyepatch who snatched the baby. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I just really wanted the Silence to make another appearance before the fall.

That was really all the complaints I about the episode, but the combination of all of it left a sour taste in my mouth. Overall, it was a good episode, I just felt that it was unworthy of being a "summer finale." It seemed as though it couldn't make up it's mind on what it wanted to be: dramatic or emotional. In the end, it seemed to try and combine the two...badly. Thankfully, the name for the next episode alone makes me excited. Here's hoping Stephen Moffat returns to his normal, spectacular self in Let's Kill Hitler. 

I want one.