Doctor Who: "A Good Man Goes to War"

Season 6, Episode 7

A case for increased serialization

“Good men do not need rules. Today is not the day that you find out why I have so many.”

-The Doctor

In my review last week, I used a significant amount of words to talk about how I feared that tonight’s episode wouldn’t work, based mostly on the fact that Doctor Who has never been all that good with building up its seasons’ arcs. I suppose that I owe Steven Moffat an apology, considering that this episode was pretty great, but for now my concerns were legitimate, and they might still be in the future, depending on how much the show embraces serialization in the future. Now, I’m not saying that every episode Doctor Who does from here on out has to be part of a fully serialized arc. While the highly serialized “The Impossible Astronaut”/"Day of the Moon” gave this season a real narrative momentum, episodes like “The Doctor’s Wife”, an episode that had very little to do with the ongoing narrative, were equally fantastic and showed just how good this show could be in standalone episode format. And while some critics may claim that this season’s duller episodes have dragged because they failed to really tie into this larger arc, I think such talk lets the writers off the hook for their basic lack of storytelling skills, and it also proves that we’ve learned nothing about the perils of over-serialization from the seventh and fourth seasons of Buffy and Angel.

But it still must be noted that “A Good Man Goes to War” worked because it so played into the larger narrative, and it seemed to avoid the pratfalls of most two-parters because of it. Because so many two-parters use their first halves for set-up, it leaves those hours feeling almost lifeless, as nothing was accomplished, and often builds up false expectations for the second halves as we expect them to accomplish enough to make up for the first hour. “A Good Man” however already had a bunch of ongoing questions/plotlines to play into that it could answer some of them – River is Amy’s daughter, who was most likely the child in the space suit; the eyepatch lady is part of a larger army meant to destroy The Doctor, and they plan on using Amy’s daughter to do so; the child was able to regenerate because she was conceived aboard the TARDIS – while still giving us plenty of new questions to ask while we go into the break. What does The Doctor now plan to do with this information? Even given that the baby version of River is sent off to God Knows Where, how did River end up with a reverse timeline trajectory to The Doctor? And what weird Oedipal-esque issues would cause the child of a companion would have a romantic relationship with The Doctor? (Okay, I may be alone on that last one.)

(And while we’re on the subject, I believe it was the grown-up version of River who “killed” The Doctor back in “The Impossible Astronaut”, given all the clues that were dropped back in seasons four and five.)

But none of these revelations would have made the episode work in and of itself. (See: “The Almost People”.) No, the best thing about this episode was the fact that it played to some of the show’s best strengths. For starters, the show gave us yet another one of The Doctor’s brilliant plans, delivered in piecemeal to the viewers until the final explosive reveal, a move that usually works like gangbusters for the show and delivered largely here as well. (I also enjoyed that this episode spread some of that epicness to Rory as well, with both his badass delivery of the line “Would you like me to repeat the question?” amid a sea of explosions and him being the heroic figure that Amy was describing to Melody.)

Even stronger than these moments was the thematic string that weaved through the episode, as it forced us to ask a basic question: Is The Doctor a good man? The show has played around with this question several times since the show’s revival (and I’m sure there were times in the classic series as well), but since this is a family show, episodes often backpedaled away from them even more quickly than they bring them up. Anti-heroes aren’t really meant to exist in family shows, and so Doctor Who plays jump rope with this question, much to my annoyance. (Actually, I have many reasons why I think the show’s current family-oriented status holds in back creatively, but that’s a rant for another time.)

But the fact still remains that The Doctor does seem to cause a lot of death and destruction wherever he turns up – even if he never intends to do so, and even if he more often than not saves a majority of human life – and it was good for the show to unequivocally show that here. All of those species that turned up to help The Doctor – with the exception of the captain from “Curse of the Black Spot”, whose appearance seemed a bit out of place – did so in order to settle some sort of debt with The Doctor. Though the respected and fought for him, they were also serving out some sort of punishment, and some of them seem legitimately afraid of him. And as evil as this army was depicted, one can’t deny the fact that if they feel that they have to create a weapon to stop The Doctor and the destruction he cause, then his wake must be very devastating and far-reaching indeed.

The way Matt Smith looks, and the way he presents his version of the Doctor – very waifish is both instances – he sometimes has difficulty expressing the darker side of The Doctor that Eccleston - and to a lesser extent, Tennant – were able to convey. But by presenting the audience with these hard facts, it helps to counter that, and it also helps to set the darker tone for the back-half of the series as a whole. With Rory and Amy losing their baby, and the Doctor’s “death” to be addressed before the end of the year, the show needs to achieve a tone to match the severity of these events, and if tonight’s episode is any indication, the show just might be able to achieve this, and in the process become the best season (or at least the best seasonal arc) that the show has ever done.

Coming Up: Doctor Who returns in September with “Let’s Kill Hitler”, the title of which alone has me excited.

Quotes, Etc.:

Apparently there is some behind-the-scenes drama about financing, which may or may not affect the 2012 batch of episodes.

“We’re the thin/fat, gay, married, Anglican Marines. Why would we need names?”

“Oh, are you boys dressing up as Romans now? Did someone finally read my memo?”

“Stevie Wonder performed in 1814?” “Well, don’t tell him that.”

“Unless there’s two of them.” “No, that’s an entirely different birthday.”

“Why would you need me? I’m old! I’m fat! I’m blue!”

“Can I borrow your gun?” “Why?” “Cause I have a feeling you’re going to keep talking?”

“Eww. Kissing and crying. I’ll be back in a bit.”

 “And you should call her ‘mummy’, not ‘big milk thing’.” Apparently The Doctor speaks baby.

“I asked him to turn something off, and it was all ‘But I don’t want to punch a hole in the space-time continuum.’”