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I'm just going to list my issues with it.

- "Mels" being a shoehorned plot device. If she didn't conveniently want to kill Hitler where the the robot conveniently went to the wrong point in Hitler's time stream, the episode wouldn't have happened. And while I appreciate the flashbacks for the light they shed on Amy and Rory's relationship, there's no reason to care about Mels herself.

- The Doctor "dying." All the credit in the world to Matt Smith for acting his socks off, but I did not care. It was bad enough with Rory, but now these fake deaths have become absolutely ridiculous with The Doctor is getting his share.

- Melody being able to turn from a lifetime of being brainwashed on a dime. After everything she's been through, it's just ridiculous that she would suddenly be good.

- The regeneration deus ex machina to save The Doctor. I know that "The Christmas Invasion" established that there's a 15 hour window, but that was too much.

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I'm just going to list my issues with it.

- "Mels" being a shoehorned plot device. If she didn't conveniently want to kill Hitler where the the robot conveniently went to the wrong point in Hitler's time stream, the episode wouldn't have happened. And while I appreciate the flashbacks for the light they shed on Amy and Rory's relationship, there's no reason to care about Mels herself.

- The Doctor "dying." All the credit in the world to Matt Smith for acting his socks off, but I did not care. It was bad enough with Rory, but now these fake deaths have become absolutely ridiculous with The Doctor is getting his share.

- Melody being able to turn from a lifetime of being brainwashed on a dime. After everything she's been through, it's just ridiculous that she would suddenly be good.

- The regeneration deus ex machina to save The Doctor. I know that "The Christmas Invasion" established that there's a 15 hour window, but that was too much.

I have just the one issue with it:

Mels said she'd regenerated once before, which we saw in Day of The Moon. But that was 1969 New York. By the 1990's, she should be around 30. How is she the same age as Rory and Amy?

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I'm just going to list my issues with it.

- "Mels" being a shoehorned plot device. If she didn't conveniently want to kill Hitler where the the robot conveniently went to the wrong point in Hitler's time stream, the episode wouldn't have happened. And while I appreciate the flashbacks for the light they shed on Amy and Rory's relationship, there's no reason to care about Mels herself.

- The Doctor "dying." All the credit in the world to Matt Smith for acting his socks off, but I did not care. It was bad enough with Rory, but now these fake deaths have become absolutely ridiculous with The Doctor is getting his share.

- Melody being able to turn from a lifetime of being brainwashed on a dime. After everything she's been through, it's just ridiculous that she would suddenly be good.

- The regeneration deus ex machina to save The Doctor. I know that "The Christmas Invasion" established that there's a 15 hour window, but that was too much.

I have just the one issue with it:

Mels said she'd regenerated once before, which we saw in Day of The Moon. But that was 1969 New York. By the 1990's, she should be around 30. How is she the same age as Rory and Amy?

OK, I can answer all these-

JasonC, she established later on that she is capable of controlling her ageing when she said she'd subtly reverse her age in her new body to freak people out.

Mel as as a shoehorned plot device- I take it you've seen plenty of Who before? The whole premise of the show is that the Tardis dumps them somewhere unexpected at a pivotal point. They hardly ever have full control of when and where they go but they always arrive just as an Alien invasion starts or where there's a mystery to be solved. The Hitler/Justice thing was just another example of that. They once had a cliffhanger here the Tardis was hit by the Titanic!

The Doctor's death is never going to be hugely suspenseful for the audience, because they're never going to actually kill him off. It's his TV show. Are you going to care more at the end of this storyline when River actually supposedly kills him? Do you care when he's supposedly in mortal peril every single episode? It depends on how well they do their job telling the story. All it was was a way of controlling the plot, both with the Justice thing and River. Regarding the breaking of her program I presume that once she had actually successfully killed him the conditioning was broken. For example, Terminator 3- Arnie fights his conditioning. It's stupid, and shouldn't work that way for a machine. Counter-example- Rory as an Auton. Once he'd achieved his task, shot Amy and the Doctor was imprisoned the programming was gone. Why wouldn't it work the same for River, given that precedent in the exact same show?

The regeneration deal was cool, it shows how much River gave up, that she turned a corner. There was nothing that she did with that effect that should have been a surprise to anyone.

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I'm just going to list my issues with it.

- Melody being able to turn from a lifetime of being brainwashed on a dime. After everything she's been through, it's just ridiculous that she would suddenly be good.

I think I can justify that one. She was brainwashed to cause the death of the Doctor, which she did. Which means she will not need to have killing the Doctor being her main mission now, and she can do whatever she wants, as her brainwashed mission is done He did die.

Melody annoyed the hell out of me, so I enjoyed when it was revealed that she was River "You named your daughter after your daughter."

I'm thinking that River was able to change history after series 5 happened, so's she became a part of Amy and Rory's life was being retconned in, because she can, she'd been waiting around since the 1930's to get involved in their lives.

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Mel as as a shoehorned plot device- I take it you've seen plenty of Who before? The whole premise of the show is that the Tardis dumps them somewhere unexpected at a pivotal point. They hardly ever have full control of when and where they go but they always arrive just as an Alien invasion starts or where there's a mystery to be solved. The Hitler/Justice thing was just another example of that. They once had a cliffhanger here the Tardis was hit by the Titanic!

Sure, but that doesn't change the fact that Moffat wedged in this character with a pivotal role in the series without even one prior appearance. We don't even know how she made it all the way over to England. To be fair, this might be revealed later on during the season, but for right now, it's like Moffat pulling a Saw ending.

The Doctor's death is never going to be hugely suspenseful for the audience, because they're never going to actually kill him off. It's his TV show. Are you going to care more at the end of this storyline when River actually supposedly kills him? Do you care when he's supposedly in mortal peril every single episode? It depends on how well they do their job telling the story. All it was was a way of controlling the plot, both with the Justice thing and River. Regarding the breaking of her program I presume that once she had actually successfully killed him the conditioning was broken. For example, Terminator 3- Arnie fights his conditioning. It's stupid, and shouldn't work that way for a machine. Counter-example- Rory as an Auton. Once he'd achieved his task, shot Amy and the Doctor was imprisoned the programming was gone. Why wouldn't it work the same for River, given that precedent in the exact same show?

I don't spend every episode at the edge of my seat, biting my nails that this one might be The Doctor's end. But there is still a sliver of suspense that has you wondering if he'll get out of his latest predicament. And every time one of these "death" deaths happens, they're flaunting that there's no reason to have any suspense at all, not even that sliver.

As far as River's conditioning, she has been conditioned pretty much since birth. The prime directive to kill The Doctor has been with her all her life. That's quite different from a programmed Auton.

The regeneration deal was cool, it shows how much River gave up, that she turned a corner. There was nothing that she did with that effect that should have been a surprise to anyone.

I'm glad we had spent a decent amount of time with this darker River so that her sacrifice really had an impact. Except rather than explore the story possibilities, it is resolved in one episode. And we'll just have to agree to disagree about the solution being cool.

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Oh I loved this. Excellent moments for everyone really, the reveals were satisfying, it was just... COOL.

And also, given what happened with Mels, this will hopefully mean that...

nobody can suggest that future Doctors can't be non-white

Also, it was nice to see some familiar faces again - even the first one. I kinda wish Matt Smith in tails could be his regular costume.

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I'm just going to list my issues with it.

- The regeneration deus ex machina to save The Doctor. I know that "The Christmas Invasion" established that there's a 15 hour window, but that was too much.

This is actually a spoiler for the Mawdryn Undead so don't click it if you don't want to spoiler that.

They kind establish that The Doctor is capable of funneling his regeneration energy into another person so that they can fend off death, it would just cost him what makes him a Time Lord i.e. the ability to regenerate. It's just Moffat using continuity, that's all.

- Melody being able to turn from a lifetime of being brainwashed on a dime. After everything she's been through, it's just ridiculous that she would suddenly be good.

Well, it is River. She never quite becomes the definition of good, she just becomes less reckless. Besides, we've seen nothing to say that the programming is completely averted, just that it's been fought off for now. She's still going to try to find The Doctor, nothing to say that she's finding him to travel or finding him to make attempt #2.

That all said, I loved the episode. It had a few problems but it was good solid fun. We got the answer to a question but we got a couple more in the process. I do think it's probably someplace towards the middle for this season so far as far as where it ranks but c'mon, it's going against A Good Man Goes to War and The Doctor's Wife. No one should feel bad for being lower quality than those episodes.

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Something that just got my pointed out to me.

The Professor at the Luna University is credited as Professor Candy. For those of you that have read Moffat's Doctor Who short story Continuity Errors, it features at one point a character is attending a lecture by Professor Candy at the Luna University about how dangerous The Doctor is. I know that the continuity between the extended universe and the televised is nebulous at the best of times, I'd say this is either just a small nod or that Candy is a member of The Silence.

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Something that just got my pointed out to me.

The Professor at the Luna University is credited as Professor Candy. For those of you that have read Moffat's Doctor Who short story Continuity Errors, it features at one point a character is attending a lecture by Professor Candy at the Luna University about how dangerous The Doctor is. I know that the continuity between the extended universe and the televised is nebulous at the best of times, I'd say this is either just a small nod or that Candy is a member of The Silence.

One of my friends pointed that out to me as well. So, it seems to be a nice nod to people who read that story, while at the same time, not being a glaring "This must be read for anything to make sense!!" Motion.

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- "Mels" being a shoehorned plot device. If she didn't conveniently want to kill Hitler where the the robot conveniently went to the wrong point in Hitler's time stream, the episode wouldn't have happened. And while I appreciate the flashbacks for the light they shed on Amy and Rory's relationship, there's no reason to care about Mels herself.

That bothered me, too, until I realized that she technically was a retconned-in character in-universe, seeing as how River traveled back in time and changed the past.

The Hitler coincidence thing is hardly worth noting, I think, in the DW universe. If we had to pick at every major coincidence on this show we'd probably kill ourselves. Better just to chalk it up to wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey TARDIS timing and move on.

Did anyone else notice that Melody/River has now done Back to the Future? She went back in time to hang out with her parents, actually got them together, and gave her mom the name for their future child.

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This is actually a spoiler for the Mawdryn Undead so don't click it if you don't want to spoiler that.

They kind establish that The Doctor is capable of funneling his regeneration energy into another person so that they can fend off death, it would just cost him what makes him a Time Lord i.e. the ability to regenerate. It's just Moffat using continuity, that's all.

Thanks for the clarification. Now that I know there's precedence, I withdraw that complaint.

Well, it is River. She never quite becomes the definition of good, she just becomes less reckless. Besides, we've seen nothing to say that the programming is completely averted, just that it's been fought off for now. She's still going to try to find The Doctor, nothing to say that she's finding him to travel or finding him to make attempt #2.

It's true that Moffat might come back to it, and if he does, then I'll probably judge it less harshly. But for right now, it bothers me.

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After he met River in The Library, The Doctor knows River will become very close to him. That she'll even travel with him. Since he knows her eventual fate, I was always willing to believe that, during their travels together, he blocked her from accessing any information about that persona from the TARDIS databanks. This way, when they meet in The Library from her perspective, it doesn't rewrite time. However, now knowing she was raised, trained, and brainwashed for the sole purpose of killing him, I'm finding it harder and harder to work around the idea that she wasn't shown images and / or video of every iteration. In fact, if I recall correctly, at one point she says she has seen all of his faces. Did Madame Kovarian only train her to kill the 11th Doctor, did they only show River images of Doctors 1-9 and then 11, or, like he did with Donna, will The Doctor erase parts of her memory?

It's all terribly confusing, and I truly hope Steven Moffat addresses this.

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Speaking of Madame Kovarian

In the episode, River has a sort of throw away line that she can change how old she looks. In the trailer for the second half of the season, we see River wearing the Madame Kovarian eye patch. So could Madame Kovarian in fact be River, who aged herself to look older? I know it's a stretch and River wearing the eye patch is probably just a Moffat red herring, but I wanted to throw it out there.

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Between "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler," what was The Doctor doing? Pardon me if I missed it, but I don't recall them ever explaining where he ran off to or what he was doing.

I know they need to age him 200 before his "death," but are we supposed to assume he spent 200 years looking for Melody / doing whatever it was he was doing?

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Between "A Good Man Goes to War" and "Let's Kill Hitler," what was The Doctor doing? Pardon me if I missed it, but I don't recall them ever explaining where he ran off to or what he was doing.

I know they need to age him 200 before his "death," but are we supposed to assume he spent 200 years looking for Melody / doing whatever it was he was doing?

It might be kind of cool if he has been searching for her for that long but I can't see them doing it. But he did say at the end of "A Good Man" Amy don't worry I know exactly where to look for her and when he turns up in "Lets kill Hitler" he hasn't got a clue where she is. Unless that harkens back to rule 1 - The Doctor Lies.

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We also know that Melody / River didn't kill The Doctor on the beach. If you watch the scene once more, you can tell she has no memory of that moment. Everything that's happening is a shock to her. Additionally, she tries to kill the astronaut. If that were her younger self, she wouldn't have shot at her.

So, piggybacking off of what you said, damndirtyape, I'm wondering if the astronaut is a Tesselecta. A possible clue in that direction is that we know River is an expert marksmen, so she must have shot it. However, those things can take bullets without harm. Just as the astronaut did.

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