Jayne Gudkov Review: A Good Man Goes To War

Demons run when a good man goes to war,

Night will fall and drown the sun,

When a good man goes to war,

Friendship dies and true love lies,

Night will fall and the dark will rise,

When a good man goes to war.

Wow, where to start with this mid-season finale? This episode had all kinds of craziness, from the physical manifestation of the Headless Monks, what I (and I am sure most everyone else) thought was a quite funny throw away line at the beginning of “Time of the Angels” about their final resting place being the Delerium Archives, to the Doctor basically destroying the 12th Cyber Legion (lots of death and destruction there – even if it's cybernetic – unless all of those exploding ships were empty) to Sontaran nurses with breast feeding capabilities to the solution of the mystery of why Jack the Ripper stopped killing the prostitutes of White Chapel in 1888 (who would have known there was a Silurian stalking the streets of Ye Olde London Towne?) to both an in your face gay couple (one member of which was sacrificed to the Headless Monks – some sort of statement Mr Moffat????) and a suggestively lesbian inter-species relationship between human and Silurian (OK – maybe not so suggestive).

Which is where we'll start this week - with what I liked:

Vash “Was I being insensitive again? I don't know why you put up with me?” (tongue flick knocking out cleric). Jenny just (suggestively?) smiles. That and there is just something hot about a woman dressed in a Victorian shirt, tie and vest. For more on that check out H G Wells in an American show "Warehouse 13" (purrrrrrr)

The Papal Mainframe of the Headless Monks is a chick.

Pirates! And Spitfires!!!!

The sound of the Tardis in Vash's drawing room harkened back to the old series sound of the Tardis console room. That good old console room hummmmmmmm.

Rory to the Cybermen - “Don't give me those blank looks!” Sorry, but that totally cracked me up.

Stevie Wonder singing under London Bridge in 1814. “But don't tell him.” I guess he was singing his version of “Happy Birthday” - a very cool version.

River calling the guards to tell them she was breaking back in.

Now onto what I didn't like:

The Doctor participating in mass murder (of the Cybermen) then making a point of defeating those who were holding Amy without bloodshed using simple logic.

That the reveal of who River Song was – it was such a non-surprise – I think most of us had it figured out just based on putting 2 and 2 together at the end of “The Day of the Moon”.

The Doctor takes off to go after the baby, leaving everyone else to be dropped off in their own time zones by River, my point being that he knows how River turns out, to the point that he knows how she dies, but he still goes off after her. What's the point??? Granted, he doesn't know that this kid supposedly kills him in the future, but still, as I said, he knows what will happen to River, so why fly off to save her? (More on the basic “essence” of River later in my “Halftime Report”)

The whole description to the baby by Amy who her father was, the misdirection making it sound like she was talking about The Doctor – when it was really Rory - that was silly.

Silly

Calling a baby crib a “cot”. A cot is barely a bed – basically a bunch of sticks with some material stretched over it that boy scouts sleep on in a tent out in the woods. What the Doctor provided for baby Melody was a proper crib (yeah – I know it's a battle between the Queen's English and the language now known as American) which brings me to . .

That whole Tardis Translation Matrix thing. Evidently either the baby's name or the Doctor's (which River has said she knows) had been inscribed on the sides of the crib. I get that the Tardis won't translate Gallifreyan into English (actually it's a bit of a stretch since it translates every other bloody language in the known universe into English – but I guess they need an excuse to either not give away the Doctor's name or the fact that it would have said “Melody Pond”). Anyway, the whole scene didn't really make any sense. If the viewer of said Gallifreyan language's normal language was English it should have shown itself in English.

Maybe, since River knows that the bunch of circles inscribed in the sides of the crib are Gallifreyan script, that's how she found out the Doctor's real name.

Granted, this is a season long arc, but I guess it would have been nice to have had a bit of an ending instead of having it drag out over the summer.

Anyway, To Be Continued in “Jayne's Season 6 Halftime Report”. What, you thought it would be titled “Let's Kill Lowtide”???? Actually . . . . . . . [Well I wouldn't have been that surprised - Editor Lowtide]