Then suddenly, the star imploded, the air surrounding the tree blurred from the heat and as sudden as it came, the warm air dissipated into what remained of the once-living star. The pines from the tree stood like iron filings with a magnet under, only that the green thin strands were attracted what was on top of them. Golden balls were floating from their strings, hanging on a different pole towards the tiny black hole, implying the impossible loss of gravity.

“Well,” the redhead announced, “I guess that marks the start of the New Year.”

She produced a metalwork of some sort from a side table, pointed it at the unusual Christmas tree, and said, “Husband, better ready our bags. We’re coming home.”

Green light sparked at the tip of the metal rod, producing a whirring, extraterrestrial sonic. A thin man entered, carrying two luggage  “Are you sure this would work? This is already our third Christmas in this battery farm.”

Without looking at her husband, she continued to wait until something happens to the Christmas tree, putting up a persistent gaze at the mini-black hole. “Of course I’m sure. If I’m  not, I won’t be his mother-in-law.”

The black hole started to slow down with a light cracking from it. Pine needles fell down on cue and the golden balls swung down and some fell. The crack of light began to expand, a churning, chaotic air could be felt trying to get through the crack. As the redhead saw that, she started to think of their destination.

“Grab my hand,” she told her husband. The thin man held her outstretched arm. “Good bye, Angels!”

“Ready, Amy?” The man grab hold of their luggage with his other hand. “Can’t wait to see Leadworth.”

“Geronimo!”

And the light consumed them.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (TV special) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

{Caveat (sorta): I was sure I had already written up this post: when was the last time you cried. But searches of my laptop don’t produce my draft. I know I wrote it in my head several times – perhaps it was only an illusion that I had committed my thoughts to paper?}

There have been two instances where I “cried my eyes out” (sounds kinda gruesome!) recently. The last 15 minutes of “The Angels Take Manhattan,” when it becomes apparent that Rory and Amy have to make life-altering decisions had me reaching for the kleenex box. By the closing seconds, I had gone through at least 10 kleenex. In case you aren’t a Who fan-atic, Amy and Rory are the human companions of Dr. Who, a time lord. His “tardis” (shaped like a British blue police box) can travel through time and space. The couple has accompanied the Dr. on many strange, fantastical, mind-bending, time-shifting adventures. Just in case you might become a Who fan-atic, I won’t give away the ending.

I hadn’t watched Dr. Who in many, many years – I remember a simpler, lower budget Dr. Who. The quality of the filming and special effects have come a long way and many regenerations of the Dr. since then.. Once we discovered BBC in America, I started watching the high-tech, hi def Dr. of the 20^th/21^st centuries.

Another Dr. and another Who had me reaching for the kleenex – all the Whos down in Whoville. (Dr. Seuss, of course, NOT the Jim Carey version). Boris Karloff is so good as the narrator/voice of the Grinch. When the Grinch is on the top of Mount Crumpet with his sleigh full of the Whos’ stolen accoutrements of Christmas and hears the Whos come together to sing the Who Welcome Christmas song anyway, the tears start. I’m working my way through the kleenex box as the Grinch’s heart grows three sizes, he stops the sleigh from going off the top of Mount Crumpet, and returns to Whoville to give back all the crazy Seuss toys, ornaments and food. And, at the end, it’s the Grinch who carves the whobeast. More kleenex!

This Seussified version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has brought me to tears since 1967. The first year it was on television, as I waited in front of our small black and white set, the power went off; no Grinch that year – just Alastair Sim as Scrooge. And that ending makes me cry too. (And, I love the Muppet Christmas Carol with Michael Cain as Scrooge – a laughing, crying event, too!)

do u ever see other fandoms’ ships posts on your dash so often that you start shipping them too without even being part of that fandom

In the post, I am highly critical of the ending of the episode, questioning the quality of the writing and the lazy loopholes which remain in the plot which formed with hasty writing from the scriptwriters to write the Ponds out of the series.  The ending was quite wishy-washy, and I have felt Doctor Who has been downhill in overall quality since the exit of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.

However, today, I stumbled upon an unshot scene that was meant to come after Amy was touched by the Angel in the cemetery with the Doctor.  I think it provides a much more realistic and humanised touch to the conclusion of the Pond’s companionship.  After all, although Brian’s (Rory’s father) role is small, he still provides a great emotional weight to the plot, offering protective fatherly warnings to Amy and Rory, while at the same time, wanting them to explore with the Doctor.  Of all characters afftected by the departure of the Ponds, it was Brian I was most concerned about and I believe an ending like this would have brought everything together in a much more skillful and emotional way than the actual ending to the episode.

However, perhaps, this is an idea the writers are planning to reuse at another time since for the Doctor, time is in a constant state of flux.  It will be interesting to see if this is ever used in the future since it certainly is a quality idea!  However, I think it is weird that since Rory wrote about the son he and Amy adopted that he never spoke of River Song being that she is their biological daughter.  I hope that she is revealed to him at some point to demonstrate that a living person survives who contains the components of both Amy and Rory.

It’s all over. The Ponds are gone. Dead in New York. There’s little point in carrying on with this article.

Only joking! Yes the Ponds have made their emotional exit from Doctor Who, and what an exit it was. Embroiled in a plot masterminded by those freakishly scary Angels, the Doctor and River Song said goodbye to good friends, parents and in-laws.

Amy and Rory’s exit aside, The Angels Take Manhattan restored my faith in the series after the previous two episodes. A Town Called Mercy was far too slow for my liking; it didn’t have enough ‘yowzah’, and The Power of Three suffered from what you might call being a bit too… premature – the ending was over before we had time to blink. The last episode in series seven however was the essence of Doctor Who distilled into a 45-minute episode. We had everything from frantic running around, last minute plot twists and the sultry River Song laying innuendos everywhere like an overactive hen laying eggs. What more could you ask for?

The Angels are a truly terrific invention of the imagination; they appear so lifelike, and yet, at the same time, they fool you into believing they are as inanimate as they first appear. Steven Moffat took them one step further this time though when he introduced cherubs to their arsenal. Don’t be fooled by the cute little baby face chubby with one too many chocolate bars; there’s nothing sweet or innocent about them. This is especially evident if you have the misfortune to be trapped in a pitch-black cellar with them. Although, whilst the Angels may have drafted in cherubs like Fagin recruiting children in Oliver Twist, they also enlisted the help of Lady liberty herself. Nothing strikes terror in the heart like the face of the Statue of Liberty bearing down on you from the top of a building. How the production team managed to move her from spot on Liberty Island is beyond me…

Speaking of dastardly returns, how about the reappearance of River Song? It always confuses me that she is Amy and Rory’s daughter, yet far older than her parents. There’s also a very odd dynamic between the two couples – the Doctor and River, and Amy and Rory. The Doctor is the Ponds’ son in law, yet he’s ageless and their guide and mentor, rather than a typical son-in-law: a submissive boy who calls their daughter his. If the Ponds had stayed much longer, Jeremy Kyle would have had a field day. In fact, as we learnt last series River was kidnapped as a baby and turned into a weapon designed to kill the Doctor. I don’t think psychotherapy would be able to even scratch the surface on that one.

If that weren’t enough, the sexual tension between the Doctor and River would take more than a sonic screwdriver (no pun intended) to cut it. As the T.A.R.D.I.S rocketed into New York in 1938, River called out, “It means Mr Grayle, just you wait ‘till my husband gets home”. Will that woman ever say something without that saucy tone of hers? There was also a very interesting parallel between the two couples. Amy and River are your typical alpha females, whereas the Doctor and Rory seem to do as they are told. Who could argue with a Scottish woman and a woman who survived brainwashing and killed her future husband?

On to more pressing matters. Episode five saw the departure of two of the best assistants since Davies revitalised the show in 2005. We first knew Amy as the girl who waited and we’ve been in love with her ever since. Ostracised by those around her because of her belief in the “raggedy-man”, Amy found solace in the company of the Doctor, accompanying him on all sorts of life-threatening adventures. Rory, although a kind of tag-along figure, brought his own brand of humour to the show as the long-suffering partner, and later husband, of Amy.

In this episode, Rory is taken captive by the Angels so that they may feed off his time energy. He is brought face to face with himself, albeit a good sixty years older, and witnesses the death of this future self. Even at this point I had put Kleenex out of business. In an act of ultimate sacrifice, Rory takes his life to create the mother of all paradoxes, thus destroying the farm of the Angels. Not wanting to be apart from him, Amy joins him and the two jump off a skyscraper. Now, as if one death wasn’t enough, Moffat decided to punish us with a second: a stray Angel zaps Rory back in time so that minutes after he technically died, he dies a second time. Amy, once again unwilling to be separated from her husband, she surrenders to the rogue Angel, thus drawing the final curtain on the Ponds.

If you watched this episode and didn’t shed a tear, then I strongly suggest you check whether your heart is organic and not made of stone. Assistants have come and gone, but few will be as fondly remembered as the Ponds. Their exit will leave an extremely large gap in future episodes and it will be extremely difficult to fill the shoes of Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill. Each assistant brings something new to the table and undoubtedly Jenna-Louise Coleman will bring her own unique style to what is, quite frankly, a British institution.

The episode begins in the style of a 1930s detective novel.  We see a detective recruited by a millionaire to track down the Angels and discover the source of their power.  This was an interesting start, although it was very much just setting the scene and the characters introduced here were soon dropped when they had served their purpose.

We catch up with the crew as they are relaxing in Central Park in New York.  The Doctor is actually reading a book of all things.  The episode gets going quite quickly.  Rory wanders off to get coffee and is sent back in time by an Angel.  Fortunately the book the Doctor is reading was written by none other than River Song, who drops hints on where they need to go.  The Doctor and Amy make it back to the right time period and find the millionaire who is chasing the angels.  He actually has one trapped in chains.

We find out that the Angels have created a sort of time energy farm in a New York hotel.  People are lured up into a room where they are sent back in time and trapped in the room until they die.  The Angels then keep feeding off that person’s time energy.  I must confess that I’m not entirely sure how this works, but I prepared to accept the idea that the Angels have set something up to feed their needs and it is suitably creepy.

Rory quickly becomes the focus of the episode when it looks like he is destined to be sent back in time by the Angels.  The only way out is to create a paradox.  This part of the episode was a tough watch because it essentially involved Rory and Amy entering into a suicide pack.  Fortunately it worked and all is well again–the Angels are defeated.

For a while.  One Angel seems to have survived the paradox (well the Daleks always manage it I guess) and the ending becomes clear.  Rory is sent back in time and Amy voluntarily joins him after a very quick goodbye to the Doctor.  And there we have it.  After two and a half seasons together, Amy and Rory are no longer part of Doctor Who.

First things first, this episode was good.  Very good in fact.  River Song made a very welcome return and there were some really touching moments between her and the Doctor.  The Angels are a great enemy and the addition of the energy farm upped the scare factor.  Knowing you would not just be sent back in time, but would be trapped for eternity in a hotel room, just added to the tension.  The book that has the future was an excellent idea and I really felt the Doctor’s frustration with his inability to look up what was going to happen and the consequences of time travel.

Unfortunately despite the strengths of the episode as a whole, this episode sets itself up for a lot of criticism due to the time travel elements and the departure of Amy and Rory.  First let’s look at the time travel stuff.  It is flawed, but then it always is.  There is no time travel TV show/film/book in existence that doesn’t have loop holes and that is because time travel is practically impossible!  A lot of people have pointed out that the Doctor could just go to another city in the 1930s and travel over to New York, or some other similar way to get Amy and Rory back.  I think they could have come up with a better explanation for why the Doctor couldn’t see Amy and Rory again, but you just have to accept that kind of stuff with Doctor Who.  After all, if there were no limitations on time travel, then the Doctor could always just go back in time to save the day.  Let’s just go with the whole “fixed point in time and space” thing.

Amy and Rory’s departure was pretty good, although it was not as big a tear-jerker as Rose’s ending.  I think part of that is because you didn’t believe the permanence of it because of the time travel stuff.  The bigger reason may be because of the strange treatment of Amy during her time as the assistant.  Although she was in the role for a long time, Rory was with her for most of it.  This somewhat diluted the relationship between her and the Doctor in my opinion.  In terms of endings, it was probably on a par with Donna, better than Martha, and worse than Rose.

The ending was also a little quick for my liking.  I would have liked Rory to have got a proper ending–he always seems to get the short end of the stick.  I did like that Amy made the decision this time.  Rory has already shown that he will do whatever it takes to be with Amy, so it was good that Amy now got to return the favor.  It all did feel a little anticlimactic though.  It really seems like we will never see Amy and Rory again, and that is a real shame and possibly unique among assistants (we have yet to see Donna return, but it seems possible).

The final small gripe is that it was very predicable.  As soon as I heard that the Angels would be in Amy’s last episode, I basically knew exactly how they would be leaving the show.

My negative comments above do not detract that much from what was still a very strong episode.  It was not an overly strong ending to Amy and Rory’s tenure, but that is just the last five minutes of an otherwise great episode.

9/10

The entire fanbase spent about 4-5 hours crying, questioning, and worrying what we’ll see in the Christmas episode return of our Matt Smith Doctor.

I fear that Amy and Rory didn’t end up together in the end, but the defining moments were their marriage….when they learned they needed sacrifice, but that they had to do it together…

The Doctor felt so much pain….

I’m still sad….

“I always rip out the last page of a book so it doesn’t have to end. I hate endings!”-The Doctor

We finally said goodbye to Amy and Rory in tonight’s Doctor Who so I thought I’d write them a little tribute.  Truth be told, this has been knocking around my brain as a piano piece for a while now but I thought it would be fitting to transcribe it for organ.  It begins with a short introduction based on Amy and Rory’s “Farewell” theme which then segues into an unfamiliar baroque treatment of the all too familiar Doctor Who signature tune.

Dear Steven,

Each of us endures a moment in our botched lives when desolation comes knocking. I’ll never forget how I felt when, aged ten, I stood in the garden of Haddo Hall, a now defunct community centre, enjoying the summer with disparate members of the Greenwich After School Club, only to find myself confronted by a gang of hyperactive girls. “Ed,” said one, “Louisa don’t love you no more”. Well Steven, I was so distraught at the news that Louisa Render, my first girlfriend, was closing the door on our two week relationship, that I couldn’t even rouse myself to correct her pal’s language. “Okay,” said I, trying to appear indifferent. I was never going to let them see me bleed. No sir, I went about my business, played swingball, ignored Louisa and her retinue, but believe me when I tell you that a heart was cracked open that day.

The incident returned to taunt me, like a time travelling interloper, as the years worn on. Days afterwards, I was listening to the radio and Whitney Houston’s Didn’t We Almost Have It All reduced me to a woman’s tears. Years later I was waiting for a train at Kidbrooke, only to be shocked by a piece of graffiti on the station sign. “LOUISA RENDER IS A SLAG” was the legend. Then I realised, Steven: it wasn’t just me she’d left for dead, two weeks of loved up bliss cast aside like a torn umbrella; no, she’d huckstered some other poor fool; conned him into loving her, only to abandon him at the peak of his infatuation.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

Tonight on Doctor Who, Amy left me, and I was once again that little boy with the crumbling insides, whose impassive shell masked a moment of all consuming woe. That Steven, was my fixed point in time, but with eyes locked on me as I watched the tragedy of the Ponds play out, or the Williams if you insist, I couldn’t allow anyone to know how I felt. That’s why I’m only able to share it now, in this private correspondence.

Before we get into the moment you stole her from me, let’s briefly touch upon the rest of The Angels Take Manhattan. I thought it had two great things going for it: the pulp novel that set up, then cleverly segued into the plot, and the choice of New York as a location. The spots were well chosen and added plenty of atmosphere to your creepy little statue yarn. The novel, now surely the most sought after prop in fandom, was an ingenious framing device: you used it to toy with our expectations and provide a sweet little coda to Amy’s time in the TARDIS. Which brings us to that ending…

For three years all I’ve wished for, all I’ve begged you for, was Rory’s demise. Yet recently, as noted last week, the lanky lummox had started to grow on me. I had to consider the awful possibility that I would miss him. Watching him, watching himself die of old age, therefore made me feel very guilty indeed. Poor old Rory Face, he didn’t deserve that – nor the 30 years he spent in his Jim Jams with festering bed sores, in a New York hotel with no one but statues for company. So I can fully understand why he’d want to take a chance on destroying the universe and pressing the reset button with his suicide.

When he bolted upright in that cemetery, his best gal by his side, we thought he’d got away with it, but in a flash, a rogue statue, a paradox survivor, though it wasn’t clear how it had survived, whisked him off into the past. That was it. No grand goodbye, no “so long Rory and thanks for 3 gormless years”, just gone. There was a brutality to that sudden disappearance and I commend you for it. Dispatching him that way was far more effective than an energy blast to the chest, or the Statue of Liberty tearing off his head, or his body exploding as it hit the pavement, an eruption of blood and bra- anyway, it worked.

But Amy – oh mercy, sweet Amy. A moment later she was gone too. In, er, the blink of an eye. For a while, 20, perhaps 30 seconds, I thought it was nice enough: Amy and Rory would spend the rest of their days together – bored, bedevilled by routine intercourse, but safe. Then it hit me. They were trapped in the past and would never see their friends and family again. Poor Rory’s Dad, the harmless old scroat: he’d be sitting in that empty house, sans fam, forever. Still, he’d have his old cubes.

I did wonder why, if River had a vortex manipulator that could bypass the TARDIS’ difficulties with 1938 New York and the new temporal fault line, she couldn’t just slip through the cracks, scoop up her ‘rents and deposit them back in their matrimonial home in the present day, but then time travel, as anyone who’s seen Looper will tell you, is a fucking complicated business, and you did go out of your way to indicate they were time-locked, or time-wrecked, or something, though again I thought that only applied in respect of The Doctor and the Po- oh, I don’t know.

So Amy chose Rory ultimately, and in a big way. Was that a good decision? Well if she’d gone for me, instead of that droopy eyed drip, she’d still be with us in the 21^st century, able to enjoy England and of course, yours truly, who’d be showing her the time of her life – 5 times a night.

That said it felt right for the two characters to end up shackled together, and as ever, you trumped our yearning for the “everyone wins”, sentimental conclusion we might have hoped for, by showing that simply dropping them back home wouldn’t be enough. The Doctor had tried it and couldn’t stay away; the only thing that would allow him to move on would be an inability to see the pair. It’s tough to contrive such a scenario when the hero of the piece can go anywhere at any time, but I take my codpiece off to you, with a bit of technobabble and some temporal slight of hand, you broke up the band.

A part of me feels bad that the twosome didn’t get to choose how and when their adventures with The Doctor ended, but all in all I think you can be proud to have introduced, developed, and finally time-napped, probably the best couple of companions we’ve had in 33 seasons of the show. I can think of many I’ve liked – Ace, Romana II, Sarah Jane, Peri’s cleavage – but none I’ve felt closer to than Amy and Rory. I’ll miss their bones, though it’s reassuring to know that I can pop over to New York and visit them whenever I like.

Well, that’s it until Christmas, Steven. Don’t worry about me, or the fact that my vagrancy status meant I couldn’t even enjoy this episode first hand – the entire thing was acted out for me by the lads from the nearby squat (lucky for me they’d seen it earlier while burgling a neighbour’s house) – I’ll be fine. I got over Louisa and I’ll get over your betrayal too, though you should know I’ve been tracking her intermittently for 25 years and sometimes visit while she sleeps. Like the Angels I freeze when she turns the light on.

Yours in time and cyberspace,

Ed

The way they were:

• Dear Steven Moffat: The Power of Three
• Dear Steven Moffat: A Town Called Mercy
• Dear Steven Moffat: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship
• Dear Steven Moffat: Asylum of the Daleks

The way they were-urther:

• Dear Steven Moffat: The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe (Christmas Special)
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Wedding of River Song
• Dear Steven Moffat: Closing Time 
• Dear Steven Moffat: The God Complex
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Girl Who Waited
• Dear Steven Moffat: Night Terrors
• Dear Steven Moffat: Let’s Kill Hitler 
• Dear Steven Moffat: A Good Man Goes to War
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Almost People
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Rebel Flesh
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Doctor’s Wife
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Curse of the Black Spot
• Dear Steven Moffat: Day of the Moon
• Dear Steven Moffat: The Impossible Astronaut 

This episode is full of surprises.

Amy and Rory are getting a divorce, it felt weird because we’ve seen them go through a lot together and makes us wonder, what happened to them so they could have reached this point?.

Oswin.-  And finally we had the introduction of the new Doctor’s companion, I don’t like or dislike shuffle girl yet, I need to see more of her but the thing is it will be quite tough to see Amy and Rory go, they are by far my favorite companions. Even when it is usual to the Doctor to “regenerate” his companions (I mean they are always coming and going), I think people always tend to compare the last one with the new one, even when they are completely different persons.

Anyway after really get to know shuffle girl better (it will take you by surprise) you might think, how are they possibly going to get out of that one?, I’m confident they will turn out with something marvelous at some point or whenever she becomes a regular companion.

By the way the question “who loves the other person more?” has become a little overdone in the Amy and Rory relationship, we know Amy is moody, fickle and sometimes ungrateful, it looks like she doesn’t appreciate how hard Roy works to give her life meaning, and Rory what can we say, he’s a worthy paragon that we all like, quite a wonderful person.

I don’t want to spoil so much; you really need to see the episode. It was great, I’m eager to rewatch it and of course interested to see what happens next.

So far by the end of the episode, many things changed and that could bring us some fascinating storytelling in episodes to come.

Just as the last season ended with the question “Doctor Who?” so too does this episode, with the additional joke from the Doctor “You’ll never stop asking”.

Do you have a theory about how Oswin will become the Doctor’s new companion?

What did you think of Asylum of the Daleks?.

Ok today’s challenge for positivity is to no be jealous of other people! Every now and then the little green monster comes and bites me in the butt. Usually when a lovely dovey couple is walking past me holding hands. In which my first immediate responce is to stare really hard at their interlocked to see if I gain the power to burn things with just a stare.

We can’t all have as much luck as Rose.

or Amy

but hey my love will come someday ,so there is no need for the green monster I finally realize! Not only no need for it in love department ,but in every other department! I’m determined to have the positivity of Mabel (from Gravity Falls best cartoon ever!!!)

Anywho, make sure you tell jealous to go jump in a ditch and take the next step to positivity!

So right now I’m trying to limit my tv time to 5 hours a day ,which has failed epically. With all the new tv shows coming on! I love tv ,but I also love reading and currently have a huge stack of books that I need to get to work on. Right now I’m working on a book called Happyface by Stephen Emod. It’s pretty good so far. It basically the life of a 10th grade guy and as most of you know 10th grade isn’t the easiest time for some people. Well I hope your having a good day see you tomorrow hopeful with some exciting new news (lately I’ve been boring… sorry )

Bye!

-megagurl

YAY!

“The Asylum of The Daleks” wasn’t a particularly great episode. I mean it was fine. It was exciting, and funny, and we got some awesome Amy/Rory pathos, but beyond the fact that there were like a billion Daleks, there wasn’t anything that great.

Oh, but wait.

There were Dalek Cyborgs! As in, Dalek’s hollowed out humans and turned them in to Daleks but they still looked like humans. And that was pretty amazing.

Now, on to the Amy/Rory pathos. We first see Amy at a photo shoot, (which, I didn’t realize Amy was a model, I thought she was a kind of stripper…) and then someone comes up to her and says,

“Your husband’s here!”

Now, the Amy Pond that we all love should jump for joy, run over to Rory and say something sarcastic right? Exactly, but this Amy just says:

“I don’t have a husband anymore!”

The first thing that went through my mind was, “oh no, did Rory die again? That’s going to be inconvenient.” But no, they’re just separated and Rory was there to give her divorce papers.

Only on Doctor Who is this outcome so much worse. Because The Doctor isn’t a marriage counselor, and he has no normal human experience, so he can’t fix this right?

Don’t be silly, The Doctor can fix everything. He fixed Pete and Jackie Tyler’s marriage and they were both dead. (Well, Pete was dead in one universe, and Jackie in the other and he just brought them together, but still…) How does he fix Amy and Rory’s relationship?

Why by taking them to a planet where the Daleks stick their malfunctioned brethren and forcing them to talk while waiting for a teleporter of course! We learn that Amy left Rory because she found out she can’t have anymore children and she knew that Rory really wanted to be a dad. (Poor River, no brothers and sisters for her.) This scene was pretty great, because there’s always been a sort of inequity in Amy and Rory’s relationship, due to Rory’s stint as The Last Centurion and everything. So when Amy explains that she “gave him up” to give him what he wanted she says.

“Don’t you dare compare this to sitting outside a box for a while. That is nothing compared to giving you up!”

So they kiss and make up and The Doctor brings them back to earth and everything is great.

Also, one super crazy Dalek, who thought she was a pretty girl, hacked in to their “hive mind” and deleted all knowledge of The Doctor. So, we’ll see how that goes!

What I liked about the episode:

• Compared to the confusing two-parter that started last season, this episode was a million times easier to follow.
• Oswin may be a spin-off personality of many Doctor Who characters, but you like her, which is a lot better than if you didn’t like her. Her situation, which may not be the most original, especially given you knew there was something suspicious going on with her, does make you think about both identity and delusions.
• Insane Daleks? Who doesn’t like that? Could have used a bit more of that, though. As far as setting goes, it could have been scarier. Finding Daleks that fought in the war against him? Super creepy. Would have liked to get their perspective on that war, though, because we know the Doctor wasn’t exactly a saint in that war.

What I hoped for but didn’t receive:

• When we met the man in the snow coat, I was hoping this was some kind of time-wimey thing because he had only been here a couple days but his crew had been here a year. But nope. Only zombies.
• If the Doctor wasn’t wearing a wristband to protect him from becoming a Dalek, why do we never even slightly address his battle with memory and hatred?
• It’s been a whole summer. They should really start off with “good old Amy and Rory” to get people back into the swing of things. They’re both so different now, you can’t remember how to connect to them. Their problems feel shallow because we’ve missed out on so much of their lives.

What didn’t work:

• The Dalek’s name for the Doctor is The Oncoming Storm. Why is it suddenly “the predator”? Can the writers stop making up names for the Doctor and pretending like it was his nickname the whole time?
• I almost feel like it’s the same old Amy and Rory in the end, but not really. I’ve always really liked them both, but maybe now that they’ve been through so much, their story is too soap opra-ish, and I’m weary of it.
• Rory fiddling with the Daleks and trying to have a conversation with one about eggs? Not convincing.

Thoughts on forgetfulness:

• “Make them remember you,” is what the Doctor tells Amy as a tactic to survive their encounter with the Daleks. Why? If he has found that this is a survival technique, should he be afraid now that the Daleks (spoilers) have forgotten him?
• Daleks’ fear of the Doctor makes them stronger, so their forgetting him may make them weak. But now that he’s gotten their attention, can’t they just research him?
• This creates a whole new dynamic between him and his greatest foe. I hope they use this to their advantage and really explore the new relationship.

Although it’s certainly not the worst episode, I also don’t disagree with any of Alex Day’s points on why he’s giving up Doctor Who based on this episode. I am not giving up Doctor Who, as it’s customary for the first episode and Christmas episode to not be very good.

My question for you: Stephen Moffatt’s Who (more than Davies’) is all about clues. He leaves things even in the first episode that will be important later. Do you see anything here that might be a potential clue? Is the fact that the Doctor had no reaction to not wearing a wristband a clue? Or that the Doctor said “Make them remember you?” Did you see anything else?

Arthur Darvill and Karen Gillan will be featured in their own 5-part collection of short webisodes which will appear at the start of the new season on September 1st, but will premiere online on Monday the 27th on the BBC1 YouTube channel. (io9)“

In a recent article from the Chicago Tribune, the newest release from Disney Pixar entitled Brave is getting rave reviews for its willingness to go against the traditional princess stereotype. For a link to the article: A tiara? Not for ‘Brave’s’ bow-and-arrow-wielding princess – Chicago Tribune.

For the most part, they’re dead-on! Modern princesses in film and television are becoming absolutely kick-butt! They reference Ginnifer Goodwin in Once Upon a Time, and Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. The only reference I didn’t really agree with was Kristen Stewart‘s portrayal of Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman, but that’s mostly against Kristen rather than against the “Joan-of-Arc like figure” she is supposedly cast as. (I can’t even really offer that as a critique, since I have yet to psych myself up to go and see it. They also mention Mirror Mirror, but that’s another one I haven’t seen).

But with the recent hits of Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hunger Games, and the novels Fifty Shades of Grey, I think that there are many more heroines to be both praised and rejected in these modern times.

Praiseworthy

I personally think that the heroines Hermionie Granger (from Harry Potter) and Catniss Everdeen (from The Hunger Games) need to be lifted up as non-princess, inspirational role models for young women today. Not only are both resourceful women, but they are emotionally strong and are not romantic relationship-focused.

Hermione, as many may know, has grand intelligence. But she has much more than just brains going for her! In the very beginning of the Harry Potter series, we are told that she is technically an “outsider” to the magic world, and often has to face sneers from the wizard purists as well as attempt to adjust to an entirely different world that she only realized existed thanks to her invitation to Hogwarts. At the end of the series, after countless events of self-sacrifice, cunning, loyalty, bravery, and survival, she experiences erasing herself from her parents’ memory and possibly losing her True Love over some hurtful words. And yet, despite these two traumatic events, she finds the inner strength and will to endure and continue on her greater mission. Could you ask for a better heroine?!

Likewise, Catniss must use her cunning and her survival skills in order to endure the Hunger Games. She constantly thinks about her family’s safety, but overcomes personal barriers to getting close to the people who help her (such as Cinna and Peter, even Effie and Haymitch after a fashion). I don’t want to spoil anything for the people who haven’t read the entire series (I figured that most people have had a chance to at least see all the Harry Potter movies by now), but the events of the first Hunger Games are actually the least of the taxing and difficult challenges which she must endure. While most girls would not want to be put in her position, many can agree that they would like to have some of her strength, determination, and resolve.

The Rejects

It infuriates me that Twilight’s Bella Swan is considered a heroine by many girls of today. While she too goes through many trials and tribulations, these are significantly different from what Hermione and Bella go through. All of her troubles are brought on by her obsession with Edward Cullen. Many girls cite their relationship as an ideal to aspire to, which makes me cringe. Not only is Edward controlling and, in his own way, abusive – Bella is also a very weak-willed heroine. Many popular pictures on Pinterest show countless pop culture romances, and write “Still a Better Love Story than Twilight” underneath them. Examples of these include Lilly and Marshall (How I Met Your Mother), Sheldon and Amy (The Big Bang Theory), Harry and Ginny, Ron and Hermione (Harry Potter series), and Amy and Rory Pond (Dr. Who).

Combine that with the recent fascination with Fifty Shades of Grey’s Christan Grey, the male protagonist. Fun but not completely confirmed fact? Fifty Shades of Grey started out as a fan fiction by EL James about….you guessed it! TWILIGHT. “Source” The ‘heroine,’ Anastasia Steele, becomes CEO Grey’s BDSM sex-slave after graduating college still a virgin and going to intern for his company.

Take a second to let that soak in.

Women. Of today. Are obsessed. With a work of BDSM porn. And hold it up as an ideal relationship to which all women should aspire to. 

It’s that second part that really makes me angry. While sexual freedom should be a right for every human being under the sun, holding a BDSM relationship, which even the heroine isn’t completely comfortable with, as the goal relationship type for all women….? No.

*sigh* No, I haven’t read the series. And nothing in this world will make me. From what my friends have told me about the novels, combined with the pop culture references made to it, this ‘novel’ is simply porn without pictures. And because it is porn without pictures, to me it is akin to holding up a Playboy magazine and saying the women sprawling naked across the pages should be what little girls hope to grow up to be.

Conclusion?

There are modern heroines emerging who do not deserve the label of ‘heroine.’ These women are usually the female protagonists of books whose leading males are controlling, manipulative, and yet for some reason so desirable to the female readers that they are held up as the ideal men and the relationship as ideal, both of which therefore hold up the female protagonists as ‘heroines.’

But, there are also modern leading ladies, coming out in books, television, and movies, who more than deserve to be the new standard to which we hold modern women. These true heroines are emotionally strong and can make independent decisions about their lives, take action in the face of adversity, and maybe most importantly can make decisions about themselves without having to have abusive ‘romantic’ relationships define them.

It is that – the abusive male protagonists – which seems to really determine whether or not a story will have a strong or weak heroine. Twilight has Edward, and Fifty Shades of Grey has its namesake, both of which have weak heroines, and both of which are ‘supposedly’ the best modern love stories.

However, I would love for there to be a Best Modern Heroine Tournament, in which Bella must face off with Catniss, Steele must compete with Hermione, and see just who would come out on top. I could all but guarantee you who would be knocked out in the first round.

And I’m thankfully not the only one with this opinion! Check out this post from Thought Catalog entitled An Imagined Girls Night with Katniss Everdeen, Hermione Granger, Bella Swan, and Buffy Summers. See how Bella stands up next to the rest of these heroines, and you’ll start agreeing too.

I know for an absolute fact that the departure of Rory and Amy is going to be the most heartbreaking thing since the departure of Rose in Series Two and the regeneration of the Tenth Doctor in the final moments of The End of Time: Part 2. I have to say that Steven Moffat is an exceptional writer who knows how to get a response from an audience. So I know beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that the Ponds’ exit with be nothing short of an emotional roller coaster what will have me heave out my emotional guts once the train has re-entered the station. I hear that’s supposed to happen around Episode 5.

But enough about depressing. Let’s talk about Clara.

Several websites and articles located on said sites have reported and confirmed that the new Doctor  Who companion, played by Jenna Louise Coleman, is named Clara. She will enter the Doctor’s life in this year’s Christmas special (ep. 6).

Many names have been floating around, the most circulated being Susan Tyler (iMDB FAIL). But it seems the new companion’s name is Clara. Let’s hope this isn’t a production trick (but in case it is, remember I’m just posting what I’ve found). Now to what really excites me.

Steven Moffat has never let me down. He is one of the few television writers two have two shows fall into my top five (the other being Sherlock). But what he has said concerning the new companion has me begging for time to move faster (obviously, I have no TARDIS). Here’s what he said:

“Who she’s playing, how the Doctor meets her, and even where he finds her are all part of one of the biggest mysteries the Time Lord ever encounters,” Moffat said. “Even by the Doctor’s standards, this isn’t your usual boy meets girl.”- from The Guardian (03/21/12)

The fact that even the Doctor is going to have a bit of a surprise with this one is enough to make my brain go haywire. Considering that the Doctor’s “standards” have included such time enigmas as the legendary River Song, it stands to reason that we’re all about to have our minds blown. Again.

So, fellow Whovians, get ready for a wild ride this Fall as we say goodbye to “The Last Centurion” and “The Girl Who Waited” and welcome our newest mystery: Clara.

I thought as a Whovian that we needed a concise guide to what’s occuring in the world of Doctor Who at this stage. With filming beginning on the 20th Febuary, information is already starting to emerge- here is what we know so far…

• Chris Chinball and Toby Whithouse will be writing for the season. “Kind off” confirmed are Mark Gatiss and John Fay.
• Whithouse commented that, at this current stage, his episode is the third and is one of the last episodes of S7.
• Amy and Rory will be leaving Doctor Who this year- Moffat has teased we will feel like we are in trouble in the “heart breaking” episode.
• In a video pre-recorded for the Australian Doctor Who Concert, Moffat commented this on the new companion: “There will be shocks, surprises and heartbreak – the Doctor is about to say goodbye to his very best friends, Amy and Rory. And then he’s about to say hello to someone very different – the Doctor is going to meet someone very new in the very last place he could ever have expected…”
• Rehearsals begin next Monday for Matt Smith.

More news as we get it!

I don’t know if Steven Moffat’s an Eminem fan, but I wonder if something like this was going through his mind when he announced the imminent departure of the Ponds. The timing – a week in advance of the Christmas special – cannot be ignored. Nor indeed can Moffat’s rant about spoilers earlier this year, a moment in which he completely lost his rag, and a fair bit of my respect for him. The problem, of course, is that you can’t court the press and then expect them to play ball; nor can you tease the fans with shoot access and stills and then expect them to keep quiet. These are the days of instant file transfer, of photos being passed round the world faster than Polaroid development speeds, of tweeting and blogging and –

Sorry, where was I? The point is it’s easier to share information than ever, and as much as Moffat may rail against the people who choose to do such, to create and promote a culture when such controlled leaking is standard practice in your own institution hardly gives you the moral high ground. And what’s more, as various people have pointed out, if you cultivate a show whose success depends crucially on the retention of certain information – in other words, if spoilers are your be-all and end-all – then you’re in serious danger of writing yourself into a corner.

But that’s neither here nor there. I’ve touched upon it before and others have done so with more eloquence and attention to detail than I have the time or energy to commit to screen. For all our ranting about spoilers, the news of Amy’s departure is neither particularly surprising, nor (as such) is it particularly newsworthy: it was going to happen sooner or later, because no one wants to travel with the Doctor forever, unless they happen to be Rose Tyler, who couldn’t have been more irritating in her final episodes if she’d donned an orange fright wig, raised her voice a couple of octaves, lost the Danny Baker sheen and impersonated Mel. (Yes, I know she was better in Big Finish. But I still remember her for ‘Time and the Rani’, and that’s simply no fun.) Characters who never want to leave are in serious danger of wearing out their welcome, and it’s a good thing, in a way, that Amy lacked the see-the-stars wide-eyed schoolgirl wonder that her previous companions seemed to possess in abundance. When it came to dealing with time, and the consequences of time (perhaps that should be the Doctor’s campaign slogan: “Tough on time, tough on the causes of time”) I always got the feeling she learned to cope remarkably quickly.

Perhaps that was part of the problem some people had with her. Amy seemed to divide the viewers like no other companion before or since. Some people loved her. I did. Amy’s a character who’s been messed up by the Doctor and it shows. She’s crazy and that’s understandable, and the complex she gained after the fish custard incident has given her a wonderful zaniness that is consistently fun to watch (Amy is arguably at her least interesting, I’d suggest, when she’s being normal). Many have expressed a view to the contrary, but I don’t think her innate goofiness lessens our ability to relate to her, unless it means that those who can are in some way quietly crazy (“Oh yes, sir. Every time sir!”). Gillan has a wondrous gaze about her, and Amy speaks to the Doctor in a manner that no other companion has chosen to adopt since the revival, and whatever she’s doing, she always lights up the screen.

But there’s a flipside to this, and while many people found her a breath of fresh air, others found her irritating, kooky, with skirts of inappropriate length for a family show (hello? Leela? Peri?) and her treatment of Rory in rather poor taste. They may have a point about that – certainly the young Mr Williams (whom, I have to say, Arthur Darvill plays brilliantly) has the patience of a saint to have put up with Amy’s treatment of him over the past few years; it’s clear that he and Amy love each other, but he seems to alternate with the Doctor when it comes to playing gooseberry, and that’s no way for a marriage to survive. It was, finally, the Doctor who realised this come the end of ‘The God Complex’, and Rory and Amy’s subsequent exit was refreshing in its brevity and (relative) understatement; I remember wishing at the time that that could be it for them, but of course it was not to be.

Because, you see, companions don’t just leave in New Who. They have the most ridiculous, protracted departures imaginable. It’s strung out over three or four episodes (in the case of Donna, almost an entire series) and when it happens, you’re so anxious for it to happen that you can’t wait. This in itself is nothing new. I can recall, some fourteen years ago now, sitting in a darkened cinema on the outskirts of Reading – where I was living at the time – watching Leonardo Dicaprio clinging to an iceberg and muttering something incoherent and rambly through chattering teeth. James Horner’s music was building to a swirl, Kate Winslet was all doe-eyed and the girl behind me was sniffling through an entire box of Kleenex, and my only thought at the time, I can well remember, was “Will you please hurry up and fucking DIE???”. This was not, I’m sure, what James Cameron had in his mind when he filmed it, and concordantly this makes the scene, and indeed the film at large, a spectacular failure – although it is a visual spectacle, even now, with the sinking of the boat rendered effectively and with appropriate emotional pathos for many of the passengers. Take out the wraparound love story, and clean up the historical detail, and you’ve got yourself something with serious potential.

What irritates me most about New Who, though, is the way that death is trivialised. This has become particularly prominent under the obsession with ontological paradoxes that has epitomised Moffat’s two-season reign. One of the most beautiful moments in ‘Blink’ was the death of Billy Shipton, the police officer who dies in the hospital in the company of Sally Sparrow, because such a death has since become so rare. It’s terminal in a literary as well as literal sense: the character is never mentioned again, despite the fact that ‘Blink’ is a story that essentially eats itself. Conversely, the death of Miss Evangelista in ‘Silence in the Library’, and the subsequent ghosting scene that follows – one of the most glorious moments in the post-2005 canon – is seriously undermined when she re-appears in ‘Forest of the Dead’ dressed as a Photoshopped Woman in Black – before being magically restored, in the episode’s closing scenes, presumably no longer thick, and in the company of the ever-irritating River Song.

I remember my first entry to this blog was a brief discussion on the Classic Who episode I recall with most clarity – that of Adric’s death – and as I may have said then, I loved the fact that it’s final, at least in the official continuity. So when Moffat says that the exit of Amy and Rory will be “heartbreaking”, I am resolutely sceptical about what he actually means, but personally I would dearly love to see the death of a companion. And ideally I would like it to be Amy, and for Rory to blame the Doctor. Because that would be the right way to get rid of her. Take the inappropriate relationship to its logical conclusion: have her choose him, in that she’d die to defend him. Elton Pope, way back in ‘Love and Monsters’, talked of what happens when you touch the Doctor, and while the self-congratulatory Doctor Who Confidential has always spoken of taking the show “to dark places” (oh, thank the love of God it’s been canned), what I really want is for them to do something truly dark, and just have someone die. And when I say “die”, I don’t mean

• Die in the sense of getting trapped in a parallel universe, separated from the man you love, with your records expunged so you’re legally dead
• Die in the sense that you’ve had your memory wiped
• Die, with subsequent erasure from existence, only to find yourself resurrected as plastic
• Die, only to be resuscitated
• Die, only to be resurrected inside a computer mainframe
• Die, only to take astral form and drift out among the stars
• Die, only to find out it’s a hallucination by your other half
• Die, only it turns out to be an act of fakery to get you into Area 51
• Die, only to later reveal that you were hiding inside a robotic head
• …I don’t think we need any more…

This would be grown-up. The audience can handle it. Transformers and the X-Men are constantly killing people (and later bringing them back, but that’s another bugbear of mine for another day). But at least they die and stay dead. You don’t see them again a few episodes later as a disembodied head, in a scene of pointless comic relief that provided no relief nor any sort of comedy.

Gareth has alerted me to a suggestion on the Big Finish forum that goes like this:

What could happen that would give the pair a “heartbreaking” end to their story?

DOCTOR: Ah, here we are on the planet Fixedpointintime. Oh no, Rory, look out for that falling piano!

AMY: Sigh. How long till he comes back to life this time?

DOCTOR: Ah. Well. You know what I said the planet was called….

It could work. It really could.