Forgive me, my love.

[alexandraerin]

I watched the first episode of season 6 1/2 without you.

Given that I'm hoping to be in Maryland later this fall, I'd planned on holding out until then so that I could watch the whole mini-season for the first time with Jack and Sarah. I... didn't make it quite that long. Though I'm sure he expected that.

• First: I posted this on my Tumblr, but it bears mentioning any time this episode is discussed: the character of Mels is like the Campbell's Soup version of what was wrong about how the show handled Martha, condensed and canned for your convenience. I've got a longer post brewing in me about this, about what I think Moffat was going for and what was actually achieved, but that's going to be a more sober analysis.
  
• I loved the episode anyway. Privilege Check: It's easy to look past a slap in the face when it's not your face being slapped, and there was so much going on in this episode...
  
• "What is the question?" What isn't the question, silly Doctor. It's obviously who.
  
• So, did the Doctor tell NuMels to tell River that he loves her, or did he tell her his name? The former seems like the more obvious possibility, especially given the way it calls to mind David Tennant's hamfisted Non-Declarations of Love at Bad Wolf Bay. But in "Silence in the Library", he said that there was only one possible circumstance under which he would have told her his name... I thought "wedding", but "with my last dying breath" fits. Also? "When the last question is answered, silence will fall." It fell in the library. It was even in the title. A whole order devoted to his downfall because of that? Well, they don't know what it means, and that's the sort of muddled prophesy the Doctor tends to leave in his wake. That kind of wordplay that seems all mysterious and portentous but ends up being something else is a Moffat hallmark.
  
• I wouldn't have even considered all of that, but this is Steven Moffat... the man who won't write a trilogy for Spielberg unless he gets to write it all in one go, and we now have our explanation for "I learned from the best. It's a shame you were sick that day."
  
• Rory. Rory. Rory. So much love for Rory. I don't get the people who say there's nothing to him and that he's got nothing going on. First: he's a nurse. He's always been a nurse. His existence as a healer is an intrinsic part of who he is, and it's not nothing. The very first time we saw him he was risking his job (and possibly his reputation as a sane individual) to help his patients, and every appearance since then he's had that same level of conscientiousness. He notices a man is hurt before he notices the uniform he's wearing.
  
  Also, he punched Hitler and put him in a cupboard. Having watched Coupling, I think it's obvious that Rory is something of an author insert... even if it's at the level of "Well, every character I write has a bit of me, maybe this one has a bit more." And I think that's influenced Rory's development into the Epic Badass of the Time-Space Continuum. It really can't not be influencing it, especially since the Hitler-Socking Action Hero is otherwise a bit of a departure for the series. But the fact that the heart of the character is still the same as when he first appeared makes it work.
  
• If the intricately interwoven callbacks (and, doubtlessly, the callforwards) aren't enough proof that Moffat wrote this, the aside about Amy being a justice-dispensing death machine explaining everything probably would have sufficed. I love his writing, but he should possibly talk to someone about his issues before he ends up putting out a big manifesto about "creative lights" and "emotional voids" or something.
  
• River's aside about aging backwards "just to freak people out"? Pretty great.