katewrites | A Good Man Goes to War

+ All of the people who owed the Doctor debts

+ LESBIAN VICTORIAN LIZARD QUEEN AND HER TRUSTY SWORD WIELDING SIDEKICK (with a side note of "I don't know why you put up with me")

+ "We're the tall and fat gay Anglican soldier couple. Who needs more than that?"

+ RORY in a Centurion uniform and River saying, "Are you dressing like Romans now? And I thought no one read my memos!"

+ For that matter, River telling them to turn off the alarm, she's breaking back in.

+ For THAT MATTER. River in everything. RIVER ROCKS ALL THE THINGS, OKAY?

+ The Doctor. This is the Doctor I like. He's not the Oncoming Storm, he's not violent, he makes other people turn into fools and that's how he beats them. His punishments are as capricious as they are accurate. He makes a Sontarian do penance by helping those who are weak. He convinces a lizard queen to go good and help Victorian England rather than killing people just to kill them.

Moreover, here you could see how he burned cold rather than hot. He gathered allies and foes, he was unaware that he was angry, but he never went the nuclear of Ten. He was the Trickster to the extreme. He punished a general by forcing him to tell his men to "Run Away." Not retreat, not regroup, he told them to run away; he made the military man who said he was not a fool look the fool.

I love that in the end, he's held accountable for not just his actions but Ten's and Nine's and everyone up until One's. River skewers him at his weakest point: he's turned himself into a weapon of massive destruction and he is now a tremendous threat to the universe. So much so that the only weapon against him is one that he loves without knowing it.

And she has to do that, so that he understands, so that it makes sense to him why it's been done. So that River Song herself makes sense to him. She has to tell him so that when he finds out who the weapon is, he can also understand their whole complicated relationship. He has to suffer in order to appreciate what a gift their relationship is.

Because it means that no matter how rough the course, there's hope. There's a fate that ends with her dying for him.

+ I like the idea of Amy being softly rebellious this whole time. Like, she gets that as herself she can't take on a whole army, but she can keep her baby safe by playing along and planting seeds of doubt in the soldiers' minds. That speech wasn't just for Melody, it was for the soldiers, too, so that they know who's coming for them. So that they're afraid when he does come.

+ OH RIVER SONG. OH DOCTOR. When he's yelling at her, how he's ALWAYS been there for her. And she looks at where she slept as a baby and just can't even say the words.

+ AMY AND RORY AND THE DOCTOR. Best friends, awesome and the fact that the Doctor is so awkward around them.

+ I think that it's so interesting here that they're trying to brianwash Melody when Melody comes from stronger stock than that. She comes from Rory who waited thousands of years on faith (in his wife, in the Doctor) and she comes from Amy who believed in stars when everyone told her it was nonsense. Amy who saw the crack for what it was. Amy who pulled the entire universe, the Doctor back with the power of her belief in herself.

+ PONDS. THE NAME OF SUPERHEROES, YO.