One of the problems with Internet rumors is that they can create false expectations for an episode. For example, last week I heard that as many as two other previous Doctors could turn up for a cameo in this week’s mid-season finale. The story was backed up by the IMDB listing and while I didn’t necessarily believe that it was the case (it was something too big to keep this far under wraps in the Internet age), I still held out some glimmer of hope the show might go and surprise me with that moment. I was ready for my inner Doctor Who fan boy to weep with delight.
And it never happened.
I’ve heard it may happen for the series six finale, but I don’t think I’m going to buy into the rumor again. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
Even not buying into the rumor, there were still a lot of things about the mid-season finale that disappointed me. After last week’s installment worked toward redeeming an uneventful and tepid first half of the story, I was hoping the series would get back on track with the type of mid-season cliffhanger and finale that Steven Moffat has been out there talking about since news of the split season was first announced. And that’s where I think a lot of the issues with this story arise–it’s simply been oversold on the expectation meter since the closing moments of series five. Moffat has told us time and again that we’re all going to be picking up our jaws off the floor when the mid-season finale hits and we finally get the revelation of who River Song really is.
The problem is you have to make good on that promise and, at least upon the first two viewings of “A Good Man Goes To War,” the episode itself didn’t really live up to the hype. Part of it was that I’d guessed River’s identity long ago and was secretly hoping they wouldn’t go in this direction. The other was that while I like the new series, I’m not a huge fan of episodes that make the Doctor out to be some kind of inter-galactic super hero. One of the hallmarks of the old show was that the Doctor came in, corrected a wrong and then left again in the TARDIS will very little fanfare or accolades. At most, it was a warm handshake and a quick goodbye, except maybe in the case of the Daleks. In that case, I understood why they feared the Doctor since he’d defeated so many of their more audacious schemes in the past and seemed to constantly show up at just the right time to throw a sonic screwdriver into their well-laid plans.
The first fifteen or so minutes of “Good Man” spend a lot of time playing on the Doctor’s reputation and showing him calling in favors. And while it’s nice to see a bit, it also felt a bit disconnected from a lot of the series as a whole. Oh look, we’re bringing in Cybermen, Sontarans and Silurians it seems to say. Look at how clever these callbacks are. Problem is these are callbacks to characters we haven’t met before and so they lack the punch they could or should have.
Then the Doctor shows up and easily defeats the forces of evil who had kidnapped Amy and her daughter. But it’s too easy and turns out to be a trap for the Doctor. The revelation that Amy and Rory’s daughter has become some kind of new breed of Time Lord due to extended exposure to the time and space continuum, I can sort of buy. (I keep reminding myself that a certain segment of fandom hated “The Deadly Assassin” when it first aired because it threw hiccups into the mythology….and I can see where Moffat is trying to do the same thing here).
A lot of the issues I have with this is that it’s the first of a two-part story and we’re only given so many answers. If we were given everything, there would be little reason to tune back in when the second half of the season kicks off later this year. But I still feel that the episode sold a lot of things really short. Again, a lot of this could be the hype, but I think a lot of it is the essential weakness of making the Doctor into some kind of inter-galactic hero.
Another issue I have is we don’t really get much in the way of any type of motivation or backstory for Madame Kovorian. She wants to see the Doctor brought down a peg and defeated, but we’re never told why. I’m assuming we will get answers later this year and I get why she wants baby Pond. But Moffat has done such a good job of crafting characters in the past that Kovorian felt a bit paper thin.
That doesn’t mean I don’t hold out hope. Having River point out how far off course the Doctor has gone certainly feels like the show trying to pull back a bit. If the show is trying to get back to its roots, this is a good step in the right direction in my book.
And I still did like isolated moments in the story. Arthur Darvill is rapidly becoming this season’s MVP and his performance here is another solid one. His barely constrained anger and determination to find his wife and child drove the first half of the episode and the reunion of the family on the station was one of the more effective moments in the story. In many ways, Rory has become far more compelling this year than Amy has.
In “A Good Man Goes To War” we have a lot interesting pieces and isolated moments. The problem is that they don’t quite all add up in the same way Moffat stories have in the past. I think a lot of this is huge expectations placed on the story by Moffat in both where the storylines came together and in the hype surrounding the show. I’m still intrigued enough to come back in the fall when the show returns (oh, who am I kidding…I’d be back no matter what!), but I have to admit my enthusiasm is a bit tempered.
I’ll probably be in the minority on thinking this way, but for now, color my a bit underwhelmed.
I think that you have two characters confused. Madame Vastra is the Silurian that we first saw in “The Hungry Earth”. How she ended up in Victorian London isn’t explained as far as I can tell. The bid baddie here was Madame Kovorian.
Scooter, Vastra wasn’t in Hungry Earth. The confusion here is because the same actress who played Vastra ALSO played both female Silurians in the Hungry Earth/Cold Blood two-parter.
Those sisters were Alaya and Restac.
It’s easy to think they are the same, since they don’t even change the makeup, and it’s the same actress, acting much the same way, plus they didn’t really bother mentioning what the previous adventure with the Doctor would have been, so people would naturally connect the wrong dots.
There was a bit much of that, I think. So who is this Sontaran with the mommy sacks, and why does he owe the Doctor anything? Same with Blue Guy.
Maybe the Doctor was pissed the blue guy sold River a vortex manipulator cut off the wrist of a time agent (who hopefully wasn’t Jack) last season. So we have seen that guy before. I don’t mind the implication that the Doctor has had more adventures than we’ve seen. It would be cool if Lorna’s experience with the Doctor is actually in his future and we get to see what he did there when she was a girl. And I certainly would not mind if the “I’ll see you two again” Victorian detectives shows up again. 🙂 Or were new companions. It would be refreshing if the next companion had clear reasons for having no romantic interest in the Doctor. Rabid Rose fans would have no reason to immediately hate her at least.
I’m afraid that they worked too hard at trying to create a big mid series/season cliffhanger and that ended up causing a less than stellar episode that we have to wait 3 months to see the conclusion for.
Two points. Firstly please remember that Dr Who is aimed at children, with enough of a “adult” theme for it to be watchable for the parents. The fact that it has been watchable for all these years is a plus. Dr Who isn’t Battlestar Galactica or Lost. It’s a kids show that for some reason we feel it should behave like an adult show and therefore be able to stand up to “geek” scrutiny.Enjoy it for what it is and stop expecting it to be an “adult” show,
Second point… you are missing the point. If you actually look at the history of Dr Who and see who he has beaten over the years and against incredible odds, it’s not surprising some races would start to see him as some kind of super being or God like creature. So the logic of this story is sound.
The Doctor has defeated some overwhelming odds in the course of the show, yes. But if you watch the classic show, you’ll see that he doesn’t exactly embrace the idea of being a “superhero.” He tends to slip in, defeat the baddies because it’s the right thing to do, and slip out again.
Yes, he does have certain enemies that he’ll deal a huge blow to, like destroying Skaro in Remembrance of the Daleks. If the Daleks had somehow been behind all of this, I could see it….but other than that, it’s a bit too extreme.
And I understand the show is designed for the intelligent 8-12 year old. But at its peak, Dr Who was able to appeal to that demographic as well as the parents watching as well.
I liked this story because it wasn’t an episode with a credible storyline or plot, rather it was one filled with vignettes loosely tired together by the Doctor and his hunt for Amy.
There are elements which I detested, most notably River’s prediction towards Rory that the Doctor will rise higher than he ever has, and then fall further than ever before. This was utter hogwash as his “rising higher than ever before” was a fraud. It was all part of the trap for the Doctor so in reality never really “rose higher” in the first place. As for his falling further than before, it certainly didn’t appear that way. Yes, he lost Melody and felt terrible, but that was redeemed quite quickly when the reveal about River was made (which I guessed a LOOOONG time ago). Still, those elements didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the episode.
As far as the Doctor being a “superhero,” you can blame Russell T. Davies for that! It was his stories which catapulted the Doctor to that level (RTD wanted to reboot Doctor Who for something that the Buffy generation could get behind) in the first place, so this might be an attempt by Moffatt to gradually reign the Doctor back in to what he used to be during the classic series.
*nods* Look back at the episode he picks up Leela. Doctor leaves a paper trail in the very least.
I don’t mind the intergalactic super-hero bit so much. What I really don’t like is the identity of River. For a couple reasons – Try as I might, I just can’t make myself like her that much, so not looking forward to her being an increasingly major character. Story-wise, she never showed any kind of recognition of Amy or Rory earlier on. Plus, call me shallow, but does does it bother anyone else that she doesn’t look remotely like their kid should look?
River doesn’t have to look like Amy and Rory, since she can apparently regenerate, at least partially, as evidenced at the end of Day of the Moon.
That makes sense, I’ll concede the regeneration point – I still just don’t really like her though…
I liked the reveal of River’s identity. I liked Kovarian, because after six episodes of her as this ambiguous figure, this is the one where they established as not just a Big Bad, but one who can properly match wits with the Doctor; I imagine this’ll be like “Utopia” and “Sound of Drums”, where the first one establishes who the villain is and the next one fleshes out who they are and what they’re doing.
As for “the Doctor being an “inter-galactic superhero”, that’s what this whole episode was about, deconstructing this trend of the revival. That’s what they’re talking about at the end: the more the Doctor gets away from being the wise man and healer and more like a warrior/bad guy boogeyman/”intergalactic superhero”, the more that REALLY nasty bad guys come out of the woodwork to mess with him in really personal ways, and the more that the Doctor’s friends and companions suffer because of it. I think it really hit home for the Doctor at the end of this episode, and hopefully we’ll be seeing this trend of caracter growth continuing.
As far as looking like her parents, remember she’s a good 20 years older than they are at this point, hard to judge. I like that part of the story, even though I guessed it the minute I heard of Amy being pregnant.
She regenerated as a kid. We saw it. So we’ll never get to see what a Amy/Rory kid would look like as an adult. We don’t know what number River is on too. Maybe this is a couple regenerations in. Which means the Doctor could track a younger River down who doesn’t look like our River. It would be odd but the Doctor wouldn’t skip a beat probably.
Yeah, what he said.
Also, it is important to note that the River we know right now, is probably the last of her regenerations… since she dies in the Library.
@Vox Arcona – Don’t forget that if she actually is the child, she can regenerate. This has been established. If she has actually developed Galifreyan DNA threads in her humanity, we can step back to Classic Who and remember that Lady Timelords can choose the shape of their regeneration (established in Destiny of the Daleks.) So, not really a stretch that she doesn’t look like the child.
Moffatt, in an interview with DW Magazine, intimated that he’s written this story specifically to address the fact that the Doctor’s reputation has gotten out of hand…
The only reason the Doctor’s “reputation has gotten out of hand” is because Moffatt tells us so. I don’t see how this is otherwise true. Moffatt undid everything that happened during RTD’s time by “rebooting the universe” (as the Doctor put it). That’s supposedly why the Cybermen and Daleks exist again (although I don’t understand why).
Frankly, despite being a huge Doctor Who fan, I am immensely disappointed in what I perceive to be injuries to the canon committed by Moffatt.
The whole “Doctor re-booting the Universe” didn’t exactly alter the history or timelines. Once the Doctor re-appeared at Amy’s and Rory’s wedding the whole of reality remembered exactly who he was. Also it didn’t really change the Doctor’s character either. He was still the same man as he had been in the events leading up to it, so just re-booting everything wouldn’t be enough to change the Doctor as an individual.
I think that’s what these particular stories are designed for, to reign in an out of control Timelord that RTD had unleashed upon not just the Universe, but upon TV viewers as well.
It did change the timelines. The Daleks mysterious reappeared as did the Cybermen. Also, the events in the Medusa Cascade apparently never happened.
It really irritates me when a new producer comes in and screws everything that the last producer built.
Bitch about RTD if you want, but the man brought this show back from the grave.
Yes RTD brought it back…and the first season and a half was good. But the man couldn’t write a season finale to save his life!
That said, producers coming in and changing the show and paving over what previous regimes did is nothing new for Dr. Who.
All this talk of the Doctor being portrayed as the inter-galactic Super-Hero is not quite on the mark. He has armies, headless monks, and entire races after him. Hero? No, try villain. Or rather, he’s become the ultimate vigilante, and all the mucky-mucks hate that.
But, from the outset, from ep one, I’ve always thought that the suit was piloted either by River or by Amy. It looks more like River at the moment, but it could still go both ways.
What we know is this, the Doctor and River know what’s printed on the “Cot”, but Amy and Rory do not. Amy and Rory only know what’s embroidered on the prayer leaf. River comes from the future, and knows what’s coming (in a vaguish timey-wimey way). That bit is EXTREMELY important, because the “Cot” cannot possibly have her name on it, as it is a dead give-away AND a paradox that can’t be easily gotten rid of. (So, the doctor has been hoodwinked somewhere, or Moffat screwed up.)
Is River the baby? Yes. Is she close to the Doctor? Yes.
So, my current belief, and it’s been reinforced by something a friend said, is this: River Song is in the suit that kills the Doctor in SE06E01. River Song goes to prison for this (she killed someone, and won’t say who. Why is that?) The Doctor that is killed is actually a part of the Flesh (The Doctor specifically stated that the Flesh Doctor could survive what was about to happen). This gives River Song a motive, as we see in ep 1 that she and the “Flesh Doctor” are able to sync their timelines. So, she’s been getting it on with the wrong doctor at some point. The deception would be enough to upset anyone, and that works for me.
Of course, it’s all speculation. This is what Moffat wants with 3 months till the next ep. { Expletive Deleted }
Having River be in the suit is way too easy an out and Moffat does it, I’ll lose some of the respect that’s built up for him the past five years.
Agreed. Which is why I’ve always thought that Amy is also a strong candidate. The irony of her not wanting the Doctor to get killed and wanting to tell the Doctor about his future but being forced not to tell would tie that end up nicely. We’re also being given more to work with in these recent episodes, as we’ve seen that Amy has been fooled by a Flesh copy of the Doctor, and her baby has been made out of a Flesh as a decoy… She’s got to be having some truly ill feelings about Flesh copies at this point… Add in my thought that Kovorian is Amy’s future self, it all would make sense that she’s getting revenge (of course, I admit that that is a little far fetched).
I actually cannot believe that that is river that killed the doctor. Why would child river kill the flesh time lord when all the stuff with the flesh doctor would be in her future. I personally think that River did not kill the doctor at all. She said she killed a good man the best man she ever knew. I think she killed Rory. After all most women consider their fathers to be the best man they ever knew.
If River was in the suit and killed the doctor, she would know it. Remember, she had to escape from the storm cellar to come to America. So whatever she did, she’s already done it by the time the Doctor dies.
We know that River killed “the best man she ever knew,” and “a hero to many.” Amy’s speech at the beginning of this episode was deliberately misleading. You thought she was talking about the Doctor, but she was talking about Rory the whole time. I think the man River kills is her father.
I agree – I think she kills Rory. The look on her face when she sees him in the beginning of “A Good Man…” – I think that’s because she sees her father looking much younger (I hope) than when he died (by her hand) and she’s taken aback, moved?, by it all. WHY she’d have to kill him, who knows… My guess is that Rory will become like Donna Noble, in that the universe will be singing songs of praise for him before we know it…
All, that rant above, and I left out that I thought Kovorian is a future version of Amy Pond… She appears to see the weakness of the doctor, has a trap set, knows the variables on how the Timelord things… Yeah, she’s got more than just advanced intelligence, She KNOWS him.
:: THIS OPINION BROUGHT TO YOU BY WILD HAIR PRODUCTIONS ::
No this can’t be, Amy and Kovarian are seen in the same place at the same time. This would create a paradox.
What about this:
River is Amy’s and Rory’s child. After the kidnappping it was raised on Earth in the 1960s. The child can regenrate. It’s name is quite possibly on the cot. Rover call’s the Doctor sweety and love. NOT lover. They have kissed, but the Doctor now realizes that this is exceptional in their kind of relation.
Now there are a number of possibilities:
1. The child regenerated into a younger Susan and is eventually found by the first Doctor. (this seems very unlikely, but possible)
2. The child was eventually found by the Doctor (or another timelord) and brought to old Galifrey. There the child grew up, married. Had a boy of her own (maybe two?), after which she eventually left Gallifrey.
The boy grew up, and eventally borrowed an old blue box to have a lot of new adventures out in time and space.
The major event would then have to be, to bring back the (timeline of the) Timelords to this universe, without them destroying it.
Note that the woman in “the end of time” never was identified as the Doctor’s mother on screen. It was just RTDs opinion. It could just as easily have been Romana.
3. Kovorian looks like River, not like Amy. Maybe Kovorian is securing her own timeline by kidnapping Melody. And after she is defeated by the Doctor (and has returned the Timelords back to this universe?) she regenerates and becomes the current River, to do penance?
Not to nit-pic, but Susan always called him Grandfather, and there was never any hint that she was not.
Galifrey has always been portrayed as temporally transcendent. The time on Galifrey is always NOW no matter when you go there. I don’t know how that plays with the canon, but apparently one does not screw with Timelords’ history.
I was giving the possibility of Kovorian being Amy, because of her pale skin and red hair… Kovorian is probably just a villain and not related to either of them. Of course, that doesn’t mean she couldn’t be a future version of Amy, but we know what happens to River in her future, and Kovorian seems to be heading towards her past.
Don’t forget the Silence. The kid who was kidnapped by the Silence wouldn’t remember anything about them.
But, the child did. The child would have been calling the president and telling him to turn around when not in the presence of the Silence, because she could remember them. This may be because of the suit maintaining her, but I can’t think of why the little girl would be warning the president in the presence of the Silence… unless that was part of the overall trap for the Doctor in the first place.
What bothers my about the identity of River is it is just so underwhelming.
Moffat has always been good at creating these huge questions that would have people online guessing at for months, then he would throw in the answer that nobody was expecting.
But the thing about River being Amy and Rory’s daughter has been all over the place, so it wasn’t up to the usual cleverness.
Also, I feel like it doesn’t make sense when you look at her past interactions with Amy and Rory. She never seemed even remotely interested in them in anything other than ‘friends of the doctor’. If I were meeting the younger versions of my parents I would be a little more excited…
Of course, she’s also one who hates giving spoilers. One could postulate that she did know the whole time and simply didn’t give anything away, because it would change their future/her past.
Then again, she was taken from her parents when she was extremely young. We pretty sure that she didn’t see them again until she shows up in the space-suit. She may not have grown up after that in their presence either… and yet, River Song is presenting herself as if she knew the whole time. Conundrum.
I recall that in weeping angels when she first saw AMy she seemed to care about her. also, there has to be more to the doctor’s noting that they smooched after reading the ‘cot’…the cot he said he slept in. would he have thought that so noteworthy if she was simply amy/rory’s kid? there’s no way river is his mother, that’s just too much for a kids show. one theory i have (which simultaneously makes no sense) based on his reaction, and based on how much he loved hanging with flesh doc, is that river and doc are the same. that would explain his reaction to the smooching, and why he’d want to do it more without being incestual, but like i said, also make no sense in terms if the timeline. then again, the doc and flesh doc knew to tell amy to push which implies he was there (in his past). and in the flesh episodes, when amy sees the woman in the wall, while he says ‘it’s in my head’ and then goes on about the eyes (and he feels it more than flesh doc), he’s also looking in the same direction as amy (at the wall).
also, nixon specifically said the child in the space was a boy. sure, they then focused on the name ‘jefferson’ due to the street signs, but that nixon comment has been bugging me
I wonder if we aren’t seeing multiple-times of River at this point as well where she has to be careful about not crossing her own path but at the same time….
When River met the doctor in the Library she had been on a team and was not in prison right?
grr wanting now to go back and watch from that point forward.
Brain Hurts!!!!!!
Yes. Yes it does.
I’m enjoying watching the show, but I do have a lot of issues with Moffat.
First, he takes way too many liberties with the the concept of time, to the point where his story-telling really isn’t very credible (ie: how did a Doctor locked in the Pandorica come back from the future to give Rory the sonic screwdriver to open the Pandorica?) …and you’d have to be Stephen Hawking to figure out whether some of the explanations for things ever make sense (River Song and the Doctor travelling on opposite timelines in each other’s presence?) Thus, you shrug your shoulders but don’t really engage with those points of the plot line. It’s always there as a convenient way to get out of a pinch. The 1960s episodes managed three times the suspense without special effects and without overusing the time travel theme.
Secondly, this “reveal” was completely predictable. Good writers make you think they’re going in one direction and then go in another.
Finally, with specific regards to this episode, what’s with River scolding the Doctor for making people afraid of him? How does that make any sense at all? Sure, if you’re good and powerful, the badies will try and get you, but why did he deserve a dressing down over it? Makes no sense.
I totally agree with you. Moffat takes far too many liberties. What about the rule that once the Doctor is engaged in an event he becomes part of the event and therefore cannot use the TARDIS? Moffat conveniently ignores that rule.
How did the Daleks and Cybermen come back to life? I really don’t understand that one, and the explanation Moffat gave left me unfulfilled. It was particularly annoying to see that the Cybermen at some point build a galactic empire without any explanation about how that happened.
I thought this season was picking up until the mid season finale. I was really disappointed by the storytelling. Who are these villains? More importantly, why should I care about them? There was no explanation. I thought it was really pathetic that nobody at any point during the episode thought to ask, “hey one-eyed lady, who are you?”
In short, Moffat’s M.O. seems to be: show the middle of the story first, don’t bother about any back story or explanation, just show the flashy effects. I really long for the RTD days.
River brings up a good point when scolding the Doctor about him making people afraid. We think of the Doctor as a good person but ‘good’ is a relative term. Some think that the Doctor has the right to interfere with time and space, while others would naturally be against this. The Doctor became a legend through his travels and is known throughout the universe (almost everyone has heard of him). This explains the motivations of the bad guys against the Doctor. If a single Timelord can become so powerful that armies would run-away at the mention of his name, imagine if that same power can be harnessed as a weapon. The bad guys have found a way to create a new breed of Timelord and that can have serious implications on the Universe. Naturally, the enemy will want to destroy the Doctor because he is the only one who can stop them from fulfilling their objectives.
River’s comments also address the issue of the Doctor becoming too much of a warrior instead of the ‘wise man/healer’ that he once was. If he continues to identify himself by his reputation then it will end up destroying him in the end. She was trying to get him to see the bigger picture so he can step back from the darker path he has been presented with since the series returned in 2005.
For a bit now I agreed it would be “lil River” in the spacesuit but then River was at that event which lends to me thinking it couldn’t have been her.
Next if it is her and “a doctor” regenerates her because of his energy than that implies that she is unable to regenerate on her own.
Just a thought.. if you go back to the “first time” that the Doctor meets River in the Library remember how the ‘shadows’ or memories could more easily exist in those suits. Not sure how it ties it but it could considering the girl is in a suit?
Did anyone catch how River is in a fancy dress and seems to not really know Rory when she really should? She may know some of her own future (as it is the Doctors past) but it may be a “younger” River there in the scene. Similarly the attitude of River near the end is different from there at the beginning.
Now, I watch this show and, okay, River is the child, with lots of possibilities and interpretations as … discussed.
But for me, my question is – whoever these people (as represented by the eye-patch broad) are, teamed up with the clerics and the headless monks (who have a fairly non-specific selection process it seems), had to know that Amy was pregnant and set up the kidnapping and the flesh replacement… that would have to be a pretty precise calculation besides having an actual plan that would require said infant, and setting up the “trap” for the Doctor. A bit alarming since his enemies already tried to trap him in the Pandorica, but this would seem to require some time-travel or how else could they set this up so exactly?
And then that whole song and dance with the Silence and the little girl (how did she get there and why) and so on and so on. Sure seems like a lot of story details to tie together, will be interesting to see whether it can be done…
I have to disagree on you that the side characters the Doctor calls on suffer from underdevelopmeent. You have to realize that the Doctor has been traveling through time and space for hundreds of years and has met millions of people along the way. We have only seen a fraction of the Doctor’s travels and he has met so many others offscreen. I believe that the reason why the backgrounds of these characters are left unexplained is that (1) it will clutter up the episode with needless exposition (2) it is written so the audience can imagine their own scenerios to how these characters came to owe the Doctor a debt (3) it introduces very colorful and interesting twists on established aliens/monsters (Victorian Silurian and a Sontaran nurse, lol).
On another subject, I will agree that internet speculation led to your underwhelmed reaction. The problem with writing for television in this day and age, is that there is so much information and rumours circulating around that it is very difficult to write a storyline that surprises the audience. We can look at thousands of individual ideas on where the story may go and there is bound to be a few that correctly guess the plot. Your disappointed reaction to the outcome is your own fault because you actively pursued an answer to the questions that were presented in Doctor Who. You basically spoiled yourself by reading all of the speculation. I recommend that you stay away from the forums if you wish to feel more engaged with the series. If you can’t, then judge the episodes on their merits and presentation to the audience, not on whether you guessed the outcome ahead of time.
I agree, I actually really liked the entire episode, I didn’t see River Song being Amy’s daughter coming, and I enjoyed the entire premise of the show. Reading through this comment section here is one of the first times I’ve done it, and I have to say, I always enjoy the show more if I don’t read something like this first, so I probably won’t again until the next episode comes out.