The Doctor Who Club v.4

[Thecatteam]

I didn't get around to watching A Town Called Mercy. It looks like I'll be a week behind for a while!

    Spoiler:- Dinosaurs on a Spaceship:

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I enjoyed this episode! Like I predicted, it didn't take itself too seriously!
It had more jokes than plot, which has the potential to be a little confusing; fortunately the plot isn't that complicated so the episode managed to pull it off! I think the Doctor's Christmas list was my favorite joke, but there were many others that I've probably forgotten about.
I like how the Ponds are really the Doctor's friends--he doesn't need to tell them what to do all the time and they are capable of handling a lot of things themselves! Which is awesome!
I agree with everyone else that I didn't like how the Doctor killed whats-his-face. He enjoyed it! That's bad. Although I suppose all will be put right in A Town Called Mercy.

 

[elyvorg]

Armando Payne: Welcome back. It's good that you've liked all the episodes so far this series, but keep in mind that the warning still stands. The next time you do happen to dislike an episode, please think carefully about how you express as such in here. That's all.


    Spoiler:- Mercy's characters:

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Was I really the only one to get fairly attached to quite a few of the characters in Mercy? They might not have been as instantly epic as characters like Nefertiti or Oswin, but this was less about what they did onscreen and more about what we learned about the kind of people they were. I found both Kahler-Jex and Kahler-Tek to be pretty compelling, multi-dimensional characters who really carried the episode well. The exploration of the Doctor's mercy wouldn't have been anywhere near as interesting if there hadn't been those parallels between him and Jex, and to a lesser extent, Tek, to bring those aspects of the Doctor out into the open.

Then, although he didn't get as much focus, I also liked Isaac for just being such a through-and-through good man*; he really embodied the episode's spirit of forgiveness and mercy and realising that even those who've done terrible things can still be good people. And I even kind of liked Dockery, that eighteen year old lad, in his little moment in the spotlight.

*Although, that said, we don't know much about Isaac's past. For all we know, he too could have done some bad things - he probably fought in the war, at least - and have become the way he is now as a way of making up for it, much like the Doctor and Jex.

...I've thought about this episode too much. (I also have headcanon that the little girl from Mercy becomes friends with Tek, because it would be adorable and Tek doesn't deserve to be lonely. I almost want to read warmfuzzy fanfic about it - and I don't usually get even the vaguest desire to read fanfiction for Doctor Who.)
 

I agree with The Eleventh in that this episode's music score was great. I hope all the best pieces end up on the soundtrack.


So, The Power of Three! The Radio Times has a couple of mildly interesting things to say about it:
    Spoiler:- Radio Times:

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Apparently there's a character introduced in it who could potentially become a recurring character. Might possibly be referring to Kate Stewart, the blonde woman from the trailer, as she seems to be quite prominent. Perhaps she's an important member of UNIT; they're in the episode, too.

There's the question of whether the cubes are some kind of gift or something more threatening than that. Obviously we viewers can be pretty sure it's the latter since otherwise there'd be no conflict, but the Doctor doesn't know which it is. And he doesn't like not knowing.

Then it also reassures anyone who might be put of by the low-key, domestic premise that it still manages to be a fairly fast-paced episode. For once, I actually honestly wouldn't have minded if this particular episode had been slower-paced, but I guess that's good to hear, too.
 

And generally it talks about how warm and funny the episode is, making it sound promisingly like what I've always hoped it'll be. =D

There's also the usual gallery of images, some of which I find pretty damn adorable, and so I feel the need to squee unnecessarily over them:
    Spoiler:- Gallery:

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I am very amused by the Doctor, Amy and Rory sitting on the sofa, staring at the cubes like they're waiting for them to suddenly do something. The Doctor is adorable when he's bored out of his mind. x3

In the background of the one in which the Doctor is demonstrating how not to sit on a sofa properly (he is such a big kid), a photo of him, Amy and Rory can be seen on the mantelpiece. Awwww. I wonder if it was taken during one of their adventures, or sometime during his stay with them? But either way, its presence there just goes to show how much a part of their life he is.

...and on an even closer inspection of that image's background, it turns out that the Doctor actually kept the Stetson from Mercy and has it hung on their wall! There is something kind of awesome about that.

Also on the note of the Doctor being a big kid, look at the one with him having dinner with Amy and Rory. Rory's drink is in a glass, like any normal adult. The Doctor? Has a plastic cup with brightly-coloured stripes. Hee.

Then the one with Amy resting her head on the Doctor's shoulder is just too heartmelting for words.

While the trailers have focused on the more mystery/action aspects of the episode (because apparently if people realise it's about the Doctor living with Amy and Rory for a year then they'll be put off?), I like that these images focus more on the heartwarming, domestic stuff. It's a good reassurance that that's still going to be a big part of the episode. :3
 

Also, the first preview clip.
    Spoiler:- Really tiny thing in the preview clip, but:

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Their phone has 59 messages. o.o Are the other 58 all from the Doctor, perhaps?

...okay so I think Pond Life may have given me a weird fixation with the Ponds' answerphone messages. Shush.

also aaaa Amy's reading glasses; she's slowly getting older D:
 

The more I learn about this episode, the more sure I become that I'm going to love it to bits. Three days!

-elyvorg/Amelia

[The Eleventh]

    Spoiler:- Radio Times:

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Apparently there's a character introduced in it who could potentially become a recurring character. Might possibly be referring to Kate Stewart, the blonde woman from the trailer, as she seems to be quite prominent. Perhaps she's an important member of UNIT; they're in the episode, too.
 

    Spoiler:

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Indeed she is. She's their scientific advisor, which was the role held by the Doctor during his UNIT days (it was also Malcolm's title in Planet of the Dead). I'm looking forward to seeing what she's like.
 

Anyway, after reading the DWM preview for TPoT, I'm far more excited for it than I was; it should be an interesting episode. The preview for Angels gives away some of the premise.

    Spoiler:- The Angels Take Manhattan - slightly spoilery:

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The synopsis the magazine gives is as follows:

The Doctor, Amy and Rory visit modern-day New York. But the Weeping Angels are lurking here, too. When one of the TARDIS crew is zapped back to 1938, Amy discovers that time can't always be rewritten. Not once it's written in stone...

Gah! It's probably Rory who ends up the victim of an Angel. It fits in with a mention of him kissing Amy, then heading off to get some coffee. I could be completely incorrect, though. There's also an image of River, who's wearing a very provocative black dress, revealing a chained Weeping Angel behind some curtains. Interesting. Matt furthers the idea of the Ponds never returning, something Karen Gillan seems to be set on. Of course, we can never trust the cast nor crew. :P I want to see this episode so badly, but then I don't, since it's the end of the Ponds. Ambivalence is cruel.
 

Matt mentions something highly intriguing in an interview. While speaking of Moffat planning things so far in advance (again mentioning a link to The Eleventh Hour), he says, "Like, there was a moment in Asylum of the Daleks, which I just think is great, it's one of those 'What does that mean?' moments... It's when Oswin looks to camera and says, 'Remember me.' The fans are now going, 'What?! Remember what?!' That's why it's important to keep things a secret, because the revelation is the fun bit of sitting down and watching it. With Amy, this whole idea of the girl who waited... Steven writes the romance of the show so brilliantly and he understands it. I don't mean just the Amy/Rory romance; I mean the romance, the theatrical romance."

It seems to me that Oswin's plea will have importance when Jenna-Louise Coleman returns. Or maybe not. I also get the feeling that Amy's title of "The Girl Who Waited" will be meaningful in Angels. Waiting for Rory, perhaps...?

Oh, and Moffat reveals that the whole movie-poster-episodes idea will continue through to the second half of Series 7.

For those interested, Alex Kingston will be the focus of tonight's Who Do You Think You Are?. It airs at nine on BBC One. I find the programme really interesting, and it's even more inviting when a Who star takes part.

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams.

[elyvorg]

    Spoiler:- The Angels Take Manhattan - slightly spoilery:

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The synopsis the magazine gives is as follows:

The Doctor, Amy and Rory visit modern-day New York. But the Weeping Angels are lurking here, too. When one of the TARDIS crew is zapped back to 1938, Amy discovers that time can't always be rewritten. Not once it's written in stone...

Gah! It's probably Rory who ends up the victim of an Angel. It fits in with a mention of him kissing Amy, then heading off to get some coffee. I could be completely incorrect, though. There's also an image of River, who's wearing a very provocative black dress, revealing a chained Weeping Angel behind some curtains. Interesting. Matt furthers the idea of the Ponds never returning, something Karen Gillan seems to be set on. Of course, we can never trust the cast nor crew. :P I want to see this episode so badly, but then I don't, since it's the end of the Ponds. Ambivalence is cruel.
 

    Spoiler:- Reply:

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Aaaa. So, um. I'd more or less already thought that an Angel sending Amy and/or Rory back in time and the Doctor somehow not being able to just pop back and pick them up might be along the lines of how he loses them. What I didn't think is that it would be a significant enough part of the episode's premise to be put in a synopsis (albeit one slightly more spoilery than normal). So there has to be more to it than just that, especially if it's only one of them being sent back. I also think it's probably Rory: I've seen a clip in a trailer of the Doctor and Amy but not Rory in a New York street, plus Rory's all on his own with that Weeping Cherub in another trailer clip. So I guess the episode is about the Doctor and Amy trying to get Rory back, but the Angels somehow make that less simple than it should be?

The thing about time not always being rewritable reminds me of this exchange: "Time can be rewritten." "Not all of it." "Says who?" "Who do you think?" - between Amy and River in The Impossible Astronaut. I wonder if the River in Manhattan is younger than the one in TIA/DotM, and therefore she said that stuff back in TIA because of her experiences here? That would mean she'd have always known how her parents were going to be torn away from the Doctor forever. Ouch.
 

As much as I'm going to miss them terribly, I can definitely get behind the idea of Amy and Rory never returning once they're gone. Their departure is obviously going to be hugely heartbreaking and impactful - it would greatly cheapen the impact if they were to just pop back again for an episode or two later. (Especially as they've basically already left the TARDIS and are just popping back for individual episodes at the moment.)

"Like, there was a moment in Asylum of the Daleks, which I just think is great, it's one of those 'What does that mean?' moments... It's when Oswin looks to camera and says, 'Remember me.' The fans are now going, 'What?! Remember what?!'"

Huh. I assumed that Oswin's "Remember me" was just a sly wink to the fans who knew that we'd be seeing her again. I didn't think it would have any more significance than that. Well, I guess that's something to think about. The only thing I can come up with is something like how Amy was able to bring the universe/Rory/her parents/the Doctor back into existence by remembering them, but there's no way that'd make any sense for Oswin.


So, it's later on in the week: this is me getting around to my unnecessarily long elyvorgramble in anticipation for The Power of Three. May mention preview clips/articles/other stuff that's been officially released, but mostly just talks about the premise of the episode combined with how well I know the characters in order to guess at the kind of charactery stuff that I think is likely to go on here.

    Spoiler:- Why The Power of Three is going to be utterly adorable:

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The main crux of why the Doctor living with Amy and Rory for a year is so potentially heartwarming is that the Doctor, basically, wishes he could be human. There's a quote of Steven Moffat in which he describes the Doctor as "an angel who wants to be human", essentially saying that while he can never quite be one of us because all his Time Lordy power makes him somewhat detached from humanity, he really desperately wants to join in. In this series in particular, there's been a sense of how the Doctor views Amy and Rory's normal human life in a rather idealised light, as something perfect and wonderful that he could never have and that Amy and Rory can only have as long as he's not around. Being invited to join in their Christmas dinner made him so incredibly happy - he even cried with joy, something he'd thought was a thoroughly human trait that he'd never be capable of. And that was just one evening of him taking part in normal human life. For the Doctor to have a reason to live with Amy and Rory and be a part of their lives for a year is going to give him even more chance to be that happy once again.

This is also bearing in mind that the Doctor has been travelling on his own for ridiculously long amounts of time since the last time Amy and Rory were a permanent fixture in his life. Most of the last 291 years for him have featured barely any Amy and Rory at all, apart from a period roughly two-thirds of the way through that where he'd occasionally pick them up for one-off trips before leaving them home again. In the DVD-only scene Good Night, Amy laments that all of his companions must be such tiny parts of his life because of all the stuff he does without them, but the Doctor responds that no, they're enormous parts of his life and all he ever really remembers. So most of those 291 years would have been practically meaningless to the Doctor; the only parts that would have really meant something to him would have been the times he was with Amy and Rory. For him to spend a whole, uninterrupted year with Amy and Rory here is going to mean the world to him. It's wonderful that he's got the opportunity to have this time with them now considering that we know he's going to lose them soon after; the point of them being happy now when they're going to be sad later is because they're going to be sad later, after all.

However, I imagine that the Doctor being incredibly happy at getting to join in with his companions' normal lives is going to conflict somewhat with him feeling that he shouldn't really be interfering with their lives and that he's only there to deal with the cubes, nothing more. He has something of a tendency to believe Amy and Rory are happier without him, most noticeably at the end of Pond Life - and even when they invited him in for dinner at Christmas, he lingered on the doorstep with a look that seemed to me like he could barely believe he deserved to take part in something like this. As far as Amy and Rory are concerned, though, he'd always be welcome in their house even if he didn't have a potential invasion to keep an eye on; they set a place for him that Christmas dinner even though they didn't know he was coming, after all, and I have no doubt that they continued to do so every subsequent Christmas, too. So perhaps this episode could also serve to help the Doctor consider himself even more at home with Amy and Rory and realise that he's welcome in their life because, regardless of anything else, he's their friend and that's what friends do.

Really, the only real excuse the Doctor should have for not normally joining in with Amy and Rory's home life is that he'd get bored. Boy, will he ever get bored in this episode - he is terrible at being patient. There was that scene in Vincent and the Doctor while waiting for the Krafayis to show up, where he was incapable of sitting still or shutting up and complained about how time normally passes "really slowly, in the right order" - and that was a single afternoon. Waiting for aliens to show up for a whole year is going to drive him utterly up the wall with boredom. It will be delightful and hilarious. I can only begin to imagine the antics he might indulge in in an attempt to keep himself occupied while sitting around in Amy and Rory's house waiting for the cubes to do something. And Amy and Rory will have to put up with him. That will also be delightful. There's already been quite a sense this series of Amy and Rory more or less treating the Doctor like he's their son - this episode in particular is just going to be the best opportunity for more of this dynamic, with the Doctor being like a bored, sulky kid and Amy and Rory being the exasperated parents. Especially as they'll pretty much have to teach him how to function in a normal human life; regularity and routine are things that the Doctor - this Doctor in particular - is practically allergic to.

And on a less humourous note: the reason the Doctor usually keeps himself constantly active and busy and doing stuff isn't just because he'll get bored - it's also because he has to keep distracting himself from all of the various dark thoughts about himself and his life that he doesn't like to think about. Most relevantly right now, he's been trying pretty hard not to think about the fact that he's inevitably going to lose Amy and Rory one day, to old age if nothing else. In the Ponds' house with little going on, he might find it a lot harder to distract himself from these thoughts like he usually can, especially at night when he'll be the only one awake. It would be nice if this were touched upon, just a little bit, in the episode.

Finally, because this is going to last a year, it means that at some point during the Doctor's stay, Christmas will happen! I've already talked enough about how heartwarming the last time we saw Christmas with the Ponds was, and that's not even getting into the fact that the Doctor supposedly has a Christmas list and will generally be able to let his childish side run wild. I do hope we get to see their Christmas and it doesn't just happen offscreen. I think this might actually be slightly more likely to be shown than I initially thought, judging by the fact that in the first preview clip there's a caption of "July", which presumably means that, much like in Pond Life, there'll be captions of the months as we move through the year. For the "December" one to not show us Christmas would be an obvious missed opportunity. Then I also kind of hope maybe we'll see Amy and Rory's birthdays when they come around - they might even choose a day to celebrate the Doctor's birthday, too, since as far as I'm aware he's been counting his age in Earth years - buuut this really is getting into wishful thinking that probably won't actually happen. (Even though it would be totally adorable if it did. You know you want to see Amy and Rory getting the Doctor a birthday card that says "To Our Son-in-Law".)


Okay, so there's also a plot that's got to happen in this episode and as such I'm not sure how much of the stuff I've just rambled about will actually fit into 45 minutes. Since it all came from my understanding of the characters and how they'll respond to the episode's premise, I'm pretty convinced that more or less everything I mentioned will happen, but how much of it will actually be shown and made apparent in the episode considering that there is a plot that has to be shown too is another matter. I hope quite a bit of it is, though. It should be.


Short version: the Doctor is going to feel happy and at home and not lonely for an entire year, and therefore this is going to be the most heartwarming thing. :3
 

Tomorrow~!

-elyvorg/Amelia

[VampirateMace]

    Spoiler:- Gallery, Power of Three:

Show Spoiler

 
I'm not sure the striped cup is anything more than mismatched dishes, because their bowls didn't appear to match, but I can see him calling dibs on the 'cool' cup. Or it could be one of those we don't trust you with glass things, like it is for me... Of course it could always be a special cup, like how he has a special straw.

Pretty sure I'm going to love this episode, the waiting scene in Vincent and the Doctor was one of my favorites, for exactly the reason you mentioned. The man has never been paitent. He's going to drive the Ponds insane.
 

    Spoiler:- Empire of Glass (book), humans & time lords:

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Brax (not going to try to type his full name) says the way time lords feel about humans is how a father feels about a wayward daughter. Does this imply some evolutionary relationship? Or possibly some timeline interference the old watcher time lords won't admit to?
 

[Becoming]

Don't have much time to make an on-topic post (gotta do homework) but here's a spoiler for The Angels Take Manhattan that I just love, and it's a major spoiler. It's not like a "spoil the ending" spoiler, rather a "this is going to be apart of the story" spoiler.

    Spoiler:- the spoiler:

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The Statue of Liberty is (going to be?) a weeping angel. Not sure if it's always been that way, but I think that it was done to it. Anyways, proof is on my tumblr: http://therealkierin.tumblr.com/post...f-liberty-is-a and is anyone else as excited for this episode as me? Well I'm kinda dreading if for the Amy-Rory-leaving-ness, but at the same time weeping angel stories are always very good!
 

Okay so approximately 12 hours until TPoT (or TPo3?). TBH I'm not as excited for this episode as much as I am curious, because from what we know we don't know much at all about what's really going to happen (apart from, as elyvorg said, awesomeness with the Doctor . . . oh right, spoilers . . .

    Spoiler:- about the Doctor . . .:

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. . . living with Amy and Rory for a year). Because honestly there are cubes and they don't make much sense. Also, apparently Martha is not appearing which is annoying since she was apart of UNIT. But aw well.
 

Well, that's all I have to say. Except for I rewatched Dinosaurs on a Spaceship and enjoyed it again

EDIT: well huh, found a trailer for The Angels Take Manhattan AND BE WARNED SPOILERS AND MAJOR SPOILERS OF WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN SO WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK okay so now don't blame me if anything is spoiled for you. The link is in the spoilers:

    Spoiler:- the link:

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the link

And what I wanna say about the preview:
    Spoiler:

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Well damn, now we have an idea of why this episode is gonna be sad . . . poor Rory (probably).
 

 

kjt/Oswin Oswald

[Will-powered Spriter]

Oh, so close! So close to being a perfect episode!

    Spoiler:- The Cube Root:

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This episode nearly had it all! It had a fascinating plot, excellent characterisation, good pacing, time travel, everyone in it was awesome, the celebrity cameo's were hilarious, the cubes ploy was incredibly well written, everyone was on the edge of their seat and it was all great...

Until the last five minutes. Evil deep sounding hologram buggers off, oh and the ships computer isn't password protected or anything. Lets just wave the screwdriver at it, undo everything in two minutes, explode the only invasion ship and solve the whole plot. No need to tie up the remaining few loose ends. All's well, roll credits!

Such a shame too. The whole episode was masterful and then it just hit a brick wall.
 

Well, the Angels next. Oh goody. Fun.

[Becoming]

    Spoiler:- The Power of Three:

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I have to agree, the episode was pretty good apart from the resolution. I kept looking at the clock and wondering "when is something bad gonna happen" for the most part. I think they were too slow in getting into the action, it was mostly "oh, what are these cubes?". Then they just explained everything really quickly and yup done.

I'm curious about the guys (forget their name) that wanted to destroy humanity in the first place. I hope they return 'cause otherwise . . . what the hell?

But apart from the sub-par ending, loved this episode. But I really didn't see that coming in the end, Brian telling Amy and Rory to go with the Doctor and to bring them back safe. Well that might not be the case next episode . . .

Also, it's been ten years since The Eleventh Hour. Wow. We know Rory was 31 in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship . . . they never really have done this with a character before (well in the new series), had them as a companion over a span of ten years in their lives . . . but now Amy and Rory are going to leave
 

Aaaaaand next week:
    Spoiler:- The Angels Take Manhattan:

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So the angels are after Rory (supposedly)? I've got a feeling about that potential death in this episode
 

Only one episode left, and then we have to wait three months for the Christmas special . . . I don't wanna see Amy and Rory go, but at the same time I'm excited for Oswin (or Jenna Louise Coleman's other character, if it's not Oswin).

kjt/Oswin Oswald

[elyvorg]

Well, that was pretty adorable. :3

    Spoiler:- The Power of Three:

Show Spoiler

 
Okay, so, um. Not quite what I was expecting; makes my lengthy ramble on Friday feel somewhat redundant. But then, episodes never are quite what I think they'll be. I'm not remotely complaining, because this is always what the episode was actually going to involve. I really should have supposed that the Doctor would get unbearably bored in the first few days and decide to just skip most of the year. His boredom was every bit as hilarious as I'd expected, especially him going off and doing like a million different menial things in a desperate bid to pass the time and then coming back and finding out it's only been an hour. (I feel approximately like that sometimes on Saturdays when I'm waiting for an episode to be on.) And Amy totally reminded me of a frustrated mother whose child has complained about being bored one too many times. Hee.

But even though his actual stay with the Ponds didn't last anywhere near as long as I'd been led to believe it would, there were still plenty of adorable moments this episode. For one, it wasn't even due to the cubes that the Doctor came back; it was him wanting to wish Amy and Rory a happy anniversary. Aww. The day of their wedding did mean a lot to him, after all. And this eventually led to him staying with them for apparently about a month without being too unbearable! I find it a bit of a shame that we didn't get to see much of that, but I did love seeing the Doctor, Amy and Rory sitting together sharing some fish fingers and custard (while watching Craig - Owens? Presumably what we're meant to assume - getting fired from The Apprentice. Snerk). Fwee for fish fingers and custard! The Doctor must have insisted at some point that they try it, and they'd have realised that it's actually quite nice and took to regularly having it with him. :3 (Also I would totally go to the Doctor's hypothetical restaurant that serves fish fingers and custard and nothing else.)

I also find it incredibly sweet that the Doctor actually asked them if he could stay because he misses them. It may be pretty obvious for us how much the Doctor misses Amy (and Rory), but to have him actually admit that to her is something else. The Doctor - this Doctor in particular - has always seemed to have trouble being open about his emotions, and you could tell from how awkward he was there that he was really finding it hard to get the words out, so the fact that he still did is all the more poignant. And I've sort of thought for a while now that the Doctor's deep attachment to Amy might be partly down to the fact that Amelia was the first living thing (other than the TARDIS) that the Eleventh Doctor saw, that he kind of imprinted on her like a duckling to a mother duck, so for the Doctor to admit more or less exactly that to Amy was another thing that it absolutely melted my heart to hear. It's so sad how he knows he's still going to feel that way towards Amy even long after she's gone, and that he's fully aware that might happen soon. Again there's that view of his of the Ponds' normal human life as something wonderful that they're completely entitled to without him interfering - he seemed to fully expect them to choose that life over his and wasn't going to blame them when they did, even though it'd break his heart. And the way he keeps coming back and seeing them because he knows he won't be able to forever and wants to make the most of them while he's still there - aww. :< Yet another thing I loved hearing the Doctor admit - ever since The God Complex, he can sometimes be so honest about himself and it's adorable.

As for the other characters in the episode - I cannot believe I didn't notice beforehand that Kate Stewart has half the Brigadier's surname! There's no way that was ever going to be just a coincidence. It's lovely how the Doctor influenced the Brigadier to want UNIT to become more scientific rather than military and that his daughter has been working to make that a reality. And Kate dropping half of her surname so she can make her own way in UNIT and won't only be there on her father's reputation is also pretty cool of her. I would totally be up for seeing more of Kate sometime in the future; she seems rather awesome. Meanwhile, seeing more of Brian in this episode was a treat. Brian's Log was an epic display of true diligence in the face of what should be mind-numbing boredom - and all because the Doctor asked him to. Aww. I can really see where Rory gets his incredible loyalty and patience from. Then the outside perspective he had on the Ponds' lives and the choice they had to make was also interesting to see and rather influential to the end result, I think.

Even though it's great how Amy has built herself a real life that she's happy with now, this episode showed how Doctor-life still kind of gets in the way and isn't very good at co-existing with real life. Throughout the episode it seemed like Amy and Rory pretty much intended to get around to choosing their real life over their Doctor-life eventually, because they knew that they should - and yet they kept putting that choice off because they love the excitement of the Doctor's trips and didn't want to have to give that up just yet. Even Rory, who I've always seen as more grounded than Amy, seemed to enjoy just as much as Amy did all the times this episode that the Doctor suddenly whisked them off for adventures. The trip on their anniversary went on for seven weeks before they decided to go back, which is quite a while - a lot more than in previous episodes, where it seemed that they'd just had the one trip and then, despite the Doctor encouraging them to stay for another, one of them would ask to go back home. I wonder if Amy and Rory let it escalate so much here because beneath the surface they were rebelling from their supposed eventual choice to give this all up. Because as Brian pointed out at the end, it really is the Doctor's life that they want more than anything else. Sometimes the best way to figure out which of two choices you really want is to try and make yourself choose the other one and realise that you just can't do it.

So, I would be pretty uplifted at the fact that Amy and Rory are now, as far as I can tell, back permanently on board the TARDIS! And this time there's no god complex, no lies, no idolisation, just three friends on equal terms (as equal as possible when one of them is the Doctor, at least) off to see the universe. :3 Except... we have some idea of how this is going to end. The Doctor's inability to let go of the Ponds, constantly coming back and giving them that opportunity to come with him which they've just grabbed with both hands, might just have doomed them. If you offer a child a suitcase full of sweets, they'll take it, which is why you shouldn't. The Doctor promised Brian that they were not going to die, but... I'm not entirely sure if Brian will ever see them again. D: Oh god oh god oh god next week aaaaargh.
 

Edit: Okay, whoa, wait a minute. I've spotted something in The Power of Three which leads to really odd things regarding episode order.
    Spoiler:

Show Spoiler

 
The trip on their wedding anniversary where Amy accidentally marries Henry VIII? That's the trip offhandedly mentioned at the beginning of A Town Called Mercy when Rory left his phone charger in Henry VIII's ensuite. It has to be; you can see the Doctor dropping the charger under the bed. That means A Town Called Mercy actually took place during The Power of Three - it has to have been another of the trips they went on later in that seven-week-long string of adventures.

That's... really kind of weird to think about. (And also totally screws up my headcanon of what the Doctor's been doing in his timeline recently; I was sure Mercy had to have been the first time he'd seen them in ages. D: Gah. I do not know the Doctor as well as I thought I did!)

(...this does, however, add an extra level of adorable to the Doctor deciding he wants to stay with the Ponds because he misses them, as that happened very shortly after the events of A Town Called Mercy in which the Doctor realised that he needs Amy and can't keep spending ages on his own.)
 

    Spoiler:- Next time.:

Show Spoiler

 
This is going to be incredibly creepy. And timey-wimey for that matter; Weeping Angels have the potential to be very timey-wimey, something we didn't really see much of in the Byzantium episodes but which is clearly back in full force here.

Amy and Rory fall from a tall building together. That couldn't be... you know, it, could it? Surely not; they wouldn't put that in the trailer. Hopefully it's something like they're taking a leaf out of their daughter's book and expecting the Doctor to catch them. Yay for River being here, too. I wonder why she is, though - maybe, this time, she's come because the Doctor called her?

And oh god the Doctor looks and sounds really desperate and frightened in parts of the trailer. It seems like he's going to be helpless to stop whatever the Angels have planned for Amy and Rory, even though he's the Doctor and he's usually able to stop bad things and he promised Brian and aaaaa. D:
 

Only six days left.

-elyvorg/Amelia

[VampirateMace]

    Spoiler:- Power of Three:

Show Spoiler

 
I have to agree that the ending was way too easy. No shipboard security, no moment of hacking? The not-really-there guy did shoot at them, and then he just lets them undo it? What?

I'm going to have to watch this again, it all seemed to go by so fast. Loved the 'hour' scene where the doctor has to do anything but watch the cubes.

Anyone notice the cubes are about the size of a rubix cube, the same puzzle toy we've seen the doctor announce hatred for (House Call), but also have on his person to play with (God Complex)... It probably doesn't mean much, like the flickering lights, unless possibly it was foreshadowing the puzzling cubes.
 

Got to double check a couple things before I post Chapter 1 of Aggressive Stairs. I think the last Doctor Who club had a clause about Fan Fics and what, if any, was allowed. I'm perfectly fine with just posting it in the Fan Fiction subforum if it's not allowed here, but if it's okay here I'll put it in spoilers so that those of you who don't care for fan fiction aren't subjected to it anyways. I always hate when I start reading a fan fiction and it turns out to be some bizzaro shipping thing where the character's personalities aren't remotly canon. I'm trying for canon personalities. Sorry, rambling, I'll shut up on that now.

I'm going to miss the Ponds.

[The Eleventh]

Gah, I had almost forgotten that I've yet to post about The Power of Three.

    Spoiler:

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Well, it was kind of what I was expecting, but in a way, it wasn't. It certainly delivered and was great fun. The ending was a bit silly; I agree (Let's bring one-third of the human race back to life with a whirr of the screwdriver!). The character interactions were fantastic. I loved Kate. I can't believe I didn't make her association to the Brigadier before the episode aired. It was also nice to see the Tower of London UNIT base again. The final scene was quite sad in that it was the last one to be filmed by Matt, Karen and Arthur. (It was actually filmed at the hospital where Rory works; not in the garden of the Ponds' house. :P)
 

It's really starting to sink in now that Angels will be the last episode with Amy and Rory as regulars (at most). They've been here since early 2010. I kind of don't want Saturday to come, even though I'm very much so looking forward to TATM. It seems like it'll be quite timey-wimey, emotional (Amy narrating in the past tense, apparently) and... fun.

    Spoiler:- What I think will happen. I haven't read any spoilers, so this is completely speculative:

Show Spoiler

 
I have a feeling that neither of them will die. That, or Amy will. It seems like the promotional material is setting up Rory as the one in danger, so I think it could go the other way. From the looks of things, Rory is zapped by the Angels and meets River in the past, and Amy and the Doctor... go back in time to them? Perhaps they attempt to, but are thrown off course (there's a scene in a BBC America trailer with the TARDIS monitor displaying "Temporal Distortions Detected")? I want to know, but then I don't. Oh, I hate this.
 

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams

[elyvorg]

VampirateMace: Discussion of Doctor Who fanfiction was and is of course allowed, but... I think I'm going to go ahead and say that the actual fanfiction itself should be posted elsewhere and only linked to in here. This might be my principles as a fanfiction writer rather than my principles as a Doctor Who fan making me decide on this, but I just don't feel like a piece of fanfiction belongs in a thread devoted to a much broader topic, for the sake of the fic itself more than anything else. (If you want to post it on SPPf, remember to use the Non-Pokémon Fics subforum.)


So, about that thing I mentioned in an edit to my last post. Since then I've remembered that there's an even tinier background detail in The Power of Three which basically completely counters it. :x
    Spoiler:- Phone chargers, Stetsons and 97 years:

Show Spoiler

 
Namely, the image in this gallery which shows the Mercy Stetson on the Ponds' wall, during a scene (the Doctor's epic boredom montage) that takes place before the anniversary. And it's definitely the same Stetson, as it has the hole through it and everything. So A Town Called Mercy has to have happened before the beginning of The Power of Three after all. Disregard what I thought I'd discovered last post. False alarm. (The phone charger we see when they visit Henry VIII on their anniversary is therefore probably because, while they were there, they thought they might as well retrieve it from where Rory left it last time. It would explain why the Doctor was holding it even though it's Rory's.)

I have to admit I had begun to slightly warm to the idea of Mercy taking place a third of the way into The Power of Three, though. The more I looked at the way the Doctor acts before and after the anniversary trips, the more it seemed to make a certain kind of sense. All of the Doctor's moments of adorable honesty that I gushed about in my main episode ramble happened after them, whereas before them he was acting kind of flippant about the whole Doctor-life/real life conflict. ("You've got a job?") It seemed reasonable that this change could have been partly due to his character development in A Town Called Mercy. Even though it wasn't Mercy after all, I still feel like something significant happened to the Doctor during their anniversary trips to make him realise he should be treating the Ponds' life more outwardly seriously. Maybe it was just simply spending seven uninterrupted weeks with them, which must have been the longest he'd spent with them in quite a while, possibly even since The God Complex, that did it.

Also, although it turns out I was right about A Town Called Mercy's placement in the first place, this has made me willing to rethink my headcanon surrounding Mercy a little bit. Previously I was basically totally convinced that almost all of the last 97 years of the Doctor's life (between when he says he's 1103 at Lake Silencio and when he says he's 1200 in Mercy) happened between Dinosaurs and Mercy. I still think that he must have been on his own for a significantly long amount of time immediately before Mercy because of the state he's in in that episode, but now I'm more open to the possibility that quite a large chunk of those 97 years were used up elsewhen in his timeline, too. I think it's possible there could have been quite a large gap between The Wedding of River Song and Christmas, and also possibly between the end of Pond Life and the beginning of Asylum. And speaking of Pond Life, where does the May episode of that go in the Doctor's timeline? I'm thinking it might have been just before the beginning of The Power of Three and the important thing he was being very vague about in Pond Life was the cubes' appearance, which he'd heard about via the TARDIS, zoomed off to get the Ponds' help in dealing with it and then realised he'd arrived far too early and the cubes weren't even there yet.
 

If anyone else has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them. But then again I'm probably really weird for finding this kind of thing interesting and nobody else particularly cares, which is also fine.


    Spoiler:- The Power of Three's resolution:

Show Spoiler

 
...yeah, I have to admit I agree with everyone else in that the resolution to the plot was a bit cheap. In my attempts to justify it, I came up with this thought: the Shakri's vulnerable-to-a-sonic-screwdriver security probably was impenetrable for a 21st century human, and they just apparently weren't expecting a more advanced alien to care about protecting humanity. Why weren't they expecting the Doctor to show up? Because he's recently been erasing all record of himself from the universe, and they don't even know he exists. Okay, so that's still a bit flimsy and probably wasn't what the writers actually intended - if it was, they could have done a better job of making it apparent - but thinking about it that way makes things slightly more satisfying.

The lack of a decent resolution made this episode feel more like just an introduction to the Shakri than a full story with them. I don't know if that was the intention, but if we do see them again, at least it'll give them a chance to redeem themselves by trying harder next time. The whole cube thing was pretty cunning and neat, and if they can pull off something like that again without the glaring weakness to sonic screwdrivers it might make an interesting conflict. And also maybe a future appearance would explain what on earth they were kidnapping a bunch of people for. :/ I don't think that was ever explained, was it?
 

So, there's a gallery for The Angels Take Manhattan. There's also the Radio Times which mostly just has an interview with Matt about how close he grew to Karen and Arthur and what filming without them has been like. He didn't talk about the Doctor much, and when he did it was just about the effect that Amy and Rory's presence had on him, not the effect that losing them is going to have.

    Spoiler:- Gallery, with minor Radio Times info and mild speculation:

Show Spoiler

 
Amy's reading glasses! D: They do make her look older. Other preview stuff has said the Doctor's barely noticed them, but I'm sure he must have done and is just pretending not to because he doesn't want to think about the implications of the fact that she's aging. He has quite a tendency for noticing things about his companions but pretending not to have done.

A couple of the images show Amy reading a novel, which, according to the Radio Times, the Doctor just found in his pocket at the beginning of the episode. I wonder if that'll be important somehow; I'm imagining it might have been used by someone to send messages along the slow path, perhaps.

Loving that hat, River.

Awww at the Doctor hugging Amy and Rory tightly (which can also be seen in the BBC America trailer). I wonder if he knows he's about to lose them? He does look rather worried. D: D: D:
 

The Radio Times also talked about how the episode starts off so happily before descending into a nightmare. D: I bet we'll get a sense of that happiness in the preview clips when they show up (assuming they do; I think they will).

Gaaaah. I've already been reduced to tears once so far at the thought of the Ponds leaving. (I am a pathetic sap, I know.) And yet from a more out-of-universe perspective I'm also sort of really looking forward to this happening because I'm fascinated to see the effect that losing them will have on the Doctor and how he's going to cope. Usually I like to think I know the Doctor well enough that I have a vague idea of how he'd react in any given situation. This situation, though? I don't have a clue what it'll do to him.

I'm really eager for this year's Christmas prequel, when that comes around. Yes, I know, there has been absolutely no indication of if there's even going to be one - but I'm like ninety percent sure there will be. All of the previous prequels that have featured the Doctor (Let's Kill Hitler's, TDTW&TW's, Pond Life) have seemed to be largely for the purpose of showing us how he's been doing in the time since we last saw him in an episode. There will definitely be a need for that once he loses Amy and Rory for good.

Three days left. D:

-elyvorg/Amelia

[The Eleventh]

If anyone else has any thoughts on this, I'd love to hear them. But then again I'm probably really weird for finding this kind of thing interesting and nobody else particularly cares, which is also fine.

I find it very interesting. It's so hard to keep up with the Doctor once he's not travelling with companions. We're only seeing the stories from the companions' perspectives (for the most part); the Doctor could be having these adventures in any order, unless there's something to prove otherwise.

    Spoiler:

Show Spoiler

 
Well, since the stetson from Mercy is in Three, that settles it; ATCM takes place before TPoT. I'm not too fussed about it, really.

I think that the Doctor spent most of his ninety-seven years between TWoRS and TDTWTW. I like to imagine that, after calling into Amy and Rory at Christmas, he couldn't stay out of their lives for too long, and so the events of Pond Life occurred. Although we haven't exactly seen Amy and Rory in a straightforward manner. There have been plenty of jumps forward as of late. Ah, this is confusing! I'd like to sit down and figure it all out sometime. :P
 

    Spoiler:- Gallery, with minor Radio Times info and mild speculation:

Show Spoiler

 
A couple of the images show Amy reading a novel, which, according to the Radio Times, the Doctor just found in his pocket at the beginning of the episode. I wonder if that'll be important somehow; I'm imagining it might have been used by someone to send messages along the slow path, perhaps.
 

    Spoiler:

Show Spoiler

 
Yeah, I think so too, what with Amy's mention of the "last page" in a trailer. But then that could be irrelevant, given how much Moffat loves making comparisons to books. I did stumble across a filming picture a while back that showed the title of the book. I can't fully remember it, though it did reference...

    Spoiler:- Semi-spoiler? It's not very spoilery. At least I don't think it is.:

Show Spoiler

 
River Song. I think.
 

 

I'm really eager for this year's Christmas prequel, when that comes around. Yes, I know, there has been absolutely no indication of if there's even going to be one - but I'm like ninety percent sure there will be. All of the previous prequels that have featured the Doctor (Let's Kill Hitler's, TDTW&TW's, Pond Life) have seemed to be largely for the purpose of showing us how he's been doing in the time since we last saw him in an episode. There will definitely be a need for that once he loses Amy and Rory for good.

Me too. It looks like we may be getting a trailer at the end of Angels, since a teaser I read said to keep watching until the very end. It could be a tiny teaser, like the one shown of the skeletal hand holding the sonic when AGMGTW ended. There'd certainly be material for a trailer, since filming for the special ended last week or the week before.

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams

[VampirateMace]

Thanks for the input elyvorg… and yeah, I know to post it in the non-pokemon section.

    Spoiler:- Gallery:

Show Spoiler

 
It certainly does look like Rory is the one that gets taken.

Why is the Doctor wearing Amy’s glasses near the end of the slideshow?
 

    Spoiler:- Mercy - wardrobe mistake:

Show Spoiler

 
BTW, back when I was watching Mercy, I noticed that the sheriff’s badge does a jump on the Doctor’s coat pretty much just after he gets it. First it’s on the collar, then it’s lower, then it’s back again.
 

EDIT:
Aggressive Stairs

[elyvorg]

VampirateMace - you're doing a decent job with the Doctor, Amy, Rory and River's personalities so far. I'm like you in that I can't stand fanfiction with canon characters twisted out of character - which is one of the main reasons why I usually never read any Doctor Who fanfiction - but I thought I'd give yours a go and it didn't make me cringe, so you must be doing something at least vaguely right. I may possibly go and give it a properly nitpicky review in its thread at some point. For now, though, I'm kind of puzzled as to why you only said it takes place sometime after A Good Man Goes to War, even though the Doctor is married to River, and Amy and Rory are living at home and just periodically being taken on trips, making it definitely at least after The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe.

I find it very interesting. It's so hard to keep up with the Doctor once he's not travelling with companions. We're only seeing the stories from the companions' perspectives (for the most part); the Doctor could be having these adventures in any order, unless there's something to prove otherwise.

    Spoiler:

Show Spoiler

 
Well, since the stetson from Mercy is in Three, that settles it; ATCM takes place before TPoT. I'm not too fussed about it, really.

I think that the Doctor spent most of his ninety-seven years between TWoRS and TDTWTW. I like to imagine that, after calling into Amy and Rory at Christmas, he couldn't stay out of their lives for too long, and so the events of Pond Life occurred. Although we haven't exactly seen Amy and Rory in a straightforward manner. There have been plenty of jumps forward as of late. Ah, this is confusing! I'd like to sit down and figure it all out sometime. :P
 

Haha, I'd barely even considered until you mentioned it that the Doctor could be doing any of these things - not just May from Pond Life - totally out of order. That just makes everything potentially even more confusing. That said, thinking about it, I don't think it'd apply to that many episodes. The Power of Three is definitely the latest so far, and I'm also pretty sure Asylum has to have come first for the Doctor because if he and the Ponds hadn't been kidnapped by Daleks then I'm not sure he'd have got back into their life. So that only leaves Dinosaurs and Mercy that could have been the opposite way around for the Doctor, but... eh. They make more sense to me the normal way around.

I agree that a good chunk of the Doctor's ninety-seven years could have gone between TWoRS and TDTW&TW and that after Christmas he would have wanted to see Amy and Rory quite often, hence Pond Life. However, at the end of Pond Life, he tried to remove himself from their life yet again (at least, that's how I interpreted him deleting his message), so that's why I think there could have been a long gap between then and Asylum, too. I also get the impression there's a gap there from how much he seems to hate himself on Skaro at the beginning of Asylum; it seems sensible to think that the more noticeably self-loathing the Doctor is, the longer he's probably spent on his own recently, what with how his view of himself tends to deteriorate when he doesn't have a companion around to remind him that he's a good man. This is more or less the same reason I still think there should be a sizeable gap before A Town Called Mercy. And it actually makes me wonder if the gap before TDTW&TW really was that long after all, since the Doctor's view of himself in that episode is pretty positive (the Caretaker!), so perhaps the timey-wimey distress beacon from TWoRS, which reminded him how loved he is throughout the universe, was actually still quite recent.

As for a reason why the Doctor would have spent so long on his own before Mercy even though he still wanted to be part of the Ponds' life: various things in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship gave me the impression that the Doctor was only just becoming fully aware of the fact that his time with the Ponds wouldn't last forever and that every time he sees them he'll get a little closer to the inevitable day they'll (so he believes) choose to stop travelling with him. I think he could have tried to deal with this and keep himself from losing them for as long as possible by leaving really massive gaps in his timeline, but not theirs, between visits, even though this meant he'd go without seeing them for long periods of time which he normally wouldn't want to do. Basically I think he might have let his fear of losing them for good outweigh the fact that he'd miss them terribly for all those years.     Spoiler:- and now I want to briefly mention something from the most recent episode, so:

Show Spoiler

 
We saw in The Power of Three how much he's dreading the day he'll lose them, after all - it's just that there he was dealing with it in a much healthier way by trying to make the most of the time he has left, instead of running away from the inevitable end.
 

Uh. I may have gone off on one slightly there, so feel free to ignore some or all of this. I pretty much sat down and tried to figure it all out myself this afternoon, and apart from amassing a Notepad document full of largely-incomprehensible notes, this hopefully-somewhat-coherent ramble also came out of it, so. (I enjoyed myself, though! The Doctor is fascinating and trying to figure him out is so much fun. :3) I would be interested in hearing any thoughts you do have about it, though, because I often wonder if my interpretations of the Doctor actually make any sense to anyone who isn't me.

It looks like we may be getting a trailer at the end of Angels, since a teaser I read said to keep watching until the very end. It could be a tiny teaser, like the one shown of the skeletal hand holding the sonic when AGMGTW ended. There'd certainly be material for a trailer, since filming for the special ended last week or the week before.

Ooh. That sounds potentially interesting. I'll actually be a bit busy on Saturday evening and won't be able to watch the episode live on telly (I'll be watching it on iPlayer pretty soon after, though), so I hope whatever it is will be in the iPlayer version, too, or at least that it'll be easily findable somewhere online.

Two days leeeffft. D:

-elyvorg/Amelia

[Thecatteam]

Ahhh, I liked Power of Three. It was definitely my favorite episode so far this season. It was nicely balanced between humor and drama, but I agree about the end being rushed.
    Spoiler:- Power of Three:

Show Spoiler

 
Was it ever said what those weird nurse-with-huge-mouth things were? I might have missed it, but I was confused about them the entire episode.
 

I can't wait until Saturday! I go back to college tomorrow, and I'm hoping to get a bunch of people together to watch Angels! I'm going to have to wait until it airs again at midnight, though, because I have to be at a museum while it premieres.

Cheers,
Toshiko Sato

[VampirateMace]

It was a rough estimation of when the story takes place, based more on when we see the Doctor really realize who River is, verses when she actually marries him, and when we see the Ponds living at home more. You would seem to be right however.

    Spoiler:- Power of Three:

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Was it ever said what those weird nurse-with-huge-mouth things were? I might have missed it, but I was confused about them the entire episode.
 

    Spoiler:- Reply:

Show Spoiler

 
Loose ends I suspect... they were rushing through the conclusion of the episode so that it wouldn't have to be a two-parter (which it probably should have been so that it could have a decent ending, and we could have seen something more of the Ponds’ Anniversary trip), so they never really stopped to mention, “Oh yeah, those cube mouthed nurses are drones controlled by the little girl android while on earth, and the ship’s computers while in space (one dimension to the left).”
 

[Becoming]

Well I'm not gonna write a huge post, but about the reason why we should keep watching after The Angels Take Manhattan:

    Spoiler:- I read on tumblr:

Show Spoiler

 

. . . from a DW blog that there would be like a fifteen minute thingy about Karen and Arthur leaving. It would be less about the characters are more about the actors. I mean they've been there for the whole of Eleven's run, well Karen at least. And Arthur has been in about half the S5 episodes and then all of them from S6 onwards.

Plus there whole "seared into my heart" thing? Think about it. Amy and Rory are the companions of Eleven, his only companions. Not to insult Rose/Martha/Donna, but Moffat's Who has definitely focused on the relationships between the characters a lot more IMO. Maybe it's just because I watched the series in a funny hindsight way (3-4-5-1-2-6), but I always think about ten like "he had so many companions". For a start in three years he had three companions (Rose, Martha, Donna). All of them came back at some point (Rose and Martha in S4, Donna in The End of Time). They all had other characters which were introduced because of them: Rose had Mickey, Jackie, Pete; Martha had all her family; Donna has Wilfred. RTD's DW had a lot of interaction with the spin-offs: Jack (plus some of the TW team) and Sarah Jane (plus Luke), as well as DW having some crossovers with them. Plus Ten had some other characters that were one-off companions (such as Astrid) that would have been companions.

As for Eleven? He mostly had Amy and Rory. Sure there was River, but she's not leaving (I hope?). Eleven did have some potential companions (Rita from The God Complex), some crossovers (that one with SJA), but for the most part he hasn't been that friendly (well in my mind) and has mostly stuck with Amy and Rory. Plus he spent the last x00 years not travelling with the Ponds, so he'll have missed them dearly, and then what? They're gonna leave. Overall this is gonna be sad!

So why am I looking forward to it?
 

kjt/Oswin Oswald

[VampirateMace]

So I just re-watched ‘Power of Three’ and during the trailer I had this thought:

    Spoiler:- The Angels Take Manhattan - possibility?:

Show Spoiler

 
We know the next episode takes place in NY, there’s speculation that Rory gets drawn back in time and Amy may go to stay with him in that time. We also know that Melody regenerated in NY. After Mels regenerated into River she mentioned that last time she’d overdone it and ended up a toddler in NY, and that they got to raise her after all. Maybe she was actually referring to Amy and Rory raising her in NY, not the time they spent together while she was Mels?
 

[The Eleventh]

So I just re-watched ‘Power of Three’ and during the trailer I had this thought:

    Spoiler:- The Angels Take Manhattan - possibility?:

Show Spoiler

 
We know the next episode takes place in NY, there’s speculation that Rory gets drawn back in time and Amy may go to stay with him in that time. We also know that Melody regenerated in NY. After Mels regenerated into River she mentioned that last time she’d overdone it and ended up a toddler in NY, and that they got to raise her after all. Maybe she was actually referring to Amy and Rory raising her in NY, not the time they spent together while she was Mels?
 

Oh, wow.

    Spoiler:- Reply:

Show Spoiler

 
I think you may really be onto something there. I've always found the circumstances regarding Melody's regeneration to Mels to be strange. She regenerates in 1969/70, apparently into a toddler, yet only looks like a seven-year-old around 1996. I know Time Lords can age slower than humans, but even then, how did a toddler make her way from New York to Leadworth? It's something that's bugged me ever since Let's Kill Hitler. We'll see just what happens in only twenty-four hours. The end of the Ponds is nigh. :(
 

-The Eleventh/Rory Williams