So for those of you who haven’t heeded the months of advice from myself and several other wise Crasstalkers, or for those of you who forget what’s happened this season so far, here’s your Doctor Who recap of the first half of the sixth season of the new series, or the 32ndish season of the show overall, with your 11th Doctor if we’re counting Paul McGann’s unfortunate “American-friendly” TV Movie attempt in the 90s. Got it? Excellent.
Anyway, tonight marks the premiere of the second half of what we’ll call the 6th season, because that’s how it goes. For a quick recap, read on.
The season starts out with Rory and Amy in their humble newlywed abode, being summoned by the Doctor to Utah. Met there by Doctor River Song, the enigmatic possible wife of the Doctor herself. Is she really married to the Doctor? We don’t know yet, but then again, why would we? Also, it turns out our Doctor, who had been 907 years old the last time we saw him, is now 1103. Time travel, it’s all wibbly wobbly and such.
In any case, as Amy, Rory, The Doctor, and River have a picnic beside a desert lake, as a truck pulls up behind them, and a spaceman emerges from the lake. The man in the truck gets out, the spaceman meets the Doctor, and zaps him with a laser gun. But the Doctor can regenerate, right? Wrong. Killer Spaceman zaps the Doctor again, killing him.
The man in the truck, Canton Everett Delaware III, helps the crew burn the Doctor’s body so no one can learn anything about a time lord’s physical being, and the crew heads to a diner they met the Doctor in earlier.
And that’s the end. Of the first 10 minutes of the first episode.
Or not! As they’re mourning, the Doctor comes out of the bathroom of the diner, and has zero clue why they’re mad at him. So, they get in the TARDIS, talk him into going to space, 1969, as the now dead version of the Doctor, and off they go to the oval office, meet Richard Nixon, and a much younger version of Canton Everett Delaware III (Mark Sheppard, a nerd fangirl’s dream).
The United States (and the whole world, I assume) has been occupied since the dawn of man by The Silence, a race of aliens who can only be remembered when seen. These ugly bastards can implant ideas into your head as you see them, but you forget you’ve seen them as soon as you look away, but your subconscious remembers what they told you. Hence, the space program because they needed a space suit to keep a mysterious little girl in who keeps calling Richard Nixon.
The Doctor gets arrested and entrapped in Area 51, Amy and Rory get shot by Canton, and River jumps out of a building to avoid being shot. They’re ok though! Really, they’re fine, and they end up getting the Silence to give the order for their own execution on television, during the moon landing. So we’ve all seen it, and apparently have been going around killing the Silence since 1969, but none of us remembers. Right on, crew. Now that that’s done, let’s drop River off at The Stormcage, River’s prison home, shall we? See you, River!
Oh yeah, the little girl? She can regenerate.
The Amy, Rory and the Doctor then end up on a pirate ship that’s haunted by a Siren who, well, evaporates anyone who gets an injury, and is hence marked by a black spot. Turns out she’s a robot doctor on an alien ship in another dimension, who has actually transported the sick and injured to a sick bay to keep them alive. Oh, and the alien ship? Apparently exists right on top of the pirate ship, which is why the Siren doctor lady kept showing up. Also, her crew – totes dead, y’all. Yeah. It’s all good though, the captain of the pirate ship ends up flying it off into space, leaving sea life behind.
Back on the TARDIS in deep, deep, super deep space, there is a knock on the door. Because the TARDIS has an air bubble thingie around it, the Doctor is able to open the door and not get himself, his companions, and everything else in the TARDIS sucked out. A little flying box comes flying through, and hey! It’s a distress call from a Time Lord! But wait, aren’t all the other Time Lords gone? Maybe not, after all The Master returned and became PM of England, then enslaved or murdered the entire human race, but that year was erased and that was another Doctor, so don’t worry about that part, but the point is, it can be done! Maybe there are more Time Lords out there and the Doctor isn’t the last of his kind after all! Let’s go on a rescue mission!
The TARDIS has to travel to a little bubble universe outside of our regular, known universe, and landing on
a planet occupied by “Auntie”, “Uncle”, “Nephew”, and Idris. Turns out the planet is actually “House”, a creature that exists within the planet – kind of like a snail in a big-ass shell, and enjoys attracting Time Lords, killing and disassembling them, and junking their TARDISes. The distress signal came from that planet, and the Doctor finds Auntie and Uncle are patchwork people, kept together by house, and Nephew, an Ood, does their dirty work. Idris? Well, her soul is sucked out and replaced by the TARDIS, thereby making it possible for the Doctor, after 700 years, to physically speak to his true love – his “Sexy”.
House ends up occupying the TARDIS with Rory and Amy in it, and driving them crazy, and “Sexy” and the Doctor build a new, temporary TARDIS from the TARDIS junkyard, and saving the mere humans from certain death. Idris dies, the doctor cries, and I’m apparently chopping onions because there were more than a few tears on my side of the teevee box. But the TARDIS is ok now! And Amy and Rory no longer have to sleep in bunk beds! Everybody wins! Except for Idris. And the Doctor, because he’s still the last of his kind, but let’s move on.
The Doctor is then drawn to some bizarre island place, pumping acid, that is operated by people made of living flesh, based on real people who control the living flesh people while they’re asleep. Only the living flesh people/dopplegangers/gangers become self-aware, and decide they want independence. One of them goes insane, the Doctor ends up getting duplicated, making two Doctors which was awesome, much fighting ensues, most of the people/gangers realize the error of their ways, and the Doctor saves the day. The ganger Doctor really, but our real original Doctor is pretty awesome as well.
Oh, and by the way – Amy’s totally a ganger, her real self’s in labor, and the doctor melts her with his sonic. Yeah.
Amy wakes up, has the baby, and some evil lady with an eyepatch who appears and disappears through a window-type thing in various walls has apparently imprisoned Amy to steal her baby, Melody Pond. Not Melody Williams, mind you, because Melody Williams is a Geography teacher, and Melody Pond is a super hero.
Amy’s kept at a space rock known as Demons Run, and guarded by an army led by the Headless Monks, who have it out for the Doctor. River is summoned from the Storm Cage by Rory who has been sent by the Doctor, who has also dropped River off from her birthday celebration at the Thames with Stevie Wonder. Wibbly wobbly timey wimey and all that again. River refuses to go with Rory to help the Doctor find Amy, so Rory heads out to find her with the Doctor.
The evil eyepatch lady steals the baby, Rory rescues her and Amy, and the Doctor gets the entire army to be ordered to “Run Away”, by who is now known as Col. Runaway. I love when the Doctor gets pissed.
So, the Doctor comes to find out that because Melody was conceived on the TARDIS, turns out the kid is actually, probably, most likely a Time Lord, and oops – the baby Amy is holding is a ganger and the eyepatch beyotch has the real Melody. Sucks, right?
But wait, there’s more! River shows up just then, and informs everyone that she is actually Melody, so the Doctor jumps in the TARDIS to go find her, because he says he knows where she is, and leaves getting Amy and Rory back home to River. And, end the first half of the season.
Now, we’re left with that, and this:
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Don’t forget. Doctor Who; 9PM EST. BBC America.
