It’s a good thing that a method of time travel hasn’t been discovered in real life as rather than enjoying trips to the far future or distant past I’d spend the whole time trying to work out how it worked until my head exploded. I spent most of this week’s episode of Doctor Who trying to do the same (which it goes without saying is a ridiculous thing to do, after all we can argue as much to the contrary as we like but that doesn’t change the fact that the series really is aimed at kids), which is a pretty ungrateful thing to do when presented with a very strong penultimate episode. I think I’m going to have to watch it again when my brain is feeling a bit less inquisitive so I can just sit back and enjoy the drama, rather than trying to pick holes in the story’s time travel sections in order to explain away the headache I was getting from following it. Despite numerous points where I thought I’d caught them out on creating plot holes, on reflection the time travel stuff all pretty much added up – it wasn’t the writer’s fault that I couldn’t follow this part of the story, it was my own. So I won’t be recapping that part of the plot in too much detail as it still gives me a bit of a headache thinking about it – although I will concede it does make sense, the presentation of the episode’s back story in a linear fashion (covering eras the Doctor and Amy have visited this series from Vincent Van Gogh, to Churchill and River Song in prison, presumably as a result of the events at the end of the stone angels adventure earlier on in this series) did trouble me a bit, in particular the urgency with which it was presented – Van Gogh’s panicked painting, Churchill’s grave expression when shown what was in the then recently rediscovered painting (although I was happy to see Bill Paterson back in this scene as robot-scientist Bracewell, as well his presence makes anything better, I assume this means that his quest at the end of the WW2 Daleks story to find the girl he recalled in his implanted memories didn’t end happily) and the phone call he then placed to River Song roughly 4000 years in the future about the matter (I know that they introduced the phone calls through time via the Tardis in the second episode of Christopher Eccleston’s run as the Doctor, if not before, but it still is something that I can’t quite get on board with).

And for that matter, I did also have an issue with River Song’s method of getting the Doctor’s attention. Although I enjoyed the reappearance of her psychotropic lipstick in her prison escape, and of course the brief return of Sophie Okonedo’s future Queen, the fact that she then decided to get him where she wanted him by graffitiing a cliff face from the dawn of history seemed like a bit of a risk – how could she know that the Doctor would decide to take Amy there at that point in their adventure (if it was that impressive I’d expect that would have been one of the first things he’d gone to see), as after all the plan did seem to revolve around Amy being with him (actually, don’t get me started on how feasible creating a reality based on Amy’s memories would be in trapping the Doctor as I found that a little hard to swallow too). The problem with time travel as a narrative device is that the sheer amount of places and eras you could send the characters to is completely mind-blowing if you think about it too much (if presented with the ability to time travel, I expect I’d get so overwhelmed by the potential choice that I’d end up crumpling to the floor in a sobbing wreck, unable to choose anywhere).

I suppose you could argue that the Tardis itself played a part in taking him there at that point to find the message, as its been shown at numerous points in the past to have a bit of a mind of its own, and indeed it did later on in the episode when it took River to the fateful date of 26th June 2010 (completely non-coincidentally the air date of the final episode in the series, which was a pleasant touch, fingers crossed an overlong football match or breaking news story doesn’t ruin it by pushing the showing of the episode to a later date) of its own accord. It is a bit of slightly lazy plotting though – an almost too literal case of Deus Ex Machina. Actually, on writing that last bit I’ve just hit upon another part of the episode that confused me – if River was in on the plot to trap the Doctor as the end of the episode suggested, why was she surprised about finding the setting for the Pandoricon was based on Amy’s memories and then warned the Doctor about this?

So, basically, I think the bulk of the plotline in this week’s episode highlighted one of the many reasons why I devote my time to picking apart pop culture rather than concentrating on taking up a career in physics, and I hope you take away the lesson that sometimes it’s better not to think too hard about something or you’ll start to suck the joy out of it. As otherwise it was a pretty great episode. Stonehenge, no matter how many times it appears in TV dramas and films always seems like a great setting, being frankly so bizarre and unfathomable (I spent a good portion of the time during the episode when I wasn’t worrying about the concept of time travel wondering just how those massive stones have remained standing for so long, good thing I’m not an engineer or an architect either). And although I groaned at the sight of the Cybermen’s reappearance, and even more so at the return of the Crayola Daleks from earlier on this series, and I wasn’t too keen on the return of Mike from The Young Ones Sontaran, I was glad that the episode turned the concept of the Doctor versus big bad foe from the past that has marked the end of every other series finale of the new Who so far on its head somewhat. Instead of it being the Doctor saving the world from invading monsters, we now saw the monsters saving the universe from the Doctor who’s adventures were causing inadvertent damage to time itself. I’m guessing it won’t be as simple as that anyway come the final episode. I won’t go into my problem with the concept of the Pandorica in too much detail though (if the Doctor knew all about it from a long time ago, how come it had just been created to respond to the trouble he was causing, unless it wasn’t the real Pandorica – if a real one even exists in the Who Universe – or it was the real one and the united forces of aliens against the Doctor found it and decided to put it to use against the Doctor, or a third option I’ve not thought of).

And the return of Rory was fantastic, albeit not completely unexpected, development! I was surprised at how pleased I was to see him again, particularly when the wordless moment between him and the Doctor when the Doctor poked him to see if he was real. And although it was incredibly sad to find out that he was merely an Auton programmed based on Amy’s memories rather than a miraculous resurrection of Rory himself, I think it was for the best plot-wise. It also lead to the touching moment when robo-Rory tried to fight his programming to protect Amy and so very nearly succeeded before shooting her against his will. And now we have the shock death of a companion on our hands. I am willing to bet that she’s either a) not dead (despite the subsequent episode of Doctor Who Confidential claiming quite adamantly that she was) or b) she’ll be resurrected herself somehow in the finale as they’ve not killed off any companions so far and I doubt they’d start here, and besides a final episode with the Doctor locked in an impenetrable cage and a dead companion would be too much of a downer… But then what do I know? I can’t even follow the plot of a drama that’s aimed at kids apparently.

And so next week we have the finale to get through. Although it goes without saying that I’d appreciate to hear your thoughts on this week’s episode (they might help me make sense of it all), I’d also be interested to hear if you’d like any other TV shows to be blogged about after this series is over – it might be that there’s nothing on what with summer being a bit of a TV wasteland, but you never know there might be something worth a weekly discussion.