NICK: Is it time to get up?
ME: I’ve decided you’ve slept in long enough, and now I’m going to stand over you judgementally until you get up and make me a cup of coffee.
(Long pause)
NICK: Wow. You weren’t kidding, were you?

NICK: So next time I smirk at Alison Brie, you can’t say anything.
ME: I certainly can, and will. Just like you do when I get that look on my face when Boromir turns up in Fellowship of the Ring.
NICK: I just laugh at you.
ME: I suppose it is a bit laughable.
NICK: Now you’re putting words in my mouth! Admittedly, they’re the words I used, but still!

ME: Want to see Jane Eyre tomorrow night?
NICK: Sure!
ME: It’s good for you. It’s like reading a book.
NICK: I know! I do that sometimes!
ME: It’s not “reading” when you’re looking at the pictures, honey, whatever art historians tell you.
NICK: OMG.
ME: Are you more annoyed by the slam at your literacy or the slam at art historians?
NICK: Both. Equally!
ME: The latter was below the belt. I recant it.

In which Nick (finally) notices the (extremely large and prominent) necklace he bought me, which arrived in the mail today:

NICK: Hey! That looks great!
ME: It does, doesn’t it?
NICK: How long have you been wearing that?
ME: Since I picked you up from work.
NICK: Oh.
ME: In fact, since about 1pm.
NICK: Oh.
ME: It’s okay, honey. You’re just a terrible boyfriend.
NICK: Really?
ME: Not really. I’d much rather you did the washing up while I’m marking than that you notice when I get six inches cut off my hair.

ME: Honey, can you come here?
NICK: Not only can, but will.
ME: No!
NICK: What?
ME: Don’t you dare criticise my inaccurate use of auxiliary verbs while I’m in the middle of marking!
NICK: But I …
ME: No!
NICK: Okay, I have no idea what just happened.

We have one half of our usual peanut gallery with us tonight: Michelle is being conscientious and working tonight, but Heather’s sitting here with a beer, watching the football coverage on the news, and saying things like “Was it really a miraculous goal? Did Jesus descend?” and “He turned the field goal into wine.”

Remind me not to watch football with Heather.

Word of warning: I’ve been marking all day and I haven’t live-blogged in ages and this is a tricky one and I’m a bit worried about how it will all work out, as you can tell by the way I just strung all those independent clauses together with co-ordinating conjunctions.

Did I mention I’ve been marking all day?

Heather’s explaining the significance of the Birdsville Races to me.

Heather’s from Florida.

I’m a bit ashamed of myself for not already knowing this.

Also, this happened:

NICK: I don’t like prequels! As a narrative form, I would prefer people went forwards than backwards!

Then Nick said he didn’t like Planet of the Apes and Heather accused him of being “such a humanist.”

It’s all a bit weird in here, actually.

Previously, on Doctor Who: I’m not blogging that. You’ve all seen it. If not, I’ve already live-blogged it.

But now, we’re in a cornfield. And I already had this pegged as a corn circle. Then Heather pointed out that this is actually barley and that the term is “crop circle”. She’s all about making me feel foolish tonight.

Also, I went to an agricultural high school and should have known that.

Then we see the newspaper that the Doctor’s holding, and Heather says, “CROP circle.”

Amy’s worried about Melody, and Rory’s worried about something unusual in the crop circle, but it’s just some nutty friend of Rory and Amy’s.

MELS: You said he was funny. You never said he was hot.

The Doctor’s more worried about them not saying he was hot than he is worried about the police sirens. He’s also a bit worried about not having met Mels before when she claims to be Amy and Rory’s best friend.

DOCTOR: I danced with everyone at their wedding. The women were brilliant. The men were a bit shy.

Mels suggests they kill Hitler, and then we all swear at the patronising voiceover. Except for Nick, who doesn’t have a problem with it and tells us so at length.

We ignore him.

We flash back to Mels’s childhood with Amy and Rory.

AMY: You’re the most in trouble at school except for boys.
MELS: And you.
AMY: I count as a boy.

Heather labels this as “a brief history of Mels who we’ve never heard of before but who is very important to Amy and Rory. Apparently.”

I wish I could do justice to this heart-breaking, gorgeous scene where Mels pushes Rory and Amy into admitting their affection for one another.

AMY: I’d love to. He’s gorgeous. He’s my favourite guy. He’s gay.

Oh, poor Rory’s face when he finally legs it.

I admit it: I deeply love Rory now. I was unsure at first, but I deeply love him now.

And, as Nick points out, that’s a beautiful cut between Amy’s toy TARDIS and the actual TARDIS spinning helplessly out of control. And Mels’s shot the TARDIS console, so we don’t like her already.

Oh, but Nazis. We like them even less.

NICK: Nazis!
HEATHER: And their Nazi cleaners!
NICK: Nazi cleaners. I hate those guys!

The Nazi cleaner, under the control of other guys whose position hasn’t been made quite clear yet, is confronting the actual Nazi who, as Nick points out, looks more like a Nazi than any actual Nazi could.

This is a fascinating sequence, and Moffat’s playing it close to his chest, which I like. But it’s almost impossible to live-blog, so I’m just going to assume that you’ve all seen it.

ME: I love that they have little miniature cups of coffee.
HEATHER: They have miniature everything!
ME: Including Nazis.
HEATHER: And antibodies.

And, sure enough, the miniature Nazis is destroyed by jellyfish-like antibodies who say, “Welcome. You will experience a tingling sensation and then death.”

Meanwhile, the robot/Nazi cleaner/Nazi is trying to kill Hitler.

HEATHER: I like how all the Nazis speak English.
ME: TARDIS translation circuits?
HEATHER: Except that it’s not there yet.
ME: Shush.

Luckily for Hitler, it’s too early in his timeline to kill him (it’s only 1938) and also the TARDIS just landed on the assassin.

I do love the moment of complete speechlessness when they realise that they just saved Hitler’s life.

DOCTOR: Believe me, it was an accident.

But that’s all right, because the assassin is back on his feet. Luckily, Hitler has a gun and Rory gets to punch him in the face and then pull a gun on him (and say, “Shut up Hitler!” and put him in a cupboard).

HITLER: But I am the Fuhrer.
RORY: Right. In you go!

They’re moderately worried about the assassin fainting, but only until they notice that Mels has been shot. And then the tiny people inside the assassin notice that the TARDIS is listed as stolen and they’ve found the worst war criminal of all. Not the Doctor, though—someone they call “her”.

Mels’s dying, and the Doctor proposes to her.

MELS: Shouldn’t you ask my parents’ permission?
DOCTOR: Soon as you’re well, I’ll get on the phone.
MELS: May as well ask them now, seeing as they’re both here.

And then she starts regenerating.

Let’s talk about how this works with Amy and River’s established timelines in the comments, shall we?

Anyway, Mels regenerates as River.

I just won’t stop loving River. Except she’s a bit too obsessed with her weight at this stage.

MELS/RIVER: Who’s River Song? Hang on, I just need to check something.
DOCTOR: Is anyone else finding this day just a bit difficult? I’m getting a sort of banging in my head.
AMY: Yeah, I think that’s Hitler in the cupboard.

Then River tries to kill the Doctor, but the Doctor has already thwarted her six ways from Sunday (is that the idiom?) and she’s pulling a banana on him instead of a gun.

River explains a little bit about what’s happened to her since Demons Run. Then she kisses the Doctor and calls him “Sweetie”, but he says that only River Song gets to call him that.

She’s about to head out into Berlin, much to the Doctor’s surprise. But she says she’s already killed him.

That’s why we don’t snog women, Doctor.

Well, there might be some provisos to that statement. I’ll leave that up to you.

Nether Amy and Rory nor the little miniature people can believe that the Doctor is dying. He sends Amy and Rory after River, who has run into a group of Nazis, who demand to know her business.

RIVER: I was on my way to a gay gipsy bar mitzvah for the disabled, when I suddenly thought, “Gosh, that Third Reich’s a bit rubbish. I think I’ll kill the Fuhrer.”

Of course, you shouldn’t shoot someone who’s regenerating. Duh.

Rory’s punching a lot of people today, isn’t he? But they’re all Nazis, so that basically makes him Indiana Jones.

AMY: Can you ride a motorbike?
RORY: I expect so. It’s that sort of day.

The Doctor, meanwhile is trying to enable the voice interface for the TARDIS. First it gives him himself. But he asks for someone he likes. Then it gives him, sequentially, Rose, Martha, and Donna, which he says is just a litany of guilt. He says that there must be someone in the universe whom he hasn’t screwed up yet, and they give him young Amelia Pond.

There’s much Scottish humour in this section, including “Scotland’s never conquered anywhere, you know? Not even a Shetland” and “I’m going out in the first round. Ringing any bells?”. And by “Scottish humour”, I mean “humour directed at the Scots. By a Scot. So that’s all right.”

Born in Perth, me. But not really Scottish.

Elsewhere, in a restaurant.

HEATHER: Man, that Third Reich. They could cook up a fancy feast.
ME: Isn’t that a cat food?
HEATHER: Yeah.

The robot stuff is actually really creepy in this. I say this as Amy and Rory are trapped inside a giant robot replica of Amy (RORY: I’m really trying not to see this as a metaphor). Amy wonders how they got there.

RORY: Miniaturisation ray.
AMY: How would you know that?
RORY: There was a ray, and we were miniaturised.
AMY: Okay.

They’re about to be destroyed by antibodies, but an employee says that they’re not guilty of anything, and welcomes them aboard a Justice Department vehicle.

Elsewhere, robot Amy is planning on holding River to account for the Doctor’s death, but the Doctor turns up in a tuxedo with a sonic cane.

HEATHER: Sonic cane? SONIC CANE!

He’s rather excited about the robot with the miniaturisation field, and asks Rory and Amy to signal him if they’re okay. Amy has the sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor has a severe leg cramp.

The justice robot tries to attack River again, and the Doctor says they’re not to harm her. They wonder why, since she’s the woman who kills the Doctor.

DOCTOR: At least I’m not a time-travelling robot death machine operated by miniature cross people, which, I have to admit, I did not see coming.

The justice robot explains what it does, and it’s actually quite interesting, but I didn’t have time to cover it all. Except that Amy (real Amy, not robot Amy) has “privileges”, because she’s River’s mother, so she can make the Doctor’s records available. About all it tells us is that the Silence is not a species, but a religious order. They believe that silence will fall when a question is asked, but they don’t know which question.

The Doctor’s kidneys are done for, and so the Justice Department want to “do what they do” and “give her Hell.” This literally means burning River alive, it seems. The Doctor insists that Amy and Rory stop them, however they do it.

It’s lucky Amy has the sonic screwdriver, then, isn’t it?

What she can do is withdraw their privileges, so that the anti-bodies think they’re unauthorised people and try to kill them all.

I wonder why they even have anti-bodies on the ship, and Nick and Heather explain why at some length, until I ask them both to shut up.

Amy and Rory are soon the only people left alive in the robot, though, as the others all beam back to the mothership. They scream for the Doctor, but he can’t really help—he’s pretty much dead at this point.

He’s asking River to help him, but River still doesn’t know that she’s River. So she’s bewildered and a bit jealous, and she wants the Doctor to explain. But he just wants her to help him, because he’s almost dead.

And so are Amy and Rory, it seems. Until the TARDIS materialises around them—but it’s flown by River. The TARDIS taught her how to fly, and the Doctor told her that she was the child of the TARDIS.

RIVER: What does he mean?
HEATHER: He means you’ve got a big Time Head.

The Doctor’s actually dying this time. But it’s all right, River will sort it out.

(We got a bit distracted there, discussing how many regenerations the Doctor might have. Apparently, Nick tells us, the Sarah Jane Adventures set it at 504, and that would be canonical. So no worries about the show needing to be cancelled in two Doctors’ time, then.)

Meanwhile, the Doctor whispers something to River (about River), and Amy finally shows River (through the justice robot) who River Song is.

So River uses her regenerative energies to bring the Doctor back to life.

DOCTOR: River. No. What are you doing?
RIVER: Hello, sweetie.

And she snogs him. Which Nick and Heather thinks removes the poisoned lipstick, but that would have spread through his system already, surely?

Oh, we’ll save it for the comments.

RIVER: He said no one could save him. But he must have known I could.
DOCTOR: Rule one. The Doctor lies.
CAT-NURSE: She just needs to rest. She’ll be absolutely fine.
DOCTOR: No, she won’t. She will be amazing.

And he gives her a diary that looks like the TARDIS.

Rory, Amy, and the Doctor have a serious discussion about who River is and why she’s in prison in the future.

DOCTOR: Well, she did kill me. Then she used her remaining lives to bring me back. As first dates go, I’d say that was mixed signals.

Apparently, River finds the Doctor through the power of archaeology, but I admit that by this point I’m a bit drunk and not really paying attention.

Next week: creepy dolls!

ME: Actually, he was pretty hot in that episode of Community.
NICK: You think?
ME: Yeah. I didn’t see the appeal of Sawyer, but I’m a sucker for a man in a ten-gallon hat.
NICK: Really?
ME: What can I say? I watched a lot of Westerns as a kid.
NICK: Now I’m wondering where I can get a ten-gallon hat.
ME: Honey, I’m also a sucker for men with long hair, because I discovered I was straight in the early ’80s. Doesn’t mean you have to grow your hair.
NICK: And you’re still straight in the early ’80s.
ME: Pardon?
NICK: Okay, that’s not fair. You have evolved. A bit.

While documenting the epic study spring-cleaning ordeal of 2011, I’ve made mention, on occasion, of my spare room now looking as though a disreputable secondhand bookstore had exploded in it.

And I thought to myself, “Hmm. What if people think I’m being hyperbolic? If only there were some way to demonstrate that such a description is not merely hyperbole!”

It’s not hyperbole.

I cannot wait until this marking is finished and I have time to start moving these books back into their rightful home.

An extension of a Twitter conversation about self-importance:

ME: But if I don’t keep that secret from my students, I’ll have to rule by fear. And that’s so tiring.
NICK: Simple solution? Get a Death Star.
ME: Honey, one of my classes is twenty-two students and me in a room that takes a maximum of twenty-four people. There’s no way I’m getting a Death Star in there.
NICK: Good point.
ME: And that’s how I choose to undercut that argument?
NICK: It made sense to me.
ME: Really? Because it sounded like the stupidest reason ever to me. “Oh, I can’t have a Death Star. The room’s too small.”

Talking a class through a professional-editing exercise:

ME: So, how would you annotate that problem?
STUDENT: I’d say, “Don’t be a pompous douchebag.”
ME: As a general rule, it’s best to avoid any phrases that, for example, I wouldn’t write on a student’s assignment.
STUDENT: But if you wrote “Don’t be a pompous douchebag” on my assignment, I’d just think, “You’re right, I was being a pompous douchebag.”

So.

The carpet cleaner has come and done his best to remove the mould from carpets that should probably have just been stripped up and killed with fire. (And, incidentally, the carpet cleaner also loudly bemoaned modern morality, insulted the music I was playing while I was working, and said “Who cares?” when I explained what I did for a living. He also left me to move all the furniture myself after I corrected his assumption about my boss’s gender, which is fine, and called me a “brave girl” as he watched me drag a bookcase down the hallway, which is not fine.)

Leaving all that aside, though, the end result is that we can start moving stuff back into the study. Or we will be able to once my marking is out of the way, which means (practically speaking) we still won’t be able to get into the spare room for at least another week.

But we’ve moved the books out of the living room, so at least one room in the house isn’t littered with academic debris.

So now I can work at my desk again, loomed over by shelves of Victorian and Edwardian novels, just like a real nineteenth-century scholar:

Of course, until Nick has a chance to pop some picture hooks up for me, everything’s still in a state of “propped up wherever there’s a space”:

And the majority of the study looks like this, which is neat but not particularly useful:

Still, it’s better than a completely empty, mouldy room.

Slightly better, anyway.

ME: Those brown linen trousers of mine aren’t going to last much longer. I don’t know what will happen to my wardrobe when they’re gone.
NICK: They just don’t seem to be making trousers these days.
ME: Of course they’re making trousers. They’re just not making trousers for women who are short and fat.
NICK: You’re not short. You’re at the tall end of medium.
(Pause)
NICK: What? What are you looking at me like that for?

ME: I’m not sure about this blanket.
NICK: I think it looks great.
ME: Yes, but you also think that knitting is witchcraft.
NICK: That’s true. I don’t think it’s relevant, but it’s true.

NICK: Yeah, she’s taking valuable shelf space away from the rest of us!
ME: And by “the the rest of us”, you mean me? Because you aren’t publishing anything soon.
NICK: I might produce a short monograph on my adventures.
ME: What, your adventures between the bathroom and the kitchen?
NICK: And on the bus! My … commute. And the grocery store, sometimes. And when I go to get takeaway …
ME: Honey, you’re killing me.

After listening to a radio advert in which Darth Vader tries to put his TIE fighter in for service:

NICK: The experimental TIE interceptor!
ME: I don’t think even Darth Vader knows that much about his TIE fighter.
NICK: Darth Vader doesn’t need to. (Darth Vader voice) “I like that TIE fighter. Give it to me.”
ME: Is Darth Vader played by Arnold Schwarzenegger now?
NICK: Oh my god!
ME: Seriously. That sounds exactly like Schwarzenegger would sound doing Darth Vader.
NICK (Darth Vader voice): I find your lack of faith in my Darth Vader voice disturbing.
ME: Seriously, can’t you hear that?
NICK: Force choke!
ME: It doesn’t seem to be working.
NICK (Darth Vader voice): Give me my light saber.
ME: You can’t hear that?
NICK: Actually, that did sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Light saber. Light saber. Damn, it’s all I can hear now.
ME: Honey, you have to stop this. I can’t laugh this hard and steer the car at the same time.