I’ve been forbidden to blog any of the comments that the peanut gallery have been making thus far, because apparently it’s all “pre-blogging.”
This seems unfair to me.
I’m also eating chocolate with “Happy B’Day Michelle” written on it in legible icing.
But previously, people were sucked into the earth, including Amy. Alaya also predicts that someone will kill her, while the Doctor also says that they need to keep her as a hostage, so that nobody dies today.
A narrator says that this is his planet—we miss the rest of the narration, because Heather’s telling me that I can’t put any of what she’s saying on the blog.
HEATHER: Okay, I just missed that whole thing.
MICHELLE: Yeah, just stop saying things.
NICK: If you listen to the voice-over, it ruins all the suspense of the episode.
HEATHER: Oh, good. Yay me!
The Doctor and Nasreen set off an alarm, as elsewhere Amy is about to be vivisected—and criticised for her tiny shorts, until the doctor hears the alarm. The doctor legs it
MICHELLE: Holy crap, that’s a short skirt.
ME: Shorts.
MICHELLE: Those are short shorts.
HEATHER: She dressed for Rio.
NICK: A bit over-dressed for Rio.
HEATHER: Her sexuality’s not ambiguous enough.
MICHELLE: Yeah.
We’re not really compelled by the storyline here.
But Amy picks the lizard man’s pocket and unties Mo, and in legging it, they find Elliot, linked to some kind of equipment that monitors his vital signs.
And the Doctor is tied to an exam table, being ‘decontaminated,’ which doesn’t look pleasant.
Tony tries to get Alaya to help him overcome the poison in his system, but Alaya says that he’ll be the first ape casualty of the coming war.
The doctor who’s decontaminating the Doctor tells a militaristic woman (Restac) that they’re the same rank, so he’s not going to bow down to her desire to kill the Doctor.
Though the decontamination seems to be doing the same thing—the Doctor says that the human germs are half of what’s keeping him alive.
Restac wants the decontamination to continue, but the doctor stops her. Restac, though, says that she’s going to execute the Doctor and Nasreen, as a message to the rest of the coming invasion force.
Amy and Mo, wandering around the city, find two alien warriors in suspended animation.
HEATHER: ‘Their skirts are shorter than mine!’
Amy insists in checking out what’s happening with the sleeping warriors: she finds transport discs, and Mo finds guns. So they’re both happy. Then they find an army, and they’re not so happy.
In the church, Ambrose wants to know what’s wrong with Tony. He says he’s fine, and to leave him alone. But Ambrose insists on checking what’s wrong, and she sees the creepy green vein things.
HEATHER: I’ve got green!
NICK: They’re multiplying?
The Doctor, heading for his execution, tells Nasreen why the Silurians went into hibernation in the first place. (Moon fear, in short.) Rastec asks how he knows about that, and he explains his last meeting with the Silurians—and how badly that ended. Not the most diplomatic move, but typical Doctor.
Ambrose confronts Alaya, with a taser, which we determine—after a brief discussion—was one of the weapons she put in the truck, which the Doctor told her to get rid of.
Alaya taunts Ambrose about, firstly, being unable to take care of her own child and, secondly, about being the one who Alaya knew would kill her—and Ambrose tasers her.
Alaya screams, and Rory and Tony come running. Tony grabs the taser off Ambrose, and Rory tries to help Alaya, but she dies.
AMBROSE: I thought sooner or later she’d give in.
HEATHER: I was at Guantanamo!
Amy and Mo come in, fully armed, into the banquet hall where the Doctor’s going to be executed (where we have a brief spirited discussion about how many times Doctor Who has used this set), but Amy is swiftly disarmed and I get distracted by the question of what happened to Mo’s shiny reflective jacket.
AMY: What do you think they’re going to do to us?
HEATHER: They’re going to mini-skirt you to death.
Then Restac activates the computer, and asks to speak to the ‘ape leader.’ Rory steps forward, and they can all see the hostages.
RORY: Amy! I thought I’d lost you!
AMY: Why, because I was sucked into the ground? You’re so clingy.
Rory’s doing pretty well, but then Restac asks to speak to Alaya, and it goes a bit badly. Ambrose takes over, demands everyone be returned, and prompts Restac to try and execute Amy.
But then they’re interrupted by a valedictorian.
ELDANE: You want to start a war when the rest of us sleep, Restac?
HEATHER: I was in the middle of graduation ceremonies.
MICHELLE: Yeah, and that doctor was in the middle of being a butcher.
Eldane dismisses and belittles Restac, and sends her away. This is an opportunity for diplomacy—so the Doctor tells Rory to bring everyone, including Alaya, down to the factory, where they’ll find some transport pods.
Oh, dear. That’s not going to go well.
Elsewhere, Amy and Nasreen are acting as diplomats in discussions with Eldane about sharing the Earth. The Doctor’s terribly excited about this, saying this is not a fixed point in time. Here, they can change the future.
Rory and the others are preparing to travel down with Alaya’s corpse.
HEATHER: They’re going to start a war based on the [redacted] thing you’ve wrapped her in. That is a fashion atrocity.
Ambrose is begging Tony to do something,but she doesn’t say what—just that this is something she needs to do for her son. Or, what? Like the time you electrocuted that woman to death? ‘Cause that was some great role-modeling, right there.
HEATHER: Ambrose needs to die. Blog that.
Tony turns on the drill. Oooh-er.
The Doctor and the doctor (or butcher) bond, basically, as Nick says, sweeping under the table all the vivisecting that he’s been doing (though I’ve argued that the valley has so few people living in it that they can really only have been vivisecting the disappearing corpses). Elliot is released, and the Doctor apologises for letting him run off and be kidnapped by lizard people.
ELDANE: You give us space, we will give you technology beyond your dreams.
HEATHER: And host all of your graduation ceremonies.
MICHELLE: What colour are Amy’s eyes?
NICK: Let me find one of the many pervy sites on the Internet devoted to her.
So things are going terribly well, until Restac turns up with an army and Tony turns up with a corpse.
Ambrose quite openly admits to killing Alaya, and I’m really not the slightest bit sympathetic to Ambrose’s perspective.
DOCTOR: In future, when you talk about this, you tell people that there was a chance, but you are so much less than the best of humanity.
NICK: On the other hand, that is just rubbing it in at this point, Doctor.
The Doctor still thinks he can save this, even though Restac is keening over her sister’s body, but Ambrose tells them that she’s set the drill to start burrowing again, unless the lizard people let then all go.
RESTAC: Execute her!
HEATHER: Yes! Yes! No, Doctor! It’s okay to let some people die!
The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver apparently blows up Silurian weapons, which is handy. He tells Restac to go back into hibernation, and she refuses, so he blows up more guns and they retreat into the lab.
They have three things to do: hold off the Silurians, do something for Tony, and blow up Nasreen’s life work, to stop the drill destroying the city.
Eldane can help with the first thing: he says there’s a toxic gas that serves some function that I couldn’t type fast enough to catch. The Doctor amends this plan, telling Eldane to set his alarm clock for one thousand years, and telling Elliot to make sure that the humans are ready for the Silurians to return at that point.
The problem is Tony, who hasn’t actually run through the decontamination process yet.
Nick and Michelle are still looking up Amy Pond websites.
Tony decides to stay behind, though Ambrose objects. Tony tells Elliot not to blame his mother, which makes Heather apoplectic.
The Silurians start heading back to their hibernation chambers, despite the cries of Restac.
And Nasreen decides to stay with Tony—he can be decontaminated when they wake in one thousand years.
Everyone else legs it to the TARDIS.
And at the TARDIS, Ambrose, Elliot, and Mo dash inside, while Rory, Amy, and the Doctor see the crack return—wider this time. The Doctor’s fascinated, but Amy tells him they have to leave.
Not the Doctor—he’s sticking his hand in, to see if he can find some shrapnel. He grabs something, and then Restac drags herself out of the corridor.
She shoots the Doctor—but Rory shoves him out of the way and he hits Rory.
Oh, Rory. What were you saying in Venice about the Doctor being dangerous because he makes people want to impress him?
RORY: I don’t understand. We were on the hill. I can’t die here.
AMY: Don’t say that.
RORY: You’re so beautiful. I’m sorry.
Those are terrible, terrible last words. No one’s last words should be “I’m sorry.”
But there’s worse to come, because the light from the crack is covering Rory’s body, and once it absorbs him, he’ll never have existed.
The Doctor tells Amy to concentrate.
DOCTOR: Tell me about Rory. Fantastic Rory. Funny Rory. Gorgeous Rory.
Amy thinks. And she remembers Rory dying, and Rory in Venice, and Rory tripping over as they walk—and there’s an enormous explosion, Amy and the Doctor are thrown to the floor, and Amy pops up saying, “What were you saying?”
Oh, poor Rory.
But the engagement ring bounces across the floor, so that’s interesting.
They leap out of the TARDIS just in time to see the big mining thing explode.
Then the Doctor administers a stern speech to Ambrose, telling her to make Elliot the best of humanity, as she couldn’t be.
Heather still thinks Ambrose should die.
At the TARDIS, Amy sees herself on the hill, but Rory is not there.
The narration returns, this time from the future—saying that as his race prepares to waken, he thinks back to the Doctor, the losses he suffered then and the losses still to come.
And we see that the shrapnel he pulled from the explosion is a piece of the TARDIS.
Damn.
Damn.
