A Good Man Goes to War – QUESTIONS!!!!!
Right, I am blinking buggery bloody confused after tonights episode!!!!!!!!!!! And I have to wait AGES to get answers!!!!! However, please feel more than free to join in my confusion and offer answers to my questions below: (spoilers if you haven’t seen the ep!!!!)
1) What does the Gallifreyan language on the Doctor’s crib say? That’s how River told the doctor who she was, by getting him to read what was inscribed on his crib, presumably when he was a baby. NOW, Amy can’t read gallifreyan (poor lass,) so River says, okay, well read this instead – a bit of cross stitch done by that dead girl over there. She was trying to write “Melody Pond” in her own language, but because her language and ours don’t match up very well, it actually came out as “River Song.” Are we therefore to believe that Rivers whole name has come out of a translation error? Why not just stay as Melody Pond? Why stick with River Song? And like I say, that explains the cross stitched hankie, but how does the doctor get it after reading the bit on his crib? What does that say? “I am Amy’s baby!!!!” It doesn’t make sense!!! Please tell me someone else thinks this? Either it is a glaring continuity error, or a clue to something we’re yet to find out. I personally hope it is a clue – River just being Melody is not a very good pay off for the years wondering who the hell she is in my opinion.
2) Why does Madame Kovarian et al want the Doctor dead? What is their beef with him? Why are they engaged in a war with him??? I get it, he’s a bit of a scamp, running about here and there fiddling with things, but really, they’ve got a HUGE chip on their shoulder and they all seem to be possessed by some kind of bloodlust, desperately wanting him dead. They REALLY hate him. I don’t get why – are we meant to know or will we find out? I could have done with some more hints about this. I mean surely they knoew that he has saved the universe (that they live in!) a bunch of times, even if his morals are sometimes ethically dubious.
3) The Doctor met clerics in the angels two parter last year – they didn’t hate him – they weren’t even sure who he was!!!! Why are they so desperate to kill him now?
4) Who is Madame Kovarian? I mean really?
5) Who is the girl from the opening two parter? Melody/River? If so then how come River seemed just as flummuxed by her when she was in the episodes? Surely if that little girl IS Melody IS River then River would remember exactly what had happened and wouldn’t be scanning the space suit left right and centre postulating about who or what the little girl was. She’d know it was her? Or was she just lying? Seems like a lot of effort. Something still doesn’t add up here.
6) What the hell does ALL of this have to do with the Silence??????? We know they’re like the main big bads – all that Silence Will Fall stuff, it was foreshadowing something a lot bigger than the opening two parter – proof being that Amy saw a Silence on the cliff by the lake just before the doctor was killed. They’re involved in this whole mess somehow.
7) What does this all have to do with the TARDIS exploding???? Were the Silence behind that? Or Madame Kovarian and her army of crazies? Or are they all in cahoots?
I’m sure I have more questions, but right now my brain is frazzled. Don’t get me wrong, it was a belter of an episode, had me in tears in parts. But it really was confusing, and I’m worried that Moffat is digging himself a hole that even he can’t really get out of. All these plot twists and revelations mean that there has to be some kind of pay off. And it has to be good. For me, personally, River turning out to be Melody just wasn’t pay off enough. It was gripping, sure, but I realised when the revelation finally came, a part of me inside was going “oh noooo!” in a disappointed way. I sort of saw it coming, and would have prefered something completely unknown. Still, we’ll see. Like I say, I’m not sure exactly what happened by that crib.
Oh, two more:
1) or 8) IF River is Melody, then is River a Timelord? Or like a part time lord??
2) or 9) Where did the doctor go off to at the end? Why did he just suddenly run off with a big grin on his face? Didn’t he listen to the (frankly deserved) dressing down River gave him a few moments before? Why is he just acting like everything’s fine? And why is he leaving Amy????
ARRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I Never Forget 
And if Madame Kovarian wanted him dead so badly, why send in the monks when she could surely have just rigged the asteroid to explode? She had what she wanted and her people were already off the base.
June 5, 2011 at 5:10 pm
Very true. As you say, she was gone with the baby – why not just blow them all sky high if she wants the doctor dead so bad? Instead she seems to want/need to get to him via this baby. The pile of questions grows higher and higher by the minute. I’m not sure whether I’m just being too nitpicky and over observant. Thought of another one: the identity of River Sing has always had an air of terrible-ness about it, like it was a dark secret she feared to tell, some kind of awful truth. But she’s amy’s baby. I mean okay, sure, that’s a shock, but it doesn’t seem as spoilery awfully bad as she’s always made out. I mean why couldn’t she say before? I mean I can see it would be a MASSIVE spoiler to amy and rory, but why couldn’t she tell the doctor – “psst, i’m your companions daughter!!!” – it hardly seems like the deadly, deadly dark secret she’s been holding this whole time.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr – there’s just so many questions, and I want satisfactory answers NOW!
June 5, 2011 at 7:56 pm
I think what’s written on the side of the Doctor’s crib was simply written by him that same day while on the Demon’s Run asteroid. Remember, it’s late in the episode when he brings the wooden crib out of the TARDIS, so he’s already met up with Amy and found out she named her newborn baby “Melody Pond”. He had plenty of time to use some sort of device (maybe even his sonic screwdriver of all things) to burn the name “Melody Pond” onto the side of the crib before he fetched it from the TARDIS, and he wrote the name in Galifreyan as a personal gesture (to share a part of his culture with Amy and Rory).
June 7, 2011 at 5:16 pm
1: I think this a big plot point. I think most people assumed it was just rivers name, but that doesn’t sound right to me. if it really was the doctors then why would they change the name on it? and why is he hiding the fact he has been a parent?
My personal theory is that the doctors family name is on it. and he realized that river must be family, then when he mentioned the kissing and she said yes, he realized if they are related it must be because they get married. The whole “she’s his wife” thing seems impossible and too obvious, but so did River being the baby to me before that episode.
2, 3 ,4 ,6: I think the silence has manipulated the clerics and that is why they see him as an enemy. It was said that they don’t make or do things so much as they manipulate their host race into doing the dirty work. I don’t know if they started doing it after the angel episode or time has been changed but I think it’s one of them.
5: pretty sure the little girl is river. I think river has had to lie to everyone this whole time simply because that is what she knows happens. a possible leaked script snippet I read (which I didn’t believe until this episode) **small spoiler** has her saying something along the lines of “my whole life has been a spoiler, I couldn’t tell anyone anything” which I think is a great encompassing line *** end spoiler ***
7: I think there is more to the tardis exploding. it seemed someone was trying to control it. I think the conflict of someone trying to force the tardis to do something it didn’t want to do caused the explosion. maybe it was river when she was younger and under the control of the silence.
1b / 8 : according to what they have said she is a human with timelord characteristics. not that there is anything timelord about her, more that she underwent part of the process that caused timelords to become timelords originally.
2b / 9 : I am lost on this. I would think he knows who river is to him (if I’m right about the wife thing) but not that she is their daughter. except that he tells them he knows where their daughter is and she will be fine. He knows something about his upcoming death, if he knows all of it, and the little girl is river then he may be going to right after his death to retrieve the girl.
June 9, 2011 at 3:54 pm
River put her hand on the cot when she explained who she was, Amy and Rory assumed thats what she was making reference to. The Doctor was actually looking at the Prayer Leaf laying inside the cot. It was basic mis-direction that was clearly explained in the following scene.
January 7, 2013 at 10:07 am
Maybe the crib just had the simple word baby on it? Seeing the word baby may be enough for our clever doctor!
February 21, 2013 at 6:17 am
Actually, the Gallifreyan on the cot DOESN’T translate to letters: it translates to NUMBERS! So something on that cot has to do with River and the Doctor that the two of them would know, possibly his birthdate? Whatever it is, it defiantly isn’t his name.
June 4, 2013 at 10:52 pm