Just a quick mention to readers and followers of Cathode Ray Tube's Doctor Who reviews that yours truly can be heard in conversation with Chip Sudderth and fellow writers and critics Kyle Anderson (nerdist.com and battleshippretention.com) and Teresa Jusino (Tor.com and Newsarama) on Chip's Two-Minute Time Lord podcast this week.
Our roundtable discussion looks at Doctor Who Series 6 (so far) and examines the changes brought to the show since Series 5, Moffat's women characters such as Amy and River and the how the latest episodes have been received by audiences in the UK and US.
It was a delight to take part in, to meet my fellow roundtable pundits and I hope you enjoy listening.
And don't forget... if you like the reviews here then my book on Series 5, The Pandorica Opens: Exploring the Worlds of the Eleventh Doctor is still available either direct from the publisher or via Amazon and other retailers.
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Listened to this this morning; it was a fun discussion, and nice to listen to some good analysis and criticism as always.
Something that came to me while y'all were discussing Moffat's themes - and Moffat's women - was the theme of names. I haven't seen this discussed anywhere, but there have been several instances where a character's name is important to their identity and how others view them.
In Silence of the Library, River whispers the Doctor's name to him, immediately establishing that she both knows him and is someone important to him. From that moment the Doctor recategorizes this particular member of the archaeological expedition as special. I believe in Confidential, Moffat talked about there being something terrible about the Doctor's name, although I didn't get that feeling from the episode.
In the Eleventh Hour, the renaming of Amelia Pond to Amy Pond symbolizes her disappointment over the doctor, and disenchantment from "a fairytale name" to a more ordinary one. It reflects her change from a trusting child to a disillusioned and defensive adult. And that the Doctor keeps calling her Amelia (not sure about S5 but he's done it a lot in S6) re-names her as his enchanted, fairytale friend.
In The Big Bang, the Doctor rechristens Rory from Williams to Pond, emphasizing his status first as Amy's husband (and only secondarily, Amy as his wife) - he is the ordinary man who married the enchanted woman, and she has left her mark on him.
And finally in A Good Man Goes To War, we have the name of River Song as Melody Pond. When the Doctor learns this, it is the moment that he transitions from a simpler, flirtatious, sometimes-hesitant relating to River to outright giddiness and joy, seeming to finally jump head-first into his oncoming relationship with her. River tells us that this is "when everything changes" - and not just for the Doctor but it is certainly going to be when things change between her and her parents. In the same way that River naming the Doctor the first time he meets her instantly changes their relationship, the Doctor, Rory, and Amy naming River as "Melody" changes for them how they relate to her.
Themes of names, stage names, secret names, and birth names, are old stuff in storytelling but I only just now noticed it going through many of Moffat's characters and how they relate to one another.
Thanks for that very thoughtful assessment.
I had picked up on the importance of naming in my book but only in the way that the Amy/Amelia shift does as you signify the move from child to adult and back again. He has called her Amelia on and off during Series 5 too. The loss of her fairy tale status is something I cover in the book!
The Doctor's name has previous of course because he's also known under various other guises - The Oncoming Storm, The Destroyer of Worlds - and here 'Doctor' is conflated with 'Warrior' by Lorna Bucket in A Good Man Goes To War.
And let's not forget that The Last of the Time Lords now has his counterpart in The Last Centurion.