Welcome to Day 17 of my 47-day series about the revival version of Doctor Who (2005-present). I’ve come up with 47 topics / questions to answer, all of them basically positive and upbeat about the program. Each day (or as often as I can actually write these–so far so good!) I’ll pick one of them at random (using this convenient random number generator) and then write up an answer.
Why 47? It’s my favorite number.
Why Doctor Who? It’s my favorite show.
Why the modern day Doctor Who only? Simply because I remember it better.
Why only positive stuff? Because really, I write enough snark.
Today is Day #17, and around and around goes the Random Number Generator, and we get number 25, which means the topic of the day is this:
“Best Shocking Reveal / Plot Twist”
Amy being revealed to be a flesh-duplicate in the closing moments of The Almost People is a serious contender for this. That was a great twist that made sense out of some really confusing and strange stuff we’d had leading up to it (all those strange manifestations of Madame Kovarian appearing in the walls, and so on). It’s certainly a viable answer for this question, and it was the first one to come to mind.
Right behind this was the secondary shock of discovering an episode later that Amy’s baby was also a flesh-duplicate, the real one having already been kidnapped by the sadistic Kovarian. That was impacting because it was easy to see how horrifying that would be for Amy (Karen Gillan definitely sold it) and for the Doctor, as his great victory is turned into a bitter defeat.
But there’s another reveal that I’ve decided to make my pick of the day, though I admit I’m a bit conflicted over it…
Oswin Oswald is really a Dalek, Asylum of the Daleks
My friend Rod disagrees with me but I’m still making this my pick. Oswin was really fun and likeable, and because we knew Jenna Coleman was about to take over the co-starring role on the show, we assumed that we were getting an early introduction to the new companion. So even though the hints were there, it was easy to ignore them. When it was revealed that this funny and intelligent girl was not only going to die, but she had already suffered the ultimate indignity of being converted into a soulless killing machine, it was genuinely shocking, confusing, and a bit heart-breaking.
With the Amy twist, mentioned above, I was pretty sure we were going to get her back, and with young Melody Song this was quickly made into a pretty foregone conclusion. With Oswin, it was genuinely unsettling – I just didn’t have any idea what was going on and what was going to come of it.
Other runner-ups for this category? The Dalek appearing at the end of Doomsday. Professor Yana being revealed to be the Master. Mels turning out to be a prior incarnation of River Song. The truth about the Pandorica. I can’t quite bring myself to include either the revelation of River Song’s parents or that Missy was the Master on this list because both ideas had been tossed around so much in advance, even if we weren’t positive.
What’s next? I don’t know! Tune in tomorrow to find out!
Click here for a master list for this series.
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