Overview: Season Six

And we're off! Same deal as yesterday, different season.

In case you missed it yesterday, I explained these posts thusly: I decided to jot down a few notes on each episode based on my memory alone. Max pitched in a few times, but for the most part these thoughts/notes are mine and based on nothing but my memory and knowledge of specific episodes of Doctor Who.
This is the second of three posts. Season Five went up yesterday, and seven will arrive tomorrow! I know, the anticipation is insane.
General notes:

• HUMANITY is a major theme. As the Doctor gets more God-like, he draws a thicker line between himself and the human race. Episodes that feature this theme are starred. *
• Any two-part episodes are considered as one unit. Their story line is split up, but their themes continue to develop and character arcs stretch from the beginning of one to the end of another
• We consider CHARACTERS over "Real-world" circumstances (for instance, rather than considering the fact that Tennant stepped in because Eccleston had to leave, we would look at Nine's departure in the storyline, and Ten's arrival.)
• Memory/forgetting is another important theme, in both Doctor Who and Peter Pan

"A Christmas Carol" (This episode needs my attention--I have only seen it once)

• Amy and Rory apparently on a Honeymoon type trip
• Doctor goes back in time to deal with the child version of an adult
• sharks are the best animal.
• Sleeping Beauty motif, 
• The psychic paper breaks after he tells too big of a lie-- THAT HE'S A RESPONSIBLE ADULT

"The Impossible Astronaut" and "The Day of the Moon"

• America. Doctor pulls shenanigans--200 years have gone by for him.
• When did Rory and Amy get a house/settle down into it?
• River shows up again! (Now we know how she got into jail.)
• When does River find out who she is/who her parents are?
• Introduction of the Silence, question of whether Amy is or isn't pregnant
• Drinking wine--she doesn't think she's pregnant.
• The Doctor drinks again and promptly spits it out, again.
• Doctor faces death as though it WOULD BE A RATHER BIG ADVENTURE.
• Why does he make Amy, Rory and River witness the death?

"The Curse of the Black Spot" (Another ep. that needs my attention)

• Rory almost dies. Again. (role reversal, Amy is the nurse)
• Pirates are a throwback to the classic series
• Team work, both in the past and on a spaceship.

"The Doctor's Wife"*

• The Goddess of crying.
• Impossibility defied
• Outside of the universe
• More Timelords?
• TARDIS given a body
• Amy leaves Rory behind twice, but it's not really him.
• One "death"
• FEAR of growing old--aging is a negative process. (We see this again in "The Girl Who Waited")

"The Rebel Flesh" and "The Almost People"*

• Rory sympathizes with the flesh b/c of his time as a centurion
• Posession over "her" Doctor--Amy thinks she knows which is real and which is flesh
• Knowing SHE herself is flesh at this point--changes perspective? 
• Clear up questions about mythology behind the Flesh, don't you have to be conscious to control it? how does Amy's avatar work?
• Amy gets another avatar in "Let's Kill Hitler"
• Amy is Flesh. He tries to calm her down before changing her
• REALITY VERSUS PERCEIVED REALITY
• Continued Sleeping Beauty theme, Amy awakening as she is about to give birth. In the traditional fairytale she gives birth in her sleep and it is her infants that suckle the cursed thistle or prickle in her finger, loosening it out, which awakens her. 

"A Good Man Goes to War"

• More questions than answers.
• Throws a FIT at River "How goes the day?"
• Why COULDN'T she help?
• She couldn't interfere with her timeline too much, it would eliminate her present self. (Max answered my question).
• Rory and Amy as parents, River turns into Jane, Amy and the Doctor's relationship markedly changes again.
• "You always worry about me." but Peter never worries about Wendy...does he?
• Another name argument--Pond vs. Williams
• Does the Doctor REALLY not know who River is? Who Amy is?

"Let's Kill Hitler"*

• Amy gets another avatar
• Rory and Amy spend an entire summer just waiting for the Doctor. Again.
• River's origin story

"Night Terrors"*

• Nightmares, obviously.
• Changelings (Lost boys)
• Do George and the Doctor have anything in common?
• Amy changes, but Rory doesn't
• Nightlights

"The Girl Who Waited" WAITED.

• Amy waits, finally for too long.
• both men fail her, she "saves" herself (twice)
• attitude change btwn old and young Amy
• Nightlight, Tinkerbell (isn't there a reference to the light on the top of the TARDIS?)
• 36 years... how old is Wendy in "When Wendy Grows Up"?

"The God Complex"

• Season 6's "The Satan Pit"?
• Gods Vs. Timelords
• "Complex" as double entendre--both the psychological problem and the building itself.
• Rory's door as an exit (what does he believe in?)
• What is in the Doctor's Room?
• What would be in Peter's? Wendy's? AMY'S?
• Belief systems. Amy's story line is on constant loop.
• The Doctor and Amy's continued arc of trust and the Doctor's insistence that Amy needs to stop trusting him now, stop believing in him, a marketed difference to him telling her to trust him completely in "The Time of Angels"/"Flesh And Stone".
• Tinkerbell--I do believe in fairies
• Doctor gives Amy and Rory "their dreams" to keep them safe. House, car, etc. Essentially his way of telling them to grow up.

"Closing Time"*

• Back to Craig and Sophie--the only other time he was without Amy. (Max added: not true, will bicker with you over this later)
• TOY SECTION at the store. Clear child-like exuberance in the atmosphere. 
• "I speak baby" Of course you do. Incredible parenting skills; hint of the Doctor having had children before (classic series--his first companion is his Granddaughter). Empathy with children and babies over adults.
• Releasing Craig and Sophie from their normal human lives.
• Bromance, which is what eventually saves them from the Cybermen.
•  The Doctor watching Amy and Rory from afar, incredibly close, but refrains from interacting. "Looking into the inside of the nursery", from the outside looking in, much like Peter did once he went to his true home, but was shocked to find his parents had long since had a second child and had closed their window (is that canon? Or only from Hook. Fact check needed.--Max)

"The Wedding of River Song" 

• Really REALLY need to watch this one again
• Revisiting Lake Silencio, the Tardis blue "death" invitations also double as Wedding invitations, to a degree. River, already in jail, has already seen it occur and married (?) hence her knowing smile to the Doctor's original invitation. ( Max is speculative).  However her anger at the younger doctor back in "The Day of The Moon" for making her watch that all again (and his innocence in the affair, being invited too ) (after revisiting that episode knowing she knows what happens) seems to negate that...need to revisit. 
• Doctor's reaction to River calling everyone to help (embarrassment is paralleled in "The Angels Take Manhattan" with the wrist)
• Amy forgets Rory again, he doesn't forget her. 
• (You sure Jen? She due to her wall-crack universe powers that have her remember all her lives and alternate selves, vaguely remembers him, but draws him completely incorrectly, like a male model. It is a marketed improvement over when he was erased by time, but even then she still remembered him a bit in that she would at various times cry and "feel sad" despite not knowing why, especially present in "Vincent And The Doctor". )
• (FINE! We can delve deeper into this later, after I punch you.)

That's it for Season Six. Tune in tomorrow for Seven's overview! Yay!

--Jen (and Max)