This episode was pretty good as some places, in terms of acting, plot setup and The Doctor figuring things out, but at this point the logical inconsistencies have reached critical mass, and this episode contains a meltdown of its own core theme that overshadows everything. We'll get to that later.
The whole scenario of this episode, is so complex that it's worth watching twice: A cyborg arrives to the town of Mercy, and states his demands to kill an "alien doctor" - Jex. While the townspeople know that Jex is an alien (because they pulled him from the crash site) and a doctor (that has cured them from cholera), they refuse to hand him over because he's so beloved. Despite a very good aim, the cyborg can not just barge into town because "People will get in the way.", so instead it begins starving the town.
Then later, when some of the townsfolk later begin to turn on him, Jex goes into hiding, so the townspeople still cannot deliver him. The cyborg doesn't trust the townspeople when they tell him this, so he can't just join the townspeople in their search. At this point I'm thinking that Jex is Bin Laden before the Afghanistan invasion.
...but what I find odd is that the cyborg doesn't let people flee the town. That would mean less people that is in the way, and more exhausting work which would require more food. Better yet, why not tell the townsfolk "You are all free to leave in an orderly fashion - let me just make sure that you're not an alien doctor. You can return in a month.", and then patrol the street until Jex goes for an apple tree or a store? This gets even MORE bizarre when the townsfolk figure out what Jex has done previously, and exactly where he is hiding. That would be a good time for the cyborg to move that line of his to circle and starve only the sheriffs office.
Also, this cyborg is supposed to be a soldier so powerful and high-tech, that it has ended a 9 year long planetary war in less than a week, but a shot hat reveals that the intimidating arm-cannon it carries, has the same bullet diameter as a 9mm gun, but doesn't tear or scorch anything, making as effective as maybe a Colt .45. Granted, future tech doesn't need to make visible wounds, but firepower that size, should kill somebody dead instantly. It makes guns from Earth look like high-tech, so I'm wondering if its culture hadn't discovered combustion, and had to leap straight from crossbows to lasers somehow (somewhere passing spacecrafts with FTL). Still, this weak firepower has managed to intimidate a whole gun-toting town, and also its whole surrounding area, into obediance, without anybody getting killed or firing back at him. They only explanation that I can have for all of this, is that a beam weapon naturally has really superior range, aim and somehow penetration, but this doesn't rhyme with the cyborg having to approach the line to shoot a guy in front of a group of people, and I still have doubts that it would replace a mortar. They're arguing that it could replace a nuclear bomb, and saying that just one of it could hunt down a whole team on an inhabited planet filled with experienced soldiers.
The "a horse named Susan" scene was pretty weird as well, but it was a short scene made only for comedy (and transgender promotion), so it's cool.
So, now to the first part of the discord of the theme:
When The Doctor and the cyborg get a chance to talk, suddenly The Doctor says this line: "Look: You want justice, you DESERVE justice, but this isn't the way. We can put him on trial, we can..."
Execution was EXACTLY the way that The Doctor took in the previous episode, and now he's suddenly back to normal again. It's obvious that this discord is caused by there being different writers for each episode, and that they're just stacked together without a second thought, and it shouldn't happen, because there should be a "proofreader" that should be doing his job. There should be a producer who cares about the world and the continuation of the series. We'll see more of this later.
The cyborg retorts: "When he starts killing your people, you can use your justice." What the cyborg is meaning, is just "You're not upset enough. If you want to continue, the rest of this conversation will be done by my gun.". I bring this line up because this is the start of a big moral mumbo-jumbo that doesn't really mean anything, despite sounding profound.
The Doctor goes to confront Jex. Jex tells him that the soldiers more or less voluntered, that war has different politics, and that his actions saved "millions of lives". The Doctor retorts "and how many died screaming on the operating table?". I doubt that it was millions of people. If we're doing the genocide angle again, Jex PREVENTED it - probably DETERRED it. Jex is morally right here, but The Doctor seems too upset to notice it. Rory is also calling Jex a war criminal, but I'm pretty sure that his experiments were sanctioned and approved by his government. Jex is probably telling the truth when he says that he's a war hero, and probably has medals somewhere to prove it.
Then comes THIS line: "When did we start letting people get EXECUTED?"
This is a good question, that strikes The Doctor hard because of his recent execution of Solomon, but what's so jarring, is that the line was delivered by Amy "River Song didn't get it all from you, sweetie." Pond.
In case you don't recognize those words, here's a recap: Amy Pond ended last season by executing Madame Kovarian, who like Solomon was also defenseless and begging for mercy, and there was this big scene about how she now was a killer, and how unknown the future was going to be from there. You could argue that Amy Pond killed Kovarian in a controlled fit of rage over her baby, because that would make sense, but River Song is a callous psychopath, and Amys last words to Kovarian explains that Amy is playing an innocent little girl while The Doctor is around, while River Song has partly inherited psychopathy from Amy, and she explains that this psychopathy is the reason why Amy kills her. In other words: Amy killed Kovarian in cold blood, and has little to no regrets about it. ...so if The Doctor would turn evil all of a sudden, this shouldn't bother Amy one bit. This moral stance is instead what I would expect to come from Rory, who has too small of a part as it is.
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Anonymous2012-09-16 23:34
Instead, Amy "Coldblood" Pond goes on: "This is not how we roll, and you know it. What's happened to you, Doctor? When did killing someone become an option?" You tell me, Amy.
The Doctor retorts "Jex has to answer for his crimes!" and talks about "honoring the victims" and "not today". He's simply so upset that he can't think straight, because the previous "your people" argument doesn't really translate into "I'm a one man cyborg tribunal.", yet The Doctor is now going with that opposite line. The Doctor goes on to say that mercy will only get more people killed, comparing Jex to Daleks, saying that Jex will somehow turn into a mass-murderer even in peace-time. This villification doesn't make sense unless The Doctor is trying to justify the execution of Solomon to himself. As character progression, this would be a good time for him to start turning into Tennants doctor. (I think they age backwards for every regeneration.)
Later on The Doctor tries to reason with a kid who pulls a gun, saying "...but that's how all this started: Jex turned someone into a weapon. Now that same story is gonna make you a killer too. Don't you see violence doesn't end violence? It extends it.". "I don't think you want to become that man." Only in Jexs case, violence ended the war, or at least minimized it into a small scale town extortion, which would theoretically be solved by killing Doctor Who. In short, more moral mumbo-jumbo, that somehow saves the day because the plot needs it to.
At this point The Doctor is so morally confused that he's mostly going by "what Isaac would have wanted". He argues that Jex "chose this town as a punishment". In that case, is roaming around time in the Tardis, The Doctors punishment for HIS war crimes? ...because The Doctor has no moral high-ground here. They both fought in wars and tried to end it by the meanns available to them, and they both carry scars from it, and try to repent for it, and somehow one is a monster and one isn't.
The Doctor then delivers his verdict line: "Justice doesn't work like that! You don't get to decide when and how your debt is paid!" Why not? You can argue that helping a town won't undo the cyborgs, but I'm pretty sure that Jex would help the cyborg if he could, even going so far as to wanting to get killed by it. ...so if the cyborg or Jex won't get to decide when and how the debt is paid, then who gets to? The Doctor obviously thinks that HE gets to, at least partly.
Then, to confuse things further, Jex tells The Doctor about his alien religious belief. It's basically every religious afterlife ever, but what Jex is actually saying is that he will get divine punishment in the end, so that punishing him now won't matter. Then somebody must have hit the dialogue writer on the head, because after that Jex starts talking gibberish:
"Can you see now why I fear death? You want to hand me over? There's no shame in that. ...but you won't. We all carry our prisons with us. Mine is my past. Yours is your morality."
None of that made any sense. Jex is an evil and religious man who wants to die but who is having a guilty conscience. He wants to say that he has a conscience, but at the same time he says that he rejects morality. He wants to die, but also says that he fears death. This man is a walking paradox, yet at this point Doctor Who goes "We all carry our prisons with us... Hah!", getting the idea that they should send Jex off in his ship. Why? There is absolutely zero sense here, because The Doctor has been convinced that the guilty conscience of Jex is punishment enough, while Jex just told him that he's not imprisoned by morality.
...and while it sounds like he has a plan for Jex getting past the cyborg at this point, he really hasn't. The final plan is to have everybody get painted, in order to confuse the quick-targeting system of the cyborg, but while Jex may have informed the other townsfolk about this, he hasn't told The Doctor about it, and not the viewers either. There's no reason for him to go "Hah!".
Also, if Jex knows that this is the way that it quick-targets things, you'd think that he would disguise or remove his facial tattoo. Apparently paint is enough to trick the sensors of the cyborg, yet I don't think that Jex painted himself as he made his escape. We also learn about the targeting system as the plan is being implemented, making the solution seem very improvised.
Also, what kind of a plan is it to have the townsfolk running around drawing fire from the cyborg? If even one townsman would have gotten shot by the cyborg, the whole plan would have been ruined. Doctor Who actually came up with a plan on how to make things WORSE.
In the end, Jex kills himself, and by doing this, he actually decides when and how his debt is paid, which leaves us with the question if doing that was morally right or wrong. Did Jex somehow get away with his crimes in the end? You can't tell, because the moral is just so deranged in this episode. The most tangible message, seems to be that people should stop hunting war criminals.