I know I'm late to the party, but.
This episode, you guys.
Attention was paid to Amy Pond as a person; as a girl, as a wife, as a friend, as someone who has been mistreated and someone who has loved and someone who has hurt.* Attention was paid to Rory and his relationship with Amy and what it actually means to him to have become a companion to this Doctor and at this point in his life. Eleven was cold and he tricked Rory and he believed in a version of The Right Thing that other people didn't believe in; he acted like the Doctor.
Things were said that resonated really deeply in me, and things happened that were undeniably important. And that just hasn't happened in so long.
And there were Doctor/Rose hints and Doomsday parallels, and they were handled beautifully, with respect and class and enough to subtlety to also let the moments stand on their own.
I'm not going to lie, I started crying pretty early in this episode and kept crying and cried hard. Because this was my show. This meant something. This is what Doctor Who used to do, what it's supposed to do, to be this gorgeous and this important, to reflect our humanness and connect us deeply to a show that, despite being set in ~Time and Space~, is supposed to be about people. They were people. Finally. And I was so moved and touched and honestly so inspired, and that's cheesy, but whatever. I haven't stopped thinking about it since I watched it about 18 hour ago, and just...I can't remember the last time that was true about an episode of Doctor Who. (I mean in the sense that I've been actually thinking about it, feeling about it, as opposed to still being angry and sad about how much I hated or was disappointed by it. Ha.)
I hate that I've been given this because it's not going to last and I'll be mad again like immediately, but whatever, this episode and The Doctor's Wife and (most of) the Flesh two-parter are enough to keep me from Whoicide. (Ha! Get it?...not that funny?...whatever.)
*Granted, it did not look at Amy as a mother, but that shouldn't have been Tom's job. It should have happened in Gatiss' episode the week before, you know, the one that was all about a strange parenthood. (It REALLY should have happened in LKH, but what's to be said about that; there was no time for it in LKH because of all the other super quality stuff that was happening in that episode, obviously.)
Hi, ElJay. I'm bad at you. Maybe we'll be friends again soon.