Howling:Mels

The Howling → Mels

There be spoilers about un-released stories here.
Run back to the forums if you're scared.

Am I the only one who found the addition of Mels to be kind of a weird plot point. Not that I find it weird that Amy and Rory grew up with their own daughter who secretly wanted to kill Amy's imaginary friend. That all makes perfect sense in the context of the story. What I find weird is that Mels has never been seen or mentioned before. I feel like if RTD was still in charge, we would have seen Mels as early as The Eleventh Hour as a minor character, and then she would have showed up at the wedding again. That way it would have been a shocking plot twist. This way, it's more along the lines of "Huh, a character named Mels who seems obsessed with the Doctor. I wonder who that could be." The way they ended up doing it it seemed more like Moffat was just like "Hey, you know what would be cool. If it turned out that River's actually known Amy and Rory their whole lives." I guess the difference is that Davies always seemed like he had the story planned out years in advance (the Master's drumming, the cult of skaro, etc.), while Moffat seems like he's just making it up as he goes along. It also seems a bit odd that Amy and Rory seem to forget that Mels is an old childhood friend the second she regenerated. At the end, for example, Amy said something along the lines of "Are you sure we should just leave her there? She's our baby, she's River." No mention of, "Rory and I have known her our whole lives." I dunno, overall the episode was pretty good, and I've enjoyed the whole River Song arc, but the whole Mels plot twist just seemed like lazy writing to me.Gowron8472 02:50, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Well, Amy and Rory don't forget that Mels was their childhood friend--instead, they realize that River was their childhood friend. --Bold Clone 03:14, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Well gowron8472 does have a point. They do realize that their daughter was their childhood friend, but they hardly discuss the subject. I'm sure that they'll bring it up in later episodes. Amy might be happy to realize that she did not in fact miss all those years like she said on the Doctor's answering machine, although given how much Mels got in trouble she might not be too happy. Well, we'll see in the next River Song episode.Icecreamdif 04:11, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Well, I guess it's nice to see one person who's got the opposite complaint to the mass delusion that "the show has gotten too arc-heavy to follow for the common people who aren't as smart as me".

But really, the only reason RTD was able to seed his plot points so early is that they were so trivial. Sure, the words "Bad Wolf" were in every episode after the first, but that's just throwing out two words that turn out to not really mean anything important, just a random phrase that Rose used to signal herself across time. The Heart of the TARDIS wasn't even mentioned (unless you think he seeded it decades ago in Arc of Infinity) until pretty late in the very episode when it became central to the plot; we didn't meet Harold Saxon until the middle of the 3-part finale; etc. Compare that to gradually learning about the cracks throughout series 5, and the hints of the future Doctor be traveling back through the whole season at the end.

Also, I kind of like that the possiblity is left open that maybe they originally _hadn't_ known Mels their whole life, and the whole series of events from The Pandorica Opens to A Good Man Goes to War changed their (pre-time-traveler) past. I doubt that will turn out to be true, but I like that we can't be sure yet. --173.228.85.35 04:41, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Well, you have an interesting idea (Mels is actually a retroactive time travel change), but what I fail to see is anything that might back it up. --Bold Clone 14:52, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

"given how much Mels got in trouble she might not be too happy": Amy didn't seem all that bothered, except to tell Mels she should stop it for her own sake; indeed, it was obviously part of what made them friends. Also, at least when she was younger, Amy seems to have got into a fair amount of trouble herself -- witness the conversation between young Amelia and Mels on that very topic that ends with Amelia saying, "I count as a boy." It looks as if they were both tearaways but Amy calmed down (a little) as she grew up, whereas Mels got worse.

One thing I liked was Mels making sure her parents got together: "Penny in the air... Penny drops." --89.241.71.249 17:47, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

I'm not neccessarily agreeing with Gowron8472 that RTD would have done a better job, though the Torchwood arc was a bit more elaborate than the Bad Wolf thing, and the heart of the TARDIS did actually appear in Boom Town. I'm just saying that if Mels had been introduced in The Eleventh Hour and been seen again in The Big Bang, then when she appeared in Let's Kill Hitler we would have thought "oh, there's Mels again. Is she going to become a companion." If anybody had noticed the similarity between her and Melody's names, they would have just assumed that Amy named her daughter after Mels. As it was, however, Mels seemed to come completely out of the blue. She's been Amy and Rory' best friend for their entire lives, but neither of them have ever mentioned her once. Rose and Donna both used to name drop their old friends a lot, so why wasn't Mels ever mentioned, even in passing. I don't know about other people, but I figured out who Mels was as soon as I heard her name. I assumed she would be a recurring character before she regenerated, but when you know that River is going to be in the episode, you know that Mels has a pretty similar name, the flashbacks show that she is pretty obsessed with the Doctor, and she has a similar personality to River, it really wasn't that hard to figure out. If she had already been an established character, I doubt I would have made the connection.Icecreamdif 23:14, August 30, 2011 (UTC)

Bold Clone: As I said, it probably won't turn out to be true. But it would be a cool storyline (assuming the justification works, the characters react to it in appropriate ways, etc., but I take that for granted with Moffat—or, really, any writer since the Pip&Jane Baker days).

Icecreamdif: If you notice, Amy and Rory never mention any of their friends when they're off with the Doctor. And that isn't something peculiar to them; most companions never mention a single other person, or at best make vague and rare references to a single relative (like Sarah Jane's Aunt Lavinia, or Amy's Aunt Sharon). The only exception I can think of in the classic series is Ace, and even in the RTD era, it was only Rose and Donna who talked about their friends. Can you name any colleagues, classmates, or friends of Ian and Barbara, Romana, Tegan, Peri, or Martha (or, before he got his own spinoff, Jack)? --173.228.85.35 03:48, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

But what you have to remember is, until this series, Amy _didn't have a daughter_. So she would have grown up all this time with Mels, without having that idea in her head. It's posisble she even named her daughter after her best friend, without ever making the connection. 187.59.125.160 14:05, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

"It's posisble she even named her daughter after her best friend, without ever making the connection": She did. That's in the dialog of Let's Kill Hitler. Amy says she named her daughter after Mels because Mels was her best friend and the Doctor says, "You named your daughter after your daughter." --2.96.28.149 16:37, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see why Amy never made the connection. 173.228.85.35, I see what you're saying about companionsnever mentioning their friends, and you have a point. I'm not really talking about this from an in-universe point of view, but from a real world storytelling point of view. I think that the character of Mels and the plot twist of her turning into River would have worked better with a bit more foreshadowing. Introducing the character about ten minutes before the big reveal that she is actually River just seems a bit lazy to me. Even if Moffat had done what RTD did in Utopia, and spent the episode introducing the character before having her regenerate at the end, it would have been better. Still, apart from that I did enjoy the episode, and I think that its an interesting plot point that Rory and Amy knew their daughter for their whole lives, but I feel like it could have been done better. Also, I don't see how they could have not known Mels their entire lives in a diffeent timeline fom before A Good Man Goes to War. Mainly, because then we would have to assume that they and the Doctor didn't know the older River Song until after the episode, which of course makes no sense at all. Since Mels got them together anyway, we should assume that her entire life is one masive causality loop.Icecreamdif 18:15, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

I, too, feel that Mels could have been handled better. Other considerations apart, that version of Melody was highly entertaining in her own right and I'd like to have seen more of her. I'd also have liked to see more of the Sydney Wade version. We've had 3 good actresses cast in the part (Sydney Wade as the 1960s version, Maya Glace-Green as the younger Mels and Nina Toussaint-White as the adult Mels), none of whom have been allowed much screen time. It all feels rushed. --2.96.28.149 18:36, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif, I'm not talking about in-universe either. In fact, in-universe, it actually never made much sense to me that Sarah Jane doesn't have a life outside of the Doctor—but I didn't mind too much, because it worked for the stories, and that's pretty much the way all TV scifi works (how many acquaintances does Scotty have outside the bridge crew and engineering team of the Enterprise?).

As for how they could have not known Mels in a different timeline: Why would that mean they didn't know the older River? I think you're missing the fundamental point that it's a different timeline, so history is different between the two of them. In the old one, River never became Mels, so the first time they met her was with the Doctor in their early 20s; in the new one, she did, so the first time they met her was as children in Leadworth. Even though I don't think this is what Moffat's planning, it's definitely the _kind_ of thing he likes to do, and the kind of thing you keep failing to get, just like the cracks.

2.96.28.49: Maybe Moffat has just written too many ideas to fit into a 13-episode season. But I don't think so. Leaving people wanting to know more of the backstory is exactly what makes great episodic writing. A few dozen lines, and we believe Mels is a fully-realized, fascinating character, and we desperately want to know more of her story. But the reality is, that's all the story there is—and anything he dreamed up would be less interesting than we're expecting. I know I'm not explaining this very well; Neil Gaiman explains it a lot better in the context of Idris, on his blog and elsewhere. (Gaiman can explain just about anything a lot better than me; that's why he's the famous writer…) Of course the actress, and the director, also deserve a lot of credit, not just Moffat. But the point is that it _is_ a credit, not a problem. --173.228.85.35 04:41, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

While the last writer makes a good point, I'm also a bit annoyed by the last episode. The transformation of character in the last sequence, from happy psychopath to the stand-by-your-man gal is abrupt for my taste and I need a little more, if only a thunderstruck look. It feels like plot pushing character, rather than the other way around. Boblipton 10:48, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

173, we both know that the only characters in the original Star Trek who got any character development or background at all were Kirk, Spock, and Bones, so Scotty is hardly a reasonable analogy here. Modern-day Doctor Who companions get much more character development and backstory than 60s Star Trek characters. Also, just because we disagree on a subject doesn't mean that I have failed to grasp it. Most details of the cracks were left pretty vague, and it is just as likely that you are the one who is completely mistaken. My problem with Mels isn't that she was so interesting and I think she should have been given more screen time. It is that she seems to come out of nowhere for the simple purpose of regenerating into River. If they had just given her a cameo or a minor role in The Eleventh Hour, where we saw many citizens of Leadworth, then her role in Let's Kill Hitler would have been more effective. He certainly doesn't seem to have written too many ideas to fit into 13 episodes. He's not even filling thirteen episodes with his ideas, is he. I didn't eally mind Sydney Wad not getting much screen time though. In that episode, young Melody is a much more mysterious character, and giving her less screen time worked better. With Mels, its almost like the old Anthony Ainley Master episodes in a way, where the Master would spend the first part of the episode wearing a bad disguise only to remove it for no reason. It's obviously not the exact same thing, but it still comes down to the big reveal being "this character who you've never heard of before is actually River Song." It would work much better if it was "this minor character who you didn't pay much attention to last year is actually River Song."Icecreamdif 14:33, September 1, 2011 (UTC)