Howling:Mels

The Howling → Mels

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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)

In addition, immediately after regeneration, the new personality is fluid. I do wish that point was made more forcibly in the episode. Boblipton 00:25, September 5, 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)

OK, look at Kirk, Spock, and Bones. Sure, they got much more character development than Scotty, but almost none of it was their backstory, it was their relationships with each other, and how they dealt with the extraordinary events they were facing week after week, and so on. (In 3 years, all we learned about McCoy's past was that he had an ex-wife and a daughter.) And the same is true of Sarah Jane, Tegan, or Jack Harkness.

Meanwhile, I don't know why you think "Mels is really River" is, or should be, the big season-dominating reveal. It's just one minor plot point in the much larger saga of River, which itself is just part of the season's overall storyline. Ultimately, the Doctor is the main character this season, not Amy (as with most seasons, with season 26 and series 2 being notable exceptions). --173.228.85.35 17:35, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

Of course there will be other big dominating reveals this season, but this should have been a much bigger one. It is pretty much a major portion of River's life condense into the first 20 minutes of an episode. Besides, not that this is about Star Trek, but we did get a bt more with Kirk and Spock. With Kirk we find out about at least a hundred ex girlfriends that he's had (including Carol Marcus), his illegitimate son that he never knew about, the guy who used to bully him back at the Academy-there are more examples that I can't think of. With Spock we meet both of his parents, his half-brother, I think he got an ex-girlfriend from years ago. Even McCoy we get a bit more when we learn about his father who he euthanized, and I think he had a daughter in the animated series. Either way, DS9 might be a better analogy for the way the direction that Doctor Who is taking these days. Legate Damar, for example, would have been a pretty lame character if he had only been introduced in the final ten episode arc to lead the Cardassian resistance movement. Instead, they introudce the charactes years earlier as basically an exttra serving on Gul Dukat's ship, and built him up over time. same goes for Enterprise. If we only found out that T'pol was in an arranged marriage in Home, it would seem like a completely random plot point that came out of nowhere for no reason other than to create conflict in her relationship with Trip. Instead, we learned that T'pol was suppossed to marry Koss back in season 1, and then it became important in season 4. Yes, most characters don't actually talk about their friends unless its relevant to the plot, but Mels would have been a much more compelling character with just a bit of foreshadowing.Icecreamdif 18:19, September 1, 2011 (UTC)

McCoy's daughter Joanna was mentioned (but never appeared) in the original series. His divorce was also mentioned.

Anyway, back to the real business: Although I (in common with others) feel the introduction and rapid disposal of the Mels (Nina Toussaint-White) version of Melody is a bit odd, that might itself be a plot point, for all we so far know. After all, something that looked like a continuity error (the Doctor's jacket in Flesh and Stone) turned out to be intentional and to make sense, once we'd seen the rest of the series. It's too soon to assume that the sudden "intrusion" of Mels isn't meant to be odd. --2.101.48.209 01:22, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Well, the only likely way that that could be intentional would be if Moffat is going for the alternate timeline approach. We know that she didn't just rewrite Amy and Rory's memories or anything like that because of the flashbacks. Making Mels part of an alternate timeline wouldn't make any sense though. For one thing, Amy named her daughter after Mels, so Amy's daughter would have a different name in the alternate timeline. For another thing, we know that a later version of Mels was already part of the timeline during The Eleventh Hour, as we had already seen River back in Silence in the Library. As for Dr. McCoy, I remember there was something along the lines of his daughter was supposed to appear in that awful hippy episode, but they decided against it because they didn't want tom make him seem old. It was something like that. Either way, we were definetly inroduced to some kind of relation to him in the animate series.Icecreamdif 01:29, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

If it's altered memory, the flashbacks could be to Amy's memories, rather than to "actual history". If they explained that in an episode, nobody would think twice about it.

If it's an alternate timeline, maybe her daughter was named Melody for a different reason in the original timeline. (Which would mean there wasn't actually an ontological paradox until someone changed history, which actually makes things a bit more interesting.) Also, I wasn't suggesting that River's entire existence could be in an alternate timeline, just that her having grown up (as Mels) with Amy and Rory could.

I still don't think either of these is what Moffat's planning, but they're both far from impossible. And, as the new number 2 implies, Moffat could easily be planning something involving River and timey-wimey that's more clever than the idea I just tossed out from the top of my head. After all, there's a reason they gave the show to him instead of me. :) --173.228.85.35 04:00, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

If it is an altered memory, then that just makes the sudden inclusion of the character even worse than it already is. In that case, there is really no good reason to have introduced Mels at all. The way that the episode came out, it at least established that Amy and Rory knew their daughter for her entire childhood, but if it is altered memory, then they might as well have just had them run into young iver in Berlin. As for the alternate timeline, it is possible, but there is literally no evidence at all to support that. It comes to the same thing as saying that River must be the Rani-completely random theories with no evidence to back them up.Icecreamdif 15:45, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

The "new number 2" is the same one -- dynamic IP addressing, changes each time I connect and doesn't always begin with "2". I wasn't really suggesting an alternate timeline or modified memories. I don't really know what I'm suggesting other the possibility that something that looks odd may be meant to look odd and we'll find out why later. I'm told I have a twisted mind but I don't claim it's twisted enough to figure out in advance what Steven Moffat is up to. --89.241.66.115 16:26, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

It hink the most likely reason is really just that Moffat hadn't mapped out River's entire backstory yet back when he started writing Series 5. He may or may not have decided that River was Amys daughter, but I don't think that he had decided that she was also Amy's childhood friend yet. Icecreamdif 17:50, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

"The new number 2" was a joking reference to The Prisoner, where each week the new sinister leader of the Island would say "I am the new number 2. You are number 6." It's not meant to imply that you're a different person each time you log on to the internet. :)

Anyway, I didn't think you were suggesting, any more than I am, that either the altered timeline or the altered memory thing is the most likely truth. They're just the only two examples anyone in this thread has come up with of something clever and twisted and timey-wimey that Moffat could be preparing to spring on us. As you imply, Moffat is more clever and twisted than we are, and he's thinking about this stuff full-time, so we shouldn't expect to be able to anticipate everything.

As for Icecreamdif's idea that Moffat hadn't mapped out the whole backstory from the beginning, I definitely agree with that. That's how all episodic writers work. Moffat's even talked about the fact that one of the strengths of Doctor Who is that, because it largely recycles itself every few years, you can paint in more interesting stories without having to worry about painting yourself into a corner. So, he keeps inventing new elements to the River story, and he'll keep doing so until he reaches a point where anything worth writing would contradict the established story, at which point he'll just stop using her. --173.228.85.35 18:21, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but these days Doctor Who isn't quite episodic, is it. It isn't like Torchwood where the entire season is esentially one story, but it is still one story told over several episodes. I think that the River Song arc would have been stronger if he had mapped out at least a general idea of what he wanted to do with the character. Obviously I'm not saying that when he was writing Silence in the Library he should have been thinking "OK, so in 2011 I'll do an episode where her previous incarnation goes to Berlin, regenerates, and tries to kill the Doctor," but when he realized that he would be able to do an entire story arc involving the characte he could have planned out some of the major plot twists such as River being a childhood friend of her parents. I would imagine that if Moffat were to rewrite The Eleventh Hour knoinwing about the plot twists from Let's Kill Hitler that he would have given Mels a cameo. Icecreamdif 19:30, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

That would have just been stupid on Moffat's part. The Eleventh Hour: the Doctor is signalling the Atraxi with his screwdriver. Mels is seen walking by. Suddenly, she turns around and shoots the Doctor in the head. The Doctor dies before he can regenerate, and the Atraxi blow up the earth. ...Mels could never have appeared before now because 1) she was probably in jail, or 2) she would have killed or tried to kill the Doctor. --Bold Clone 20:19, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Why would she have shot the Doctor back then. If she shot the Doctor back then he would have died, Amy never would have travelled in the TARDIS, and Mels would never have been born. I'm sure she was waiting for a version of the Doctor from after A Good Man Goes to War to show up, or she would have just walked into UNIT HQ in the 70s (or 80s) and shot the Third Doctor. All that would have to happen would be when we're meeting all the Leadworth residents in the Eleventh Hour for Mels to show up and say something along the lines of Oh my god its you. Its the raggedy Doctor. I've always wanted to meet you.," add a bit more to show her personality and how she always gets into trouble, continue the episode, and everyone would have forgotten about her until The Let's Kill Hitler. Then when she returned everyone would have just thought "Oh yeah, it's that character from last season. I guess she's going to be a companion now."Icecreamdif 20:58, September 2, 2011 (UTC)

Icecreamdif is right. Mels programming must have included some limitations to ensure she'd not create a paradox by killing the Doctor so soon in his timeline that she prevented her own birth. It's not too unlikely that she'd also be programmed to keep away from the Doctor until she was ready to kill him. Kovarian and company wouldn't want to risk him figuring out who she was (or, even just that she had been programmed to do something involving him) while it was still impossible for her to kill him without creating a paradox. They also (unless stupid) would want to avoid the risk that getting to know the Doctor would undermine Melody's programming, which seems to be exactly what it has done. --89.241.69.44 04:31, September 3, 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, but Mels wouldn't have known the exact date that the Doctor would arrive in Leadworth in 2008, so she wouldn't really be able to avoid him. Icecreamdif 15:39, September 3, 2011 (UTC)

She couldn't arrange to go on holiday at the critical time, no. She could still avoid him, though. By the time she got to Leadworth, she had seen what he looked like in his 11th incarnation. All she'd need to do would be to keep out of his (and Amy's) sight. He wasn't there for very long and, even in a small place like that, it's possible to stay away from someone for a few hours, if you want to. Since she was operating under programming that probably included hypnosis, she'd not even need to be consciously aware of recognising him -- or, indeed, of avoiding him. --2.101.60.5 20:23, September 3, 2011 (UTC)

Poor Third Doctor. First Terrence Dicks kills him off early in Seven Keys to Doomsday, then Larry Miles kills him off early in Interference, and now Icecreamdif kills him off early in the middle of the UNIT stories. Why doesn't anyone want to let him finally get to Metebelis III as he always wanted? --173.228.85.35 03:41, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

I don't want to kill him off. He was easily the best Doctor. I'm just saying tahat the fact that Melody never showed up at UNIT proves that she had to wait forr a later version of the Doctor, and that she wasn't around in the 70s/80.Icecreamdif 15:13, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

It does prove she had to wait for a later version of the Doctor but it doesn't prove she wasn't around in the 70s/80s. She could have been around but waiting. Whoever programmed her to kill the Doctor would need (not just want) to ensure that that part of her programming didn't become active until she encountered him late enough in his timeline to avoid preventing her own birth. Knowing that she couldn't kill him until then, it would be sensible to program her to keep away from him. If she'd made contact earlier, there are two major dangers: 1. he might learn enough to become suspicious of her and take action to frustrate the plan to kill him, or 2. her programmed imperative to kill him might get activated too early and create a temporal paradox. If it occurred to them that contact with the Doctor might counteract her programming (as it did), that would be another reason for them to want to keep her away from him until the last moment. However, none of those would be a reason to stop her being around and making preparations, such as locating her parents and befriending them -- and, rather importantly, getting them together so that they'd become her parents. --2.96.28.193 00:05, September 5, 2011 (UTC)