If you’re not interested in Doctor Who spoilers or theory or anything related, come back in a day or two when I can guarantee the subject will not be Doctor Who. Otherwise, again, paraphrasing Bette Davis in “All About Eve,” fasten your seatbelt because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Back in June, I wrote a speculation piece on the Doctor Who/ River Song relationship. I’m pleased to say the Doctor Who episode, Let’s Kill Hitler, confirmed much of my speculation. However, the story opened another series of questions that I’m sure (or at least hoping) will be answered later in the series. But back to my attaboy moment, the major things I apparently got right (and there were many) are underlined and include:

1.  River does kill the Doctor – in both 2011 and in 1938 on orders from the Silence, which is not a species, but a religious order.

2.  River was born with a full compliment of Time Lord regenerations  which she gave up to save the Doctor after her poison lipstick killed him. It’s strange that her first kiss of the Doctor was intended to assassinate him and her last kiss (from her perspective) rips her heart out in its realized finality.

3.  She apparently kills the Doctor in 2011, and is hunted by the Teselecta, which is a time traveling, shape-shifting  judge, jury and executioner dispatched by the Justice Department. It is unclear to me, at this point, if they are the ones who actually jail her in the future.

4.  The child who regenerated in New York in 1970, was Melody Pond, who becomes Mels (short for Melody) and  Amy & Rory’s childhood friend.  Turns out she was responsible for bringing her parents together so that she could be conceived.

Foreknowledge is a dangerous thing as the Doctor acknowledges. He now has confirmation of his date with death and because of the Teselecta knows when and where a young Melody Pond/ River Song will kill him. (And because of that, my ganger Doctor theory (while now a little weaker)  is still in play.

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As to the episode itself, I loved the continuing reference to the movie, “The Graduate” (‘Hello Benjamin’) and the rules the Doctor spouted out, telling Melody she should be writing them down (one Time Lord trying to educate another). But the Star Trek references absolutely grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I don’t mean just the star trek-like command bridge of the robot (Justice Vehicle 6018), but a huge shout-out to the Star-Trek episode, The Empath.

Melody Pond learns to care about others by watching the Doctor, in his dying moments, care about his companions. She learns to be more than she was born to do. Melody Pond is an assassin who will be punished for her crime, but River Song is a heroine who was born the moment Melody Pond gave up being a Time Lord to save the Doctor. Just like Gem, the Empath, saves Doctor McCoy from death at the risk of her own life, Melody saves the Doctor because she, too, learned to care.

The mission of the Teselecta is to  punish criminals at the end of their timeline (but before they actually die) and they accidently got it right by hellishly punishing Melody Pond in 1938 for the Doctor’s death in 2011. That was the end of Melody’s timeline, but it marked the beginning of River’s who still must pay for the crime she committed as Melody, that of killing a good man, the Doctor. This episode also marks the point in the Doctor’s timeline where he knows more about River than she knows about him (assuming that he meets the River that’s not in prison from this point forward).

River Song, like Gem, is the pearl that Doctor McCoy spoke of at the end of “The Empath” and the one the Doctor knows is worth saving at all cost. And because he does, River Song will be…“amazing.”

Oh, and what did the dying Doctor whisper in Melody Pond’s ear for her to pass on to River Song? What did Melody assume River Song already knew? The Doctor’s true name, of course. It’s what River will whisper back to the Doctor (10) in “Silence in the Library.”