On the asteroid Demon’s Run, Amy Pond has given birth. But the villainous Madame Kovarian and the religious order of the silence are waiting to make a collection that tears Amy’s world apart. Across the galaxy, the Eleventh Doctor and Rory Williams are assembling an army to fight the battle that lies ahead, whilst in Stormcage, River Song prepares to escape for what may be the last time.
For this is the battle of Demon’s Run. On this day, The Doctor will rise higher than ever and fall so much further, and finally, this is the day he discovers who River Song is…
NOTES
This episode was originally entitled Demons Run. It was changed to A Good Man Goes To War, although His Darkest Hour had also been considered as a title
A Good Man Goes To War, as noted by Steven Moffat, aside from being episode 7 of this series, is also the 777th episode of Doctor Who. Moffat stated there were no “seven puns” in the episode as the coincidence was only observed after it was shot.
The end credits list Russell T Davies as creating the Ood and Judoon. However, no Ood appear in the episode. In The Brilliant Book 2012 it is stated that we would have seen Ood Sigma assist The Doctor’s Army, but the scene was cut.
According to Steven Moffat, he was unable to include Jack Harkness in The Doctor’s Army because John Barrowman was busy filming Torchwood: Miracle Day
The TARDIS console room does not appear in this episode. This is the first time this has occurred since Planet of the Dead, over two years earlier. It is the first episode of the Eleventh Doctor era to not have a scene set in the TARDIS.
The Series 1 & 2 variation of Doctors theme (The Doctor’s theme) plays for six seconds when The Doctor and Vastra are talking about a Time Lord being used as a weapon.
A variation of All The Strange, Strange Creatures plays right before the scene mentioned above.
This is the first story to include River where the phrase “Hello Sweetie” isn’t heard.
Vastra’s first exchange of dialogue -“Thank you, Parker, I won’t be needing you again tonight”, to which an unseen carriage driver replies “Yes, m’lady” – is a reference to Lady Penelope in the Gerry Anderson series Thunderbirds, who often exchanged similar words with her manservant, also named Parker. A 2004 live-action version of Thunderbirds featured Sophia Myles of Moffat’s The Girl in the Fireplace as Lady Penelope, and Ron Cook, who played Mr Magpie in The Idiot’s Lantern, as Parker.
This episode features a unique sound mix on the opening theme music, which features the sound of the TARDIS. No Series 6 episode before or after featured this version of the theme.
The title of this episode is much more ambiguous than one would think, partly because of the Doctor’s own admission that he is not necessarily a “good man “because he “has so many” rules, and also because of Amy’s opening narration, which misled the viewer into thinking she was talking about The Doctor rather than Rory. These two instances lend weight to the idea that the “good man “of the title may refer to Rory rather than The Doctor.
This episode solves the fan debate as to whether or not The Doctor was speaking Gallifreyan and it was being translated.
As the last episode of the first half of Series 6, there is no “NEXT TIME” trailer at the end of the episode, instead a message saying that “Doctor Who will return in Let’s Kill Hitler”.
