Anger is always the shortest distance to a mistake

Will the Canucks do it tonight? Win the Stanley Cup for the first time ever and bring it back to Canada for the first time in nearly two decades? Their performance in Boston hasn’t been stellar so far, and they only have six goals total in five games (1-3-1-0-1), so they better bring out the big sticks tonight. I’d hate to have it come down to game 7, though it would be cool if they could win at home.

I wasn’t expecting a months-long mid-season break in Doctor Who, but there we are. Demons Run (not Demon’s Run, note), an interesting episode that had everything in it, including the kitchen sink. Surprisingly, the Doctor himself doesn’t show up on-screen until nearly the 20 minute mark. Instead we get Amy misleading the audience with her cooings to baby Melody by talking about a man who is hundreds of years old. We think “the Doctor,” but of course that also applies to Rory, after a fashion. I’m not quite sure how you figure in the universal reboot. The Doctor’s message to the cybermen is loud and clear, but I’m not quite sure from episode to episode and doctor to doctor where he stands on killing/destroying sentient beings. Apparently cybermen are fair game.

Funny Abbot & Costello bit with the “thin-fat-gay-married-Anglican marines,” who don’t really require names beyond that description. We have a Silurian who “captured” (i.e., devoured) Jack the Ripper. Q: How did you find him? A: Stringy, but tasty all the same. We have Mr. Potato Head, aka Commander Strax, the Sontaran who is serving out his punishment by nursing humans injured in battle and greeting them like a warrior, saying things like: I hope to meet you in battle some day, where I expect I will chop you into tiny bits and stomp on the pieces. We have River, of course, fresh back from a date with the Doctor accompanied by Stevie Wonder, in 1814 (“but you must never tell him”).

We have Dorian, the fat blue guy from the Star Wars cantina, the pirates, the guy who flew the fighter pilot in space, and a gazillion other shout-outs. And we have a young woman named Lorna Bucket who met the Doctor when she was a little girl and who has crocheted a sampler for baby Melody.

Cute baby stuff, including the Doctor talking baby and telling Melody not to call Amy “big milk thing” and Strax’s offer to be a nursemaid, leading to the display of the Doctor’s “cot” (or crib as we would call it).

The bit where he cons the colonel into voluntarily disarming (“we are not fools” — oh, year?”) was pure Doctor (no weapons fired), but the revealing moment was the part where he got mad at Colonel Manton, dubbing him Colonel Runaway. Madam Vastra is the source of this post’s title, but it is River Song who drives the message home. The Doctor has strayed from what he once was. He’s angrier and more prone to killing things. His name is feared. Will River’s confrontation, and the fact that he is now the focus of armies who see him as an enemy, a lethal weapon, lead to an overall change in his personality? A kinder, gentler doctor once he puts paid to eyepatch lady, who is clearly a force to be reckoned with. Remains to be seen.

I have to boast a bit by saying that I predicted who the little girl from the opener would be, although I only got it half right as I didn’t know there would be a baby to consider. All this backward and forward time travel is a tad confusing. Someone needs to draw a chart to show how and where River and the Doctor overlap relative to their individual chronologies. Or, better still, someone needs to get his hands on that diary.

Favorite line of the episode came from Strax after the rather pointless battle with the headless monks. “Strange. I always dreamed of dying in combat. I’m not enjoying it as much as I’d hoped.”