A Good Man Goes to War is unfortunately a bit messy.

It is a lot of things - essential to understanding the larger narrative arc of the Moffat era, but also confusing enough I definitely didn't fully understand it until re-watching this series. It tries to be this big, epic battle thing, and it kind of still feels small and weak.

I'm not against an angry doctor and it does feel quite warranted given the Silence has been quietly stowing away pregnant Amy for months. That's pretty sinister stuff and like a hundred other ideas in this episode, none of them are quite fully fleshed out.

I do love Matt Smith who carries this episode against a lot of other weaker performances. His delight on learning the identity of Melody Pond with Alex Kingston (who also stands out here acting-wise) is profoundly memorable. Everything else is a pretty rough mix of cheesy, forgettable, and silly. I mean, just look at the enormous, insanely long plot summary for this review page up above. This episode is bloated and dense to an extreme fault.

And it is all a real shame because I like the idea of this episode a lot. When we're exploring stuff like the Doctor building an army and the nature of his identity - that stuff and the aforementioned ending buoy up this score quite a bit. That it becomes a bit more informative on a second viewing also helps repeatability. I don't really hear people talk about this one much one way or another, which I think is most telling about the emotional impact of A Good Man Goes to War