And furthermore, we get another parallel in the last five minutes of the episode comparing Liz 10's choice in taking her own choice away to Amy's choice in taking away the Doctor's choice, and therefore when accounts are settled, the only metaphor left is that the Doctor is the STARWHALE!, which is tidy in terms of the Doctor/Companion relationship drama, but not exactly compelling we've now looked at the Master/Servant/Savior triangle from about seventy different angles and everybody stands in every position at some point. Plus a bunch of other unrelated shit that only complicates and diffuses it more, to no effect literary or authentic.

And as much as I hated that episode, at least I got it, it made sense in terms of the whole thing going in. But here, we haven't even begun to unearth "the whole thing," beyond this gaylord "crack" thing, which if I don't get a motherfucking answer by the end of the Angels two-parter about that I will literally spit in your face and leave, because ain't nobody making me wait as long as I wanted in the first place, where "The Long Game" started, and I stopped bitching.

Secrets. They're not helping her, so it's something they're afraid of. Shadows. Whatever they're afraid of, it's nowhere to be seen, which means it's everywhere. Police state. Where'd she go? the Doctor wonders, having snerched this one little girl's crying person for her identity. As though -- and I do appreciate this about this episode -- she wouldn't notice, when the UK is already about your "papers," in a way we Americans don't quite understand but a Brit would automatically: He's snerched her shit, and thinks she's doesn't know. And she's let him, because she needs one grownup, or almost, to pick up the slack.

So knowing this, or not knowing it, the Doctor sends Amy off to find this little girl according to her papers. And he notes, giving meaning to those robot smiling things: "Ask her about those things, the smiling fellows in the booths. They're everywhere... They're clean. Everything else here is battered and filthy -- look at this place -- but no one's laid a finger on those booths. Not a footprint within two feet of them."

And yes, that's where the theoretics of the Doctor and the poetics of this show intersect, and we the audience know something real has happened, is happening. Because even knowing what's to come, even knowing all of this is a shadowplay for the amazingness of the Doctor and Amy's take on him -- I do understand that this little girl is important, and we're in a political situation, and when the people walk by it's not because they don't hear or don't care about her crying, but something bigger. (My problem is that we could have known, you an I, all that from watching a couple people walk by her while she was crying, and this episode would have been rational. We would have cared. Not to say that Horrible Liz Ten wouldn't have fucked it all up again.)