It's a beautiful sunny day, birds tweeting calmly under a bright sky, and a soldier wandering a sunny field, lost. He's got a kiss-mark near his lips, and he's whirling around in the beautiful day, but soon enough he's approached by gunmen and an awesome guy in a tuxedo. He's wearing hallucinogenic lipstick on his face, which the tux guy knows means "She's here." Does this meadow really exist? Because there's a forest on the Byzantium, but he could also have created the whole thing. This bears remembering.

I was going to watch "Blink" and the Library episodes, to get ready for this one, but I ran out of time but mostly out of the inclination to do so. And, since from what I do remember this episode doesn't seem to give a damn about "Blink" either, that's probably for the best. Tuxedo man looks nervous, and then there are feet in really high heels, and a lady in a Blair Waldorf dress takes out a tiny revolver that shoots lasers, opens up a vault, and attends the shiny blackbox inside. She sets her gun, not quite a squareness gun, to a new setting, and begins to solder the box.

Twelve thousand years later, the Doctor is dragging Amy through a museum, the Delirium Archive, getting anorak about how wrong they've gotten so much of the history of every single artifact. It's directed strangely, in that he barely seems to be looking at anything in order to say his lines -- "Wrong! Wrong! Bit right, mostly wrong. Wrong! Very wrong! Oooh, one of mine. Also one of mine..." -- and move on to the next blocked area. The Archive -- "final resting place of the Headless Monks, the biggest museum ever" -- is a fairly gorgeous cathedral.

Amy, complaining that they were supposed to visit an alien planet next, realizes that museums are how the Doctor keeps score. It makes sense: Less like video game levels, more like video game accomplishments. There's something to the idea of comparing the Doctor to a museum, because it's where things go to die whereas it's enough for him to know he's touched them. He lights upon the blackbox, twelve thousand years rusted and dusty, and stares down. Amy's none too impressed. It has letters on the surface. Somewhere the woman is blasting away; the Doctor explains it's a Homebox, from "one of the old starliners," but in this case it's interesting because what the woman is right now writing, twelve thousand years ago, is Old Gallifreyan.

"There were days -- there were many days -- these words could burn stars and raise up empires, and topple Gods." This time is no different, considering who and what. And what do these old letters say? Hello, Sweetie!

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