Pondering (ha!) more overnight has lead me to more overt parallels in this episode. But first, a theory:
I think we are in for a New Gallifrey, come the 50th Anniversary. All these symbols - eggs (which explode), lights (which flicker), christmas - these are symbols of creation and destruction, death and rebirth. They are symbols of regeneration. They could be pointing to the departure of the Ponds, or to the advent of the next Companion, but they could be pointing further afield. We know Moffat likes to play long games. You can't kill an idea. If something can be remembered it can be brought back. "The idea became flesh" (a biblical allusion made in the prequel to 7.3) - to (completely irrelevantly) quote one of my favourite plays, 'Translations' by Brian Friel, "Name a thing and - bang! - it leaps into existence!'. I think Gallifrey is coming back. Maybe not Old Gallifrey - because that's happened once before already, and let's face it the Doctor wasn't actually too happy about that. But somehow we're going to get a Gallifrey with a clean slate, I think. The Doctor is erasing his name from the universe, he's going back to how it all began, all those years ago, when he was stolen by a magic box and ran away. I think he's going to give his 11th regeneration to help bring Gallifrey back, just as he gave his 8th regeneration to destroy it. I'm therefore hoping this doesn't happen for a while, because NO MATT STAY FOREVER PLEASE. Ahem.
Moving on to less speculative meta:
In 7.3, the Gunslinger is a mirror for Oswin. This much is pretty clear - everyone in that episode is a mirror for everyone else (which I would have enjoyed even more if they hadn't actually pointed it out in the dialogue). But more interestingly, the Gunslinger and Oswin are mirrors for River and Rory - specifically, River/Mels the 'bespoke psychopath' and Rory the Last Centurion. All four characters are human beings who are turned into robot (or robot-like, ie. brainwashed) killing machines BUT ultimately embrace their humanity, and prove that they are more than what they have been made into. They choose what they are. Rory and the Gunslinger become guards, standing watch over something they once endangered, but have now sworn to protect. River and Oswin subvert their prisons (their boxes, to return to one of my *favourite* themes from last season - an egg is a kind of box...) and use them as a source of power: Oswin hacks into her Dalek nature and uses it to destroy the Asylum and wipe the Daleks' memories of the Doctor. River uses her Stormcage cell as a convenient base in between time-travelling jaunts, and in so doing manages to safeguard the secret of the Doctor's death.
Both River and Rory first kill, then marry the one they love. Love and hate and life and death - as I said yesterday, these not the binary opposites, especially in the Doctor's wibbly-wobbly universe. River and Rory both have memories of being someone else - a plastic robot, a would-be-killer - and these are now an irremovable part of them. But they have chosen to be other than what they were created for: they have chosen to embrace their humanity.
This will also be Amy's choice. Not her 'humanity', perhaps, as she's always had that - but her 'humanness'. The travelling is starting to feel like running away, she says in the series trailer. We know she is going to be leaving at the end of this series, and although we don't yet know how, I have very high hopes that it is going to be on her terms. Unlike Rose or Donna - or even Martha, whose decision to leave was motivated more by self-preservation than anything else - I hope Amy will make positive decision to stay and live life in the right order, on Earth, and she will enjoy being a human with a regular human life.
Until now, she has been - like Queen Nefertiti - the 'Lady of the Two Lands'; the Crack in time and space has run through Amy's life like the Nile, dividing her ordinary human world from her space adventures, dividing her memories and her many lives ("does it ever bother you that your life doesn't make any sense?") Her 'two lands' are presented as diametrically opposed. "Goodbye Leadworth, hello everywhere" - how do you reconcile that? Of course you can't. But in this next episode, which I am INORDINATELY excited about, we will see those two worlds reconciled, as the Doctor comes to live with the Ponds (for a year?! God, I hope so!) I have no idea how it will be handled, or how it will turn out, but it is the first indication since the Tardis landed at their wedding that 'real life' and 'Tardis life' can co-exist happily, and don't have to be opposites. Amy will choose which of her two lives she wants to live to the full, but that doesn't mean completely giving the other one up completely - she will still have her memories, and everything she's learnt. So much of who she is comes from her life with her raggedy doctor - the two little children who used to dress up as the raggedy man have now become like him, and they will stay this way whether or not they are travelling in time and space.
Amy has not been turned into a robot killing machine, but she has been through more physical transformations than any other companion - she was almost a dalek, almost a vampire-space-fish, almost an Angel, she was a ganger and an old woman and a wooden doll and a worshipper of the Minotaur, she was the tesselector, she was an orphan and not an orphan, dead and alive again, pregnant and not pregnant at the same time, married to a plastic roman, mother to her best mate and mother-in-law to her imaginary friend - like Oswin and like the Gunslinger, she didn't choose how her new life began, but she will choose how it ends. When the war is over, the war machine still has a role to play. When the waiting and the travelling's over, the 'Girl Who Waited', the girl who travelled amongst the stars will still have a role. It's Amy's choice.
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