It's Whosday! Recaps: "Day of the Moon"

Series 6, Episode 2
Title: "Day of the Moon"
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Toby Haynes

Dear god, where to begin with this episode? This has to be one of the most frenetic, blisteringly fast forty-five minutes of television I've ever seen. The characters relentlessly throw exposition at you, all while wild action is happening every five minutes. I know personally I was hoping for some resolution to the questions raised by last week's "The Impossible Astronaut," but instead, "Day of the Moon" has given us approximately eighty thousand new problems to puzzle about until our brains explode.

From the get go, this episode throws us a major curveball. Rather than picking up at the cliffhanger that ended the previous episode, "Moon" sends us three months into the future. Turns out that the Doctor has been held captive in Area 51, while Canton hunts down Amy, Rory and River, seemingly killing all three. Of course, as the audience, we know they'll all be fine, but Moffat gets a remarkable amount of eeriness and intensity out of the whole intro. It turns out that the whole gang, Canton included, has been staging this ordeal, just so they can get everyone together in the TARDIS. The rules of Silences are reestablished (the minute you can't see them, you forget they ever existed) and the Doctor goes all Memento on us, having everyone keep tally marks on their skin to keep track of the aliens. He also implants little recording things in everyone's hands, so they can record descriptions of the Silences and play them back once they've all forgotten. It doesn't all quite hold together, but it comes close enough.

The Doctor and Co. realize that the little girl in the spacesuit is important, so Amy and Canton are dispatched to find where she came from while the rest of the gang toy around with Apollo 11 (more on that later). This leads them to the creepiest orphanage ever (which is saying something), which includes one seriously addled caretaker, terrifying words scribbled on the wall and several dozen Silence nesting on the ceiling. It's all insanely dark and frightening by Who standards and the scene where Amy first realizes they're in the room with her is better than most horror movies. She explores some more, sees a mysterious woman behind a big metal door, finds a picture of herself holding a baby, meets the little girl in the spacesuit and then finally is attacked and seemingly kidnapped by a gang of Silence. Keeping up here?


As if all that wasn't enough, we find the Doctor installing a blinking science doohickey in Apollo 11, requiring a personal appearance (via TARDIS) from Richard Nixon to bail him out with NASA. They get a distress call from Canton and try to rescue Amy from the Silence, only to find her recording device on the floor. This leads to all kinds of emotional angst, with Rory listening to Amy's desperate pleas and thinking that she's pining for the Doctor instead of him. They capture a Silent (Canton's a bit trigger happy) and use Amy's phone (snazzy tech for 1969) to record the alien declaring that "you should kill us all on sight." The Doctor, who's busy learning that the girl's spacesuit is actually an exo-skeleton/life-support thing, is delighted when he gets the video of the Silent and everyone leaps into the TARDIS to save Amy.

The Doctor ends up broadcasting the video clip from Apollo 11, ensuring that every single person watching the moon landing has now seen the Silence and is encouraged to kill them. There's a big shoot out (River is also a bit trigger happy), Amy and Rory are happily reunited and River and the Doctor flirt uncontrollably. They say their goodbyes to Canton and good ol' Nixon (who's been a surprisingly good sport throughout this whole mess) and they're off to their next adventure. The episode ends in a New York alleyway, with the little girl telling an old man that she's dying, but that she can fix it, before being consumed by the now-familiar Time Lord regeneration energy. Umm... what?!

I can't decided how I feel about this episode, mostly because every time I've watched it, I feel like things are going too fast to even have opinions. This two-part intro to the season has undoubtedly laid the groundwork for the big arc of the season, so it will be hard to judge until we've seen where things are going. The Doctor's apparent victory over the Silence was fun, while the psychodrama generated while the gang were hunting them was impeccably executed, but the actual narrative is a bit hard to judge. Doctor Who currently has dozens upon dozens of balls hanging in their air and it will probably take at least a few more episodes before any of them come back down. I, for one, am welcoming next week's pirate-themed episode. At least that plot will be more-or-less contained by the end... right?

Stray Observations (by which I mean "some of the dozens of questions that replaced my normal notes")

-Why do the Silence always state people's names? Is this important?
-River's realization that the Doctor is knowing her less and less (along her timeline) seems to be creating quite the reckless streak in her. Which is cool.
-This episode featured the second "perfect prison" of the Moffat era.
-Pregnancy red-herrings? Does anyone have any way to make sense of this yet?
-Rory dressed as a 1960s executive is wonderful. Mad Men cameo much?
-I'm going to combine about eight questions into one when I say "What the fuck happened in that damn orphanage?" C'mon, Moff. Throw us a bone here.
-How and why does the little girl get out of the spacesuit?
-"Silence will fall" seems to coming true, in that the Doctor's actions are ruining their empire. Could this be part of their plan? Is the Doctor actually making a mistake here? What will happen when the alien overlords who've been ruling us all through post-hypnotic suggestion go away?
-The "your firsts are my lasts" stuff between River and the Doctor receives an incredible emotional payoff when the two kiss at the end of the episode. It's the saddest, cutest moment I've seen in a damn long time. Suddenly, Matt Smith and Alex Kingston have wild chemistry.
-The fact that the girl's spacesuit can repair and drive itself around seems important.
-Memory keeps popping up as a theme this season. This episode alone deals with the Silence rules, Rory's complex relationship with his years as the Centurion, the reverse timelines of River and the Doctor and even Nixon's concern about his legacy.
-In "The Lodger," the Doctor describes the alien tech thing the Silence have as "a time engine." What's up here, Moff? Will we ever know?
-Finally, the reveal that Canton is indeed gay feels like a fairly blatant slap at America's medieval views about homosexuality and gay rights. While I support this politically, I can't help but wonder if this was a weak move. It distracts from the rest of the show and feels forced, petty and a bit childish to me.

(Photos courtesy of Emma-Jane)