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| The Doctor's funeral pyre. |
2 episodes: The Impossible Astronaut, Day of the Moon. Approx. 88 minutes. Written by: Steven Moffat. Directed by: Toby Haynes. Produced by: Marcus Wilson.
THE PLOT
Amy, Rory, and River Song all come together in present-day America, summoned through numbered invitations sent by the Doctor. He explains that they are going to 1969, a year when much more happened "than anyone remembers." But before he can say more, a mysterious astronaut appears. The Doctor walks off to speak with this apparition - and is immediately killed by it.
It's no trick. The Doctor is dead. But one other person was invited to this reunion: the Doctor's younger self. Now his three old companions must convince him to travel back to 1969, and must do so without telling him what has happened/will happen to him. At the end of the trip waits a President whose career will one day end in disgrace (Stuart Milligan), disgraced FBI agent Canton Delaware (Mark Sheppard), and the Silents - an alien race which can only be remembered when directly observed.
"Silence will fall," Prisoner Zero warned. Now the Silents are here - and, quite possibly, unstoppable!
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Last season's The Time of Angels saw him trying to run from the future River represented. Now, he's actively enjoying their relationship. He still doesn't trust her, but he enjoys the flirting and the banter. The climactic facedown with the aliens sees them as a comfortable team, with him confessing that he actually takes pleasure in her amoral side, even though he recognizes that he probably shouldn't.
Amy: Has the most overtly emotional reaction to the Doctor's death, denying that it even could happen. She still sees him as the man who came out of the sky during her childhood to fix the scary crack in her bedroom wall. She focuses intently on preventing the death she has just witnessed, which leads her to a rash action at the end of Part One. Karen Gillan also gets a chance to play with creeping, quiet terror in a memorable set piece in Part Two, and she is - as ever - terrific.
Rory: Has the most grounded reaction to the Doctor's death. It's happened; now they must deal with it. He may be dead, but as he tells Amy and River, "he still needs us." He seems to have the easiest time interacting with the younger Doctor when he arrives, while Amy has the most difficulty. A very good, quiet moment in Episode Two sees Rory confessing to the Doctor that he does remember his millennia-long wait for Amy, but that he doesn't remember it all the time. "It's like a door," he tells the Doctor, "I can keep it closed." Which is likely the only thing that has kept him sane.
River Song: Previous stories have kept River at a distance. She's a character we observe, not someone with whom we truly identify. This story pushes her into closer focus. She confides to Rory the emotional toll of her backwards relationship with the Doctor. For her, their relationship began with him knowing everything about her. Now, she's nearing her end of that relationship and his beginning. He still knows her - but less and less each time. She is losing him, and he can't share in the loss because he's only just getting to know her.
THE GAPS IN THE SILENCE
Disjointed.
That's really the word that best describes the 2-part kickoff for Series Six. Not in a bad way, though. This is an excellent story, superbly crafted, thickly atmospheric, and stuffed to the brim with the kind of structural tricks that are Stephen Moffat's stock in trade. It's not disjointed in the sense of a story badly told, but rather in the sense that not all of the joins are there. There are connections we don't see, really from the very beginning of the story, creating several points at which I had to stop and ask myself, "Where are we now?"
When last we saw the Doctor, Amy, and Rory, they were all together and off on another adventure. Here, we pick up with Amy and Rory settled into a (very nice) house. What happened? We aren't sure, and the episode doesn't explain. We just know that "time passed."
Next, everyone meets up with the Doctor. But it's a strange meeting, with the Doctor clearly in possession of knowledge he's not sharing. Just as we think we might be catching up, he is killed. This sets off the narrative... but not just the narrative of the serial, which never comes full circle to the Doctor's death. Clearly, this is set-up for later in the season. Within the episode, it actually creates more distance by opening yet another gap just as the first gap was starting to close.
The rest of Part One plays normally enough. The tone is fast and jokey, as the Doctor takes rapid control in the Oval Office. Then everything becomes very dark and creepy. We get a slow build to the cliffhanger, one that leaves every character in direct physical or emotional jeopardy. The sort of cliffhanger that demands the next episode pick up from that very second.
Pop in Episode Two, and... It's three months later. Grainy flashbacks quickly sketch in broadstrokes how Rory and River got away from the aliens in the tunnels and what happened to the Doctor, Amy, and Canton. But the details are left obscure, and we're left to play catch-up regarding what's happened since.
More narrative gaps. Amy has some bizarre encounters, then wakes up and is told she has been in a dark room for "several days," when she knows she's only just been taken there. In Part One, Amy makes a claim that Part Two flatly contradicts. Gaps upon gaps. For the direct narrative of this 2-parter, it creates distance. But I suspect those gaps are there to be filled later. If I'm right, this is the kind of serial that will be much more rewarding on second viewing, once the other pieces have fallen into place.
THOUGHTS ON THE STORY
But all of the above is really for later, as I get to the rest of the season. Discounting arc considerations, how does this 2-parter work as a story in itself?
I've already mentioned how the disjointed narrative creates distance. But it also creates a surreal atmosphere that greatly appeals to my personal tastes. Part Two has a nightmarish feel. The Silents are wonderfully designed, creepy and alien in a way that suggests their parasitical nature. A scene in which Amy tries to pick her way unseen through a roomful of Silents is genuinely frightening, and likely gave younger viewers some very bad dreams upon initial airing.
Despite the deliberate gaps, the story does effectively hold together. The effective bits creating atmosphere also tie together the story: The aliens, which cannot be remembered except when observed; the markings Amy, Rory, and River draw upon their bodies. Not only do they heighten the tension in the set pieces, they feed in perfectly to the way in which the Doctor ultimately defeats them. Take away the gaps, the surreal trappings, and the obvious setup for the season arc, and the story still works on its own.
After the general excellence of Series Five and its outstanding finale, Steven Moffat had a job on his hands to show that he could keep that momentum going. The Impossible Astronaut is exactly the season opener he needed to prove that he could continue to create that level of television magic. It's narratively clever without blunting the effect of the story's horror elements. And as a setup to a new season and a new chapter of the ongoing narrative, it does its job of raising anticipation for what may come next.
Rating: 9/10.
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