Day of the Moon The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon |
BBC The Impossible Astronaut |
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| Story No. | 233 | 
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| Production Code | Series 6, Episode 1 | |
| Dates | April 23 2011 |
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With Matt Smith,
Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill
Written by Steven Moffat Directed by Toby Haynes Executive Producers: Steven Moffat, Piers Wenger, Beth Willis. |
| Synopsis: The TARDIS crew are in the United States, on the trail of the Silence. |
Fascinating and Fantastic by Kaan Vural 17/7/11
This is it. This is the one we've been waiting for.
In 2005, the world hit the F5 button on Doctor Who. Now the button's been hit a second time.
Incredibly difficult as it is to discuss even the tiniest details about this episode without spoilers (even those relating to Series 5), I'll be as vague as I can.
Before I get into the details, though, let me give you the general gestalt of my impressions after watching this episode. I was struck to realize just how conventional, in some ways, RTD's tenure on Doctor Who had been. I've lambasted him before for twisting Doctor Who into a sort of cheap imitation of itself, but what I didn't appreciate was how much he was carrying on much of the Doctor Who formula. What Moffat's done here is revised the formula of Doctor Who downwards, reducing it to the even barer and the even more essential. No longer is the Doctor just traveling around time and space for the hell of it; sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, he's getting involved in bigger plots and bigger plans, not all of them in the right order. The result is a take on Doctor Who that is... well, ridiculously new and effortlessly 'big' without resorting to monologues, prophecies, or in-your-face orchestral music. Moffat's doing his best to surprise us, keep us on our toes, keep us looking at the details and turning them over in our heads. This is when 'everything changes', a character tells us, and that character was spot on. This is Doctor Who totally unlike anything from the past five or six years. And I love it.
Now the specifics:
The Doctor: as adventurous and as quirky as ever, the Doctor's grown a bit since the past series and learned from some of his mistakes. He's more cautiously optimistic, at least twice preferring to gather information rather than jumping headfirst into a problem.
The Companions: a significant improvement on Series 5. Every character has toned down a bit and been given some depth. A character who may usually come across as bitchy is now more mature and settled, with pressing issues allowing us to avoid a Tooth and Claw situation. A character who might be thought of as comic relief is actually one of the more clear-headed and responsible of the team, figuring out a couple of details for the audience rather than just asking what's going on. A character who tends to be very coy and cryptic is given an additional layer of pathos.
The Supporting Cast: Strong. The characters are well-conceived and quite good. One of them has an unrevealed trait that will probably be picked up on by certain people, but is otherwise quite not obvious. Three-dimensional characters: good for crafting good stories. They add humor, pizazz, and an effective backdrop to the story.
The Plot: Big, unusual, and still twisty. It is light on plot in the sense that it has to first establish some background for the series as a whole, but surprisingly enough we're given at least five important mysteries to chew on for the second half and the rest of the series. I couldn't tell you, even if I wanted, exactly what the central conflict is, but I can make a decent guess, and the leads certainly have a lot of the knowledge needed to better understand the situation. This episode will reward attention to detail, and so manages to be a powerhouse of intellectually challenging narrative: within the first ten minutes, the wheels in your head will be turning furiously to figure out what's going on. In other words, as well-written as the beginning of a premiere two-parter can be.
The Arc: There are strong indications of what the arc will entail; Series 6 ties so much into Series 5 that it's quite surprising, given how much more conventional and light-hearted the latter was. Let me put it this way: the villains appear in Series 5 at least twice, although you haven't yet realized it! I did anticipate the central element so far revealed according to the plot arc, but it was done so well that I'm still too impressed to be smug.
The Villains: They strongly resemble the Weeping Angels in conception in this sense: to defeat them requires more than luck, brute force, or Doctor ex Machina, but actual thinking and tactical reasoning. And a conflict that requires intellect to resolve is a strong conflict. They're also distinct from the Weeping Angels in that they're actually very much inspired by aspects of Earth history instead of being a purely original concept. Suffice it to say that they're both chilling and compelling.
The Music: much less intrusive this time around; I couldn't recall a single moment in which the 'I am the Doctor' theme was used in its full form, even though it almost certainly was, which speaks to the restraint and subtlety not only on the part of Murray Gold but the people who work with him.
The Effects: actually quite accessible, given that this episode wasn't so much high on effects as it was high on location. The result is a story that is not dependent on finding CGI villains threatening.
But the reason you need to watch this story isn't just because it's well-written, that it shows an uncommon degree of creativity, thought, and effort; not just because it's shocking, funny, sad, mysterious, and balls-to-the wall awesome - though it is all these things. It's because it's new. This is a true reboot of Doctor Who, and as with watching anything for the first time, there's only one way you can know for yourself whether or not this is is some of the most exciting television I've watched in years: to get out there and watch it for yourself.
The Curious Case of Doctor Moffat by Noe Geric 28/4/24
BE WARNED, I'll spoil most of Series 6 in this review...!
After trying to reassure fans with Series 5 and its ''traditional'' storyline, it was time for Moffat to go speed two! Without you knowing it, the whole of the Pandorica arc was part of the bigger game that played behind the entire of Matt Smith era. The Impossible Astronaut is, in my opinion, the beginning of the end. This is where Steven tried to do big stuff, teased an incredibly complicated storyline that could've been Doctor Who's finest, but miserably failed to live-up to the expectation. Watching Series 6 in 2019 (and having begun Doctor Who in 2013), I don't really know how it was possible not to know how the astronaut arc would resolve or who River Song was. But it must have raised a lot of eyebrows back in 2011. The Impossible Astronaut... It's all in the title! The first half of the story is gripping, with the introduction of the Silence, the Astronaut coming out of nowhere and the Doctor dying. It could've been one of my favorites, with all this mystery about the president receiving a strange phone call every night at the same time. But, with it's terribly boring second half, this episode remain just an interesting idea wasted by Moffat trying too hard to be entertaining.
We began with another sequence in which Steven tries to throw the Doctor into the greatest number of places and times as possible for absolutely no particular reason! It's something that just teases stories you'll never see, and perhaps you'd preferred to see. We come back to Amy and Rory living their ordinary lives and ho lord, I don't get the point of it?! The whole of Series One to the end of Series Two was about Rose never wanting to leave the Doctor! You're travelling through time and space with an alien and all you want to do is come back home for months and do... ordinary things? Okay, perhaps Amy and Rory have people to see, friends they don't want to forget (and I would've been pleased to meet any of their relatives because it'll never happen in the whole of their tenure... Except for Brian that quickly shows-up and Amy's parents and aunt we see once), but why staying months away from what is the Trip of a Lifetime?! This also happens with Clara, and I don't see the point of introducing the lives of the companions if you're not going to write any Jackie Tylers or Wilfried Motts into the story!
Then we've got the Astronaut, from the title. And that's where the good stuff began! An astronaut, killing the Doctor, who invited his own friends to his death?! Of course, as it is only episode one, everyone knows he isn't dead yet. There are still 12 episodes to prove to you that he's more clever than that! I'm just impressed by the idea of the astronaut! It reminds me of the Apollo 23 novel in some ways (also with the eleventh Doctor). Take a curious object and put it somewhere it shouldn't be, and it turns into a perfect mystery. Of course, when you introduce this sort of storyline, you need to find an appropriate conclusion to it. And I still don't know why the Silence needed an Astronaut, or why put it in the lake... And while I'm talking about things I still don't understand, let's talk about President Nixon's mysterious call...
The whole idea is fascinating, and of course you can't wait to know the answer... But after watching the whole of Series 6 more times than I can remember... I still don't understand why did the girl call, why is she in an astronaut suit, what happens when she is shot, what is the purpose of the abandoned building the call is from or why did that cliffhanger needed to be in slow motion? I haven't checked on the Wikia yet but, when an episode is well-written, you shouldn't need internet to tell you what happened. The whole idea behind this episode is brilliant, but I still haven't seen any satisfying answer. And that's the biggest mistake behind all of it...
The Impossible Astronaut is a clever concept, showing you the Series' ending before it even began. But when you throw a lot of other mysteries in the mix and can't manage to resolve everything satisfactorily... Don't do it. This is just a big waste of time, all of it could've been far better and yet... Even after watching Day of the Moon, I'd love to be surprised. This is the sort of story that has you hooked until you know what is happening, but we sadly never know. Still, the Astronaut is one of the most clever ideas I've seen on television. It's the sort of stuff that can't bee done anywhere else than in Doctor Who! It could've been one of my favorite, but I'll only give it 8/10.