In which I review Day of the Moon

(Here's the review! Sorry for the delay, I was moving out of my apartment this weekend and lugging around boxes isn't exactly conducive to blogging. Better late than never, right?)

Y'all should know by now, but...

The great thing about Steven Moffat, as a writer, isn't his mastery of plot twists. It isn't his ability to sprinkle humour into a situation that otherwise has you soiling your fresh laundry. No, it's his ability to create believable characters who reach out and grab you with almost painful strength. In a world where writers like Joss Whedon and RTD (on his good days, anyway) are given well-deserved recognition as "character" writers, I think people don't always recognize that Moffat does quite a comparable job of making you care about whom you're watching.

And that's what grabbed me about Day of the Moon. Even more so than the plot twists and the answered (and freshly raised) questions. It was the look on Rory's face as he listened to Amy's voice over the recorder. So yeah, actor of the episode award? Arthur Darvill.

Anyway, there's the sappy shit out of the way. Hold on to your hats boys and girls and Princess Beatrice, and let's dive into the glorious clusterfuck that was this week's Doctor Who episode.

So...is this a thing now, are we trying to set a record for how quickly we can kill the main characters each episode? The hunting and "killing" of Amy, Rory, and River sets up a heightened tone of suspense for the conclusion of the two-parter - if such a thing is even possible when your suspense has been building up ALL WEEK LONG - though let's be honest here, we all knew they were just fine and dandy. Why they had to set up this "chase" scenario with Canton, though, is something I'm still unclear on. When the Doctor and his gang can get Tricky Dicky to personally arrive and back up their mission with a quick message, and when they've got the TARDIS to jaunt around in, why would they go to the trouble of setting up such an elaborate chase-and-capture-and-imprisonment scenario? Maybe I'm just being thick, but I don't get what the need was for all that.

Unless it was to show how fantastically sexy Matt Smith looks with a prison beard, in which case, hearty approval.

Anyway. Karen and the Babes make my heart smile when they rescue River by opening the doors to the - yep - SWIMMING POOL. And then there's an absolutely fantastic bit with the gang all in the TARDIS, explaining their mission to Canton. I've wanted to see the effects of Silence encounters from an "outside" perspective for a while, and this was brilliant. The power of suggestion, the sudden flashing of the recorder in Canton's palm, all these disjointed jumps did the trick of making the Silence far creepier than they could ever be in actual appearance. (Aside: The Doctor reminds me of a far younger Q, handing out gadgets for the mission, except without Bond ruining the shit out of his toys. Anyone else see that? Just me then? Okay.)

Also, the Silence can't be remembered even if you look at pictures or video of them, which makes sense. Was wondering when they'd bring out that picture from Amy's phone.

So then Amy and Canton decide to go visit a deliciously creepy haunted house an orphanage to find the girl in the spacesuit. Seriously guys, I get it: there's lightning, there's a horror-movie villain orphanage manager who sounds like Cleveland from Family Guy, there's "GET OUT" scrawled in the wall in what looks like blood...I get that this is a BAD BAD PLACE. No really. I do. 

Amy goes off to "investigate upstairs", which is classic horror-movie code for "get lost in a smorgasbord of terrors and possibly die or disappear". Moffat, you're just being self-indulgent now. But I will admit, this part was done extremely well. Once more we see the effects of the Silence from Amy's perspective: the rapidly multiplying tally marks and the flashing message from herself culminate in a simply delicious climax where she looks up and finds the HOSHIT IT'S A NEST OF GODDAMN SILENCE AUGH RUN. 

Meanwhile, River and Rory (and Dick, apparently) have to go and rescue the Doctor, who's been caught tampering with Apollo 11. I decide that Arthur Darvill looks delicious with glasses. 

What? Everyone's allowed a little cheesecake.

But that's not the interesting part right now - and you KNOW things must be crazy if "the Doctor getting arrested for tampering with a spaceship and then being rescued by the American President" doesn't qualify as "interesting" in relation to everyone else. In a Truman-Show-esque turn of events, Amy sees a woman with an eyepatch remarking that she's "just dreaming", who then disappears. Before she can spend time freaking out about this, she finds the spacesuit girl's room - WHICH HAS A PICTURE OF HER WITH A BABY, WHAT - and then the girl herself confronts Amy. Whose gigantic cliffhangery shot apparently missed. 

Look, yeah, I know shooting is harder than it seems, and it's more plausible that she'd have missed, but when a gunshot is one of the huge cliffhangers from Part 1, you generally tend to expect that that gunshot will have had some effect. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think this part was done terribly well. PLEASE DO NOT PELT ME WITH ROTTEN FRUIT I STILL LOVE THE MOFF WITH ALL MY HEART I SWEAR

And then Canton - who frankly should not have let Amy out of his sight, doesn't he know that this orphanage is Not A Nice Place, but whatever - hears Amy scream at the sight of approaching Silence, finds himself confronted by another one, and unleashes The One-Liner of the Year: "Welcome to America." My Canadian heart feels oddly like humming the Star-Spangled Banner. Oh, and apparently the Silence can be shot? 

All that's missing was a "...motherfucker".

Amy has disappeared, leaving behind only her subcutaneous recorder. And this is where Arthur Darvill wins his Actor of the Episode award. I'm not going to blather on about this subplot because it was pretty self-explanatory (and served the purpose of FINALLY putting to rest all the Amy/Doctor shippers), so this is all I'm going to say:

<3

Also, apparently Rory remembers being the Centurion. Tumblr should be happy.

While Amy's still stuck wherever she is, the rest of the gang go back to the warehouse and try to puzzle out the origins of the little girl - who apparently has been raised by the Silence, who by the way influenced humanity to go to the Moon because they needed a spacesuit. After a bit more puzzling out, the TARDIS jets to the rescue of Amy, who's on some sort of operating table, being told by the Silence that they "do her honour" and that "her part will be over soon", and then the Doctor blathers on (in one of Eleven's best, and longest, monologues) about exactly how he's going to bring down the Silence, and feeds a clip that Canton recorded of the injured Silent saying that humanity should "kill us all on sight" into the live feed of the moon landing, thus ensuring that humans will be subliminally indoctrinated to wipe out the Silence should they decide to stay on Earth.

Did that paragraph make your head spin? If it didn't, you're either A - the Moff himself or B - some sort of insane alien. If B, please leave your name and number after the beep.

River Song: Making everything look sexy since 2008.

This is where my notes sort of disintegrate into incoherent, profanity-laced nonsense.

So, having played a dazzling game of laser-screwdriver-shoot-em-up with the Silence in their Lodger TARDIS, the gang whisk off once more to drop River off at Stormcage and have further adventures which totally won't end up with another encounter with the Silence oh no. River, in a continuing series of "Here's Where I Make Everyone Cry", kisses the Doctor for the first time by his perspective - which, of course, means it's the last time by hers. Poor River.

Canton fulfills my prediction, and Karen and the Babes go off to have their adventures, but not before the Doctor determines that Amy's womb is the new timey-wimey Schrodinger's Box (bad joke? yes? okay, sorry) and we cut to the now-abandoned spacesuit girl BLOODY REGENERATING in an alleyway. 

WHAT.

So yeah, there's that. Overall, I did really enjoy this episode. I liked the balance of good ol' Who intelligent problem-solving and action, I thought the Doctor's idea for getting the Silence off Earth was rather genius, and I melted for Rory. But did I think it matched up to the impossibly high bar set by Part One? Not quite. For one thing, the pacing was far too frenzied in parts; the imprisonment scenario from the beginning still makes no sense to me, and I don't think it'll be explained later; the whole Amy-shooting-the-girl thing wasn't done especially well; and it just felt too rushed. A month ago I was wondering what sort of introductory story could possibly take up a whole two-parter, and now I'm thinking they should have brought back the four-part format of classic Who for this one. The other unanswered questions I'm fine with - who's the little girl, who's the eyepatch woman, what's gonna happen to the Silence - because I know they'll come back. But these things just seem like glitches.

Then again, I thought Eleven and Amy's bit in the forest (in Time of Angels) seemed out of place, and that came back in a spectacular fashion. So for now, I'm trusting the Moff to explain some of the less-obvious unexplained things from this story. That's why my rating is:

4/5 (conditional on the Moff explaining certain things, like the chase-and-imprisonment business; if that doesn't happen, 3.5/5)

Predictions, theories, and other tidbits:

- You know how I said last episode had the feel of a movie? This episode had the feel of a mystery story and horror movie by turns. For better or worse, I'm not sure quite yet...part of me is nostalgic for the more whimsical days of Who, but as long as they can make this format work, I'm on board.

- The Bowtie! thread has an interesting discussion on whether or not the Doctor's actions could be construed as genocide, starting with this post. Have a look, if you're interested.

- The Doctor in the "perfect prison". Sound familiar?

- Dear Twitter/Tumblr/certain sections of Who fandom: SHUT UP ALREADY about the Doctor fathering Amy's baby, or the Silence impregnating Amy with the Doctor's sperm, or all the other theories of that ilk. I refuse to believe that. I think that, if the girl is Amy's daughter - which is a theory I will hold to - the explanation for her regenerative capabilities might very well be either something relating to Amy's "time head" joke, or something else altogether. But the baby is NOT Eleven's. I promise you I will eat my laptop if that happens. 

- Dear Moff: Please don't make that happen, I don't think my laptop would digest very well.

- EDIT: I forgot about how Creepy Orphanage Guy seems to think it's 1967. Symptom of insanity? Or something more?

Anyway, till next time. Farewell, and happy squeeing.