Doctor Who Review - 6x02: Day of the Moon

Dialogue Triumphs

The Doctor: “As long as there’s been something in the corner of your eye, or a creaking in your house, or breathing under your bed, or voices through your wall. They’ve been running your lives for a very long time now, so keep this straight in your head: we are not fighting an alien invasion – we’re leading a revolution. And today the battle begins.”

***

Amy: “I love you. I know you think it’s him. I know you think it ought to be him, but it’s not – it’s you. And when I see you again, I’m going to tell you properly just to see your stupid face. My life was so boring before you dropped out of the sky. So just get your stupid face where I can see it, okay? Okay.”

***

The Silence: “You should kill us all onsight!”

The Doctor: “You have given the order for your own execution, and the whole planet just heard you. And one whacking great kick up the backside for the Silence. You just raised an army against yourself! And now, for a thousand generations, you’re going to be ordering them to destroy you every day. How fast can you run? Because today is the day the human race through you off their planet, and they won’t even know they’re doing it. I think the word you’re looking for is ‘Oops’.”

***
River: “What are you doing?”

The Doctor: “Helping!”

River: “You got a screwdriver! Go build a cabinet!”

The Doctor: “That’s really rude!”

***

Amy: “What’s the matter with you?”

Rory: “You called me stupid.”

Amy: “I always call you stupid.”

Rory: “No, but… my face. I wasn’t sure who you were talking about… me… or…”

Amy: “…him?” (referring to the Doctor)

Rory: “You did say ‘dropped out of the sky’.”

Amy: “It’s a figure of speech, moron!”

***

The Doctor: “You know what they say: ‘there’s a first time for everything’!”

River: “And a last time.”

***

Mysterious Little Girl: “It’s alright… it’s quite alright… I’m dying. But I can fix that. It’s easy really… see?”

Dialogue Disasters

N/A

Double Entendres

Nixon: “This person you want to marry… black?”

Canton: “Yes…”

Nixon: “I know what people think of me, but perhaps I’m a little more liberal than…”

Canton: “…he is.”

Nixon: “I think the moon is far enough for now, don’t you, Mr. Delaware?”

Canton: “I figured it might be.”

***

Rory: “You should have told me that you thought you were pregnant! I’m a nurse, I’m good with pregnancy!”

Amy: “Not, as it turns out, that good.”

Review

Three months after the events of The Impossible Astronaut, The Doctor and his companions discover that the mysterious, black suited aliens, who reveal their names to be “The Silence”, secretly inhabit the entire planet Earth, and have manipulated human history for thousands of years. The Doctor immediately concocts a daring plan to defeat them, using the Apollo 11’s mission to the moon. Meanwhile, Amy has another strange encounter with the little girl in the astronaut suit from the previous episode, but it’s cut short when The Silence kidnap Amy and hold her hostage. Now The Doctor must save the Earth, and Amy, from the enigmatic designs of the Silence before it’s too late.

As far as two-parters go, The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon has been a hell of a fun ride. I’m beginning to think that the reason season five was so uneven, and ultimately unsatisfying, was because it was Moffat’s warm-up – a year for him to get used to the new responsibilities as showrunner, and to give Doctor Who fans time to get used to Matt Smith as the new Doctor. Season six is shaping up to be where the real shit hits the fan, and Moffat gets to remind everyone why he inherited the reigns in the first place.

The story of Day of the Moon was fast-paced, suspenseful, and did a great job of wrapping up most of the events set up by The Impossible Astronaut. I must admit, I am a little confused as to the point of the first act though – why the charade involving FBI agent, Canton Delaware, pretending to kill the Doctor’s companions, while The Doctor is imprisoned for three months in Area 51? In the previous episode, it seemed that the US government was fully in support of the Doctor’s assistance, and suddenly they’re being hunted down? Was the entire ruse for the sake of fooling The Silence? Also, there were a lot of cliffhanger elements that just weren’t entirely wrapped up from the last episode. The last we saw Rory and River, they were about to get blasted by the The Silence. Amy had just show the Astronaut, much to the dismay of The Doctor. Now, without explanation, they’re all getting hunted by the government, one-by-one, as a clever trick set up by The Doctor? It just seemed like a strange way to link both episodes together. However, I did love the Doctor’s solution to defeating The Silence, which is Doctor Who at its best. I also loved the plot device of the marks on the skin, or the blinking light of a voice recorder, for whenever The Doctor and his companions encounter The Silence. You see, The Silence have ruled Earth for so long because whenever one takes their eyes off them, one immediately forgets one saw them. So, that makes for a very difficult enemy to face.

Once again, the acting was top-notch. All the principle actors turned in great performances, especially Matt Smith, who seems completely familiar with his Doctor by now. The guy who played Nixon stretches believability though, and the goofy “Hail to the Chief” music that played whenever he entered a scene began to get silly. I was also kind of annoyed by the strange housekeeper for the children’s home the mystery girl apparently lives at.

While that summary covers the main plot of the episode, there are so many other pieces of the larger puzzle going on. For example, while searching for the astronaut girl, Amy comes across a strange woman, with an eye patch, who glares coldly at Amy through a hatch before dismissively saying, “No, I think she’s just dreaming” and closing the hatch. When Amy opens the door to confront the woman, nobody is in the room. Hmm…

Then there is Amy’s confession to The Doctor of being pregnant, which, in this episode, she denies. When The Doctor scans her, he gets mixed readings, which suggest some kind of trippy time/space situation is going on in Amy’s sexy womb (did… did I just call Amy’s womb sexy? Yes. Yes I did.) Hmm…

Just what was The Silences’ ultimate objective, and why did it involve installing a little girl into an astronaut suit brimming with alien tech? Why does, presumably, this same girl show up in the aforementioned suit, in 2011, to murder the Doctor in cold blood?

As if these mysteries weren’t enough, the last 2-minutes of the episode will leave your jaw hanging open. However, I most certainly do not want to spoil this ending. Needless to say, Moffat seems to have gone to the school of Lost when it comes to setting up fascinating puzzles to entice audiences to keep watching. Let’s hope this season ends with more satisfying plot resolutions than the entire series of Lost did.

Next time... "Curse of the Black Spot"