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THE IMPOSSIBLE ASTRONAUT

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 is very
happy to see them, and explains that they are going to 1969, a year
when much more happened "than anyone remembers." But before he can
tell them more, a mysterious astronaut appears. He 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), a disgraced FBI agent (Mark Sheppard), and the
Silents - an alien race which can only be remembered when directly
observed.

"Silence will fall," Prisoner Zero had insisted way back in The
Eleventh Hour. Now, it seems, 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 that
relationship. He still doesn't trust her, but he enjoys their flirting
and banter. The climactic facedown with the aliens sees them as a
comfortable team, with him confessing that he actually enjoys 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
immediately 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. But
this story pushes her into closer focus. She confides to Rory the
emotional toll of her backwards relationship with the Doctor. The
longer she knows him, the more times she interacts with him, the less
he knows her. 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 2-parter,
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 strictly literal 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 audience trying to play catch-up to figure out what happened
in the gap while the Doctor has some extra knowledge he's not sharing.
Just as we think we might be catching up, the Doctor 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 feel closed.

The rest of Part One plays normally enough. The tone is first 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. I will say, this opening makes me even more thankful to have
kept myself unspoiled than I was when watching Series Five.
Discounting implications for the rest of the season, 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 particularly nightmarish feel. There's
a vivid set piece that features Amy wandering through the labyrinth of
an abandoned children's home. The horror imagery here would put most
modern ghost and monster movies to shame. 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.

Also, 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. Throw 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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