Impossible Astronaut.
I watched ‘The Impossible Astronaut’ at a friend’s house yesterday and was checking my phone to see what time I had to leave to get to my family’s house for dinner, so I can’t say I have the most analytical sense of it, but it was fun enough and fairly well directed, so that was nice. I feel like it’s a mystery plot and I’m not really the greatest fan of Moffat writing mystery, I think that a lot of confusing stuff gets thrown up for the sake of confusion instead of letting the plot develop organically and then it turns out to be something not that complicated, but frankly I’m not watching this show because I think he’s Dorothy Sayers, so whatever.
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Still, though, it’s obvious that there will be some hat trick with Eleven in the end to show how he didn’t really die after all but probably constructed the whole thing. So I’m sort of wondering where the clues about “oh, fire and gasoline reverse the death rays’ destruction of cells” are, or if something like that will be held til the last minute as a dues ex machine. I think it was Terry Pratchett who said something like “if you’re going to have someone get stabbed in Scene Three, you need to show that the sword is hanging on the wall in Scene One.” As far as I know, I saw no sword.
· Going to ignore the first few minutes of the ep, I have no idea what was going on there and since it involves Eleven in a French farce and Amy and Rory grocery shopping in suburban bliss, I’m not sure that I care.
· I’m gathering from reaction posts that the aliens were The Silence that we’ve heard so much about. I guess they’re kind of scary; not really in themselves, but losing your memory is a scary thing, so it works. Looking forward to finding out why they’re huddling underground looking like refugees.
· Personally I found River being vulnerable a bit scarier. What I love about her is that she’s generally a force of nature, she doesn’t really wait for things to happen to her but she happens to everyone else. Her being scared and hurt at the thought of losing the Doctor… or, I guess, her admitting that she may very well not be able to cope with any situation she can’t do anything about (even when it’s one we’ve already seen), is sort of frightening.
· I loved the talk River and Rory had, and how the problematic nature of the type of relationship both Amy and River have with the Doctor. It was a little understated and very well written. I think the interesting part about the dynamic between the two of them is what wasn’t said-these two are the ones that had to pick up the pieces of the confused little girl who didn’t know what was going on, with Rory always following Amy, and River needing to become somewhat invincible, after the Doctor presumably leaves a trail of little girls falling asleep on their suitcases in the garden in his wake.
· I don’t think Amy’s actually preggers, I think she just said that because she had something very important that she knew she had to tell the Doctor and couldn’t remember what it was but she knew it was making her nauseous and she hadn’t told Rory and so in the heat of the moment she just blurted out the first conclusion that came to mind. I mean, she was pregnant one of the last times she had trouble remembering what was real, so who knows.
· I feel betrayed by the role they put Mark Sheppard in. I mean, he’s not Mark Sheppard at ALL. I don’t care if he’s typecast, he has a role that works for him and it should be stuck with, he’s excellent at being a menacy British petty crook, and variations thereupon.
· I took Canton’s inability to marry someone as a mention of him being gay, despite the actual historical inaccuracies involved there. Did Nixon have a daughter? I’d say wanting to marry the president’s daughter would likely get you kicked right out of the Secret Service too.
· Overall I thought it was good and a bit more purposeful than a lot of what we saw in the last series, I liked the directing (by Toby Haynes instead of by Adam Smith, who irritates me greatly), and I’m looking forward to seeing how things are cleared up next week.