New Who 6.1: The Impossible Astronaut
So Moffat certainly does love his historicals. I noted at the end of last season that he was delivering a hit-rate of historical stories almost equivalent to Doctor Who in the mid-'60s. And it's not just that the bulk of this episode was set in 1969. It was the tropes he was playing around with at the beginning that really struck me - because they came straight out of the mid-'60s episodes.
See, I've got a little file of all the times 'history books' were directly referred to in Doctor Who in the mid-'60s - usually so that they could stand for the established, 'objective' view of history, as known to humanity, which the Doctor's adventures would then subvert and dance between the lines of. And that's exactly what we got at the start of this episode, too, when Rory asked Amy, "Do you really think he's back there trying to wave to us out of the history books?"
And I've flagged up case after case of in-story use of television screens as a parallel for the real-life viewers' experience of following the Doctor's adventures on their own televisions. That one's not unique to the '60s - it's been deployed over and over again throughout Doctor Who's history, including as recently as Moffat's A Christmas Carol. But this week's specific device of placing the Doctor within a Laurel and Hardy film reminded me very strongly of some of the '60s examples of it, and particularly the First Doctor's visit to a silent film set in The Daleks' Master Plan.
So, in short, it's not just that Moffat is setting stories in the past a lot. It's that he seems to me to be doing it with a very strong awareness of how Doctor Who has done that same thing within its own past. Indeed, as I've also said before when commenting on Whovian historicals, there does seem to be a particular tendency for Doctor Who stories which are set in the (real) past to become commentaries on the show's own past as well. And I could definitely see that going on here.
But of course that is by no means all, because the new thing which Moffat has really contributed to Doctor Who's treatment of history is his trademark tangling of time-lines - which was once again absolutely central to this story. That makes it hard to assess this episode it is own right at the moment. We've seen terrible and amazing things, but we've also been reminded that time can be rewritten. So who knows how it will all pan out next week. I've just got three squees and a question, which are going safely behind a spoiler cut:
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.
See, I've got a little file of all the times 'history books' were directly referred to in Doctor Who in the mid-'60s - usually so that they could stand for the established, 'objective' view of history, as known to humanity, which the Doctor's adventures would then subvert and dance between the lines of. And that's exactly what we got at the start of this episode, too, when Rory asked Amy, "Do you really think he's back there trying to wave to us out of the history books?"
And I've flagged up case after case of in-story use of television screens as a parallel for the real-life viewers' experience of following the Doctor's adventures on their own televisions. That one's not unique to the '60s - it's been deployed over and over again throughout Doctor Who's history, including as recently as Moffat's A Christmas Carol. But this week's specific device of placing the Doctor within a Laurel and Hardy film reminded me very strongly of some of the '60s examples of it, and particularly the First Doctor's visit to a silent film set in The Daleks' Master Plan.
So, in short, it's not just that Moffat is setting stories in the past a lot. It's that he seems to me to be doing it with a very strong awareness of how Doctor Who has done that same thing within its own past. Indeed, as I've also said before when commenting on Whovian historicals, there does seem to be a particular tendency for Doctor Who stories which are set in the (real) past to become commentaries on the show's own past as well. And I could definitely see that going on here.
But of course that is by no means all, because the new thing which Moffat has really contributed to Doctor Who's treatment of history is his trademark tangling of time-lines - which was once again absolutely central to this story. That makes it hard to assess this episode it is own right at the moment. We've seen terrible and amazing things, but we've also been reminded that time can be rewritten. So who knows how it will all pan out next week. I've just got three squees and a question, which are going safely behind a spoiler cut:
- The TARDIS being drawn to landing on Saturdays - fits beautifully with the Doctor's claim in Silence in the Library that he never lands on Sundays because they're boring, and is a lovely meta-reference to the fact that the show broadcasts on Saturdays, too. So of course they're the best!
- Both versions of the Doctor greeting Rory as 'Rory the Roman'. That makes the Classicist in me cheer every time it's referenced - but it also looks like we're being reminded of it for foreshadowing reasons. Cannot wait to find out how and why.
- And that ship which River and Rory found in the tunnels underneath the abandoned warehouse looks like the same one (or the same type, at least) as the ship in The Lodger. That seems to fit in with the news that James Corden will be back at some point during the current series, and perhaps suggests that the story of exactly how the one from The Lodger came to be on top of his flat will extend beyond the confines of the current two-parter. Cool.
- And finally, if Amy feeling sick is television short-hand for her turning out to be pregnant, does that mean River, who felt sick while investigating the tunnels, is pregnant too? There's a lot of interesting potential there...
Click here if you would like view this entry in light text on a dark background.