Doctor Who: Day Of The Moon

I am increasingly convinced that it is Steven Moffat's primary goal in life to drive the viewers of Doctor Who insane.

After one of the best pre-credit sequences in a long while, Day Of Moon - picking up three months after the conclusion of The Impossible Astronaut - was a roller-coaster moving at lightspeed through a surreal terrain of mind-twisting mental images, interweaving plot threads and barmy revelations.

This episode had everything - from weird science and clever twists to the most terrifying children's home in '60s America.

Although The Silents' similarity to The Weeping Angels has been picked up on by several commentators on the good, ol' Interwebz, there is no getting round the fact that they are also similarly creepy and unnerving in their own way.

There were also moments in this episode that certainly resonated with echoes of gimmicks Moffat has used before (the 'perfect prison' The Doctor was 'trapped' in by the US Government - not sure where they got the material from - was a rehash of The Pandorica, while Amy's disembodied voice touched the same raw nerves that voices in Silence In The Library did), but the innovations came thick and and fast as well.

Since Doctor Who returned six years ago and adopted the American format of 45 minute episodes (rather than its old style of four or six 25-minute episodes per story), it has become increasingly hard to pass sensible judgment on single-episodes when they are part of a two-episode story.

In the good, old days of Classic Who you wouldn't have dreamed of reviewing a single episode out of context from a multi-part story, but now the individual episodes are somehow expected to simultaneously stand-on-their-own and continue the overarching narrative of the season.

So far, this season seems to be heading the right way.

Under the auspices of The Moff, the show has been becoming ever more American in its design, with a season's through-story being more than the appearance of a particular totem in each episode (e.g. Bad Wolf) and more like one continuous story that happens to feature some 'larger', almost standalone, episodes in its run.

After just two episodes we are left with many, crucial unanswered questions - many of which I suspect will remain unanswered until the end of this season.

We still don't know who pulled the trigger in The Impossible Astronaut, how Moffat is going to get out that particular corner he has painted himself into, who the little girl is (loved, beyond words, her final appearance at the end of Day Of The Moon, by the way), what's going on with Amy's Shroedinger pregnancy, who River Song really is (although it was strongly suggested that she and The Doctor were lovers/husband and wife even?), what was happening with the face at the disappearing window that said something about "she must still be dreaming" (or words to that effect), why had The Silent been building a replica TARDIS console room (and how did it end up in The Lodger?), will Rory and Amy live happily ever after (I do hope so) and probably countless other dangling sub-plots I'm too excited to even remember at the moment.

I'm hoping this year will see the series lurch back towards science-fiction rationalisation - as it does with this two-part story - and away from the fairy tale logic of last season. So far things appear to be heading brilliantly in the right direction.

As well as giving Tricky Dicky Nixon some of his most-positive television coverage in years, Moffat's story also slipped in a Whovian explanation of The President's need to record every conversation in the Oval Office.

So is this the last we will see of The Silents or will they crop up again as The Doctor goes back in Earth's history? And what were they doing during their thousands of years of occupation when other alien races invaded our planet? It must have gotten quite crowded at times! I wonder how The Silents got on with the daleks and cybermen?

Prequel To Next Week's Episode:



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